38
Ada only fasted for a day or so. “Stewing in her own juices,” Irini’s father called it. He went to see her. According to his reading of Gandhi, blackmail of this sort was a gross misuse of satyagraha. They compared texts until she admitted it.
She began instead to call on the Mays and the Tarkens at tiresome intervals, all in the pursuit of truth, to meet weekly at Collins House with the rest of the satyagrahis. Irini’s father often joined her at one of the next-door sessions. Norma Baldish and Mr. Baldish began to attend. Then the Leggetts, who as Quakers were naturals at this stuff.
Soon they had quite a little study group. They read Gandhi and they read about Gandhi. Together they began to dislike Churchill, first Irini’s father, and then Norma, and then the rest. It was a hard step to take. The rest of Magrit strongly disapproved.
Irini’s father began to read Tagore. He just couldn’t help himself. In the midst of a group of rebels he was forced to be rebellious.
And they followed events in India. This was extremely depressing. India was awash in blood. The desire to inflict pain was still greater than the willingness to endure it. Somehow Gandhi had to tip the balance. Ada and Irini’s father fretted because the news came to Magrit so slowly and in such little detail.
If only Gandhi could see the progress being made in Magrit. One day Cindy May attended a session held at Collins House. She and the Leggetts were Upper Magrit, of course. The Baldishes, Lower. They all sat at the same table together and admired the same man.
It was the beginning Ada had hoped for, and even Fanny May’s relentless opposition couldn’t spoil it for her. Fanny made it a rule in the Kitchen that anyone who mentioned Gandhi had to put a penny in the blue pig. “Don’t ever mix politics and baking. All you’ll get is bread that won’t rise,” she said to the girls in the Kitchen.
The blue pig had been retired from its original function as Maggie’s piggy bank. Henry emptied it out one day—there was more than a dollar there—and bought Ada some potted chrysanthemums.
Maggie had never existed. She was a fictional construct and everyone was free to say so. This was because of Maggie’s last column. It came only one week after Indian Independence. During that week, Fanny had applied herself, at the expense of her wedding plans, to the delicate job of suggesting that the previous column, the one telling you to leave your husband on his sorry buttocks and plant a victory garden in your toilet, had been a joke. Maggie Collins, she tried to suggest, had always had her larkish, whimsical side, even if no one had ever seen it before.
Fanny had rewritten the column many times, trying to get it just right. She read it to the whole Kitchen for criticism and advice. Then she sent it off to New York. No one touched the mail except for her, putting it into the mailbox, and Norma, taking it out. But the following appeared in Women at Home under Maggie’s usual softly smiling portrait instead.
Girls!
A woman’s life is bounded on three sides by three constraints. We may think of these constraints as the three R’s: Religion, Reputation, and Romance.
Under Religion we include all those considerations a woman makes to lead a moral, upright life. Although they may come from the external agency of a church or synagogue, we here make a distinction between them and Reputation, which is entirely external. By Religion, we mean the little voice inside that says, “You mustn’t do that.” By Reputation, we mean instead the voice that says, “What will people think of you if you do that?”
Romance is perhaps the most potent of the three R’s. In Romance we include the compromises you make and continue to make in order to capture the heart of a man, the sacrifices you make for husband and children. You think you want Romance, you have been made to think you want it, but it is, in fact, merely a tasty sauce poured over an unappetizing dish.
Taken altogether the three R’s form the powerful prison in which most women find themselves trapped.
But it takes four walls to make a prison. Flee through the open space with only the clothes on your back. What you need most, after food and sleep, is silence and time. You will not find these in your little house with the white picket fence and the screaming children and the glowering husband. Live in the woods, eat like the birds. Wear your feather dusters as hats; make hammocks of your aprons. Warm yourself at the primitive fires. Be nameless.
Life is a smorgasbord. Take many lovers. You will be surprised how many people are edible if you prepare them properly.
The ad on the facing page was for tooth polish. The original for the column, recovered from New York and examined, proved to have been typed on the mill typewriter.
