Steven Millhauser - Edwin Mullhouse - The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954

DID HE LEARN ANYTHING in Kindergarten? Oh, everything. He learned Singing, Clapping, and Keeping Quiet. He learned Standing on Line and the Pledge Allegiance. He learned Giggling in the Coatroom, Opening Milk, and Raising Your Hand to Go to the Lavatory. Miss Tipp insisted on the word “lavatory,” no doubt on the principle that you couldn’t come right out and say you wanted to go to the bathroom, but for Edwin the new word marked a difference. The tall white machines with their shiny silver handles fascinated him; he kept flushing and flushing, watching the jets of water shoot along the back from invisible holes in the top. He was puzzled and upset when he learned what the machines were used for; he had thought them a kind of upright bathtub. Thereafter he transferred his affection to the wax half-pints of milk that were distributed daily at 10 A.M. during Snack Period, and with tireless amusement fitted pennies into the wax flap on top and peeled the wax sides with his wax-filled fingernails. After splashing milk on himself several times, he devised a slow safe method of opening the dangerous top: carefully turning back the edges he tugged gently in different places until the top came up without an explosion. The milk itself was of little interest to him. He enjoyed dipping the straw in it, putting a finger on top, raising the straw, releasing his finger, and watching the white stream come out. Afterward, when the milk was gone, he liked to flatten the straw between his fingers, roll it into a little cylinder, and drop it inside the empty container; and stuffing through the hole his white napkin, the waxpaper from his peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and his brown paper bag, he would close the top carefully, smoothing down the edges and trying to make the bulging carton look like new.

But most of all Edwin learned about Holidays. Before entering Kindergarten he knew that the year contained two special days — his birthday and Christmas — and he realized dimly, but without anticipation, that there were a number of half-special days, like the day the nuts came out in a big brown bowl with two silver nutcrackers or the day he and Karen received chocolate rabbits. And there were special days that might come at any time: a visit from Grandma Mullhouse, for instance, or a trip to the library, or a picnic expedition. But in Kindergarten he learned that the year was a continual round of celebrations and holidays, all of which had to be elaborately prepared for. Hardly two weeks had passed before Miss Tipp began telling us about the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. She read us a poem about the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and we sang a song about the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Each of us received his own box of eight enormous crayons, flat on one side, and we all drew pictures of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Miss Tipp showed us how to draw the sun, and most of us drew fiery yellow suns with long rays streaming down onto the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria; but Edwin drew at the top of his page a flat black border representing the night, and under that a small round moon, barely visible on the pale paper. But the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria soon sailed away, and Miss Tipp began telling us about pumpkins and witches, black cats and Halloween moons. She passed out black and orange sheets of construction paper and small round-tipped scissors, and we all cut out big orange moons and big black cats with pointed ears. Vast jars filled with white paste appeared, and when Edwin pasted two orange eyes onto his cat he was rewarded by having it tacked up on the bulletin board. One day Miss Tipp brought in a grinning pumpkin; Edwin took off the top of its head, looked inside, and quickly replaced the top, turning it carefully until it fit precisely. Pumpkins always baffled him. We sang a song about a witch on a broomstick and Miss Tipp read us a tedious story about Halloween in Denmark. For the first time in his life Edwin looked forward in fearful excitement to the night of funny, frightening masks; and no sooner had Halloween passed than he found himself looking forward even more eagerly to Thanksgiving. Miss Tipp brought in three ears of colored corn, a collection of miniature Pilgrims, and a sad headdress without a tail. We all cut out Pilgrim buckles for our shoes and we all told what we were thankful for; Edwin said he was thankful for Thanksgiving. We sang a sad song about God and a happy song about Indians and Miss Tipp read us a tedious story about a little boy called Miles Standish. She turned a page: and suddenly snow began to fall on Miles Standish, and we were making Santa Claus faces with red hats and curly cotton beards. Miss Tipp’s Christmas equipment put the rest of her holiday supplies to shame: during the first week alone she brought in a manger, a little team of reindeer pulling a sleigh, a wax Santa with a wick coming out of his head, a prickly wreath with red berries, a white plastic snowman with a black plastic hat, and a long red stocking decorated with white reindeer. She set us to work decorating the windows with green paper trees and red paper Santas, making illustrated Christmas cards for our families, and cutting out decorations for our Christmas trees: little green trees, little white angels, big red bells, and above all candy canes: white paper that we striped with red crayon and rolled from one corner, taping the cylinder, flattening one end, and curving the flat end into a hook; and all the activity and the tense sense of holiday worked us up to a higher and higher pitch of anticipation until we became grateful to the very tasks that fevered us for also distracting us from an unbearable pressure of waiting. It was as if we were tied to the track on which Christmas was a distant howling train. There was a real tree with lights, and a Christmas party with the two other Kindergarten classes; we ate Christmas cookies shaped like trees and stars, sprinkled with red and green sugar and sometimes with little silver balls. And everyone knew that it was all simply a matter of marking time. Then followed the tense tempestuous week before Christmas, a week that affected Edwin like an illness, like a fever, like a dream of falling, so that a sharp word from his father was capable of hurting him like a thumb: he would burst into a desolation of tears, sobbing hysterically with shaking shoulders while Karen watched in terror, squeezing her fingers into a soft doll. Mrs. Mullhouse would comfort him, stroking his hair as he cried into her shoulder, and soon the violence would spend itself and he would lift his head, rubbing his eyes and blowing his nose into a tissue his mother held for him while Mr. Mullhouse, sitting all alone as if he had banished himself into exile, would look over uneasily and try to make up for everything: tenderly, cunningly, he would begin to say something quite harmless and friendly about the prospect of snow for Christmas, he would put into his voice rich promises of stories of Indians on intimate lamplit evenings, but the sheer sound of the voice that had wounded him shattered Edwin, and he would burst into wails of such pain and bitterness that it was as if Mr. Mullhouse had announced there was to be no Christmas at all that year. Only after the second fit would he begin to recover, looking up with big red eyes, rubbing his temples to soothe his headache, and keeping his mouth open because his nose was stuffed. Within ten minutes we were all joking and laughing, and it was as if nothing had happened, except that the air was a web of intricate tenderness, spun by secret spiders. The glittering day itself, after such waiting, was flawed for Edwin by a delicate imperfection, for with each bright wrapping he ripped ecstatically from its toy he seemed to be falling one step further from a consummation he had somehow never quite reached.