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

They heard her begin to pile up the dishes at the sink, working rapidly as she always did. They heard her step swiftly back towards the kitchen table as though to pick up a dish there. They heard her stop short with appalling abruptness; and for a long moment a silence filled the little house, roaring loudly in their ears as they gazed at each other, across the table. What could have happened?

And then, with the effect of a clap of thunder shaking them to the bone, came a sudden rending outburst of sobs, strangled weeping, the terrifying sounds of an hysteric breakdown.

They rushed out into the kitchen. Mrs. Knapp stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, both hands pressed over her face, trying in vain to restrain the tears which rained down through her fingers, the sobs which convulsed her tall, strong body. From her feet to the dining-room door stretched a fresh line of grease spots. Henry had once more tilted the meat-platter as he carried it.

She heard them come in; she gave a muffled inarticulate cry, half pronounced words they could not understand, and, rushing past them, still shaking with sobs, she ran upstairs to her room. They heard the door shut, the click of the latch loud and distinct in the silent house.

“I want another help of peaches,” said Stephen greedily, taking instant advantage of his mother’s absence. “I like peaches.”

His father thought sometimes that Stephen was like the traditional changeling, hard, heartless, inhuman.

Henry’s face had turned very white. He stood looking dully at his father and sister, his lips hanging half-open. He turned from white to a yellow-green, and a shudder shook him. He whispered hastily, thickly, unintelligibly (but they understood because they had seen those signs many times before), he murmured, his hand clapped over his mouth, his shoulders bowed, “… ’mfraid goin’ be sick,” and ran upstairs to the bathroom.

They followed and found him vomiting, leaning over the bowl, his legs bending and trembling under him. His father put one arm around the thin little body and held his head clumsily with the other hand. Helen stood by, helplessly sympathetic. Henry looked so awfully sick when he had those fits of nausea!

Henry vomited apologetically, as it were, trying feebly not to spatter any of the ill-smelling liquid on the bathroom wall or floor. In an instant’s pause between spasms he rolled his eyes appealingly at Helen, who sprang to his side.

“… ’mfraid got shome shstairs,” he said thickly, the words cut short by another agonizing fit of retching.

Helen darted away. Her father called her back. “What is it? What did Henry say?” he asked anxiously. “I’ll get him his medicine as soon as he is over this. I don’t believe you can reach it. It’s on that highest shelf.” Helen stood up on tiptoe and whispered in her father’s ear, “He said he was afraid he got some on the stairs, and I’m going to wipe it up.”

Her father nodded his instant understanding. The little girl flew to the corner closet where the cleaning cloths were hung and disappeared down the stairs.

The door to the bedroom opened and Mrs. Knapp appeared. Her eyes were still red, and her face very pale; but her expression was of strong, kind solicitude. She came straight into the bathroom where Henry stood, half-fainting, wavering from side to side.

“Oh, poor Henry!” she said. “Here, I’ll take care of him.”

Mr. Knapp stepped back, self-effacingly, and with relief. She picked the child up bodily in her strong arms and carried him into the bedroom where she laid him on the bed. In an instant she had whisked out a basin which she held ready with one hand. “Bring me a wet washcloth, cold,” she said to her husband, “and a glass of water.” When it came she wiped Henry’s lips clean, so that with a sigh of relief he closed his mouth; she held the glass to his lips, “Rinse out your mouth with this, dear. It’ll make you feel better.” When the next spasm came, she supported his forehead firmly, laying his head back on the pillow afterwards; and, sprinkling a little eau-de-cologne on a fresh handkerchief, she wiped the cold sweat from his face.

To lie down had relieved the strain on Henry. The eau-de-cologne had partly revived him. He began to look less ghastly; he began to feel less that this time he was really going to die. He drew strength consciously from his mother’s calm self-possession. Nobody could take care of you like Mother when there was something the matter with you, he thought.

Mother now turned to inspect the contents of the basin. “What ever can have upset Henry this time? I planned that supper specially for him, just the things he usually digests all right.”

A pause. Then, “What can those dark brown crumby lumps be?” she asked aloud. “We didn’t have anything like that for supper.”

Henry rolled his eyes at his father, and then closed them, weakly, helplessly.

His father said from the door, briefly, “We met Mattie when we were at Wertheimer’s and she gave each of the children a cookie.”

“Store cookies?” asked Henry’s mother, more with an exclamation point than a question.