Somewhere in Northern California in the fall of 1947, a small sect of menopausal women abandoned their families for the redwoods, where they built small huts and held moonlight dances. It was 1947, but it was still California. These women called themselves the Harpies, picking the name quickly before anyone else could bestow it on them. They favored clothes with feathers.
They supported themselves first by making the drip candles you see in restaurants, and later by growing and selling marijuana; they had special contracts with the Mob regarding both products. Every once in a while they showed up at bake-offs, dressed in gorilla suits. You yourself must have a vague memory of these women. They were an intermittent embarrassment to breakfast cereals in general until the sixties, when the strident noise of the general culture swelled to drown out their shrill eccentric voices.
Otherwise the response to Maggie’s column was characterized by the three D’s, Disdain, Disapproval, and Disappointment. It was an advertising disaster. There was too much damage this time; it could not be repaired. The only possible response was triage, tragic in 1947, though a concept we seem more willing to embrace now. Margaret Mill was forced to distance itself from Maggie Collins, and just before the fifties, just before that time when her household prowess might have let her rule the world.
It was, the regulars at Bumps decided over beers, the final revenge of Upper Magrit on Henry Collins, although none of them knew how Madame Nadeau had brought it about.
Maggie’s portrait was quietly removed. Her column space was given over entirely to recipes and beauty tips, all published by the editors of Women at Home without attribution. The very name Margaret Mill had to be changed. I won’t tell you what it was changed to, but you would recognize it, if I did. You might have seen it this very morning on your very own breakfast table. You might still have some of its dangerous flakes dissolving in your blood stream, into your very bones. Are you discontented, vaguely nostalgic for times you never had? Well, all right then. It’s in the flake.
All evidence had to be destroyed, and this included little innocent Anna Peal. Wheat Theater was too closely tied in the public mind to Maggie Collins. One day Anna was wandering through the snows of her island paradise, on her sweet way back to hearth and home. The next, she had been replaced by three cats who could speak among themselves, though not to humans, and solved mysteries. Siamese cats, but that goes without saying.
Little Anna was left permanently out in the cold. “I try to think of her in Shangri-la,” my mother told me once. “I try to think of her happy.”
Irini had not told anyone else in Magrit that she had seen Maggie on Indian Independence Day. But there were other sightings, sightings that went on for years. Maggie survived her fictional death as a rumor, a bogeywoman that Magrit parents threatened their children with if they didn’t clean their rooms and clean their plates. “Maggie Collins will get you,” Magrit parents said and it never failed to convince.
Henry managed. He persevered. He found Chi Chi and brought her back to be the new spokeswoman for the new Sweetwheats, whose name was changed to the one I won’t tell you. It turned out she didn’t bowl after all. There had been some communications snafu, just as Fanny had predicted, and Henry had already gone to all the trouble and expense of having Norma build her a lane to practice on at Collins House. What she did was bow. It was well done: she put one hand i
n front of her waist and one behind and bounced. It was cute as could be, but it was over so fast.
She never could be taught to bowl. Henry had a special ball made with very large finger holes. She used to hide her Sweetwheats in them and pretend she’d eaten them. She was all charm and guile and big brown eyes.
He was quite heartsick about Maggie, and all the apes in the world couldn’t make it up to him. But he was one of those old-fashioned self-made men, and not like today’s breed. He had never asked for a life without setbacks and he would not have enjoyed one. Maggie had betrayed him and he left her behind and he never spoke her name aloud again.
The leaves began to turn. Irini met Henry one day in August, wandering up by Upper Magrit. “Look at this, Irini,” he said. He held out a yellow aspen leaf and a red maple. “The yellow is caused by xanthophyll, same as egg yolks. The red is sugar.” He shook his head. “There’s food everywhere I go,” he said, with anguish. “Makes it hard to forget.”
He gave a toast at the wedding of Irini’s father and Norma Baldish. It had been a long time since there was a wedding in Magrit, so they pulled out all the stops. It was an evening affair, very formal. Somewhere in the sky above, Cassiopeia whirled about in her chair and she was beautiful, beautiful whether Irini could see her or not.
