Mark Dunn - We Five

“I think they’re still with us,” said Carrie. “I mean, still alive.”

“Well, I hope they’re still writing music. Because what I’m hearing today by the Negroes and the Tin Pan Yids has no business even being called music.” Mrs. Littlejohn waddled off without waiting for a response.

After she was safely out of earshot, Mrs. Hale said to her daughter, “I’m sure she means well.”

“I’m sure she does,” agreed Carrie, nibbling around the burnt part of a piece of toast.

Mrs. Hale looked both ways down the street (as if her daughter’s friends might have taken leave of their attendance to practicality and created a new and even longer route by which to come and pick up Carrie). “Or maybe they have gone to fetch Jane first for some reason. How is Jane, by the way? You haven’t spoken of her lately.”

“She’s fine. All of my sisters are doing well.”

“I really wish you wouldn’t call them your sisters. By proper definition, they really aren’t your sisters, now are they? They are your friends. The only real family you have in the world is sitting right here, still wondering why you’ve hardly touched your waffles. And after I bought a brand new tin of Log Cabin syrup! Pure cane and maple syrup. Not that cheap Temtor Maple Flavor stuff. I don’t know what’s in that rot. It looks like motor oil.”

“The waffles are soggy, Mother, and I haven’t put any syrup on them, real or otherwise. I don’t think you left them in the iron long enough.”

“I wish Vitula weren’t sick so often. I worry she has T.B. — that little cough she always has.”

“I think she coughs because she smokes, Mother. I think she steals a puff or two when you aren’t looking.”

Mrs. Hale harrumphed. “It’s so unbecoming — women who smoke. Like those wanton flappers. Drink your orange juice.”

“There’s a gnat in it.”

“I don’t know why we came out here.” Mrs. Hale blotted the corners of her mouth (which, like her daughter’s mouth, had welcomed very little food inside) and placed her crumpled napkin next to her plate. “Who knew we’d have to contend with Mrs. Littlejohn so early in the morning?”

“I like it out here, Mother. And I’m glad Maggie and Molly are late, because it gives me the chance to discuss something with you that’s been on my mind for a couple of days now.”

“What is it, dear? I so hate it when things trouble you, and you keep it all bottled up inside. It isn’t healthy.”

“It isn’t something that’s necessarily troubling me, Mother. It’s just something that came up, which I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

Sylvia Hale gave her daughter a look with which Carrie was quite familiar. It involved a rimpling of the lips and a slight bulging of the eyes and it said, “I don’t believe any part of the statement you just made but will pretend otherwise through this fixed expression, certain to indicate full acceptance of whatever banana oil you might wish to peddle me.” At the same time she gurgled, “And of course there should be nothing of any substance bothering you, my dear. For aren’t things, on the whole, going quite well for us? You have that nice new job with Sister Lydia, and I have my charity work, and there is enough rental income from the properties your grandfather left me that we want for very little, so long as we don’t become too extravagant in our tastes.”

A pause. A breath. An opening.

“Well, you know, Mother, it’s very interesting Mrs. Littlejohn should mention the Prowses. Because I just happened to bump into Bella Prowse at Blue Delft on Saturday.”

An arched brow. “Oh, you’re calling her Bella, now, are you?”

“Well, she does live next door to us, Mother. And I do happen to remember her from grammar school. Anyway, I was buying those nut-center chocolates you asked me to get for the piano candy dish, and I was standing in front of the Johnston’s display.”

“Yes, I noticed they were having a sale — the dollar boxes of the mixed chocolates were going for eighty cents to the pound. You are a savvy shopper for that to have caught your eye.”

“I’d like to finish, Mother.”

Receding, chastened, into her chair: “Please.”

“Anyway, I look to my side and there she is—”

“Rolled-down stockings and her skirt up to here, and she was probably wearing a long enough rope of those ridiculous shell beads that you could slice it all up and have enough normal -length necklaces for half the women on this block.”

“Mother, please !”

A pantomimic buttoned lip. A nod. A hand upon the teapot. A declining wave from her daughter.

“ So. Anyway . We exchanged a polite greeting, and she asked me if the music from the party the night before had bothered us, and I could hardly keep from smiling, because I do remember how loud it was — the music and the sound of the motor cars coming and going — and, yes, there was drinking, and how does one defend something like that — well, of course you can’t because it’s against the law — I’m not saying anything you aren’t already thinking, Mother, in big bold letters, but the way she said it, it was almost as if she were wishing I had come over and told her to soften the gramophone and make her raucous guests behave themselves.”

“And why do you say this?”

“Because I think she was looking for an excuse to invite me to her party.”

“And why ever would you say that ? Oh dear, is that another smudge? Have you been playing Cinderella in the fireplace, sweet?”

Mrs. Hale licked a finger to saliva-dab away the offensive speck, but Carrie pulled herself out of reach, drew a handkerchief from her strap purse, and applied it to the cursed spot. “I’m sure it’s cinders in the air. Zenith has dirty air from all of its factories. Or haven’t you noticed? Sometimes I think your face looks smudged as well.”

Mrs. Hale sighed. “I’d like us to move to California someday. I think you should be in pictures. I think you’d be divine in pictures.”

“Thank you, Mother. That was very supportive. May I go on?”

“By all means.”

“I say she might have wanted to ask me in the other night because I actually did get an invitation — to her next party. It came right after I smiled and said, ‘No, your music never bothers us.’”

“Now why on earth would you say such a dishonest thing as — wait! — did I just hear you say you’ve been invited to the Prowses’ next bacchanal? By that hell-kitten? By that baby-vamp the professor snatched for himself from the bassinet?”

“Oh Mother, sometimes you sound exactly like Mrs. Littlejohn.”

“On this point, I shall take that as a compliment.”

“The party is Friday night. Bella’s birthday. And I want to go. She said I’m to invite my ‘four girlfriends’ as well, and I think I’d very much like to do that.”

“I am absolutely flabber—”

“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought over the last two—”

“—gasted. You know exactly the sort of crowd that will be there: all the professor’s long-hair friends, and, and all the local Bohemians, and every happy violator of the Volstead Act from here to Mohalis—”

Carrie, taking her mother literally for the moment, responded by shaking her head. “I don’t think anyone’s coming from Winnemac U. She did say she’s planning to invite some boys from the A&M here in town. And she told me with all candor the reason she’s inviting those boys. It’s because she thinks it’s time for We Five to come out of our clamshells like Venus on the beach — but here’s the part I really wanted to talk to you about, Mother.”