Mrs. Bridge (2 page)

Long before noon they were at the back door, wanting to know if it was not yet lunchtime, and when at last Harriet, or perhaps Mrs. Bridge, set up the breakfast-room table for them they would turn on the radio so that during lunch they might listen to the livestock reports, which Alice Jones found hilar-ious.

One day a fire truck went by the house and Alice, wagging her head in amazement, exclaimed, “There they go again! Who they going to burn down this time?” Dismayed by the wickedness of the firemen, she rolled her eyes and sighed and helped herself to more caramel pudding.

Mrs. Bridge, who was making up a grocery list, paused and smiled affectionately at both children, pleased that Carolyn was not conscious of the difference between them.

Alice and her father appeared every Saturday, and the two children, occasionally joined by Ruth who more often spent the day lying on the porch swing would play together as comfortably as on the first Saturday they met. The gardener never failed to ask Mrs. Bridge if Alice was a nuisance; Mrs. Bridge always smiled and assured him she was not.

For a month each summer the Bridges went to Colorado; they hired Jones for this month to water the grass after he had finished working for the neighbors, and so Alice amused herself on the familiar grounds and frequently asked her father how soon Corky would be back.

“Soon enough,” was his usual reply, but one day he paused, and as if considering the future, he told her, cryptically and a little sadly, “She liable to not come back, child/’

But at last the vacation ended and Carolyn returned, full of sunshine and sophistication.

“The mountains are awfully big/’ she said primly, and, echoing her mother, “It was just grand.”

Then Alice Jones said, “You know what I got in this here pocket?”

Carolyn, reluctant to become once more the planet instead of the star, affected disdain.

“Who cares?” she announced, coolly turning away.

“A human gizzard,” murmured Alice with a mysterious expression, and before much longer Carolyn was convinced a summer in Kansas City would have been much more exciting than the mountains. She said as much to her mother, who replied a trifle brusquely, being harried at the moment, “Don’t be silly, dear.” And Mrs. Bridge was about to add that there must be other girls besides Alice to play with, but she did not say this; she hesitated, and said, “Corky, you know perfectly well you enjoyed Colorado.” Soon, she knew, the girls would drift apart. Time would take care of the situation.

As time went on it became evident that Douglas was the most introspective of the three children, but aside from this to his father’s disappointment he appeared to be totally unremarkable. Mr. Bridge had hoped for a brilliant son, and though he had not yet given up that hope he was reluctantly adapting himself to the idea that his son was no prodigy. If Douglas amounted to anything in later life, he concluded, it would be less the result of brilliance than of conscientious effort.

Ruth, even more obviously, had no intention of relying on her brains; but Carolyn, as soon as she entered kindergarten, began to make a name for herself, and very shortly was known as the brightest child in the class. Furthermore she appeared to understand her own superiority and when, through some mischance, another child equaled or exceeded her for a mo-ment, Carolyn would grow furiously vindictive, and was not above lying or cheating in order to regain her position at the head of the class, so that by the time she was in the third grade she was beginning to be envied and disliked by her classmates and carefully observed by her teachers. It was no surprise to anyone when she was allowed to skip the second half of the third grade.

The teacher of Carolyn’s fourth-grade class was a young lame woman named Bloch, who wore eye shadow and mascara and had one rather strange habit: every day she would call one of the children to her desk, give the child a comb, and then, bowing her head and shutting her eyes, she would instruct the child to take the pins out of her hair. Her hair was thick and greasy and hung down to her waist.

“Who can find the Caspian Sea?” she would murmur, and the child behind her would begin combing.

“Who knows where to find the Caspian Sea?” she would ask again, and without opening her eyes she would say, “Al-bert Crawford knows.”

Then the boy she had named would walk to the great green and blue map pulled down over the blackboard, and with the pointer he would locate the sea.

“Carefully, dear,” she would whisper if the comb snarled, but even then she seemed not displeased.