The bride wore a white veil, in a pattern that spiraled out like Queen Anne’s lace. Irini was a bridesmaid in powder blue, although really, she thought, she ought to be giving him away. She thought she was entitled to this. They took over Bumps for the reception, removing the tables for dancing, and there was a wedding punch with champagne and orange juice and sherbet that Maggie had once concocted during her happier days.
“It has been a summer,” Henry said, incontrovertibly. He held his glass high. He didn’t drink, but he pretended to for the sake of the toast.
Not everyone was listening. He tapped his glass and began again. “Quite a summer for us here in Magrit. And somewhere in the midst of it all, these two kids found the time to fall in love. Let it be a lesson to the rest of us. There’s always time for love.”
Magrit drank to that. Thomas Holcrow came to stand at Irini’s side. She had never seen him in a tux. Words failed her. Her lungs filled with the smoke of his cigarette. She breathed in deep. She felt that same shuddering inside. “I’m leaving Magrit,” he said. “Hitting the road. I don’t expect I’ll be back, but you never know.”
Now she couldn’t breathe at all. “I’m leaving, too. I’m going to college.” Was the tone casual enough? Apparently not. Holcrow took her hand. Days later she would still feel the touch of it.
“That’s peachy. I never wanted to hurt you, Irini,” Holcrow said. “I really hope things work out for you. I always thought you were swell.”
“Did you get what you wanted here in Magrit? Your research? You’re not leaving just because Dad and Norma want your room?”
“No, I’m done here. And if we do meet again, I hope you’ll forgive me. I would always want to think of you as a friend.” He was still holding her hand. He dropped it, touched her cheek.
Then he made a graceful exit, a Hollywood exit. He stopped briefly beside Arlys, Margo, and Cindy. He spoke to them, leaning in close. He took their hands, one after the other, and kissed them, even Cindy’s, which had to be removed from its sling first. Irini watched his backs in the daisy mirror above the bar. It was the very same place she had first seen him. Irini’s eyes filled with tears.
And yet, that speech he’d just made. It was a little presumptuous. How could he possibly know that she was feeling all the things that she was feeling? Why should he apologize when he’d never distinguished her by any particular attention? How dare he think she cared for him? The whole thing made her feel distressingly naked. Walter didn’t help. “There goes the man of your dreams,” Walter said. He was in a tux as well, but who cared?
“Thomas Holcrow is nothing to me.” Irini had the usual tone she adopted with Walter. Starchy.
“Then come and dance.” Mrs. Gilbertsen was playing the piano. It was not dance music, but all Mrs. Gilbertsen’s selections had a steady tempo. Walter put his arms around her.
“No, no,” said Irini’s father, taking her out of them again. “This dance is with me.”
His first whirl was so extravagant he nearly lost her. Irini had worried that the whole improbable marriage scheme was something he had cooked up just to get her out of Magrit. But tonight she was believing in it. Tonight he was clearly a happy man.
He looked across the room to where Norma was dancing with her own father. “Isn’t she a beautiful woman?” he asked his daughter, and fortunately, the question was rhetorical. Norma was a woman with the shape of a bear. Irini’s father was a man with the face of a wolf. Irini could see how this could be a good match. She thought that now that Norma was her mother, maybe she could offer a little advice about lipsticks and blushes.
There was, of course, a shortage of men at the wedding. Her father went to dance with Claire and Irini danced with Margo. Margo was wearing calico. Her hair was down about her shoulders, thick as amber, full of lights and colors. Then she danced with Walter while Margo and Arlys danced. Behind them, Irini could see her father dancing with Sissy now. No one had told Sissy yet that Holcrow was leaving, or she would not be keeping time. But Tracy knew. Irini had caught a petaled glimpse of her reflection and it was enough. She was rushing from the room. She had looked so pretty, had dressed so carefully for the wedding. She had planned on catching the bouquet.
