The Homemaker · Part I · Chapter 2 (1/3)

II

When Lester Knapp stepped dispiritedly out from Willing’s Emporium, he felt, as he usually did, a thin little mittened hand slip into each of his.

“Hello, Father,” said Helen.

“Hello, Father,” said Henry.

“Hello, children,” said Father, squeezing their hands up tightly and looking down into their upturned faces.

“How’s tricks?” he asked, as they stepped off, his lagging step suddenly brisk. “What did the teacher say to that composition, Helen?”

“She said it was fine!” said the little girl eagerly. “She read it out to the class. She said maybe they’d get me to write the play for the entertainment our class is going to give, a history play, you know, something that would bring in Indians and the early settlers and the hiding regicides and what we’ve been studying. I wanted to ask you if you thought I could start it inside one of the houses, the night of an Indian attack, everybody loading muskets and barring the shutters and things, and the old hidden regicide looking out through a crack to see where the Indians were.”

“Oh, that would be great!” cried Henry admiringly, craning his neck around his father to listen. “What’s a regicide?” Henry was three grades behind Helen in school and hadn’t begun on history. His father and sister explained to him, both talking at once. And then they laughed to hear their words clashing together. They swung along rapidly, talking, laughing, interrupting each other, Henry constantly asking questions, the other two developing the imaginary scene, thrilling at the imaginary danger, loading imaginary muskets, their voices chiming out like bells in the cold evening air. Once in a while, Henry, who was small for his age, gave a little animated hop and skip to keep up with the others.

In front of the delicatessen-grocery store at the corner of their street, the father suddenly drew them to a halt. “What was it Mother asked me to bring home with me?” He spoke anxiously, and anxiously the children looked up at him. Suppose he should not be able to remember it!

But he did. It was a package of oatmeal and a yeast-cake. He dragged them triumphantly up from his memory.

They entered the shop and found Aunt Mattie Farnham there, buying ginger cookies and potato salad and boiled ham. “My! I’m ashamed to have you Knapps catch me at this!” she protested with that Aunt Mattieish laugh of hers that meant that she wasn’t really ashamed, or anything but cheerfully ready to make fun of herself. “It’s not Evangeline Knapp who’d be buying delicatessen stuff for her family’s supper at six o’clock at night! We went out in the new Buick this afternoon.⁠ ⁠… Oh, Lester, she’s a dream, simply a dream! And we went further than we meant. You always do, you know. And of course, being me, there’s not a thing in the house to eat. I put Frank and the children to setting the table while I tore over here. Don’t you tell Evangeline on me, Lester. I tried to get her to go and take Stephen, but she wouldn’t⁠—had biscuits to make for supper and a floor to scrub or something. She never lets things go, as I do. She’s a perfect wonder, Evangeline is, anyhow. An example to us all, I always tell ’em. After I’ve been in your house, I declare, I’m ashamed to set foot in my own!”

While the grocer wrapped up her purchases she stooped her fair smiling face towards Helen to say, “My gracious, honey, how swell we do look in our new coat! Where did Momma buy that for you?”

Helen looked down at it as if to see what coat it was, as if she had forgotten that she wore a coat. Then she said, “She made it, Mother made it, out of an old coat Gramma Houghton sent us. The collar and cuffs are off Cousin Celia’s last-winter one.”

Aunt Mattie was lost in admiration. She turned Helen around to get the effect of the back. “Well, your mother is the wonder!” she cried heartily, again. “I never saw anybody to beat her for style! Give Evangeline Knapp a gunny sack and a horse-blanket and she’ll turn you out a fifty-dollar coat, I always tell ’em. Would anybody but her have dreamed of using that blue and light green together? It makes it look positively as if it came right from Fifth Avenue. I don’t dare buy me a new hat or a suit unless Evangeline says it’s all right. You can’t fool her on style! What did you ever do, Lester Knapp, to deserve such a wife, I’d like to know.”

She laughed again, as Aunt Mattie always did, just for the sake of laughing, gave Henry and Helen each a cookie out of her paper bag, and took up her boughten salad and boughten boiled ham and went off, repeating, “Now, folks, don’t you go and give me away!”

The grocery store seemed very silent after she left. Mr. Knapp bought his yeast-cake and package of oatmeal and they went out without a word. They didn’t feel like talking any more. The children were eating fast on their cookies to finish them before they reached home.

They turned up the walk to the house in silence, stood for some time scraping the snow and mud off their shoes on the wire mat at the foot of the steps and went on their toes up to the cocoa-fiber mat in front of the door.

