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

Mrs. Mullhouse was quick to notice the change, for upon arriving home Edwin would not dash upstairs to change into his playclothes but would drag himself over to the staircase and pull himself slowly, slowly, slowly up by the banister. When I entered she would be waiting for me in the living room, and would subject me to anxious interrogation. Later she would come upstairs and rap with her knuckles gently twice. “Is anything wrong, Edwin?” she would say, standing in the doorway and looking almost angry with concern. “Aren’t you feeling well? Do you have a fever?” And at last going over to him she would lay the back of a hand on his forehead, and then she would touch his forehead with first one cheek and then the other, and then she would stand with the backs of her hands against her hips and frown down at him as if he had broken a window. Finally she would leave, and some time later I would hear Dr. Mullhouse enter below with a rattle of blinds. A muffled conversation would be followed by the sound of his heavy step on the stairs; with a single knuckle he rapped gently three times. “Cm in,” Edwin muttered from his bed, and Dr. Mullhouse would respond in one of two ways: he might open up briskly and stride in with an air of joking geniality, or he might turn the knob slowly and peek in as if he were entering a sickroom. Edwin ignored him in either case, and replied to his questions with grim reluctance, in a weary monotone, after an insufferable pause.

At dinner, according to Mrs. Mullhouse, he only pecked at his food. After dinner he said good night and dragged himself slowly, slowly, slowly up to his room. In the morning, when I arrived, he looked pale and worn, as if sleep had been a crushing labor. And at last, one morning, he did not rise at all. Mrs. Mullhouse shook him three times before his eyes opened, and when she returned a fourth time he was sitting up in bed, leaning against the venetian blinds, fast asleep. When I arrived she reported to me in detail and informed me that she had called Dr. Blumenthal. “Oh Jeff,” she said, “do you think it’s polio?” I assured her that it was not, but as I hurried off to school my mind teemed with images of stunted and twisted legs. The day passed with intolerable slowness. The red second-hand of the big round clock moved in its track with elaborate and unnatural slowness, as if it were moving through honey, while the tormented minute-hand, like a wounded bird, dragged its broken wing painfully forward in tiny dying jerks. That morning, for the first time, I understood the expression on George Washington’s face. At the 11:30 lunch bell I hurried away from school as quickly as I could, despite a vast policeman who held out his arms as if to press me to his chest, and without stopping at my house I ran to Edwin’s. But Dr. Blumenthal had not yet arrived. The afternoon passed like a long insomnia. Images of wheel chairs and white hospital beds mingled with the green adventures of Bobby and Betsy and their dog Scot. At the 3:15 bell I hurried straight to Edwin’s, without even changing my clothes. Mrs. Mullhouse looked grave, and my mind toppled down a flight of stairs as I awaited her news. But Dr. Blumenthal had found nothing wrong with Edwin, nothing, that is, except fatigue and weakness. He had recommended sunshine and orange juice. “Sunshine and orange juice,” said Mrs. Mullhouse, “my God, what kind of a prescription is that?” but as we spoke she drifted into the kitchen and began to fill a tall glass with orange juice. “He said there was no infection,” she continued, “but he did say to call again in a few days. Now why would he want me to call again in a few days unless it was serious. Be a good boy and bring up this orange juice, won’t you, Jeff, and try to get him to take a swallow, and Jeff: see if there’s anything bothering him, something one of us said or did, I’m sure there’s something bothering him, will you do that, Jeff?” The tall glass was so full of orange juice that she had to sip some of it herself. Holding the dangerous thing carefully in two hands I carried it upstairs. Edwin’s door was closed, but not all the way, and pushing it wide open with my foot I entered the familiar dimness. Edwin lay on his back, with one arm thrown over his eyes, fast asleep. I uttered his name, but he did not stir. I closed the door quietly with my foot and proceeded to walk across the room and place the glass on the second gray bookcase. Then I sat down on the bed under the colored map of the United States. “Edwin,” I called softly. “Edwin, Edwin, Edwin, Edwin, Ed …” A knee moved; slowly his whole body gathered itself together and began to turn toward the wall. “Edwin,” I said, “it’s Jeffrey”; and I heard him murmur “door.” “Door?” I said, glancing at the door I had just closed; and my heart began to hammer. Rising I said softly: “What door, Edwin?” “Doze,” he murmured. As I crossed the room on tiptoe the mysterious syllables, so full of possible secrets, echoed in my brain. Door … doze … doze … door … what was he trying to say? Standing over him I whispered: “What door, Edwin? What door?”—and with sudden inspiration I added: “Close what door?” His murmuring became confused, stopped altogether, and began again. I was about to give up and shake him awake when suddenly, with no more consciousness than before, but with extraordinary precision, Edwin uttered slowly the words, the burning words, the unbelievable words, that I had so grotesquely misunderstood. It was fortunate indeed that I was not holding the glass of orange juice, for at that moment it would have dropped from my astounded fingers, leaving dangerous slivers of glass in the little red rug while at my toes a dark stain soaked and spread.

