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Bee Meyer
13625 Southwest 79th Court
Miami, Florida 33158
ONE CONNECTICUT SUMMER
It began a long time before the hot summer afternoon that Uncle
Ted and I were down in his cellar, opening a barrel of clams. There was Uncle
Ted, his blue work shirt open at the throat, his little seaman's cap on his
head. Uncle Ted was once a sailor before he settled down in Haven's Point with
Uncle Jo to go fishing. "This is the life for a man," he'd say, "Fishing and
making a living at the same time."
I guess he made a pretty good living because Aunt Jo had the prettiest house in
the village. It was very small, even to me then and it was made for children to
play in. Even the staircase had narrow little treads, so we could walk the
stairs as grownups did without hanging onto a railing, or putting two feet
solidly on each stair before we could step down on the next. At the bottom of
the staircase Aunt Jo had put what she called a Dutch Door -- so we couldn't go
up the stairs if she didn't want us to, but we could look upstairs and that was
just as good.
Aunt Jo could play music on the door like a drummer. She'd make her hands into
fists and hit the door, "Rum-tiddy-rum-tiddy-rum," and she'd say, "The flag is
marching by," and then we would all have to march around the parlor and the
first one to lose step would be out. I liked being out. Because then I coiuld
sit in front of the special little shelves and look at the tiny dogs and cats
and pincushions and bells. There were lots of bells which Aunt Jo would let us
tinkle sometimes.
That parlor. Everything had a special place. It was all small and magic. The
pump organ in the corner with its high shelves and the open on the rack [opening
on the back?].
And the round table with the fringed cloth. Once my little brother Dick pulled
on the
cloth and everything fell off the table. The pink lamp on the table broke into
pieces and I thought Aunt Jo was going to cry she looked so sad but she said,
"Never mind, Dickie boy, we will build a little pink shell house with the
pieces," and she said it very fast because the big fat cat tears were pouring
down Dick's face and he was rubbing his eyes. He was afaid he would never be
allowed to come back to Aunt Jo's house again to hear her play drum music on the
door.
But we all picked up the pieces and built a little house on the floor. Then Aunt
Jo turned over Uncle Ted's big chair and we made believe we were in an ocean
liner and could see the little pink house far away on the short. We waved to the
little pink house and Aunt Jo waved back and after awhile we forgot about Dick
breaking the lamp and we all had cookies and milk before we went home.
Then our mother said, "You have been eating between meals again. I do wish Aunt
Jo would stop feeding you." And both Dick and I said very quickly, "But we
didn't eat much, Mama, we really didn't."
Aunt Jo was very pretty. She wasn't much taller than we were because she didn't
have to bend down very far to touch us. She was always touching us. She would
hold a pinch of Dick's cheek bnetween her fingers and say, "There is no silk
like this silk." Or she would run her hand over my head and say, "You are
exactly like a small plush pup, you are," and I would make a barking sound and
she woiuld laugh. She like to run her hands over fresh bread that she baked,
too. She used to say she could feel how it tasted just as she could see how it
tasted. We didn't understand that. The only way we know how anything tasted was
to eat it.
My mother said Aunt Jo dressed like a gypsy. I never saw a gypsy in Haven's
Point. The first time I ever say gypsies was near New Haven where they had come
to Savin's Rock. I walked up to a gypsy woman standing there to look at her. She
poked at my stomach and turned to my mother, "How many little babies gonna be in
there some day?" she asked. A little grown girl with only half a dress on came
up to my mother and said, "Gimme a penny I shimmy for you." Mama made us walk
away fast and let us walk the whole length of the pier to make up for not
staying with the gypsies longer.
But I didn't think Aunt Jo looked like a gypsy. I always thought she looked like
the picture of the humming bird in my first reader. It was so small you could
hardly see it and our teacher told us that it moved its wings so fast you'd
think they were standing perfectly still.
Aunt Jo's eyes were a golden color and they opened wide in her dark face. She
wore big bright golden earrings like the color of her eyes. Her hair was black.
I don't remember any highlights in it. Just black and very thick and she'd let
it down for us so we could make it into pigtails. She she'd look like a little
girl.
Uncle Ted would come into the house and laugh to see her, then he'd pick her up
in his arms and \swing her high, the way he did to us and she would treat him
with great dignity and say, "Uncle Ted, kindly put me down," and we would laugh
to see how dignified she would become with her cheeks so flushed and her
pigtails flyings. So Uncle Ted would put her down very solemly and say, "as you
wish, Madam," then she woiuld pinch his cheeck, reaching up very high and say,
"there's a good boy." It always seemed as if Uncle Ted had a little girl and it
was Aunt Joa and Aunt Jo had a big boy like a son, and he was Uncle Ted. Because
they didn't have any other children and that's the way they were.