When they finally opened the door and stepped in, an appetizing odor of hot chocolate and something fresh out of the oven met them. Also the sound of the clock striking half-past six. Good, they were on time. It was very important to be on time. Little Stephen sat on the bottom step of the stairs, waiting for them, his face swollen and mottled, his eyes very red, his mouth clamped shut in a hard line.

“Oh, gee! I bet Stevie’s been bad again!” murmured Henry pityingly. He went quickly to his little brother and tried to toss him up. But the heavy child was too much of a weight for his thin arms. He only succeeded in giving him a great hug. Helen did this too, and laid the fresh, outdoor coolness of her cheek against the little boy’s hot face, glazed by tears. They none of them made a sound.

Lester Knapp stood silently looking at them.

Their mother came to the door, fresh in a well-ironed, clean, gingham house-dress.

“Well, Evie dear, what’s the news from home?” asked Lester, as the children separated and began quickly hanging up their wraps. Stephen slipped off back towards the kitchen.

“Oh, all right,” she said in her dear, well-modulated voice, her eyes on Helen, to whom she now said quietly, with a crescendo effect of patient self-restraint, “Don’t wriggle around on one foot that way to take off your rubbers. Sit down on a chair. No, not that one, it’s too high. This one. Lay down your schoolbooks. You can’t do anything with them under your arm. There are your mittens on the floor. Put them in your pocket and you’ll know where to find them. Unless they’re damp. Are they damp? If they are, take them into the kitchen and put them on the rack to dry.” As the child turned away, she called after her, making her give a nervous jump, “Not too close to the stove, or they’ll burn.”

She turned to Henry now (Stephen had disappeared). He froze to immobility, looking at her out of timid shadowed eyes, as if like a squirrel, he hoped by standing very still to make himself small.⁠ ⁠…

Apparently Henry had taken off his coat and hat satisfactorily and had suitably disposed of his mittens, for, after passing her eyes over his small person in one sweep, she turned away, saying over her shoulder, “I’m just going to put supper on the table. You’ll have time to wash your hands while I dish up the things.”

Henry drew a long breath and started upstairs. His father stood looking after him till with a little start he came to himself and followed.

The supper bell rang by the time their hands and faces were washed. Helen and Henry washed Stephen’s. They did not talk. They kept their attention on what they were doing, rinsing out the washbasin after they had finished, hanging the towels up smoothly and looking responsibly around them at the immaculate little room before they went downstairs.

The supper was exquisitely cooked, nourishing, light, daintily served. Scalloped potatoes, done to a turn; a broiled beefsteak with butter melting oozily on it; frothing, well-whipped chocolate; small golden biscuits made out of a health-flour.

The children tucked their clean napkins under their chins, spread them out carefully over their clean clothes and, all but Stephen, ate circumspectly.

“Nothing special happened today, then?” asked Mr. Knapp in a cheerful voice, looking over at the erect, well-coifed housemother.

“Just the usual things,” answered Mrs. Knapp, reaching out to push Henry’s plate a little nearer to him. “I haven’t been out anywhere, and nobody has been in. Stephen, don’t eat so fast. Mattie telephoned. Their new car has come. Henry, do sit up straighter. You’ll be positively hunchbacked if you keep stooping over so.”

At the mention of Aunt Mattie and the new car, a self-conscious silence dropped over the older children and their father. They looked down at their plates.

“Helen, did you put salt on your potatoes?” asked her mother. “I don’t put in as much as we like, because the doctor says Henry shouldn’t eat things very salt.”

“I put some on,” said Helen.

“Enough?” asked her mother doubtfully. “You know it takes a lot for potatoes.”

Helen tasted her potatoes, as though she had not till then thought about them. “Yes, there’s enough,” she said.

“Let me taste them,” said her mother, holding out her hand for the plate. After she had tasted them she said, “Why, there’s not nearly enough, they’re perfectly flat. Here, give me that saltcellar.” She added the salt, tasted the potatoes again and pushed the plate back to Helen, who went on eating with small mouthfuls, chewing conscientiously.

There was another silence.

Mr. Knapp helped himself to another biscuit, and said as he spread it with butter, “Aren’t these biscuits simply great! You’d never know, by the taste, they were good for you, would you?”

Helen looked up quickly with a silent, amused smile. Her eyes met her father’s with understanding mirth.

“Take smaller mouthfuls, Stephen,” said Mrs. Knapp.

Nobody said a word, made a comment, least of all her husband, but she went on with some heat as if in answer to an unspoken criticism. “I know I keep at the children all the time! But how can I help it? They’ve got to learn, haven’t they? It certainly is no pleasure to me to do it! Somebody’s got to bring them up.”

The others quailed in silent remorse before this arraignment. Not so Stephen. He paid no attention whatever to it. His mother often said bitterly that he paid no attention to anything a grownup said unless you screamed at him and stamped your foot.