Although the children did not like this curious task they seldom thought of it once they were out of class. Carolyn, however, happened to mention at home that she had been chosen that morning. Mrs. Bridge was aghast; she had never heard of Miss Bloch’s habit. After questioning Carolyn and becoming convinced it was the truth, she resolved to telephone the school and report the incident to the principal, and yet, for some reason, she could not do it. Several times she picked up the telephone, shivering with disgust, but each time she put down the receiver with an expression of doubt and anxiety; she decided it would be better to visit the principal’s office, and yet this, too, was beyond her. She did not know why. In the end she told Carolyn that if she was ever again called upon to comb the teacher’s hair she was to fefuse. Having done this, Mrs. Bridge told herself the teacher was no longer a threat and the entire affair, therefore, was closed. And so it was. Carolyn was not called upon for the remainder of the term, and the following September she had a different teacher. There were times later on when Mrs. Bridge wondered if she had done the right thing; she wondered if Miss Bloch was still calling children to comb her hair, and when Douglas entered fourth grade she waited anxiously to learn who his teacher would be. It was not Miss Bloch; if it had been she would have gone to the principal and demanded that something be done. But it was not, and Mrs. Bridge, who disliked making trouble for anyone, was greatly relieved, and found that she was no longer obliged to think about the matter.

For semi-annual housecleaning Mrs. Bridge hired additional help. Carolyn answered the back door and reported to her mother, “The cleaning lady is here/’

“Oh, fine,” Mrs. Bridge said, and put away her sewing basket and went to the back door, smiling and saying genially, “How do you do? Come right in, won’t you?”

That evening she instructed Carolyn. “You should say the cleaning ‘woman/ A lady is someone like Mrs. Arlen or Mrs. Montgomery.”

Mrs. Bridge said that she judged people by their shoes and by their manners at the table. If someone wore shoes with run-over heels, or shoes that had not been shined for a long time, or shoes with broken laces, you could be pretty sure this person would be slovenly in other things as well* And there was no better way to judge a person’s background than by watching him or her at the table.

The children learned it was impolite to talk while eating, or to chew with the mouth open, and as they grew older they learned the more subtle manners not to butter an entire slice of bread, not to take more than one biscuit at a time, unless, of course, the hostess should insist. They were taught to keep their elbows close to their sides while cutting meat, and to hold the utensils in the tips of their fingers. They resisted the temptation to sop up the gravy with a piece of bread, and they made sure to leave a little of everything not enough to be called wasteful, but just a little to indicate the meal had been sufficient. And, naturally, they learned that a lady or a gentleman does not fold up a napkin after having eaten in a public place.

The girls absorbed these matters with greater facility than Douglas, who tended to ask the reason for everything, sometimes observing that he thought it was all pretty silly. He seemed particularly unable to eat with his left hand lying in his lap; he wanted to leave it on the table, to prop himself up, as it were, and claimed he got a backache with one arm in his lap. Mrs. Bridge told him this was absurd, and when he wanted to know why he could not put his elbow on the table she replied, “Do you want to be different from everyone else?”

Douglas was doubtful, but after a long silence, and under the weight of his mother’s tranquil gaze, he at last concluded he didn’t.

The American habit of switching implements, however, continued to give him trouble and to make him rebellious. With elaborate care he would put down the knife, reach high across his plate and descend on the left side to pick up the fork, raising it high over the plate again as he returned to the starting position.

“Now stop acting ridiculous,” she told him one day at lunch.

“Well, I sure bet the Egyptians don’t have to eat this way/* he muttered, giving “Egyptians” a vengeful emphasis.

“I doubt if they do/’ she replied calmly, expertly cutting a triangle of pineapple from her salad, “but you’re not an Egyptian. So you eat the way Americans eat, and that’s final/*

It seemed to Mrs. Bridge that Saturday came around quite often. She was selecting some sugar buns from the bakery man when Alice dashed up the driveway with a long piece of clothesline in her hand, and the first thing that came to Mrs. Bridge’s mind was that the girl had stolen it.

