The Richer, the Poorer Read online

  I was taken to meet the editor of that section. She was Katherine Kelly. We bonded immediately. She gave me advice that I will forever treasure: she said, “Write your best, always write your best, not for the paper but for pride in your writing.” There were times when I said oh shucks. But there were more times when I followed her advice.

  I had spent all my childhood summers on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, where we had a small cottage. In my early years, with a child’s innocence, I thought it was always summer here, and nobody called you nigger here (to Yankees the word was verboten) and no child had to get up on cold mornings to go to school. And maybe there wasn’t any school to go to if there wasn’t any winter.

  The summer of 1947, with my childhood and girlhood over and done with, I was walking on-island with a friend who was sharing my two-week stay. I was casually talking about my mother and her occasional bouts with extravagance when I was a child. My father had a profitable business, and he was indulgent with my mother, who was young enough to be his daughter, and so for my mother the living was easy. I did not know that conversation would linger in my mind nor that I would spend the coming winter writing a book in a summer house where the pipes froze and broke, where the snowplow did not know there was one house still occupied on that shuttered street, and the plumber said that nothing could be done till spring when the ground relaxed its grip on the frozen outdoor pipes. But he found a way to give me water from the main source, which meant an outdoor trip three times a day.

  The winter passed without incident, and the incomparable spring on the Vineyard lifted every heart. Every fishing boat waited to set sail.

  What was most important to me was that The Living Is Easy was finished. George Bye sent it to Houghton Mifflin. They accepted it.

  He also sent it to the best-known and most-read women’s magazine of that day. Its editors, a husband and wife team, were said to be among the most powerful editors in the country. They loved the book and they wanted to serialize it. George Bye wrote me that wonderful news, but then there was a stretch of silence. And finally he wrote me that a survey showed that many Southern subscribers would cancel their subscriptions if they had to submit to that outrage.

  That fall I read an advertisement in the Vineyard Gazette, whose reputation for excellence had become an established fact. The ad announced an opening at the paper, though it did not specify in what department. I had been given a favorable review of The Living Is Easy, which meant my name should be recognizable. I promptly applied, and the job was mine.

  It was a modest job, consisting of filing and billing, no doubt left begging by some young student apprentice returning to college. But I had decided to stay the winter, chiefly because an ailing close relative needed the quiet of the Highlands. The sounds surrounding me at work would enliven my days and make my return home a welcome change of pace.

  The water pipes were now underground. The rooms that were in use had been winterized, and the others were behind closed doors. The cottage was reasonably snug.

  Fairly soon the duties I had been hired to do became routine and took less and less time to complete. My working hours, of course, did not diminish. I asked if I could fill that time by writing occasional pieces on whatever came to mind. They were pleased by the question and I was pleased by their ready acquiescence.

  In time the paper was bought by James (Scotty) and Sally Fulton Reston, who in turn passed the reins to their son and daughter-in-law, Richard and Mary Jo Reston, an incomparable couple to whom I am devoted. This collection includes many stories that were first printed in the Gazette.

  STORIES

  THE TYPEWRITER

  It occurred to him, as he eased past the bulging knees of an Irish wash lady and forced an apologetic passage down the aisle of the crowded car, that more than anything in all the world he wanted not to go home. He began to wish passionately that he had never been born, that he had never been married, that he had never been the means of life’s coming into the world. He knew quite suddenly that he hated his flat and his family and his friends. And most of all the incessant thing that would “clatter clatter” until every nerve screamed aloud, and the words of the evening paper danced crazily before him, and the insane desire to crush and kill set his fingers twitching.

  He shuffled down the street, an abject little man of fifty-odd years, in an ageless overcoat that flapped in the wind. He was cold, and he hated the North, and particularly Boston, and saw suddenly a barefoot pickaninny sitting on a fence in the hot, Southern sun with a piece of steaming corn bread and a piece of fried salt pork in either grimy hand.

  He was tired, and he wanted his supper, but he didn’t want the beans, and frankfurters, and light bread that Net would undoubtedly have. That Net had had every Monday night since that regrettable moment fifteen years before when he had told her—innocently—that such a supper tasted “right nice. Kinda change from what we always has.”

