Summer Morning, Summer Night (Green Town 4)

NEXT MORNING, as Hattie walked downstairs, she found Grandma, Aunt Maude, and Cousin Jacob with cold cereal in their tight mouths, not liking it when Hattie pulled up her chair. Hattie wore a grim, highnecked dress, with a long skirt. Her hair was a knotted, hard bun behind her ears, her face was scrubbed pale, lean of color in the cheeks and lips. Her painted eyebrows and eyelashes were gone. Her fingernails were plain.

“You’re late, Hattie,” they all said, as if an agreement had been made to say it when she sat down.

“I know.” She did not move in her chair.

“Better not eat much,” said Aunt Maude. “It’s eight-thirty. You should’ve been at school. What’ll the superintendent say? Fine example for a teacher to set her pupils.”

The three stared at her.

Hattie was smiling.

“You haven’t been late in twelve years, Hattie,” said Aunt Maude.

Hattie did not move, but continued smiling.

“You’d better go,” they said.

Hattie walked to the hall to take down her green umbrella and pinned on her ribboned flat straw hat. They watched her. She opened the front door and looked back at them for a long moment, as if about to speak, her cheeks flushed. They leaned toward her. She smiled and ran out, slamming the door.

THE GREAT FIRE

THE MORNING THE great fire started, nobody in the house could put it out. It was mother’s niece, Marianne, living with us while her parents were in Europe, who was all aflame. So nobody could smash the little window in the red box at the corner and pull the trigger to bring the gushing hoses and the hatted firemen. Blazing like so much ignited cellophane, Marianne came downstairs, plumped herself with a loud cry or moan at the breakfast table and refused to eat enough to fill a tooth cavity.

Mother and father moved away, the warmth in the room being excessive.

“Good morning, Marianne.”

“What?" Marianne looked beyond people and spoke vaguely. “Oh, good morning.”

“Did you sleep well last night, Marianne?”

But they knew she hadn’t slept. Mother gave Marianne a glass of water to drink and everyone wondered if it would evaporate in her hand. Grandma, from her table chair, surveyed Marianne’s fevered eyes. “You’re sick, but it’s no microbe,” she said. “They couldn’t find it under a microscope.”

“What?” said Marianne.

“Love is godmother to stupidity,” said father, detachedly.

“She’ll be all right,” mother said to father. “Girls only seem stupid because when they’re in love they can’t hear.”

“It affects the semicircular canals,” said father. “Making many girls fall right into a fellow’s arms. I know. I was almost crushed to death once by a falling woman and let me tell you—”

“Hush.” Mother frowned, looking at Marianne.

“She can’t hear what we’re saying; she’s cataleptic right now.”

“He’s coming to pick her up this morning,” whispered mother to father, as if Marianne wasn’t even in the room. “They’re going riding in his jalopy.”

Father patted his mouth with a napkin. “Was our daughter like this, Mama?” he wanted to know. “She’s been married and gone so long, I’ve forgotten. I don’t recall she was so foolish. One would never know a girl had an ounce of sense at a time like this. That’s what fools a man. He says, Oh what a lovely brainless girl, she loves me, I think I’ll marry her. He marries her and wakes up one morning and all the dreaminess is gone out of her and her intellect has returned, unpacked, and is hanging up undies all about the house. The man begins running into ropes and lines. He finds himself on a little desert isle, a little living room alone in the midst of a universe, with a honeycomb that has turned into a bear trap, with a butterfly metamorphosed into a wasp. He then immediately takes up a hobby: stamp collecting, lodge-meetings or—”

“How you do run on,” cried mother. “Marianne, tell us about this young man. What was his name again? Was it Isak Van Pelt?”

“What? Oh—Isak, yes.” Marianne had been roving about her bed all night, sometimes flipping poetry books and reading incredible lines, sometimes lying flat on her back, sometimes on her tummy looking out at dreaming moonlit country. The smell of jasmine had touched the room all night and the excessive warmth of early spring (the thermometer read 55 degrees) had kept her awake. She looked like a dying moth, if anyone had peeked through the keyhole.

This morning she had clapped her hands over her head in the mirror and come to breakfast, remembering just in time to put on a dress.

Grandma laughed quietly all during breakfast. Finally she said, “You must eat, child, you must.” So Marianne played with her toast and got half a piece down. Just then there was a loud honk outside. That was Isak! In his jalopy!

“Whoop!” cried Marianne and ran upstairs quickly.