"We -- um -- listen to the radio a lot."
"Oh, the radio." She dismissed that invention with a wave of her hand. "Have you never read Treasure Island?"
"No, Ma'am."
"I see. Well, books perhaps cannot do for you what a piece of music does, or a painting, or a play on the stage, but they can perform their own kind of magic."
She lit a cigarette and streamed smoke through her nostrils. "What instrument do you play?"
I confessed I went to Mr. Auerbach up at Packard Lane every Tuesday afternoon, lugging a French horn, on which I was trying to learn the polka from Schwanda, der Dudelsackpfeifer.
"The French horn's a noble instrument!" Lady said enthusiastically.
I thought it was lousy. Ma had been swayed when the music teacher told her the set of my teeth was perfect for a brass instrument; the truth was the French-horn player had gone on to junior high. Lucky Harry got to play comet.
"You have a musical family. We must have a musical evening one night soon."
"You mean it? I can come back? All of us can come?" I couldn't believe my ears.
"Of course, all of you," she said gaily. "Larks, my darling, we must have larks." Her smile vanished like a ghost and she looked at me with a grave expression. "It's been very nice, having you here. There have never been children in this house since I have lived in it. It's -- as it should be."
"When can we come?"
"Well, let me see. I'm alone on Thursdays and Sundays. Perhaps a Sunday would be best."
Sunday was Jack Benny, but I didn't care.
"Let me consult with Jesse and Elthea and see what would be convenient," she concluded. She rolled her napkin, placed it in a silver ring -- monogrammed: curly, curvy "A.H." -- and rose from her chair. "Will you help me bring out the dishes? I don't want to leave them for Elthea." As we carried things back to the kitchen, she asked, "Do you know who Miss Shedd is?"
"No, Ma'am."
"She's our librarian. A remarkable old lady who loves children to come and take books out and read them. We must arrange for you to meet her one of these days."
She was at the dishpan, I was drying, when the doorbell rang.
"Darn, who can that be out in all this snow?" She took her hands from the water and flicked the suds.
"I can go."
"If it's Colonel Blatchley, invite him in and offer him a cigar."
I walked down the hall and peeked through the curtain of the window next to the door. Waiting on Mrs. Harleigh's stoop was a dark figure. The coat collar was turned up around the face, but I could tell it was not Colonel Blatchley. Nor was it anyone else I had ever seen before. Somehow I had the feeling I didn't like his looks. I put my hand on the brass handle and opened the door.
"Is Mrs. Harleigh at home?"
The voice was hoarse, and its owner seemed to be making an effort to keep it at a whisper.
"Yes. Do you want to come in?"
For a moment he looked uncertain. His mouth was clamped in a grim line, and his unblinking watery eyes shone in the gleam of the carriage lamp. His pale skin was splotched with pinkish freckles and his reddish, slightly curly hair was slicked back, wet with snow. He carried a leather briefcase, on whose battered flap was stamped the name "OTT." I immediately thought of Mel Ott, right-fielder for the Giants, whose picture Lew had in his bubble-gum card collection.
When I glanced at the flakes flying past me into the hall, the man finally spoke. "Tell Mrs. Harleigh someone would like a word with her, please."
"Yes, sir."
I left him on the stoop and let the door swing while I ran back down the hall to the kitchen.
"Is it the Colonel?" Mrs. Harleigh asked, rinsing a goblet
"No'm. It's Mr. Ott."
"Ott? Ott? I don't know any --"
"He has red hair . . ."
The goblet crashed against the porcelain sink and shattered. She stared at the broken pieces, then, methodically wiping her hands on a dishtowel, she removed her apron, and quickly left the room.
While I gingerly picked the fragments of crystal out of the sink, the murmur of voices drifted up the hallway. It was all unintelligible to me; presently the conversation stopped and the door closed. I waited for Mrs. Harleigh to come back to the kitchen, but there was nothing but silence. I dropped the pieces of the goblet in the can under the sink and went into the hall. It was empty. Walking to the foot of the stairs, I looked up and as I placed my hand on the newel post I heard a low muffled moan. It came from the dining room.