When you tell a story our teacher points out in short-story class, when you tell
a story you must make a structure. Then you must ask the narrative problem
before the end of the beginning. But I don't know what the beginning was. And I
don't know what the end of the beginning was. I only know that when Raphael
Guadalla came to Haven's Point, it was the end of everything for me.
My mother had a little store right on the main street of the village. The post
office was across the street with a grocery store attached to it. When Raphael
Guadalla drove up with John Wrigley, who ran the ferry and had a care besides, I
thought he was very handsome and I ran in to tell my mother that the man had
come to work in Holden's grocery store.
Raphael Guadalla jumped down from the car and whirled his hat around his head.
"Hello you in there," he called out. "I have come to work in your grocery
store."
Mr. Holden came outside still with his butcher apron on. Raphael Guadalla pumped
his hand up and down and finally Mr. Holden called for his wife and she came
out, wiping her hands on her apron. She was always doing that, as if she had
just washed her hands. When she saw Raphael Guadalla she threw her arms around
him and he hugged her and Mr. Holden stood there and said, "Well, well."
My mother said that Raphael was Mr. Holden's wife's brother and that they had
both come from New York and she was so lonesome she got her brother to come and
work for Mr. Holden in the store. But my mother said there wasn't work enough
for a flea which seemed pretty funny to me but that was the way my mother said
it.
I went over to have a good look at Mr. Raphael Guadalla and he didn't look at
all like Mrs. Holden. She was little and fat with a very bright red face and he
was thin and dark with curly black hair. He had a guitar case slung over his
shoiulder and he had a mustache, too. A long black mustache, very shiny. When I
told my mother about it she said, "Hmph...wax." "Like the holiday candles,
Mama," I asked and she said, "No, wax, but different."
In a couple of days everyboidy had a good look at Raphael Guadalla. My father
didn't think much of him. Raphael just sat on the porch of the post office and
played his guitar and all the summer boarders would come around to listen. They
came to the village from my Uncle Zelick Samuel's boarding house which was up
the road from the ferry and from Abram's boarding house, too. Once in a while
someonw would come along and speak in Italian to Raphael. That what he said it
was when I asked him. But it sounded like laughing in words, all soft, with
music in it. After a little while, Dick and I forgot about Raphael and went back
to Aunt Jo's, but she kep asking us about him. "What's he like?" And we'd tru to
tell her about his guitar and the wax on his mustache and how he spoke this
funny language and how he hadn't done a lick of work, his sister's husband said.
Aunt Jo said, "Talk, talk." ANd we said "That's what you asked us to do." And
she said, "never mind, children," and then we played with the musical door but
she didn't let us stay with her very long and we went home. We asked her to let
us play with her hair but she didn't want to get it mussed up and when we left
the house she was sitting in front of the parlor window, looking across the
street at Ralph Guadalla playing his guitar.
Well, you know it is in the summer time when there's no school. You don't pace
the days off one by one but they slide past you. It seems to me I can remember
some days more vividly than others, in that summer when I was between the first
and second grades. Mama carrying water from Villers well, so Dick and I could
play in a washtub behind our store....Mama shining lamp chimneys early in the
morning. Dick and I would wake to the soft sound of her cleaning rag buffing the
glass when we'd come barefoot into the store to see her, feeling the clean grit
of the sand she was using to sweep the floor, under our toes. Sitting on
Verstrates front porch and eating onion sandwiches. I remember this place
particularly because Mama took a picture of us with Dick's blond bangs down to
his eyes and my face concentrated on the next bite. The whole thing is like a
stereopticon picture to me, with Dick's face clear only because of that snapshot
and Mama's face not clear at all except her very blue eyes and the way her crisp
clean housedresses rustled at her work.
I don't remember when I began to notice how quiet Uncle Ted had become. I
remember that he wasn't saying much and he was gone fishing a lot. And I
remember that Mama was spending more time with us, playing more games with us.
One day she even closed the store early and took us down to the river fishing.
We didn't catch much. Dick caught an eel which we couldn't get off his line so
we finally cut the line and threw it back with eel and hook and all, into the
river.
At the beginning of when we weren't spending so much time with Aunt Jo I
remember thinking only that maybe she was very busy or tired or the summer was
too much for her -- that's what ladies were always saying that "the summer is
too mjch" for somebody or other and that's why Mama tried to make things up to
us.
