The Four-Story Mistake (12 page)

“If they applaud,” said Mona, still smarting from that remark about “the Brillo queen.”

Listening, they could hear the noisy murmur of the voices downstairs; the sudden clatter of handclapping, and then stillness. And now very round and clear came the first notes of the Bach Chorale. Randy stole down the back stairs; a thin, blue elf with a pounding heart.

In the dim dining room Oliver, wearing his first costume, was lying on the floor playing with a toy tank. Willy Sloper, in his best suit, was leaning against the dining-room table with his hands clasped in front of him and his head bowed. Every time he shifted his weight, or moved about, one of his shoes gave a loud, healthy chirp like a cricket.

“Why, Randy, I thought you was a little blue dandelion,” whispered Willy poetically. “Plays good, don't he?” he added, jerking his head in the direction of the music.

“Wonderful!” agreed Randy fervently. The lovely air came out as sure and calm and strong as though Rush had been playing it all by himself in the Office. Randy envied him. Looking down she believed that she could see the second button of the union suit bumping up and down above her panic-stricken ribs.

The music ceased, and there was tremendous applause. It went on and on like the sea, roaring interminably. Randy's head felt miles away from her feet. It felt light as a balloon and her feet felt rooted to the earth; and between her head and feet there was nothing but a sort of whirling emptiness.

“Willy, I can't do it!” she gasped, turning the chalk-white face upon him as the clapping began to diminish. “I just
can't.
I'm too scared.”

“Aw, no, you ain't.” Willy actually laughed. “You never been before.”

But they'd never had such an audience before. However, there was no time to discuss it. The first staccato notes of the Golliwog's Cakewalk began: Willy gave her a gentle shove. And there she was: a blue gnome in a blue forest, dancing a grotesque and lonely little dance. That's all there was to it. The dance danced itself.
She,
Randy, just retired someplace and closed her eyes and put her fingers in her ears. Then the music was finished, she was making her little bow, the ocean of clapping was engulfing her, and Rush was grinning at her from the piano. Was it all over? Already? Why, it was too soon! Now she could hardly wait to dance again, and with eyes full of stars, ran up the back stairs, two at a time, to change her costume. Loving the world, she burst into the bedroom.

“Oh, you look beautiful, Mona!” gasped Randy; and Mona did look beautiful: a real fairy-tale princess in her dazzling robes. The wild hair, still not quite subdued, shone in a rebellious mass about her shoulders; and her cheeks were pink with excitement as well as rouge.

“You know, Randy,” Mona said solemnly, as she put on her tall, gilt cardboard crown, “this is Life!” And Randy, ripping off the blue suit with its buttons popping, and glancing at the shimmering costume for her next dance, agreed with all her heart.

“H-m-m!” grunted Cuffy. “Tomorrow we'll have a powerful lot of cleaning up and dishwashing to do, don't forget. And that's life, too.”

The play went marvelously well. Oliver forgot his lines only once, and there was hardly more than ten minutes' wait between scenes. Of course Rush's mustache fell off once, but he picked it up coolly and stuck it back in place without any embarrassment. And then during the saddest part of the play, when Glamorosa is imploring the witch Sourpuss to grant leniency to Prince Paragon, Willy's chirping shoe could be heard distinctly as he walked slowly across the dining room behind the scenes. But otherwise, what a success! The applause they received would have warmed the heart of any producer in the world.

Afterward it was fun, too, when they came downstairs in their own clothes, traces of make-up still clinging to their faces, and mingled with the audience. What a lot of cookies they ate, now that their appetites had revived! And what a lot of compliments they got. Mrs. Oliphant embraced each of them warmly. Their cheeks were pressed against the icy links of her necklaces, and they breathed a scent of eau de Cologne and camphor. “It is the best performance you have given yet,” she told them. Mr. and Mrs. Wheelwright were overwhelmed. They thought Mona ought to be in the movies, and Randy and Rush should be on the concert stage. Mr. and Mrs. Purvis thought so, too. The Melendy children felt that life would have been perfect if only they were allowed to give a new play every week.

The next day, as Cuffy had said, there was a lot of work to be done. Everyone seemed to be going someplace with a chair. The piano was to stay where it was until after Christmas because of family carol singing, but everything else had to go back in its place. Willy and Rush had to dismantle and store the scenery; and then clean and wax the floor. Randy and Mona washed endless sticky punch cups and glasses; endless dishes, and cookie plates and pitchers. But they did it willingly, standing side by side at the kitchen sink, and saying little. Each was lost in a golden haze of memory.

Every now and then one of them would break the silence with a rapt voice.

“They liked the part where Oliver trips over his sword, didn't they? Remember how they laughed?”

“It was wonderful!”

A little later: “The phosphorescent moon was a great success, don't you think? You could just hear them gasp.”

“It was perfect!”

And before they knew it, before they even realized that they had been working for a long time, everything was washed and put away. The floor was mopped, the dishcloths rinsed and hung to dry beside the stove.

“It might interest you to know, ladies,” said Rush, bursting through the swinging door, “it might just possibly interest you to know that Father and I have just counted the receipts and we find we're the possessors of twenty-six dollars and seventy-five cents!”

Twenty-six dollars and seventy-five cents! Almost enough to buy a bond and a half! It was a proud moment.

The next day after breakfast Father asked Mona to come into the study. He was quite formal about it, and Mona wondered if she had done anything wrong.

