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April 25th, As Usual
by
“Yes. Mummy, is it boiled—honestly?—on a day like this?”
“With onions,” said Mrs. Brewster firmly.
Fifteen minutes later Pinky, splashing in a cool tub, heard the voice of Miz’ Merz, high-pitched with excitement and a certain awful joy: “Miz’ Brewster! Oh, Miz’ Brewster! I found a moth in Mr. Brewster’s winter flannels!”
“Oh!” in choked accents of fury from Pinky; and she brought a hard young fist down in the water—spat!—so that it splashed ceiling, hair and floor impartially.
Still, it was a cool and serene young daughter who greeted Hosea Brewster as he came limping up the porch stairs. He placed the flat of the foot down at each step, instead of heel and ball. It gave him a queer, hitching gait. The girl felt a sharp little constriction of her
throat as she marked that rheumatic limp. “It’s the beastly Wisconsin winters,” she told herself. Then, darting out at him from the corner where she had been hiding: “S’prise! S’prise!”
His plump blond face, flushed with the unwonted heat went darkly red. He dropped his hat. His arms gathered her in. Her fresh young cheek was pressed against his dear, prickly one. So they stood for a long minute—close.
“Need a shave, dad. ”
“Well gosh how did I know my best girl was coming!” He held her off. “What’s the matter, Pink? Don’t they like your covers any more?”
“Not a thing, Hosey. Don’t get fresh. They’re redecorating my studio—you know—plasterers and stuff. I couldn’t work. And I was lonesome for you. ”
Hosea Brewster went to the open doorway and gave a long whistle with a little quirk at the end. Then he came back to Pinky in the wide-seated porch swing. “You know,” he said, his voice lowered confidentially, “I thought I’d take mother to New York for ten days or so. See the shows, and run around and eat at the dens of wickedness. She likes it for a change. ”
Pinky sat up, tense. “For a change? Dad, I want to talk to you about that. Mother needs—”
Mrs. Brewster’s light footstep sounded in the hall. She wore an all-enveloping gingham apron. “How did you like your surprise, father?” She came over to him and kissed the top of his head. “I’m getting dinner so that Gussie can go on with the attic. Everything’s ready if you want to come in. I didn’t want to dish up until you were at the table, so’s everything would be hot. ” She threw a laughing glance at Pinky.
But when they were seated, there appeared a platter of cold, thinly sliced ham for Pinky, and a crisp salad, and a featherweight cheese souffle, and iced tea, and a dessert coolly capped with whipped cream.
“But, mother, you shouldn’t have—” feebly.
“There are always a lot of things in the house. You know that. I just wanted to tease you. ”
Father Brewster lingered for an unwonted hour after the midday meal. But two o’clock found him back at the cold-storage plant. Pinky watched him go, a speculative look in her eyes.
She visited the attic that afternoon at four, when it was again neat, clean, orderly, smelling of soap and sunshine. Standing there in the centre of the big room, freshly napped, smartly coiffed, blue-serged, trim, the very concentrated essence of modernity, she eyed with stern deliberation the funeral wheat wreath in its walnut frame; the trunks; the chests; the boxes all shelved and neatly inscribed with their “H’s Fshg Tckl” and “Blk Nt Drs. ”
“Barbaric!” she said aloud, though she stood there alone. “Medieval! Mad! It has got to be stopped. Slavery!” After which she went downstairs and picked golden glow for the living-room vases and scarlet salvia for the bowl in the dining-room.