  He mounted the four brick steps leading to his door and pulled at the bell; but there was no answering ring. It was broken again, and in a mental flash he saw himself with a multitude of tools and a box of matches shivering in the vestibule after supper. He began to pound lustily on the door and wondered vaguely if his hand would bleed if he smashed the glass. He hated the sight of blood. It sickened him.

  Someone was running down the stairs. Daisy probably. Millie would be at that infernal thing, pounding, pounding…. He entered. The chill of the house swept him. His child was wrapped in a coat. She whispered solemnly, “Poppa, Miz Hicks an’ Miz Berry’s orful mad. They gointa move if they can’t get more heat. The furnace’s bin out all day. Mama couldn’t fix it.” He said hurriedly, “I’ll go right down. I’ll go right down.” He hoped Mrs. Hicks wouldn’t pull open her door and glare at him. She was large and domineering, and her husband was a bully. If her husband ever struck him it would kill him. He hated life, but he didn’t want to die. He was afraid of God, and in his wildest flights of fancy couldn’t imagine himself an angel. He went softly down the stairs.

  He began to shake the furnace fiercely. And he shook into it every wrong, mumbling softly under his breath. He began to think back over his uneventful years, and it came to him as rather a shock that he had never sworn in all his life. He wondered uneasily if he dared say “damn.” It was taken for granted that a man swore when he tended a stubborn furnace. And his strongest interjection was “Great balls of fire!”

  The cellar began to warm, and he took off his inadequate overcoat that was streaked with dirt. Well, Net would have to clean that. He’d be damned—! It frightened him and thrilled him. He wanted suddenly to rush upstairs and tell Mrs. Hicks if she didn’t like the way he was running things, she could get out. But he heaped another shovelful of coal on the fire and sighed. He would never be able to get away from himself and the routine of years.

  He thought of that eager Negro lad of seventeen who had come North to seek his fortune. He had walked jauntily down Boylston Street, and even his own kind had laughed at the incongruity of him. But he had thrown up his head and promised himself: “You’ll have an office here some day. With plate-glass windows and a real mahogany desk.” But, though he didn’t know it then, he was not the progressive type. And he became successively, in the years, bell boy, porter, waiter, cook, and finally janitor in a downtown office building.

  He had married Net when he was thirty-three and a waiter. He had married her partly because—though he might not have admitted it—there was no one to eat the expensive delicacies the generous cook gave him every night to bring home. And partly because he dared hope there might be a son to fulfill his dreams. But Millie had come, and after her, twin girls who had died within two weeks, then Daisy, and it was tacitly understood that Net was done with childbearing.

  Life, though flowing monotonously, had flowed peacefully enough until that sucker of sanity became a sitting room fixture. Intuitively at the very first he had felt its undesirability. He had suggested hesitatingly that they couldn’t aff
ord it. Three dollars the eighth of every month. Three dollars: food and fuel. Times were hard, and the twenty dollars apiece the respective husbands of Miz Hicks and Miz Berry irregularly paid was only five dollars more than the thirty-five a month he paid his own Hebraic landlord. And the Lord knew his salary was little enough. At which point Net spoke her piece, her voice rising shrill. “God knows I never complain ‘bout nothin’. Ain’t no other woman got less than me. I bin wearin’ this same dress here five years, an’ I’ll wear it another five. But I don’t want nothin’. I ain’t never wanted nothin’. An’ when I does as’, it’s only for my children. You’re a poor sort of father if you can’t give that child jes’ three dollars a month to rent that typewriter. Ain’t ’nother girl in school ain’t got one. An’ mos’ of ’ems bought an’ paid for. You know yourself how Millie is. She wouldn’t as’ me for it till she had to. An’ I ain’t going to disappoint her. She’s goin’ to get that typewriter Saturday, mark my words.”

  On a Monday then it had been installed. And in the months that followed, night after night he listened to the murderous “tack, tack, tack” that was like a vampire slowly drinking his blood. If only he could escape. Bar a door against the sound of it. But tied hand and foot by the economic fact that “Lord knows we can’t afford to have fires burnin’ an’ lights lit all over the flat. You’all gotta set in one room. An’ when y’get tired setting y’c’n go to bed. Gas bill was somep’n scandalous last month.”

