John Steinbeck - The Winter of Our Discontent

If the dawn came up with any thunder, I didn’t hear it. All golden green it was when I came to it, dark of heather and pale with fern and yellowy red with wet dune sand, and not far away the Atlantic glittering like hammered silver. A twisted gaffer oak beside our house had put out near its root a lichen big as a pillow, a ridge-waved thing of gray pearly white. A curving graveled path led among the small township of doll houses to the shingled bungalow that had spawned them all. Here were office, postcards, gifts, stamps, and also dining room with blue-checkered tablecloths where we dolls could dine.

The manager was in his counting house, checking some kind of list. I had noticed him when we registered, a man of wisped hair and little need to shave. He was a furtive and a furthy man at once, and he had so hoped from our gaiety our outing was clandestine that I nearly signed his book “John Smith and wife” to give him pleasure. He sniffed for sin. Indeed he seemed to see with his long tender nose as a mole does.

“Good morning,” I said.

He leveled his nose at me. “Slept well?”

“Perfectly. I wonder if I can carry a tray of breakfast to my wife.”

“We only serve in the dining room, seven-thirty to nine-thirty.”

“But if I carry it myself—”

“It’s against the rules.”

“Couldn’t we break them this once? You know how it is.” I threw that in because that’s how he hoped it was.

His pleasure was reward enough. His eyes grew moist and his nose trembled. “Feeling a little shy, is she?”

“Well, you know how it is.”

“I don’t know what the cook will say.”

“Ask him and tell him a dollar stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintop.”

The cook was a Greek who found a dollar attractive. In time I toted a giant napkin-covered tray along the graveled path and set it on a rustic bench while I picked a bouquet of microscopic field flowers to grace the royal breakfast of my dear.

Perhaps she was awake, but she opened her eyes anyway and said, “I smell coffee. Oh! Oh! What a nice husband—and—and flowers”—all the little sounds that never lose their fragrance.

We breakfasted and coffeed and coffeed again, my Mary propped up in bed, looking younger and more innocent than her daughter. And each of us spoke respectfully of how well we had slept.

My time had come. “Get comfortable. I have news both sad and glad.”

“Good! Did you buy the ocean?”

“Marullo is in trouble.”

“What?”

“A long time ago he came to America without asking leave.”

“Well—what?”

“Now they are asking him to leave.”

“Deported?”

“Yes.”

“But that’s awful.”

“It’s not nice.”

“What will we do? What will you do?”

“Playtime is over. He sold me the store—or rather he sold you the store. It’s your money. He has to convert his property and he likes me; he practically gave it to me—three thousand dollars.”

“But that’s awful. You mean—you mean you own the store?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not a clerk! Not a clerk!”

She rolled face down in the pillows and wept, big, full-bosomed sobs, the way a slave might when the collar is struck off.

I went out on the doll’s front stoop and sat in the sun until she was ready, and when she had finished and washed her face and combed her hair and put on her dressing gown, she opened the door and called to me. And she was different, would always be different. She didn’t have to say it. The set of her neck said it. She could hold up her head. We were gentlefolks again.

“Can’t we do anything to help Mr. Marullo?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“How did it happen? Who found out?”

“I don’t know.”

“He’s a good man. They shouldn’t do it to him. How is he taking it?”

“With dignity. With honor.”

We walked on the beach as we had thought we might, sat in the sand, picked up small bright shells and showed them to each other, as we must do, spoke with conventional wonder about natural things, the sea, the air, the light, the wind-cooled sun, as though the Creator were listening in for compliments.

Mary’s attention was split. I think she wanted to be back home in her new status, to see the different look in the eyes of women, the changed tone of greetings in the High Street. I think she was no more “poor Mary Hawley, she works so hard.” She had become Mrs. Ethan Allen Hawley and would ever be. And I had to keep her that. She went through the day because it was planned and paid for, but the real shells she turned over and inspected were the shining days to come.

We had our lunch in the blue-checked dining room, where Mary’s manner, her certainty of position and place, disappointed Mr. Mole. His tender nose was out of joint that had so joyously quivered at the scent of sin. His disillusion was complete when he had to come to our table and report a telephone call for Mrs. Hawley.

“Who knows we’re here?”

“Why, Margie, of course. I had to tell her because of the children. Oh! I do hope— He doesn’t look where he’s going, you know.”

She came back trembling like a star. “You’ll never guess. You couldn’t.”

“I can guess it’s good.”

“She said, ‘Have you heard the news? Have you heard the radio?’ I could tell by her voice it wasn’t bad news.”

“Could you tell it and then flash back to how she said it?”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Could you let me try to believe it?”

“Allen has won honorable mention.”

“What? Allen? Tell me!”

“In the essay contest—in the whole country—honorable mention.”

“No!”

“He has. Only five honorable mentions—and a watch, and he’s going on television. Can you believe it? A celebrity in the family.”

“I can’t believe it. You mean all that slob stuff was a sham? What an actor! His lonely lovin’ heart wasn’t throwed on the floor at all.”

“Don’t make fun. Just think, our son is one of five boys in the whole United States to get honorable mention—and television.”

“And a watch! Wonder if he can tell time.”

“Ethan, if you make fun, people will think you’re jealous of your own son.”

“I’m just astonished. I thought his prose style was about the level of General Eisenhower’s. Allen doesn’t have a ghost-writer.”

“I know you, Eth. You make a game of running them down. But it’s you who spoil them. It’s just your secret way. I want to know—did you help him with his essay?”

“Help him! He didn’t even let me see it.”

“Well—that’s all right then. I didn’t want you looking smug because you wrote it for him.”

“I can’t get over it. It goes to show we don’t know much about our own children. How’s Ellen taking it?”

“Why, proud as a peacock. Margie was so excited she could hardly talk. The newspapers want to interview him—and television, he’s going to be on television. Do you realize we don’t even have a set to see him on? Margie says we can watch on hers. A celebrity in the family! Ethan, we ought to have a television.”

“We’ll get one. I’ll get one first thing tomorrow morning, or why don’t you order one?”

“Can we—Ethan, I forgot you own the store, I clean forgot. Can you take it in? A celebrity.”

“I hope we can live with him.”

“You let him have his day. We should start home. They’re coming in on the seven-eighteen. We should be there, you know, to kind of receive him.”

“And bake a cake.”

“I will.”

“And string crepe paper.”

“You aren’t being jealous mean, are you?”

“No. I’m overcome. I think crepe paper is a fine thing, all over the house.”