Summer Morning, Summer Night (Green Town 4)

The young Isak Van Pelt was brought in and introduced around.

When Marianne was finally gone, father sat down, wiping his forehead. “I don’t know. This is too much.”

“You were the one who suggested she start going out,” said mother.

“And I’m sorry I suggested it,” he said. “But she’s been visiting us for six months now, and six more months to go. I thought if she met some nice young man—”

“And they were married,” husked grandma darkly, “why, Marianne might move out almost immediately—is that it?”

“Well,” said father.

“Well,” said grandma.

“But now it’s worse than before,” said father. “She floats around singing with her eyes shut, playing those infernal love records and talking to herself. A man can stand so much. She’s getting so she laughs all the time, too. Do eighteen-year-old girls often wind up in the booby hatch?”

“He seems a nice young man,” said mother.

“Yes, we can always pray for that,” said father, taking out a little shot glass. “Here’s to an early marriage.”

The second morning Marianne was out of the house like a fireball when first she heard the jalopy horn. There was not time for the young man even to come to the door. Only grandma saw them roar off together, from the parlor window.

“She almost knocked me down.” Father brushed his mustache. “What’s that? Brained eggs? Well.”

In the afternoon, Marianne, home again, drifted about the living room to the phonograph records. The needle hiss filled the house. She played That Old Black Magic twenty-one times, going “la la la” as she swam with her eyes closed, in the room.

“I’m afraid to go in my own parlor,” said father. “I retired from business to smoke cigars and enjoy living, not to have a limp relative humming about under the parlor chandelier.”

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“Hush,” said mother.

“This is a crisis,” announced father, “in my life. After all, she’s just visiting.”

“You know how visiting girls are. Away from home they think they’re in Paris, France. She’ll be gone in October. It’s not so dreadful.”

“Let’s see,” figured father, slowly. “I’ll have been buried just about one hundred and thirty days out at Green Lawn Cemetery by then.” He got up and threw his paper down into a little white tent on the floor. “By George, Mother, I’m talking to her right now!”

He went and stood in the parlor door, peering through it at the waltzing Marianne. “La,” she sang to the music.

Clearing his throat, he stepped through.

“Marianne,” he said.

“That old black magic...” sang Marianne. “Yes?”

He watched her hands swinging in the air. She gave him a sudden fiery look as she danced by.

“I want to talk to you.” He straightened his tie.

“Dah dum dee dum dum dee dum dee dum dum,” she sang.

“Did you hear me?” he demanded.

“He’s so nice,” she said.

“Evidently.”

“Do you know, he bows and opens doors like a doorman and plays a trumpet like Harry James and brought me daisies this morning?”