  He heaped a final shovelful of coal on the fire and watched the first blue flames. Then, his overcoat under his arm, he mounted the cellar stairs. Mrs. Hicks was standing in her kitchen door, arms akimbo. “It’s warmin’,” she volunteered.

  “Yeh,” he was conscious of his grime-streaked face and hands, “it’s warmin’. I’m sorry ’bout all day.”

  She folded her arms across her ample bosom. “Tending a furnace ain’t a woman’s work. I don’t blame you wife none ’tall.”

  Unsuspecting, he was grateful. “Yeh, it’s pretty hard for a woman. I always look after it ’fore I goes to work, but some days it jes’ ac’s up.”

  “Y’oughta have a janitor, that’s what y’ought,” she flung at him. “The same cullud man that tends them apartments would be willin’. Mr. Taylor has him. It takes a man to run a furnace, and when the man’s away all day—”

  “I know,” he interrupted, embarrassed and hurt. “I know. Tha’s right, Miz Hicks, tha’s right. But I ain’t in a position to make no improvements. Times is hard.”

  She surveyed him critically. “Your wife called down ’bout three times while you was in the cellar. I reckon she wants you for supper.”

  “Thanks,” he mumbled and escaped up the back stairs.

  He hung up his overcoat in the closet, telling himself, a little lamely, that it wouldn’t take him more than a minute to clean it up himself after supper. After all, Net was tired and probably worried what with Mrs. Hicks and all. And he hated men who made slaves of their womenfolk. Good old Net.

  He tidied up in the bathroom, washing his face and hands carefully and cleanly so as to leave no—or very little—stain on the roller towel. It was hard enough for Net, God knew.

  He entered the kitchen. The last spirals of steam were rising from his supper. One thing about Net, she served a full plate. He smiled appreciatively at her unresponsive back, bent over the kitchen sink. There was no one who could bake beans just like Net’s. And no one who could find a market with frankfurters quite so fat.

  He sat down at his place. “Evenin’, hon.”

  He saw her back stiffen. “If your supper’s cold, ’tain’t my fault. I called and called.”

  He said hastily, “It’s fine, Net, fine. Piping.”

  She was the usual tired housewife. “Y’oughta et your supper ’fore you fooled with that furnace. I ain’t bothered ’bout them niggers. I got all my dishes washed ’cept yours. An’ I hate to mess up my kitchen after I once get it straightened up.”

  He was humble. “I’ll give that old furnace an extra lookin’ after in the mornin’. It’ll last all day tomorrow, hon.”

  “An’ on top of that,” she continued, unheeding him and giving a final wrench to her dish towel, “that confounded bell don’t ring. An’—”

  “I’ll fix it after supper,” he interposed quickly.

  She hung up her dish towel and came to stand before him looming large and yellow. “An’ that old Miz Berry, she claim she was expectin’ comp’ny. An’ she know they must ‘a’ come an’ gone while she was in her kitchen an’ couldn’t be at her winder to watch for ’em. Old liar.” She brushed back a lock of naturally straight hair. “She wasn’t expectin’ nobody.”

  “Well, you know how some folks are—”

  “Fools! Half the world,” was her vehement answer. “I’m goin’ in the front room an’ set down a spell. I bin on my feet all day. Leave them dishes on the table. God knows I’m tired, but I’ll come back an’ wash ’em.” But they both knew, of course, that he, very clumsily, would.

  At precisely quarter past nine when he, strained at last to the breaking point, uttering an inhuman, strangled cry, flung down his paper, clutched at his throat, and sprang to his feet, Millie’s surprised young voice, shocking him to normalcy, heralded the first of that series of great moments that every humble little middle-class man eventually experiences.

  “What’s the matter, Poppa? You sick? I wanted you to help me.”

  He drew out his handkerchief and wiped his hot hands. “I declare I must ‘a’ fallen asleep an’ had a nightmare. No, I ain’t sick. What you want, hon?”