She was standing in front of the mirror, staring at her wobbly reflection jn the glass. She seemed unaware of me as I came in the room and walked to her side. I watched as long as I could in the mirror as a tear trickled down her cheek, then threw myself against her, holding her elbow in an awkward way, trying to squeeze her hand.
"Don't, please, Mrs. Harleigh, please!" I hugged her and tried to think how I could make her stop. It made me furious that a redheaded man in a snowstorm could cause such pain.
She was still staring at her reflection in the mirror. Her features looked distorted, narrowing and bulging with the imperfect glass. Then she wiped her eyes with my napkin in her hand, and as if to hide her image she hung the napkin on the mirror. Then she disengaged herself and removed the linen place mats from the table and put them away. "If we are truly to be friends," she said over her shoulder, carrying the saltcellars to the sideboard, "you must call me 'Lady.'"
Perhaps it should have been a thrill, her asking me to call her by the name all the grownups used, but I could think of nothing else but the man at the door, his bright glistening eyes, his tight, mean mouth, his snow-covered red hair. And not wearing a hat, on such a snowy evening. I could not then say "Lady," but "Please," I entreated her, "who was he -- Mr. Ott?"
"Mr. Ott?" She gave a wry twist to the name as she repeated it. "Who was he?" She thought a moment, then smiled a strange, bitter smile and, without looking, removed the napkin from the mirror and put it in a napkin ring. "Mr. Ott," she murmured with a trace of amusement. She lifted from the table the Oriental bowl holding the winter cherries, but the single shake of her head told me she had no reply to my question.
5
I did not see her again for some time. No one did, and Mrs. Sparrow gave out the news that Mrs. Harleigh "wasn't herself," and was going through another of her "retirements." Each day I eagerly awaited a glimpse of furs and a veiled hat, to catch her going out in the Minerva landaulet, but in the brick house across the Green behind the drawn shades all was silence and I yearned in vain.
In school and out, I languished like a lover and, like a lover betrayed, I thought all the worst, the unkindest things, telling myself she wasn't worth a second glance. How cruel she was. How unfeeling after having led me on, promising me "Larks, my darling, we must have larks," and then not even so much as a sight of her. Shut herself up in the house and nary a wave or a hello, let alone a musical evening. What was wrong with people like that? Didn't they know they hurt people's feelings?
Still, it was only my feelings I was concerned with, not hers. I gave no thought to what might have occasioned her "retirement," or what she might be suffering in consequence. I thought only of the promised musical evening, and every Sunday when Jack Benny came on the radio and said "Jell-O again," I wished I was over at Mrs. Harleigh's. But I knew grownups had a habit of forgetting things they had promised, things important to children, and I decided she, for all her specialness, must be no different from the rest.
And she hadn't even paid me for doing her shoveling!
In addition to my weaselly thoughts regarding the lady across the Green, I was consumed by boyish curiosity about the red-haired man. Once, when the sun was going down and the tree trunks stretched long blue shadows across the snow, I saw a figure hurrying in the direction of the brick house: a man in an overcoat, the collar turned up, his hatless head bent against the wind. Sitting at the worktable in the sleeping porch where I was building an airplane model of Wiley Post's Winnie
Mae, I decided it was the sinister Mr. Ott returning, but the man continued past the house and disappeared in the gloom beyond the streetlight.
Another evening I saw the carriage lamps come on. The door opened and someone slipped out. I recognized it at once: the fur coat, the little fur hat, and boots. Mrs. Harleigh came down the walk and stepped onto the roadway, her hands buried in her pockets. For half an hour I sat at the table, chin cupped in my hands, my plane model forgotten, watching her slow progress around the Green. Passing our house, she did not glance up at my window as I hoped she might, but continued her solitary circuit until who should come plopping along through the snow but Rabbit Hornaday. The Green-Eyed Monster dwelt in my breast as I saw her stop and talk, pulling his dirty little cap down over his ears and doing up the top button of his windbreaker. Me she wouldn't look at, but Rabbit Hornaday got a pat and a chuck under the chin and a wave before he plopped off through the snow again.
