Mark Dunn - We Five

“The invitation alone isn’t sufficient to send me into apoplexy?”

“No, there’s more — a little more that was said that day at the candy store which I need your opinion on. And this is about you too, Mother. She said — well, she said we’re boring. She just came right out with it.”

“Well I never !”

“She said you and I are the most drab, the most boring people on the block, and this even includes Mr. Gruber with his string collection. She said it’s probably too late for you .”

“To do what? To stop being boring?” Sylvia Hale’s jaw was set. She could hardly get the words out.

“That’s right. But maybe there was hope for me. I still had a chance to kick up my heels for a few years before the Grim Reaper came knocking — because wasn’t that the purpose of life, after all: to make a little noise before we go quiet into the grave?”

“Good God.”

“Well, I’m quoting her, of course. Like how she quoted Edna St. Vincent Millay — that little poem she wrote a couple of years ago.”

Wearily: “What little poem?”

“‘My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night. But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — it gives a lovely light!’”

“Oh sweet Jesus. She wants you to be like her !”

“No, Mother. She wants me to live. ”

“Live fast and die young. I’m faint. Hand me that Town & Country . I want to fan myself.”

Carrie handed her mother the magazine, but Mrs. Hale didn’t make a breeze with it. Instead, she pointed to the photograph on the cover and said, “Isn’t that a pretty gazebo?”

“We are boring, Mother. You know we are.”

Sylvia tossed the magazine aside with an indignant snort. “Well, we can’t all drink from ankle flasks and dance on tables. Is that really something you’d like to do, darling?”

“I don’t know just what I’d like to do, except sometimes I think I’d like to do a little more than sit at home nearly every night.”

“Well, if you’ll permit me to be candid, may I just say that your four friends aren’t any more exciting than I am. Mark my words: you’ll drag them to this orgy on Friday night and they’ll just — why, they’ll just recede into the upholstery.”

“But that’s my point. I have found friends — whom I love, please don’t misunderstand me, Mother — who are just younger versions of — well— you. ”

“I may be mistaken, but I think you just insulted me.”

“I love you so much, Mother. But let me kick up my heels just a little and see what it feels like.” Carrie got up from her chair so she could put an arm around her mother’s shoulder. Through the embrace she could feel her mother trembling slightly. “I promise not to write you out of my life.”

“I don’t believe it. That isn’t how this scenario usually plays itself out. The daughter skips away and she forgets to write and she doesn’t even remember to send her mother a wire on her birthday. Then one day she reappears. Out of the blue. Now she’s pregnant with a Negro man’s baby or shaking with delirium tremens or some other such ghastly thing. And she isn’t the woman’s loving daughter anymore.”

“I’ll always be your loving daughter, Mother. Whether I choose to bruise my heels on tabletops or not.”

Mrs. Hale took a deep breath and smiled.

“What is it?”

“Something Reverend Mobry said in one of his sermons. He said, ‘God doesn’t wish us to embrace life with one finger.’ Is this what we’ve been doing, dear? Have I held you too close? Do people laugh at the mother and daughter homebodies behind their backs?”

“If they’re laughing, Mother, then they’re rude not to be minding their own business. Because I happen to think I’m the luckiest daughter in the world. I have a mother whom I love and who I know loves me with all her heart.”

“And when someday you find yourself a beau—”

“You do want that for me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. But the right boy. And you know you aren’t likely to find ‘the right boy’ among a bunch of roughneck Aggies coaxed into attending one of Mirabella Prowse’s wild parties with promises of contraband Canadian whiskey.”

With a chuckle: “Yes, Mother. You are exactly one-hundred-percent right.”

“Here come Molly and Maggie. And Jane isn’t with them. So they are merely late. Hurry off now, or you’ll all be even later than you already are and have that demanding Miss Colthurst in a ridiculous dither.”

“Sometimes, Mother, you’re as awful as Mrs. Littlejohn the way you talk about people.”

Carrie bounced up from her seat and pecked her mother on the cheek. Mrs. Hale reciprocated. Then she pulled back and pointed. “There’s a smudge.”

“I’ll wear it as a beauty mark. Good-bye, Mother.”

“Good-bye, darling.”

Mrs. Hale watched her daughter dash across the front lawn to join her friends on their delayed morning march to Sister Lydia’s Tabernacle of the Sanctified Spirit. Maggie and Molly greeted Carrie’s mother with a wave. Mrs. Hale waved back.

As the three friends moved at a quick clip down the sidewalk, Molly apologized for their tardiness. “Maggie was late and then it got even later when I didn’t go down right away, because apparently this particular morning was one in which she just wasn’t coming up to get me.”

“Perhaps you don’t remember, Molly,” said Maggie, bridling, “that there was a snoring hobo blocking the stairs, and frankly, I didn’t care to wake him. You should have been on the lookout for me.”

“Can we please not hash this all out again?” said Molly. “It’s such a beautiful day. Why ruin it?”

“As it so happens, Molly, it’s already ruined.” Pause. Importantly: “And it was your father who did it.”

“Well, well, well ! Now you’ve come out with it. And I should say it’s about time.”

Carrie looked puzzled. “Come out with what ?”

Molly answered for both Maggie and herself. “My father has asked Maggie’s mother to marry him. Maggie is opposed.”

Carrie nodded contemplatively. “Well, Maggie, aren’t you generally opposed to pretty much everything ?”

Maggie stopped in her tracks and seized her hips with both hands. “I may be crabby from time to time, Carrie, but at least I don’t go through life in an absolute drowse the way you do.”

Carrie glowered. Then she took a deep breath and announced, “I have just the thing to wake us all up. Do either of you have plans for Friday night? Well, of course you don’t. Now here it is…”

London, England, October 1940

(from

Songs and Sirens,

by Daphne Rourke)

Jane, keeping one eye on the shop window, beheld her brother lying splayed out on the couch with the torn upholstery, which mouldered in a neglected corner of the showroom. It was the couch he was supposed to have slip-covered a month ago, but had not. A few hours earlier, Lyle Higgins had collapsed in a drunken stupor not upon his own bed in the back rooms, but upon this very piece of furniture, which was merchandise, which some future customer would sit upon and expect not to be assaulted by the stench of alcohol or old sick. Jane thought about waking him and sending him to the relative comfort of his bed, but why bother? No matter where he dormez-voused, he’d still fail to open the shop at nine. She didn’t know why he even pretended to have an interest in continuing to run the family business when it was all too obvious that all he really wanted to do was drink and play cards and sometimes carouse with members of the opposite sex, though it took a little effort on his part to be halfway charming to a lady and Jane knew he was averse to doing anything that required the expense of much effort. Why else had she spent all of the previous afternoon gathering up everything in the shop comprised of the least bit of aluminium for the scrap-metal campaign whilst he slumbered the day away like some hibernating creature in a cave?