“The regular ginger cookie⁠ ⁠… a small one,” said her husband.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Knapp.

Behind Mr. Knapp in the obscurity of the hall, Helen slipped shadow-like, silently as a little mouse, back towards the closet where the cleaning cloths were kept. Her father hoped she had remembered to rinse the cloth well.

Mrs. Knapp sat down by Henry. She laid her hand on his forehead and said, “Mother doesn’t want to be scolding you all the time, Henry, but you must try to remember not to eat things away from home. You know your digestion is very delicate and you know how Mother tries to have just the right things for you here. If I do that, give up everything I’d like to do to stay here and cook things for you, you ought to be able to remember, don’t you think, not to eat other things?”

Her tone was reasonable. Her logic was unanswerable. Henry shrank to even smaller dimensions as he lay helpless on the bed.

She did not say a word to his father about having allowed Henry to eat the cookie. She never criticized their father before the children.

She got up now and put a light warm blanket over Henry. “Do you suppose you could get Stephen to bed, Lester?” she asked, over her shoulder. After he had gone, she sat holding Henry’s cold little frog’s paw in her warm hands till his circulation was normal and then helped him undress and get to bed.

When she went down to the kitchen she found that Helen and her father had tried to finish the evening work. The dishes were washed and put away. Helen was rinsing out the wiping-cloths, and Lester was sweeping. The clock showed a quarter of nine.

She looked sharply at what Helen was doing and plunged towards her with a gesture of impatience. “Mercy, Helen, don’t be so backhanded!” she cried, snatching a dripping cloth from the child’s hands. “I’ve told you a thousand times you can’t wring the water out of anything if you hold it like that!” She wrung the cloths one after another, her practised fingers flying like those of a prestidigitator. “Like that!” she said reprovingly to Helen, shaking them out and hanging them up to dry.

Seeing in Helen’s face no sign of any increase of intelligence about wringing out dishcloths, but only her usual cowed fear of further criticism, she said in a tone of complete discouragement:

“Oh, well, never mind! You’d better get to bed now. I’ll be up to rub the turpentine and lard on your chest by the time you’re undressed.” As the child trod softly out of the kitchen she threw after her like a hand-grenade, “Don’t forget your teeth!”

To her husband she said, taking the broom out of his hand and looking critically back over the floor he had been sweeping, “Don’t wait for me, Lester. I’ve got to change the dressings on my arm before I go to bed.”

“Can’t I help you with that, dear?” asked her husband.

“No, thank you,” she said. “I can manage all right.”

As he went out she was reflecting with a satisfaction that burned like fire that she was not as other women who “took it out” on their families when things went wrong. She never made scenes, not even when she was almost frenzied with irritations. She never lost her self-control⁠—except of course once in a while with Stephen, and then never for more than an instant or two. Until the terrifying but really unavoidable breakdown of this evening, no one had ever seen her weep, heavy and poisonous as were the bitter tears she so frequently held back. She never forgot to say “thank you” and “please.” Her heart swelled with an angry sense of how far beyond criticism she was. Come what might she would do her duty to the uttermost.

She went up to Helen’s room, silently did the necessary things for her cold and kissed her good night, saying, “Do try to make your bed a little better, dear. There was a great fold across it today from one corner to the other.”

Then she went downstairs and stepped about the house, picking up odd things and putting them in place: her usual evening occupation. As she hung up Henry’s muffler which lay on the floor at the foot of the coatrack in the hall, her eyes fell on Helen’s coat. She looked at it with mingled pride and exasperation. There was not a woman of her acquaintance who could have taken those hopeless old materials and pieced and turned and fitted and made such a stylish little garment. She had always said to herself that no matter how poor they were, she would die before her little girl should feel humiliated for the lack of decent clothes. And yet⁠ ⁠… what a strange child Helen was! She had put on that coat as if it had been any coat, as if she didn’t realize what a toilsome effort her mother had made to secure it. But children didn’t realize the sacrifices you made for them.

She had a moment of complete relaxation and satisfaction as she dropped into a chair to feast her eyes on the sofa. What a success it was! Could anybody recognize it for the old wreck which had stood out in front of the junk-shop on River Street all winter! She had seen its lines through its ruin, had guessed at the fine wood under the many coats of dishonoring paint. Every inch of it had been recreated by her hand and brain and purpose.