How I hated Rabbit Hornaday!
Hated her, as well. But then the time came when I almost stopped thinking of her, and of her mysterious visitor. I even stopped hating Rabbit Hornaday. The river was frozen and we couldn't think about anything except skating.
After school we would hurry home to get our skates from the back porch and make our way down through the snowy fields behind Mrs. Harleigh's house to the Cove. Out on the ice a hockey game would already be in progress and around it red and blue jacketed figures would speed by, scarves flying, sprays of ice shooting up from the tips of the flashing blades. And you could depend on it, there would be dumb four-eyes Rabbit Hornaday, sliding around on the soles of his shoes and cutting in everyone's way. Secretly I gloated that he didn't own skates.
Rabbit Hornaday was a curious case. He lived up by the railroad tracks near the Rose Rock soda-pop works. His sister Dora "wasn't all there," and she and Rabbit had come to town to stay with their aunt, after their mother, having fallen in with some reprehensible characters who involved her in an illicit bootlegging scheme, was sent to the women's correctional institution at Middlehaven. Rabbit showed off by eating worms, alive or dead, but that wasn't why he was called the Scourge of Pequot Landing. The very day he arrived, he spent the afternoon trampling down every flower bed along Main Street, unscrewing the plug on the fire hydrant in front of the Spragues' house, and opening Colonel Blatchley's rabbit hutch to commit mayhem on several of the Colonel's prize Belgian hares. It was not difficult to imagine how Harold Hornaday was instantly rechristened Rabbit, nor how he earned the undying contempt of every kid in that part of town.
On the riverbank there was always a fire burning, a great heap of scavenged rubber tires which sent up clouds of smelly black smoke, but whose warmth was comforting as the sun started to sink. When it got too dark to see, we would hang our skates over our shoulders and hike back up the windy hill to the Green, where Nonnie would have supper waiting to be put on the table by the time Ma got off the streetcar from the Sunbeam Laundry. Nonnie was always cranky and out of sorts these days. Her voice was shrill and mean, and she was forever carping at us for tracking in snow or leaving wet shoes under the radiator, which made their toes curl. Poor red-faced, angry Nonnie, who never sang anymore or played with Kerney or helped us zip our jackets up. I could tell that the whole trouble was her disappointment at not being able to go to college, and that the burden of looking after four brothers and a sister, and the house, was beginning to weigh on her.
Because she slammed pots and pans in the sink while we were all doing the washing up, Lew and Harry were glad to escape to the cellar and their newest project: a giant skating sail. While Ag stayed in her room reading magazines or pasting Photoplay movie stars in scrapbooks, they worked in the basement. I was allowed only to watch. They cut the canvas cloth themselves and because Nonnie complained she had too much work to do, they inveigled Ma into stitching it up on her sewing machine after work. The frame was a cross of bamboo, selected for its lightness; when it was assembled, the sail produced a kite shape eight feet across, and there were more than thirty square feet of canvas in it.
It was a grand success. One Saturday right after lunch I trailed along as Lew came bearing it down to the Cove. Naturally, he tried it out first. Holding the center staff against his back, one arm over his head, the other behind him, he turned his body so the sail caught the brisk wind, and off he shot across the ice to the far bank. To make his return he tacked the way a sailboat would.
Harry was next, and finally it came to me, and they both jeered because I couldn't manage it as easily as they. Gradually I found the hang of it, and discovered that when I got going too fast it required only a simple movement to toss the sail over my head, spilling the wind and slowing me down.
Then Lew took the sail away from me, and he and Harry spent the rest of the afternoon with it, in betweentimes selling rides to other kids for a dime. I got one last turn, then reluctantly handed the sail over to Lew. Skating back to shore under my own power, I looked up to Mrs. Harleigh's house on the crest of the hill. At a second-story window I could see that the shade was up and I was able to make out a face behind the glass.
Next day she came out. She wore a long flannel skirt and a little black fur jacket. Her hair was enclosed by the open end of a tasseled wool scarf. She had on dark stockings and, over these, white ankle socks. I watched from a distance as she sat and laced up her skates, white tops with shiny blades, and then -- stepping on the points of the runners, daintily balanced like a ballet dancer -- with graceful strokes she floated out onto the ice. A good skater, she turned easily and her ankles showed no signs of buckling. When she had cut several figures, as though testing her strength, she skated over to me.
