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

I THINK Edwin would have been happy to pursue matters indefinitely in this distant manner, using me as a firescreen to protect him from that dangerous flame; unfortunately he had not reckoned with Rose Dorn. She was a bold little hussy, if the truth be told. Not that she liked him especially. In fact, I believe she actually disliked him from the start. But she liked to be liked; she loved to be loved; as I have said, she was always clamoring for attention. Edwin’s fascination fascinated her. How could she fail to advertise it?

At my table the next morning I was in for a surprise. Rose Dorn sat over her workbook, drawing ears on the picture of a ball; but that was nothing. It was her left hand that startled me. Resting on the table, it was clenched in a fist; on the third finger loomed the pink compass-ring. Between her finger and the top of the ring was a space through which you might have inserted a straw.

By the end of the week everyone knew that Edwin loved Rose Dorn. Oh, she made sure of that. On the playground she showed people the compass-ring, saying: “Lookit what Edwin gamey.” In class she spun around to catch him looking at her; blushing brightly, he tried to disappear. In the coatroom she would walk up to him and stare until he blushed; then pointing a finger she shouted: “He’s blushing! He’s blushing!” On Thursday a white-chalked heart appeared on the strip of concrete under the bricks in back, bearing the legend:

E.M.

L

R.D.

The sudden crude publicity of his private passion shocked shy Edwin; it was as if he were made to walk naked on the playground while everyone giggled and stared. And yet I cannot help wondering whether in some fashion he found it reassuring. For weeks he had burned in a private fever: might not the public side of things constitute a kind of proof of intimacy, a formal declaration that she was now bound to him, as their initials were bound in a heart of chalk? Even so, he was not prepared for the violence that first emerged that Friday afternoon. We had entered the side playground as usual and were making our way toward the back. Near the corner stood a group of girls, among whom were Trudy Cassidy, Donna Riccio, and Diana Walsh. They had been watching us, and as we passed they suddenly broke into a loud chant:

Edwin and Rosie

In a tree

Kay eye ess ess eye en gee!

They sang it over and over, shrieking with savage glee, flinging the words like sticks and stones; stunned and bleeding, Edwin staggered away.

It was not until the following Monday that Edwin dared to approach her. Meanwhile he kept his distance, peeping and blushing, while she stood in various poses in the spaces of his day, paddling her ball, playing with her kitten, or simply staring. He received his allowance on Sunday, and on Monday morning before the bell he hurried over to Rapolski’s, where after much brooding he purchased, for two cents, a hideous pair of red wax lips. To my surprise and relief he did not ask me to deliver them, but stuck them in his pocket and hurried back to the playground. The bell had already rung and the line was moving forward. She was standing off to one side — she never stood in line when she could help it — paddling her ball while Gray leaped up at it with his claws. While I kept my eye on Gray, Edwin stood with his hands in his pockets, staring up at a little white cloud. As we passed Rose Dorn I saw him withdraw a hand from his pocket. He turned; and staring suddenly at his toes he burst into a blush and passed on. As we passed through the door she was still standing there, paddling away over her leaping kitten.

He lingered in the coatroom, casting his fevered gaze along the dark double row of coats toward the hall. She entered at last, seeing us instantly and staring boldly at us as she moved along, holding out an arm and brushing the coats she passed. Edwin reached into the pocket of his hanging coat and threw me a look that was meant to make me invisible. Quickly and judiciously I stepped into the room.

At once poor Edwin came shooting out behind me. He looked as if he had seen a ghost. Sliding into his seat as one might crawl under a blanket, he assumed a rigid position and held his breath. In the corner of his right fist, a piece of red wax was visible.

She was there before us on the playground after lunch, standing beside the wide oak in the angle of the wire fence. As he stepped onto the playground through the space between the building and the fence, Edwin hesitated briefly; then firmly, as if he had come to some tremendous decision, striding sternly forward and looking neither left nor right, he hurried along the side of the school and turned the corner, shutting her out of view.

The long coatroom was shared by four classes, each of which had its section and its time. At the 3:10 bell our class filed in through the door in the back of the room, picked up its coats, and quickly returned to the room to wait for the second bell. On this particular day everyone except Edwin and Rose Dorn had returned to the room; I myself happened to be crouching on the other side of the rack, reaching for a lost glove. Under the row of coats four legs were visible. Below her right knee was a small white bandaid; on her left knee a double scratch stood out darkly against a bright red background of mercurochrome. “I’ve got this stupid thing,” said Edwin, and they were the first words he had ever uttered to her. “Where is that stupid thing anyway. This is such a stupid coatroom. Oh where is that stupid thing. I don’t know why I bought this stupid thing. You probably wouldn’t want it anyway. Here. You can throw the dumb thing out if you don’t want it. This is such a dumb school. I think I’ll go to China.”

Poor Edwin. He was not an eloquent lover.

AH, THOSE GIFTS! He gave her black licorice pipes with red sugar on the bowl, red licorice shoestrings, black licorice twist. He gave her chocolate babies, root-beer barrels, round red-hots, sugary orange slices, little red hearts that burned your tongue, triangular pieces of candy corn colored white and orange and yellow, squares of butterscotch wrapped in cellophane, strawberry candy that came in aluminum tins with little aluminum spoons, clusters of rock candy crystals growing on white string. He gave her five chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil, in a pouch of green netting tied with gold string. He gave her pieces of large pink bubblegum wrapped in blue paper and containing little colored comic strips. He gave her small wax bottles filled with sweet syrup: biting off the wax bottlecaps she sucked out the orange, raspberry, and lime.

He played the bubblegum machine passionately for her sake, giving her balls of white gum and black gum, red gum and yellow gum, green gum and orange gum, and all the prizes: miniature boxes of Quaker Oats, miniature red hot dogs in miniature brown buns, white teeth set in pink gums, little white baseballs with black trim, cream-colored lightbulbs that glowed blue in the dark, silver rings with green and red and yellow domes, little blue ships in little clear bottles, and colored charms with tiny loops on top: red dogs, green roosters, white Indians, green Indians, blue hearts, black pistols, green hands, green heads.

He gave her prizes from boxes of cereal: a small round magnifying glass with a clear transparent plastic handle, a blue plastic coin with an eagle on it, a star-shaped silver marshal’s badge with a copper-colored pin in back, small tin cowboy buttons which you attached to a shirt pocket by folding back the prong on top, a red plastic caboose, a black plastic engine, a green rubber soldier wrapped in cellophane, tin railroad signs (Illinois Central, Southern Pacific Lines, Lackawanna Railroad), white plastic billboard-frames with colorful paper advertisements to insert, a five-hundred-dollar bill (THAT AIN’T HAY), a slim package of green clay, and the rings: a red watch-ring whose painted black hands pointed to three o’clock, a white ring through whose clear top you saw a clown alternately smile and cry, a blue ring with a blue telescope mounted on top, an olive-colored ring whose top opened up for secret messages, a yellow ring whose clear dome held a cowboy’s face and two silver balls, an orange ring with an oval mirror set in the top, a black cowboy ring with a gold cattle-brand.