And Life Is Better
Sometimes a family may be a happier family if part of it moves away
Helen R. Hull
Good Housekeeping, vol. 125, July 1947, pp. 24-25, 167-182.
Ann rattled the buttons in the little box, poking her forefinger among them to find one to match those still attached to her husband’s shirt. She shifted slightly in the low chair by the fireplace. The small of her back ached, the two days just past having tied knots along that part of her spine. Tonight things seemed tranquil; dinner had gone off with scarcely a raised eyebrow from Mother; Peter, Ann’s husband, had told a very funny story about crossed telephone wires; and Wilfreda had not once teased Ben.
Ann found the button, hung it on the tip of her needle, and looked about the room. Surely she was mature enough now to escape the half-childish feeling of apprehension her mother’s presence set up, almost like a low fever distorting everything. Just a hangover from the days before Ann went away to school and college, when she longed to please her beautiful and gifted mother and so often clumsily said or did the wrong thing.
Ann looked first at her mother, sitting opposite her in the blue wing chair, her slender hands moving in quick, accurate dips over the richly hued petit point. Her mother, as if she had awaited Ann’s attention, let her head, the blue-white curls shining in the light, droop lower over her work and sighed.
“That’s such close work, Mother,” said Ann. “Don’t you want to swap with me?”
Mrs. Reed lifted her long lashes; her eyes were so dark they seemed all pupil. “I can’t sit still unless I have something to work on, but it must have beauty.”
“No slurs on my shirt,” drawled Peter from behind his magazine. “If you knew how scarce shirts are, you’d think that one was a thing of beauty.” Smoke from his pipe made a quick cloud around him.
Ann could see the part in his brown hair and the high V of temple deepen in color, but he wouldn’t look up to catch her entreaty. He hadn’t said a word when her mother had settled into his favorite chair with a plaintive, “You don’t mind, Peter? I had a slight headache last night—that lamp near the davenport isn’t strong enough for my work.” This was the first winter since the beginning of the war that Peter had really been at home, instead of commuting between Washington and New York on essential telephone business, and sitting in his own chair was still a conscious pleasure. When Mrs. Reed’s letter had come, announcing her departure from the sanitarium, where she had spent almost two years since the shock of Father’s death had pushed her into a serious breakdown, and suggesting a little visit in her daughter’s home—“You’re all I have now, Ann. Of course, the children may be too much for me, but I’ll make the effort”—Peter had said, “Perhaps we should dispose of the children.” Ann had cried. Peter had given her a hearty hug and shake. “Forget it. I’ll be patient as Job. How long will she stay, do you think? Too bad she couldn’t have made it while I was running the war. Still, I’d rather be on hand as a sort of shock absorber.”
* * * * *
Peter had never forgotten that Mrs. Reed hadn’t liked the marriage. She’d said he was too old, too insensitive for her only child. Ann’s father had said, “He seems a fine chap, just the sort for you.” Ann, with the degree of independence her years in school and college had developed (years her father had insisted on) had waited until her mother recovered from some mysterious illness, and then had married Peter. Oh, he was just the sort for her! She wished he could like her mother better. After all, Mother was a genius—just look at the exquisite poetry she had written—and you had to admit that a genius is different from ordinary people. She deserved more leeway. At sixty she was still beautiful, with a slender, erect body, a kind of bloom on her skin, and those dark, expressive eyes. Only in sunlight did the lines radiating from the carefully tinted lips show the initial etching of age. No wonder she had collapsed when Father died. He had always shielded her completely.
Now Mother ignored Peter’s remark, except for a glance at Ann, a glance that asked, “Did you hear that? You see.”
Ann looked down at the hearth, where Wilfreda lay on her stomach, one arm around Taffy, the Irish terrier, the other hand turning pages of a schoolbook, her feet wriggling, denting the broadloom.
“Where’s the cat?” Ann asked her.
“I don’t know,” Wilfreda said. “Outdoors, I guess.” She rolled over on Taffy; Taffy yelped, and Mrs. Reed gave a startled cry. “Gosh, what a baby you are, Taffy! Now I got my homework done, can I turn on the radio?”