  “Dictate me a letter, Poppa. I c’n do sixty words a minute. You know, like a business letter. You know, like those men in your building dictate to their stenographers. Don’t you hear ’em sometimes?”

  “Oh sure, I know, hon. Poppa’ll help you. Sure. I hear that Mr. Browning. Sure.”

  Net rose. “Guess I’ll put this child to bed. Come on now, Daisy, without no fuss. Then I’ll run up to Pa’s. He ain’t bin well all week.”

  When the door closed behind them, he crossed to his daughter, conjured the image of Mr. Browning in the process of dictating, so arranged himself, and coughed importantly.

  “Well, Millie—”

  “Oh, Poppa, is that what you’d call your stenographer?” she teased. “And anyway pretend I’m really one—and you’re really my boss, and this letter’s real important.”

  A light crept into his dull eyes. Vigor through his thin blood. In a brief moment the weight of years fell from him like a cloak. Tired, bent, little old man that he was, he smiled, straightened, tapped impressively against his teeth with a toil-stained finger, and became that enviable emblem of American life: a businessman.

  “You be Miz Hicks, huh, honey? Course we can’t both use the same name. I’ll be J. Lucius Jones. J. Lucius. All them real big men use their middle names. Jus’ kinda looks big doin’, doncha think, hon? Looks like money, huh? J. Lucius.” He uttered a sound that was like the proud cluck of a strutting hen. “J. Lucius.” It rolled like oil from his tongue.

  His daughter twisted impatiently. “Now, Poppa—I mean Mr. Jones, sir—please begin. I am ready for dictation, sir.”

  He was in that office on Boylston Street, looking with visioning eyes through its plate-glass windows, tapping with impatient fingers on its real mahogany desk.

  “Ah—Beaker Brothers, Park Square Building, Boston, Mass. Ah—Gentlemen: In reply to yours of the seventh instant would state—”

  Every night thereafter in the weeks that followed, with Daisy packed off to bed, and Net “gone up to Pa’s” or nodding unobtrusively in her corner, there was the chameleon change of a Court Street janitor to J. Lucius Jones, dealer in stocks and bonds. He would stand, posturing, importantly flicking imaginary dust from his coat lapel, or, his hands locked behind his back, he would stride up and down, earnestly and seriously debating the advisability of buying copper with the market in such a fluctuating state. Once a week, too, he st
opped in at Jerry’s, and after a preliminary purchase of cheap cigars, bought the latest trade papers, mumbling an embarrassed explanation: “I got a little money. Think I’ll invest it in reliable stock.”

  The letters Millie typed and subsequently discarded, he rummaged for later, and under cover of writing to his brother in the South, laboriously, with a great many fancy flourishes, signed each neatly typed sheet with the exalted J. Lucius Jones.

  Later, when he mustered the courage, he suggested tentatively to Millie that it might be fun—just fun, of course—to answer his letters. One night—he laughed a good deal louder and longer than necessary—he’d be J. Lucius Jones, and the next night—here he swallowed hard and looked a little frightened—Rockefeller or Vanderbilt or Morgan—just for fun, y’understand! To which Millie gave consent. It mattered little to her one way or the other. It was practice, and that was what she needed. Very soon now she’d be in the hundred class. Then maybe she could get a job!

  He was growing very careful of his English. Occasionally—and it must be admitted, ashamedly—he made surreptitious ventures into the dictionary. He had to, of course. J. Lucius Jones would never say “Y’got to” when he meant “It is expedient.” And, old brain though he was, he learned quickly and easily, juggling words with amazing facility.

  Eventually, he bought stamps and envelopes—long, important-looking envelopes—and stammered apologetically to Millie, “Honey, Poppa thought it’d help you if you learned to type envelopes, too. Reckon you’ll have to do that, too, when y’get a job. Poor old man,” he swallowed painfully, “came round selling these envelopes. You know how ’tis. So I had to buy ’em.” Which was satisfactory to Millie. If she saw through her father, she gave no sign. After all, it was practice, and Mr. Hennessey had promised the smartest girl in the class a position in the very near future. And she, of course, was smart as a steel trap. Even Mr. Hennessey had said that—though not in just those words.