How sweet of Mattie Farnham to give her that striped velours to cover it with. She never could have afforded anything so fine. What lovely, lovely stuff it was! How she loved beautiful fabrics. Her face softened to dreaminess as she passed her hand gently over the smoothly drawn material and thought with affection of the donor. What a good-hearted girl Mattie was.

Her children would not have recognized her face as she sat there loving the sofa and the rich fabric on it and thinking gratefully of her friend.

But how funny Mattie was about dressing herself! Was there anybody who had less faculty for it? A flicker of amusement⁠—the first she had felt all day⁠—drew her lips into a good-natured smile at the recollection of that awful hat with the pink feather which Mattie had wanted to buy. What a figure of fun she had looked in it! And she knew it! And yet was hypnotized by the dowdy thing. All she had needed was the hint to take the small, dark-blue one that suited her perfectly. How queer she couldn’t think of it herself.

She loved to go shopping with Mattie⁠—with old Mrs. Anderson, with any of the ladies in the Guild who so often asked her advice. It was a real pleasure to help them select the right things. But⁠—her softened face tightened and set⁠—how horribly naughty Stephen was when you tried to take him into shops. Such disgraceful scenes as she had had with him when he got tired and impatient.

The clock behind her struck half-past nine, and she became aware of its ticking once more, its insistent whisper: “So much to do! So much to do! So much to do!”

She was very tired and found she had relaxed wearily into her chair. But she got up with a brisk energetic motion like a prizefighter coming out of his corner. She detested people who moved languidly and dragged themselves around.

She went into the kitchen and put the oatmeal into the fireless cooker, and after this waited, polishing absentmindedly the nickel towel-bar of the shining stove, till she heard Lester go out of the bathroom.

Then she went swiftly up the stairs, locked the bathroom door behind her, and began to unwind the bandages from around her upper arm. When it finally came off she inspected the raw patch on her arm. It was crusted over in places, with thick, yellowish-white pus oozing from the pustules. It was spreading. It was worse. It would never be any better. It was like everything else.

She spread a salve on it with practised fingers, wound a fresh bandage about her arm, fastened it firmly and then washed her hands over and over, scrubbing them mercilessly with a stiff brush till they were raw. She always felt unclean to her bones after she had seen one of those frequently recurring eczema eruptions on her skin. She never spoke of them unless someone asked her a question about her health. She felt disgraced by their loathsomeness, although no one but she and the doctor ever saw them. She often called it to herself, “the last straw.”

Her nightgown hung on the bathroom door. They usually dressed and undressed here not to disturb Stephen who still slept in their bedroom, because there was no other corner in the little house for him. And now they would never be able to move to a larger house where they could live decently and have a room apiece, to a better part of town where the children would have decent playmates. Never anything but this.⁠ ⁠…

She began to undress rapidly and to wash. As she combed her dark hair, she noticed again how rapidly it was falling. The comb was full of long hairs. She took them out and rolled them up into a coil. She supposed she ought to save her combings to make a switch against the inevitable time when her hair would be too thin to do up. And she had had such beautiful hair! It had been her one physical superiority, that and her “style.” What good had they ever done her!

She began to think of the frightening moment in the kitchen that evening, when for an instant she had lost her bitterly fought-for self-control, when the taut cable of her willpower had snapped under the strain put upon it. For a wild instant she had been all one inner clamor to die, to die, to lay down the heavy, heavy burden, too great for her to bear. What was her life? A hateful round of housework, which, hurry as she might, was never done. How she loathed housework! The sight of a dishpan full of dishes made her feel like screaming out. And what else did she have? Loneliness; never-ending monotony; blank, gray days, one after another, full of drudgery. No rest from the constant friction over the children’s carelessness and forgetfulness and childishness! How she hated childishness! And she must try to endure it patiently or at least with the appearance of patience. Sometimes, in black moments like this, it seemed to her that she had such strange children, not like other people’s, easy to understand and manage, strong, normal children. Helen⁠ ⁠… there didn’t seem to be anything to Helen! With the exasperation which passivity always aroused in her, Helen’s mother thought of the dumb vacant look on Helen’s face that evening when she had tried to show her how to perform a simple operation a little less clumsily. Sometimes it seemed as though Helen were not all there! And Henry with that nervous habit of questioning everything everybody said and the absentmindedness which made him do such idiotic things.⁠ ⁠…