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

She had a whole series of faces, three of which I saw Edwin perform for Karen: her Chinese face, made by pulling the corners of her eyes with her forefingers; her idiot face, made by crossing her eyes and pulling the corners of her mouth with her hooked pinkies; and her sick face, made by pulling down the skin under her eyes, letting her jaw hang slackly, and letting her tongue hang out.

To my horror he began to pick up her verbal expressions as well. She was fond of saying “Thank a- you ,” and Edwin began to say it constantly, angering everyone. “Thank a- you ,” he would say to Mrs. Mullhouse as she served each item of his lunch. “Thanks, mom. Thank a- you .” He assimilated several mispronunciations: “o-weez” (always), “prolly” (probably), “innit” (isn’t it), “chock-lit” (chocolate), “Mondee” (Monday), “rayroad” (railroad), and “crane” (crayon). Other Dornisms that crept into his speech included: “It’s Howdy Doody time” (in answer to the question, “What time is it?”), “goody goody gumdrops,” “scaredy pants,” “fa crine out loud,” and “poopy” (a vulgar expression). She was fond of making vulgar sounds in class, and to my great disgust Edwin began to practice them on the way home from school, placing his tongue between his lips and sputtering with positive gusto.

And yet, despite these distressing instances of spiritual intimacy, in other ways he was barely closer to her than in the days of his distant fever. Of course there was the daily gift, followed by the daily tease. But even then he rarely spoke to her. For that matter he was rarely alone with her; indeed he rarely got near her at all. The only real opportunities for doing so were in the morning and afternoon before the bell, but as the weather grew colder Rose Dorn, like everyone else, began to arrive as late as possible. Even in very bad weather, when we were allowed to enter early, we had to sit quietly at our own tables until the bell. And during the day they were together only in the sense that they shared the same room. It may be necessary to remind the reader how, in those days, one’s table was a personal island in an impersonal archipelago, bearing to the other islands a relation similar to that borne by one’s own room to the other rooms in the house. Like it or lump it, as Mrs. Mullhouse might say, one’s table was the center around which the schoolday turned. The only serious challenge to table-intimacy was the reading group that assembled at the front of the class, where table-democracy was replaced briefly by the hierarchy of intellect. Here Edwin and I met twice daily for twenty minutes at a time; but of course Rose Dorn was not in our group. And yet these meetings of the top reading group were points of high excitement in Edwin’s day, for on his way to the front of the room he always passed Rose Dorn. Carrying his chair awkwardly against his leg, for we were forbidden to push our chairs along the floor, gripping it by the sides and leaning backward as he walked, struggling forward with clumsy steps, his face flushed, the tendons of his neck visible, Edwin tried to erase all signs of exertion from his face and to assume a look of casual ease, of utter boredom, as if the heavy chair he was carrying weighed no more than a pencil. Rose Dorn sat with her back to him, on the side of the table close to the wide uneven aisle formed by Tables 1, 3, and 6 on the left, and 2, 4, and 5 on the right (a numbering system that infuriated me), and as Edwin worked his way toward the front I could sense his growing excitement. Usually she sat perfectly still, so that gradually her right ear must have appeared, and part of her right cheek, and her eyelashes, and the line of her nose. Practically upon her, he would gaze down at the part in the middle of her hair, when suddenly she would look up, making him flinch and blush and stumble forward in a last burst of energy to the assembling semicircle in the front of the room, where he would drop his chair loudly to an invariable: “How many times have I told you not to throw your chair down”—as if he had flung it down like a baseball glove.

The possibilities of closeness were increased during play period, though closeness was rarely achieved. Twice daily during good weather we went outside for twenty minutes at a time, during which we held relay races and played such games as Dodgeball, Kickball, Drop the Handkerchief, Cat and Mouse, and Giant Step. Edwin looked forward eagerly to circular games because of the possibility that he might hold her hand; though when at last, during Drop the Handkerchief, he found himself actually doing so, he was thrown into a state of such utter confusion that when the handkerchief fell behind her he was unable to let go, but gripped her hand more tightly and stared in horror as Rose Dorn tugged and screamed. Once, during a relay race in which we had to stand in line with our legs apart and push a dodgeball through the tunnel to the end of the line, where the last person picked up the ball and ran to the front to begin again, Edwin stood directly behind Rose Dorn. At one point, bending over to push the ball through, he bumped his head against her behind, and straightened up in such panic that if she had not happened to roll the ball straight through his legs he would not have known what to do; while she, straightening up and placing both hands on her bumped behind, looked over her shoulder at him with a shameless grin.