"Isn't it glorious!" There was the familiar laugh, but no indication of remembering our last meeting. She looked pale and there were dark places under her eyes. I could feel her hand tremble as she took mine and we skated together, out of the way of the flying hockey puck, toward the opposite side of the Cove.
"You boys are having such fun with that sail," she said when we stopped to catch our breaths. "Where did you get it?" She was surprised when I said Lew and Harry had built it. "I must try it one of these days. First I'll have to get my sea legs back. It's been years since I skated."
She spun off a little way toward a clump of frozen reeds, the scarf twirling behind her head. She held her hands out to me and I skated to her. We clutched arms, laughing together, and as we met I lost my balance and we both sat down. When we struck the ice, there was an ominous crack.
"I remember," she said, helping me scramble up and drawing me away from the spot. "It's always thin there, where the bulrushes grow. It must have something to do with the current."
Before she left, she spoke with Rabbit Hornaday, who helped her off with her skates, then walked up the hill with her. She even took his hand! I was furious. More furious shortly thereafter, for the next time Rabbit appeared he had a brand-new pair of skates slung over his shoulders, the latest kind, and by no means cheap. I was sure I knew where he had gotten them, and when Lady came again to take a spin on the ice I joined the hockey game and pretended not to see her. She waved, then went skating off with Rabbit, and I got madder. But I couldn't hold out for long, and the minute Rabbit left her, I raced to her side.
She came often after that, sometimes skating alone, sometimes with Rabbit, but there would always be a quarter of an hour when she would suggest we skate together, sometimes hand in hand, returning red-faced and out of breath to the shore where she would remove her skates and go up the hill to supper behind the drawn shades of the dining room.
Though I waited for another invitation to the house, none came. Nor was any mention made of the "little veal-cutlet supper," or the promised musical evening, or of my shoveling money. It was as though she had forgotten the entire episode. Though friendly, she seemed nervous and edgy, rather brittle like the ice, if not as cold, but in no way inclined to further our friendship.
All this changed, however, one day later in the
same month, when I suffered an accident which, had Lady not come to my rescue, might have ended my life. There had been a brief thaw, then another freeze. I had arrived home from my music lesson with Mr. Auerbach and, finding Lew and Harry out, I sneaked the bundled-up skate sail down to the Cove, where I planned on practicing alone. It was a bright breezy afternoon and, except for some younger kids scooting about near the shore, I had the river to myself. At the first gust of wind I lofted the sail, set it behind my back, and, leaning into the canvas, went flying across the ice. I worked my way upriver for a time, then let the force of nature return me on a free and easy tack, leaning back into the sail so it carried my weight along. The wind was blowing stronger. It bit my nose and I had to keep my mouth closed so it wouldn't hurt the fillings in my teeth.
After nearly an hour of sailing I was prepared to call it quits when I saw, some distance downriver, the familiar black-jacketed figure with its swirl of striped scarf. I waved but she didn't see me. I leaned into the sail at an angle calculated to drive me directly toward her, the wind catching the canvas, catapulting me along. I gripped the bamboo brace more tightly, and continued to gather speed, hollering to Mrs. Harleigh as I approached.
She raised her head and smiled when I sped past, about thirty feet away, planning at any moment to spill the wind and circle around her. But, thrilled by the speed at which I traveled, and wanting to show off for her, I refused to relinquish the wind and so failed to see the clump of bulrushes looming ahead.
When I heard the first fierce crack of ice, it was already too late to save myself. Mrs. Harleigh cried out. I let go the sail, which flew up in the air and landed with a plop behind me. Unable to check my path, I shot pell-mell along on my own power while the ice splintered all around me. I toed my skates to force myself to a stop, trying at the same time to alter my direction. It was no good. The frozen floor sagged under my weight, then gave way altogether. Oozing cracks appeared all around me, the ice parted, broke, and I sank into the river.