And then Irini had to go back to Brief Street and spend the night alone. She couldn’t ever remember having done that before. Tweed didn’t like it either. She paced and whined and kept Irini up. Irini tried to keep her thoughts on the new life she would be starting. There would be so many boys at college. She had never liked the old life so well that she should cry about it.
39
In September, Gandhi stopped the riots in Calcutta by fasting. It was a triumph for nonviolence. Irini’s father phoned to tell her about it. They were rioting riotously in the streets in Magrit, he said. Or anyway, he was.
My mother told me that when I was born, he wanted me named Ahimsa. She refused, even when he threatened to fast, or at least go on an all-liquid diet, and a good thing she did, says I. Let’s not ask ourselves what kind of story I might be telling now if I’d gone through the fifties named Ahimsa. But it shows the level of my grandfather’s commitment.
Irini had gone downstate to college. There was no baseball team for her, but there was a good program in education and she was studying to become a nursery school teacher. She didn’t get back to Magrit often. At first it was because she didn’t fancy sleeping with her father and Norma in the two little rooms above Bumps. Someday they would have the whole Baldish place and a bedroom for her to come home to. But not for years, and Irini didn’t want to consider her father’s situation. It wasn’t romantic, it was ridiculous for him to be living in a cramped little place as if he were a young married man just starting out. Of course he had done it for her. And for love. And maybe to be close to the spigots.
So when Sissy came on the train one day that next winter to visit, Irini was unexpectedly happy to see her. They tramped around the campus together, snow caking in the crevices of their boots, the shape of each snowy flake distinct and intricate against the black of Sissy’s hair. They went into the student union for hot chocolate. “I’m so starved for news from home,” she told Sissy. Home. Dear old Magrit. And she heard how Helen was expecting a baby, and that all Magrit was knitting booties. It had been so long since Dr. Gilbertsen had delivered a baby, he was telling everyone he might have forgotten how.
The Fanny May–Mike Barr wedding was on again. “Not that I’m invited either way,” said Sissy. Cindy May was seeing Horace Redd, which made Tracy the only May girl without a beau, and pretty darned cranky, too. There were rumors that Ruby had shown up at the end of the summer to try out for the Belles. When the Redds heard, Horace went straight to Racine to fetch
her, but she’d fled again. She’d played two games though. One of them was a no-hitter.
“At least that’s what Cindy says,” said Sissy. Which is how Irini knew that Upper and Lower Magrit were beginning to talk.
Claire had been hired, with Mrs. Ada’s recommendation, as cook to a wealthy family from Chicago who traveled all over Europe. This family was having an enormous party, an opera-night party, sometime in May. It was going to be Carmen, and they had sent Claire to France to learn Spanish cooking. Just for the party! They were paying for everything and Claire was seeing the world. Irini and Sissy drank their hot chocolate and tried to imagine Claire in Paris. “Le chapeau de ma tante,” they said, by way of a toast. “La plume de mon pére.”
The student union was becoming too hot. Irini took off another layer of clothing. She had plenty left. “I owe you an apology,” she said finally, awkwardly, still struggling out of her sleeves. It should have been said in Magrit, it should have been said weeks ago, but it had to be said.
“Oh, goodness, Irini. I got over that years ago.”
Possibly Sissy was thinking of the storm at Glen Annie Creek. Or something else. Sissy and Irini had known each other too long not to have behaved offensively on multiple occasions.
Irini didn’t want to stop and think of how many other things she should be apologizing for; she would never finish. “I didn’t believe you when you said you saw Maggie up by the Falls that time. I thought you were making it up, just to get Thomas Holcrow’s attention. But then I saw her, too. On Indian Independence Day. Right in the water. I never told anyone.”
Sissy put her hands into the steam over her cocoa. Her fingers were red and rough just as if she worked for a living. Her large eyes blinked at Irini slowly. Then she looked away from Irini and she didn’t look back. “No, you had it right. I was lying.” Her voice was hoarse and whispery. “I was trying to get his attention. I saw you and him and Margo leave your house that night, so I ran out to get ahead of you.”
The Sweetheart Season Page 33