As the weather worsened we played indoors (Red Fox, One Two Three Red Light, Dog and Bone, Simon Says, Hucka Bucka Beanstalk, Good Morning Judge, King and Queen). I shall report two occasions upon which Chance decreed that Edwin and Rose Dorn should play out their little drama in public. The first occurred during Good Morning Judge. Edwin was seated in the chair at the front of the room with his back to the class and his eyes closed. He had guessed five people in a row and seemed infallible. Mrs. Cadwallader looked around carefully and finally pointed to Rose Dorn. Sliding silently from her chair, she tiptoed quietly across the room to the windows and then, to fool him, stamped from the direction of Table 2. Standing behind him, in a high squeaky voice she said: “Good morning, Judge.” Instantly Edwin’s neck, as if it were a pale fruit juice container into which cherry-flavored Kool-Aid had been poured, darkened perceptibly. “Ummmmm,” he said, in a ridiculous imitation of uncertainty—“Donna?” “No!” squeaked the voice. “Ummmmm … uhhhhh … Billy?” “No!” squeaked the voice. “Ummmmm … uh … oh, I don’t know … ummmmm … rrrrr — Rose?” “He cheated!” she cried, turning passionately to Mrs. Cadwallader as sly Edwin shyly turned, his neck now resembling a fruit juice container into which cranberry juice had been poured.

But she made him suffer for a whole week because of a game of King and Queen. Rose Dorn’s thick hair formed a flattish surface that was excellent for carrying erasers, and she would have been one of the best players in the class if it were not for her tendency to cheat in every possible way. Edwin’s narrow and relatively sharp skull made it difficult for him to balance an eraser, but he was one of the fastest walkers in the class. It promised to be an exciting contest. They started against the wall across from the windows: Edwin stood by the front door and Rose Dorn stood by the back door with an eraser on her head. At the word “go,” uttered by Mrs. Cadwallader as if she were commanding them to leave the room at once and never come back, they both began walking, Rose Dorn in little quick steps and Edwin in long dipping strides that made his head seem to bob up and down above the waves of his body. Halfway across the back of the room the eraser fell and the girls shrieked; Rose Dorn hastily replaced it, but with her first step it began to slide, and though she tipped her head to balance it, by the third step it had fallen again; so that by the time she rounded the back wall and began to walk along the windows, Edwin was almost halfway across the back wall, dipping and rising over his long legs. Halfway along the windows the eraser again began to fall, but this time Rose Dorn, breaking the rules, reached up and set it straight. The boys began to shout, the girls were silent, and Edwin rounded the corner on his way after her. Rose Dorn cut her corner, the little cheater, and began hurrying along the front of the room, but as she broke into a brief illegal run the eraser fell again, bouncing on her shoulder, hitting the floor with a puff of chalk, and tumbling away; as she leaped after it she saw Edwin some ten paces away, striding along with glittering eyes in an expressionless face, as if he were insane; and she cast at him a look of burning hatred. The class was yelling as Edwin rounded the corner and came grimly gliding along the front wall, some five steps away from Rose Dorn. Clearly losing control as she neared the last corner, again she dropped the eraser, this time catching it in her hands, and illegally placing it on her head without stopping. As she scurried around the corner the eraser began to slide but she held it in place with her hand while angry shouts from the boys prompted a warning from Mrs. Cadwallader. But as Edwin rounded the corner he was only two steps behind her, he was holding out his arm and straining forward with his fingertips, gaining on her little by little; and just as she passed the front door and approached the blackboard, some twenty steps away from her starting point, he touched her lightly on the shoulder. She slumped forward, grasped her shoulder in false pain, and began to shriek “He pushed me! He pushed me!”—and as the eraser hit the floor, sending up a cloud of chalk, she burst into tears of rage, while cheers went up from the middle of the room, and shocked Edwin, pale and open-mouthed, stared at her as if at a china statuette that he had knocked from a mantelpiece onto the fireplace bricks.