“Good morning, Alice,” she said. Alice dropped the clothesline on the back steps and ran directly into the house to find Carolyn. A few minutes later the gardener appeared and asked, as he always did, whether she was being a nuisance. Mrs. Bridge smiled briefly and shook her head, not knowing how to be truthful without hurting his feelings.

The children were in Carolyn’s room playing jacks. Mrs. Bridge looked in on them after a while and asked why they didn’t play out of doors, the day being so nice, and she thought but could not be sure that as she suggested this the little Negro girl gave her a rather strange look. In any event the suggestion appeared to take hold, because a few minutes later she heard them outside shouting with laughter about something.

Shortly before noon, while rearranging the handkerchiefs in her husband’s bureau, Mrs. Bridge heard Carolyn singing at the top of her voice: “My mother, your mother, live across the way, eighteen-sixteen East Broadway! Every night they have a fight, and this is what they say ” Here Alice Jones took over the song: “Goddamn you, goddamn you, goddamn you, goddamn you “

Mrs. Bridge rushed to the nearest window and looked down. One end of the clothesline was tied to the rose trellis. At the other end was Carolyn, churning the rope with both arms, and in the center was Alice leaping up and down.

Next week, when Alice came racing up the driveway and tried to open the screen door to the kitchen, she found it locked. Mrs. Bridge was in the kitchen and said, “Who is it, please?”

“It’s me,” replied Alice, rattling the door.

“Just a minute, Alice. Ill see if Carolyn is at home,” She went into the living room and found her daughter looking at one of the movie magazines that Ruth had begun buying.

“Alice is here again. Ill tell her you’re busy.”

But at the first word Carolyn had jumped up and started for the back door.

About ten o’clock both of them came into the kitchen for a bottle of soda pop and wanted to know what there would be for lunch.

“Corky is having creamed tuna on toast and spinach,” said Mrs. Bridge pleasantly.

Alice observed that she herself didn’t care for spinach because it was made of old tea bags.

“I believe you’re supposed to have lunch with your Daddy, aren’t you?”

Alice heard a note in her voice which Carolyn did not; she glanced up at Mrs. Bridge with another of those queer, bright looks and after a moment of thought she said, “Yes’nu”

The Van Metres were no more Egyptian than Douglas was, but in a sense they were quite foreign to Mrs. Bridge. She thought them very odd. The Van Metres, Wilhelni and Susan, were about fifteen years older than the Bridges; they were rather pompous particularly Wilhelm and they were given to reading literary magazines no one had ever heard of and attending such things as ballet or opera whenever a company stopped in Kansas City. Mrs. Bridge could not quite re-call how she and her husband became acquainted with the Van Metres, or how they got into the habit of exchanging dinners once in a while. Nevertheless this situation had developed and Mrs. Bridge was sure it was as awkward for the Van Metres as it was for them each couple felt obligated to return the other’s hospitality.

On those occasions when the Van Metres were hosts they drove over to the east side of the city to a country club that had gone out of fashion ten years before. Wilhelm Van Metre never drove faster than about fifteen miles an hour, and he sat erect and tense with both hands firmly on the wheel as though expecting a fearful crash at any instant. He came to a dead stop at almost every intersection, ceased talking, and examined the street in both directions. Then, unless his wife had something to say, he would proceed, the result of all this being that they seldom reached the club before nine o’clock. Once there he would drive the old automobile cautiously around the circular gravel drive and switch off the engine at the front entrance.

“Ladies/* he would say, suggestively, in his rumbling and pontifical monotone, whereupon Mrs. Bridge and Mrs. Van Metre got out and walked up the steps to the club. He did not start the engine again until he had seen them pass safely into the clubhouse; then, driving in low gear, he went on around the gravel circle to the parking lot.

“I see there are no other autos this evening, Walter/’ he said. “I wonder where everyone can be.”

Mr. Bridge, already bored and thinking of an important case at the office, made no attempt to answer.

The women were waiting for them in the deserted lobby.

“It seems/’ Van Metre chuckled, “we have the place to ourselves this evening.”

“I do get so sick of crowds sometimes/* Mrs. Bridge answered brightly.