Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

“God,” she had replied cozily.

“So that we can’t play outside?”

“He makes the sun,” Frau Stengel said, anxious to give credit.

“Well, then—” Jane began, but Frau Stengel, sensing a paradox, went on to something else.

Until now, however, God had not been suggested as a threat. The children stayed where they were, at the table, and looked wide-eyed at their governess.

Frau Stengel began to feel foolish; it is one thing to begin a scene, she was discovering, and another to sustain it. “Go to your room downstairs,” she said. “You had better stay there, and not come out. I can’t teach girls who tell lies.”

This, clearly, was a dismissal, not only from her room but from her company, possibly forever. Never before had they been abandoned in the middle of the day. Was this the end of winter?

“Is he dead?” cried Ernestine, in terror at what had become of the day.

“Goodbye, Frau Stengel,” said Jane, with a ritual curtsy; this was how she had been trained to take her leave, and although she often forgot it, the formula now returned to sustain her. She gathered up the coral beads — after all, they belonged to her — but Ernestine rushed out, pushing in her hurry to be away. “Busy little feet,” said an old gentleman a moment later, laboriously pulling himself up with the aid of the banisters, as first Ernestine and then Jane clattered by.

They burst into their room, and Jane closed the door. “Anyway, it was you that said it,” she said at once.

Ernestine did not reply. She climbed up on her high bed and sat with her fat legs dangling over the edge. She stared at the opposite wall, her mouth slightly open. She could think of no way to avert the punishment about to descend on their heads, nor could she grasp the idea of a punishment more serious than being deprived of dessert.

“It was you, anyway,” Jane repeated. “If anything happens, I’ll tell. I think I could tell anyway.”

“I’ll tell, too,” said Ernestine.

“You haven’t anything to tell.”

“I’ll tell everything,” said Ernestine in a sudden fury. “I’ll tell you chewed gum. I’ll tell you wet the bed and we had to put the sheets out the window. I’ll tell everything.”

The room was silent. Jane leaned over to the window between their beds, where the unaccustomed sun had roused a fat, slumbering fly. It shook its wings and buzzed loudly. Jane put her finger on its back; it vibrated and felt funny. “Look, Ern,” she said.

Ernestine squirmed over on the bed; their heads touched, their breath misted the window. The fly moved and left staggering tracks.

“We could go out,” said Jane. “Frau Stengel even said it.” They went, forgetting their rubbers.

Mrs. Kennedy came home at half past six, no less and no more exhausted than usual. It had not been a lively day or a memorably pleasant one but a day like any other, in the pattern she was now accustomed to and might even have missed. She had read aloud until lunch, which the clinic kitchen sent up on a tray — veal, potatoes, shredded lettuce, and sago pudding with jelly — and she had noted with dismay that Mr. Kennedy’s meal included a bottle of hock, fetched in under the apron of a guilty-looking nurse. How silly to tempt him in this way when he wanted so much to get well, she thought. After lunch, the reading went on, Mrs. Kennedy stopping now and then to sustain her voice with a sip of Vichy water. They were rereading an old Lanny Budd novel, but Mrs. Kennedy could not have said what it was about. She had acquired the knack of thinking of other things while she read aloud. She read in a high, uninflected voice, planning the debut of Jane and Ernestine with a famous ballet company. Mr. Kennedy listened, contentedly polishing off his bottle of wine. Sometimes he interrupted. “Juan-les-Pins,” he remarked as the name came up in the text.

“We were there.” This was the chief charm of the novels, that they kept mentioning places Mr. Kennedy had visited. “Aix-les-Bains,” he remarked a little later. Possibly he was not paying close attention, for Lanny Budd was now having it out with Göring in Berlin. Mr. Kennedy’s tone of voice suggested that something quite singular had taken place in Aix-les-Bains, when as a matter of fact Mrs. Kennedy had spent a quiet summer with the two little girls in a second-class pension while Mr. Kennedy took the mud-bath cure.

Mr. Kennedy rang for his nurse and, when she came, told her to send in the doctor. The reading continued; Jane and Ernestine found ballet careers too strenuous, and in any case the publicity was cheapening. For the fortieth time, they married. Jane married a very dashing young officer, and Ernestine the president of a university. A few minutes later, the doctor came in; another new doctor, Mrs. Kennedy noted. But it was only by constantly changing his doctor and reviewing his entire medical history from the beginning that Mr. Kennedy obtained the attention his condition required. This doctor was cheerful and brisk. “We’ll have him out of here in no time,” he assured Mrs. Kennedy, smiling.

“Oh, grand ,” she said faintly.

“Are you sure?” her husband asked the doctor. “There are two or three things that haven’t been checked and attended to.”

“Oh?” said the doctor. At that moment, he saw the empty wine bottle and picked it up. Mrs. Kennedy, who dreaded scenes, closed her eyes. “You waste my time,” she heard the doctor say. The door closed behind him. She opened her eyes. These awful rows, she thought. They were all alike — all the nurses, all the clinics, all the doctors. Mr. Kennedy, fortunately, did not seem unduly disturbed.

“You might see if you can order me one of those books of crossword puzzles,” he remarked as his wife gathered up her things to leave.

“Shall I give your love to Jane and Ernestine?” she said. But Mr. Kennedy, worn out with his day, seemed to be falling asleep.

Back at the hotel, Jane and Ernestine were waiting in the upper hall. They clung to Mrs. Kennedy, as if her presence had reminded them of something. Touched, Mrs. Kennedy said nothing about the mud on their shoes but instead praised their rosy faces. They hung about, close to her, while she rested on the chaise longue in her room before dinner. “How I should love to trade my days for yours,” she said suddenly, thinking not only of their magic future but of these days that were, for them, a joyous and repeated holiday.

“Didn’t you have fun today?” said Jane, leaning on her mother’s feet.

“Fun! Well, not what you chicks would call fun.”

They descended to dinner together; the children held on to her hands, one on each side. They showed, for once, a nice sensibility, she thought. Perhaps they were arriving at that special age a mother dreams of, the age of gratitude and awareness. In the dining room, propped against the mustard jar, was an envelope with scrolls and curlicues under the name “Kennedy.” Inside was a note from Frau Stengel explaining that, because she was expecting a child and needed all her strength for the occasion, she could no longer give Jane and Ernestine their lessons. So delicately and circuitously did she explain her situation that Mrs. Kennedy was left with the impression that Frau Stengel was expecting the visit of a former pupil. She thought it a strange way of letting her know. I wonder what she means by “harmony of spirit,” she thought. The child must be a terror. She was not at all anxious to persuade Frau Stengel to change her mind; the incident of the book at breakfast, the mention of movies, the mud on the children’s shoes all suggested it was time for someone new.

“Is it bad news?” said Jane.

Mrs. Kennedy was touched. “You mustn’t feel things so,” she said kindly. “No, it is only that Frau Stengel won’t be your governess anymore. She is expecting”—she glanced at the letter again and, suddenly getting the drift of it, folded it quickly and went on—“a little boy or girl for a visit.”