HER NAME WAS ROSE DORN, she rhymed with forlorn, and Edwin was deathly in love. I had always detested her myself. She was a little blond girl with a little black kitten; she had no friends. Her mother was a witch. She alternated between fits of dreamy brooding, when chin on hand she stared with angel eyes out of windows or through walls, and fits of wild violence, destructive cold and cruel. Oh, she was always clamoring for attention. She was a small solid girl with a turned-up nose and large pale eyes. She had thick tight golden hair that she wore in two pigtails, tied with red bows; from neck to forehead her hair was combed in tight lines radiating outward from a central part. Carefully and elaborately bound, her hair was at the same time wilful and wild: pale strands uncaught by the comb lay loosely on her neck and sprang from the part in the middle of her head; often by the end of the day the tight hair in back had become unbound and hung down in long straggling waves. Her favorite dress was a short bright red one with puffed short sleeves, from which her short solid arms hung down alertly, as if she were perpetually prepared to snatch your crayons. Her posture was terrible: sliding lower and lower on her spine, she looked up innocently, raising her blond eyebrows and pointing to herself, when Mrs. Cadwallader scolded her. She was quite a little faker. During the Lord’s Prayer she muttered nonsense; during the Pledge Allegiance she moved her lips silently, standing with her left hand over her chest. One day she would pretend to be utterly stupid, stumbling over the easiest words and answering no questions; the next day she would read with fluid mocking ease. Nor was her fakery always so elementary. A terrible speller, always missing early in spelling bees, she would often pretend to be feigning stupidity in order to create the impression that she was only feigning stupidity. If, for instance, she was asked to spell a difficult word like “caterpillar,” she might begin easily enough with her c, a, t, and you could see that she was uncertain about the next letter; but instead of making a reasonable guess she would say, very slowly and thoughtfully: x, q, z, h, w — blinking in wide-eyed surprise when Mrs. Cadwallader told her to sit down. Hating to do seatwork, she quickly sank to the lowest reading group; spitefully she stayed where she was, at once contemptuous of the other members of her group and contemptuous of herself for not being in the top reading group. There was something wrong with her, we all knew that; she was like a page on which a waterdrop has dried, leaving a faint ripple. The Carol Stempel episode had frightened all of us, of course. But aside from that there was an unpleasant aura about Rose Dorn, a sense that warned you away unless you happened to be Edwin: a sense of remoteness and difference, as if she were an elf or bat. Those large pale eyes, that too-yellow hair, that sleek black kitten: Billy Duda said she roamed about at night, followed by her cat. They said her mother, the witch, stayed shut up all day in her house in the woods; they said she cut you up in little pieces if she caught you. They said a great many things, and I never paid attention to half of them; my point is simply that Rose Dorn inspired talk like that. Perhaps it was her wildness that attracted poor Edwin so powerfully; perhaps it was her stillness; perhaps it was only her hair. Whatever it was, she held him in her spell for six months, teasing and tormenting him without mercy. Of course she lost him in the end. God knows I hated her; God knows I once pitied her; may she rest in peace. She died horribly but dramatically, clamoring for attention even in her end; and her death spread through Edwin like an infection.