“Please sit down,” said Father elegantly, motioning to a chair. She sat down and folded her hands. Father laughed. “Don't look so worried. You're not going to be scolded.”

He picked up his special paperweight that was shaped like a lady's hand and examined it as though he had never seen it before.

“Mona,” said Father at last, “you've really set your heart on being an actress, haven't you?”

“Of course, Father.” Mona looked surprised. About that there had never been any doubt. Not since the time Mother had taken her to a matinee of
Peter Pan
when she was six.

“You know it's hard work, don't you? You know you have to be better than good at it or you might as well give up? You know you have to keep odd hours; work at night; sleep half the day; do the same thing, say the same words over and over and over again. Above all, you have to try to remain a real person in spite of all the imaginary people you are playing.”

“Yes, Father,” said Mona automatically. What was all this leading to anyway? “I realize those things and I don't care. I still want to be an actress!”

Father nodded his head a little wearily.

“Yes, I know. You really mean it, don't you? All right then. How would you like to begin your career right now?”

“Now?” repeated Mona, bewildered. “
Now?
Father, what do you mean?”

“One of the people who came out with Mrs. Oliphant the day of the play is a radio director. He thinks he may have a part for you in one of his new radio serials. The part of a younger sister in a family play.”

“You mean I'd be a professional? A real actress on the
radio?
” cried Mona.

“If you get the part,” said Father. “You're to go to New York with Cuffy after New Year's and have an audition.
If
you make good you'll go in town twice a week for your broadcast. I believe the salary is quite generous.”

“Oh, I'd do it free,” Mona said. “I'd do it for nothing if they wanted me to.”

“It won't be necessary. But one thing, Mona. You're very young to be doing this kind of work.
If
you make good, do you think I can count on you to keep your head? We don't want any junior prima donnas temperamenting around the house.”

“Oh, Father, I
promise,
I swear I won't be like that! I'll be good as an angel. I'll—I'll even darn Rush's socks without complaining. I'll play basketball at school; I'll wash all the stickiest, greasiest saucepans as if I loved it; I'll eat whole bales of spinach. I'll do anything. You'll see how good I'll be!”

“
If
you get the part,” added Father.

But Mona knew she'd get the part. She went out of the study and out of the house. Her galoshes might have been thistledown; her coat might have been made of air; her feet didn't feel the earth beneath them, her hands didn't feel the surfaces they touched. She was in a state of bliss. Slowly, like a sleepwalker, she floated down to the brook. The pool above the falls was frozen solid: closed in a shell of clear black ice. Under it she could see the packed rows of little fish lying fast asleep. How beautiful they were!

“Oh, brook,” said Mona aloud, in a quavery voice. “Oh, fish! I think I'm really going to be an actress at last!”

CHAPTER VIII

Noël, Noël

“This Christmas,” Father said to them, “there is war; and I am poorer. You'll have to do a lot for yourselves. You'll have presents, of course, but perhaps not such fine ones as before. Try to remember how lucky we are. A family living together in a nice funny old house: a family that's fortunate enough to have light, and food, and warmth, and no fear of anything.”

“That's quite a lot,” Rush said afterward. “I've been reading the papers and I know that that's quite a lot for us to have.”

So this year they made Christmas for themselves. And it was fun. More fun, really, than buying things ready-made. Willy and Rush investigated the woods and returned with a Christmas tree and a Yule log. With much prickling and ouching Randy and Mona made wreaths for the windows out of wild ground pine, evergreen, and holly. The old, scarred Christmas tree baubles were resurrected from their box, and in addition Oliver strung popcorn chains, and made many paste-blurred link chains of gold and silver paper; and there were bright woolen tassels of Mona's devising, sewn with Mrs. Oliphant's sparkling sequins. The tree was beautiful when it was trimmed: the handsomest tree they'd ever had, the Melendys thought.

Christmas looked promising in spite of what Father had said. An enormous box had arrived from Mrs. Oliphant; and Oliver happened to know that there were other mysterious boxes on the top shelf of the linen closet. Cuffy spent the day before Christmas locked in the kitchen; nobody was even allowed to look in at the windows. A dazzling fragrance breathed itself through the crack under the door, and filled the whole house with frankincense and myrrh.

This year the children had made most of their presents. Mona had knitted scarves for everyone out of the most brilliant colors she could find; they were like woolen rainbows. Randy had made a big sachet for Mona, and another for Mrs. Oliphant; a pincushion (stuffed with milkweed) for Cuffy; a blotter holder for Father's desk; and for Oliver she'd filled a scrapbook with cutout pictures of planes, battleships, submarines, and tanks. For Rush she had saved enough out of her allowances to buy a record he'd wanted for a long time: boys are so hard to make things for, and she wanted to give him something he'd really like.

Rush had composed a piece of music for everyone. A sonata for Father, called “Opus I.” A sonata for Mrs. Oliphant, called “Opus II.” The rest of them had regular names: Cuffy's was called “Music to Cook By”; Mona's was “Incidental Music for
Macbeth
”; Randy's was “Funeral March in F” (she loved funeral marches); and Oliver's was a “Military March” which he didn't appreciate. To Willy, who had often displayed a wistful interest in music, Rush gave a recorder and some easy tunes to play on it. Thereafter mournful tootlings could be heard coming faintly from the stable at odd hours of the day or night when Willy wasn't working.