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

And so he played — now with sound, now with silence, now with his other toys. My most vivid memories of that winter, Edwin’s second, are evening memories, for from the age of two I was a frequent evening visitor there. Mama, I think, was happy for a few hours’ peace, and Mrs. Mullhouse seemed to hope that my articulate presence would inspire Edwin into speech. Bundled up in boots, mittens, snowsuit and hood, I would walk with mama each evening after dinner along the dark sidewalk between heaps of snow, watching on my left the line of the snowy pricker hedge, the open space of the Mullhouse driveway, the snowy pricker hedge again, and the open space of the steps; and holding tight to mama I would make my way down the same two steps I had bumped down in my carriage long ago, and would walk along the wavily shoveled walk toward the lit-up front stoop with the little cone-shaped bushes set back on both sides under the yellow windows. Over a thick brown mat rose the tall white door with its three red numerals screwed into the wood at the top: 295; and as mama rang the two-note bell I wiped my snowless boots carefully on the fuzzy mat and listened to the sound of the inside door opening with a rattle of blinds, heard the click of the inside light, the three steps in the hall, the hand on the knob — I watched the door swing inward at my toes, revealing the feet of Mrs. Mullhouse in vast puffball slippers that looked like white kittens — and looking up I saw breath coming out of her smile. Mama usually went right home, and Mrs. Mullhouse would help me off with my boots and snowsuit in the chilly front hall. Then opening the door, and turning off the light, we would enter the lamp- and firelit living room, which seemed to have contracted from its huge daylight proportions to a small warm circle defined by armchair, couch-corner, and fireplace, yet seemed at the same time somehow vaster: for the dark stairway with its diagonal row of balusters was alive with dangerous shadows and the tall chest housed a hundred eyes. Edwin sat on the flickering rug before the fire in a bright circle of toys, solemnly rolling an empty wooden spool back and forth or dropping purple wooden hoops onto an orange pole. Mr. Mullhouse was always seated on the brown armchair to the left as I entered, smoking a pipe and reading, one leg hooked over a chairarm and a vast black moccasin, trimmed with white, dangling from his toes. He would look up and say solemnly: “Good evening, Jeffrey,” or “How do you do, Jeffrey,” for he believed that little children should be addressed as adults, and I would reply: “Good eeving, Mistuh Muh-how”; and sometimes in his eyeglasses I could see flames from the fireplace. Edwin would watch all this carefully out of the corner of his eye but would show no enthusiasm or even recognition. Mrs. Mullhouse would say: “Say hello to Jeff, Edwin. Say: hewwo, Deffy, hewwo!” “Oh for the love of Christ,” Mr. Mullhouse would say, and in a waggish humor I would echo: “Oh for luwa cries.” “Oh fine, that’s just great, they’ll just love that over there,” Mrs. Mullhouse would say, but already Mr. Mullhouse was back in his book; and I would join Edwin silently on the floor, and silently we would play. Mrs. Mullhouse sat on the end of the couch near the fireplace, reading or knitting by the light of a small lamp on the wall bookcase, and looked up sadly from time to time at her soundless son. Sometimes she turned out her light, moved to the other end of the couch, and sitting with her legs tucked under her, watched the fire. Sometimes she sang. After a time that always seemed too short she would say: “Well, Jeff, I guess it’s time to go bye-bye,” and a long time later she would go to the front hall, pull down her big furry coat and pick up her furlined red boots, return to the couch, and begin to pull on her boots with a frown. She would say: “Well, Edwin, mommy’s going far away across the snow,” but of course he knew perfectly well she’d be back in two minutes. When she had me all bundled up in my snowsuit, and herself bundled up in the big furry coat that made her look like a bear, I would go up to Mr. Mullhouse and say: “Good eeving” or “Fankoo, goonye.” He would look back at me and say solemnly: “Good night, Jeffrey.” Once, looking up from a fat book, he said: “Marry, God you good den.” And Mrs. Mullhouse always said to Edwin: “Say goodnight to Jeff, baby,” but Edwin would be knocking wooden pegs into holes with a red wooden hammer or rolling a little wooden horse on silver wheels along the fireplace bricks or just sitting there.

One evening I appeared as usual and joined Edwin on the floor. The room was cozily dark, lit only by the crackling fire behind its screen and the light by Mr. Mullhouse’s chair. Edwin was seated on the rug before a large white drawing pad with the broken remains of his eight crayons in a shoebox beside him; he was making wavy lines in an aggressive fashion, delighted at being allowed to scribble all over the nice clean sheets of paper (Mrs. Mullhouse persisted in seeing dogs or houses among those joyful scrawls). The red crayon was only a little stump without its paper sheath, and Edwin had discovered a new stroke, made by pushing the stump across the paper on its side. As I watched him making a winding pale-red river across a world of blue and orange wiggles, Mrs. Mullhouse began to sing:

“This old man, he played one,

He played nick nack on my drum,

With a nick nack paddywhack give a dog a bone,

This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played two,

He played nick nack on my shoe,

With a nick nack paddywhack give a dog a bone,

This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played three,

He played nick nack on my tree, sing along with mommy honey,

With a nick nack paddywhack give a dog a bone, come on baby,

This old man came rolling home.

This old man, he played four,

He played nick nack on my door,

With a nick nack paddywhack

Oh Abe he just won’t sing.”

Mr. Mullhouse looked up from his book and stared at Mrs. Mullhouse solemnly through his flickering lenses. Placing the book over one leg, and removing his pipe, he said:

“Columbus said to Isabel

Just give me ships and cargo.

I’ll be a lowdown sonofabitch

If I don’t bring back Chicago.”

“Oh really, Abe,” said Mrs. Mullhouse. Mr. Mullhouse said:

“For forty days and forty nights

They sailed in search of booty,

When on the shore they saw a whore—

By god she was a beauty.

The sailors all jumped overboard

Without their shirts and collars.

In fifteen minutes by the clock

She made nine thousand dollars.”

“Oh Abe,” said Mrs. Mullhouse. “Really.”

Mr. Mullhouse put the pipe back in his mouth, picked up his book, and began to read. A few moments later he took his pipe out of his mouth and said: “Snip snap candlewax for the love of Christ.”

“Nick nack paddywhack,” said Mrs. Mullhouse, “and Abe I wish you’d watch your language in front of the children. And besides,” she continued, “oh now I’ve forgotten what I wanted to say.” She returned to her fire-watching. Edwin all this while had been sitting with his back to me, but with great stillness, as if listening intently. After a while Mrs. Mullhouse began to hum, and soon she broke into song:

“This old man, he played five,

He played nick nack on my hive,

With a nick nack paddywhack give a dog a bone,

This old man came rolling home.