“Gimme some more meat,” he said heartily, pushing his plate towards his father.

“Say, ‘Please, Father,’ ” commanded his mother.

He looked blackly at her, longingly at the steak, decided that the occasion was not worth a battle and said, “Please, father,” in a tone which he contrived, with no difficulty whatever, to make insulting.

His mother’s worn, restrained face took on a deeper shade of disheartenment, but she did not lift the cast-down glove, and the provocative accent of rebellion continued to echo in the room triumphant and unchecked. It did not seem to increase the appetite of the other children. They kept their eyes cast down and made themselves small in their chairs.

It had no effect on Stephen’s enjoyment of his meal. He ate heartily, like a robust lumberman who has been battling with the elements all day and knows he must fortify himself for a continuation of the same struggle tomorrow. The mottled spots on his cheeks blended into his usual healthy red. He stopped eating for a moment to take a long and audible draught out of his mug.

“Don’t make a noise when you drink your milk,” said his mother.

The others ate lightly, sipping at their chocolate, taking tiny mouthfuls of the steak and potatoes.

“Helen’s school composition had quite a success,” said Helen’s father. “They are going to have some dramatics at the school and.⁠ ⁠…”

“What are dramatics?” asked Henry.

“Oh, that’s the general name for plays, comedies, you know, and tragedies and.⁠ ⁠…”

“What is a comedy?” asked Henry. “What is a tragedy?”

“Good Heavens, Henry,” said his father, laughingly, “I never saw anybody in my life who could ask as many questions as you. You wear the life out of me!”

“He doesn’t bother me with them,” said his mother, her inflection presenting the statement as a proof of her superior merit.

Henry shrank a little smaller. His father hastened to explain what a tragedy was and what a comedy was. Another silence fell. Then, “Quite cold today,” said Mr. Knapp. “The boys at the office said that the thermometer.⁠ ⁠…” He had tried to stop himself the moment the word “office” was out of his mouth. But it was too late. He stuck fast at “thermometer,” for an instant and then, hurriedly as if quite aware that no one cared how he finished the sentence, he added, “stood at only ten above this morning.”

Mrs. Knapp had glanced up sharply at the word “office” and her eyes had darkened at the pause afterwards. She was looking hard at her husband now, as if his hesitation, as if his accent had told her something. “Young Mr. Willing didn’t get back today, did he?” she asked gravely.

Mr. Knapp took a long drink of his hot chocolate. “Yes, he did,” he said at last, setting down his cup and looking humbly at his wife.

“Did they announce the reorganization⁠ ⁠… the way he’s going to.⁠ ⁠…” asked Mrs. Knapp. As if she did not know the answer already!

They both already knew everything that was to be asked and answered, but there seemed no escape from going on.

“Yes, they did,” said Mr. Knapp, trying to chew on a mouthful of steak.

“Who did they put in charge of your office?” asked Mrs. Knapp, adding in an aside, “Helen, don’t hold your fork like that.”

“Harvey Bronson,” said Mr. Knapp, trying to make it sound like any other name.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Knapp.

She made no comment on the news. She made it a point never to criticize their father before the children.

Helen’s eyes went over timidly towards her father, sideways under lowered lids. She wished she dared give him a loving look of reassurance to show him how dearly she loved him and sympathized with him because he had not had the advancement they had all hoped for so long, because a younger man and one who was especially mean to Father had been put over his head. Her heart swelled and ached. She would get Father off in a corner after dinner and give him a big silent hug. He would understand.

But as it happened, she did not. Other things happened.

There was almost total silence during the rest of the meal. Mrs. Knapp did not eat another mouthful of food after her husband’s news. The others made a pretense of cutting up food and swallowing it. Helen and Henry cleared off the table and brought in the dessert.

“Be careful about holding the meat-platter straight, Henry,” cautioned his mother. “I scrubbed on those last grease spots till nearly five o’clock this afternoon. It makes it very hard for Mother when you and Helen are careless.” Her voice was carefully restrained.

“How is your eczema, tonight, Eva?” asked her husband.

“Oh, about the same,” she said. She served out the golden preserved peaches, passed the homemade cake, but took none herself. After sitting for a few moments, she pushed back her chair and said: “I don’t care for any dessert tonight. I’ll just go and start on the dishes. You can come out to help when you finish eating.”

Her husband looked up at her, his face pale and shadowed. He tried to catch her eyes. But she averted them, and without a glance at him walked steadily out into the kitchen.

Her presence was still as heavy in the room as though she sat there, brooding over them. They conscientiously tried to eat. They did not look at each other.