“Not tonight, darling.”
“Aw, Mum! It’s ‘This Is Your F. B. I.’ Ben’s got his going, but he won’t let me in, and anyway he just has that old Q X R music all the time.” She cocked her head, listening; Ann heard, too, the muted sound of a recorded symphony.
“But Ben’s studying. He studies to music. You take Taffy out for his night run.” Taffy yelped again, this time with delight, and Mrs. Reed murmured, “Must you scream so?”
Wilfreda opened her mouth and shut it again as Ann gave her a push from behind. The little girl looked at her mother, freckles golden over her nose, an amusing grimness in her face exactly like her father’s expression. All she said was, “Okeydokey.”
* * * * *
Wilfreda left ajar the French door leading to the terrace. Wilfreda’s bursts of action usually left doors ajar, thought Ann. But the air that entered was soft; it smelled golden, rich with the odors of the prolonged warmth this autumn. A moment later Ann was sorry the child had not closed the door, as Mrs. Reed spoke incisively.
“That child must be a foundling! She can’t be my grandchild. Now, Ben—he’s all mine.”
“Both children are related to me, you know,” said Peter. Again he did not lift his head from his reading; but this time a vein grew prominent on his temple.
“I feel a draft; it’s chilling my ankles,” complained Mrs. Reed, stretching toward the fire her gold-brocade slippers, the jeweled heels sparkling, rose-pink nails shining through the nylon hose, slender, graceful ankles gleaming from the folds of the chartreuse satin slacks.
Ann glanced at Peter, who settled lower in his chair. Before she had to ask him or, still worse in her mother’s eyes, shut the door herself, Wilfreda rushed in, out of breath, Taffy leaping at her knees and Boots, the cat, following in sedate dignity.
“Please close the door,” Ann said, “and don’t let Taffy go crazy in here.”
Wilfreda shut the door and flung herself down beside her father, laughing, straddling the arm of his chair, pushing her head down to share the picture at which he was looking. Taffy stood up, his forepaws braced on her leg, and she shut her fingers around his square muzzle to hush him. He broke away, bounced across the room and up the stairs, his toenails noisy, as he caught the cue that Ben had finished his work and was coming down. Boots, with the self-possession of most cats, lay placidly on the hearth.
“Taffy always hears Ben open his door before I do,” said Ann.
“He knows when the radio stops,” said Wilfreda. Her father had drawn her into the chair beside him, one arm around her, and her small face shone with contentment. “Gee, but it’s super to have you home ’most every night,” she said. “Lookit that picture. Where’s the steer going?”
Ben stopped in the entrance from the hall, and Ann smiled at him. He didn’t see her; he was staring at his father and sister, a queer, strained look on his thin face. His dark eyes, like his grandmother’s, with long lashes, seemed too large for the rest of his face. He had lost some of his child look lately, but he had as yet not grown into anything definite. Ann couldn’t see the kind of man he would become. His head was fine, high-domed, with dark hair neatly brushed.
Ann tried to shake off the sharp stab of deepened apprehension at the look on his face. How long would it take for Ben to accept his father’s full presence? How long before he stopped resenting the free flow of affection between Wilfreda and her father? The years while Peter had been so seldom at home had not exactly alienated the boy from his father. In secret Ben worshiped him, absent or at home; but he fought against him. Peter was patient enough, but he saw no reason to hide his irritation at the boy’s shyness, or his dislike of his fears, his odd little ways. Worst of all, Ann thought, was the tacit inclusion of Ann in those fears and ways, as if she had failed in her job of mother. Like last Monday, when Ben came in from school crying because a gang of tough, older boys had waylaid the little fellows and thrown rocks at them. The next morning Ben couldn’t eat his breakfast, he so dreaded the trip to school and home again. When Peter ordered him to eat, he tried, but became ill immediately. Even then, Peter didn’t approve when Ann promised to walk toward school that afternoon to meet Ben.
“Father thinks I just make up that my stomach is sick,” Ben whispered.