But you know how it is. Sometimes consciousness is like the singing sound in the
telephone poles. You don't know there's any sound to them until you put your
head close up against them and it must be very quiet all around you. Then you
hear the high, thin tone against your ears and pretty soon it begins to feel as
though your'e carrying the tone in your own head and even when you're not staind
gainst the pole you carry the sound with you. Knowing about Aunt Jo was like
that, I think. First I didn't know and then I remember thinking I had known it
from the very first minute I saw her look at Raphael Guadalla playing his guitar
on Holden's porch.
People were talking. All kinds of people. Coming into Mama's store and leaning
against the ice-cream tubs and laughing and talking. When Dick and I would come
in, they'd say, "Sshh. The children," and then began saying what a hot summer it
was and were we getting any fresh meat from the travelling butcher? Once I heard
the words, "Positive disgrace," and once I heard, "Everybody knows but Ted."
It must have been August because the river was green and quiet at the edges and
gthere weren't any more wild flowers. Dick and I had been looking for Ladies'
Slippers even though we knew there weren't any more, but we were looking anyway.
There's a twisty little road from the river, not where Mr. Wrigley drove his car
from the ferry to the village. The road at the left went to Uncle Zelick's
boarding house. Off that road there's a path that goes to the white birch
forest. Maybe not a real forest, because the trees were so think but that's what
we used to call it.
Dick and I were down on our hands and knees, holding a grasshopper so he'd make
molasses, when we heard them. Aunt Jo's voice, high and excited and Raphael's
voice, soft and rich and low.
Sometimes now when I hear the radio or TV suddenly and realise I've been letting
it run without noticing it, I;m as surprised at finding music in the room as I
was at hearing their voices. Yet, not surprised. You know what I mean. Maybe we
had been listening to them ahile and hadn't realized what the words meant until
we heard Aunt Jo say, "But darling," and then she laughed and Raphael laughed
too. They were quiet awhile and she laughed again.
Dick looked at me and said, "That's Aunt Jo and where is she?" And I said, "I
don't know. I want to go home." So we did.
Well, it's a funny thing to know everything and nothing. Just to hurt inside,
with a lump in your throat worse than a fishbone. And Mama looking at you and
saying, "What's the matter, baby?" and you not being able to say anything, not
anything at all. Once Mama bought me a real gas balloon. I moored it next to my
bed with a string of beads so I could wake in the morning and see it shining and
straining up on its string next to me. But when I woke up it was all shriveled
and ugly, lying in a heap next to the cold white beads. When I thought it was
going to be beautiful forever. It was like that, what I felt about Aunt Jo.
But even worse that that was the way I felt about Uncle Ted. I was ashamed to
look at him because I knew and everybody knew and he didn't know. That was the
biggest shame.
I remember the Sunday afternoon Mama went riding with Max, from the Abram's
boarding house and Dick and I had to sit in back of the car and watch the light
through Max's big clean thin ears and I heard Mama say, "It's a shame, Max," and
Max said, "Shh...the children." And I was thinking about Uncle Ted, how
everybody was talking and saying, "Shh...the children." And Uncle Ted alone not
knowing.
It wasn't that I didn't try to figure out how to tell him. But I couldn't. That
was the hardest thing of all.
The afternoon Uncle Ted opened the barrel of clams, Dick and I were playing on
the front porch. Dick was going, "Choo, choo," making the top of a bottle of
Moxie skid across the splintery floor. I was just sitting there, watching him,
every now and then saying, "Choo, choo," just to please him. Uncle Ted came by
and said, "Hello, Be-at-trice." He always used my full name, deliberately
changing the accent to make me laught. "Hello, Uncle Ted, " I said.
"Would you like to taste a good fresh clam?" he asked me. So I left Dick playing
with the bottle cap and followed Ted into his cellar. It was cool and dark and
quiet there and I sat down on a keg, while Uncle GTed took a scredriver and
proddedn the barrel open.
"Never let anyone say your Uncle Ted didn't give you a treat," he said. Then he
opened a big river clam and offered it to me. I didn't want to take it. I sat
there and looked ant the clam and at Uncle Ted and gulped.
"You must taste it," he said. "It's very good."
Then I remembered the time Uncle Ted and Aunt Jo and some of us were in the
kitchen and she had baked a wonderful pan of bread. Only it didn't look like any
other breat I ever saw but it had sliced tomatoes and onions on top of it. Uncle
ted had laughed at her, saying she woiuld make a little Dago out of me yet and
then she had said without a smile on her face, "Go on my dear Beatie, you must
taste it. It's very good."
They were the same words Uncle Ted was using, making me remember how long it had
been since I had been with them together in their kitchen or in their house and
how everyone knew except Uncle Ted.
His eyes were shining at me and the clam was open in his hand. "Go on," he
said." I tased the clam. Then I began to cry. I cried very hard. And he laughed
and said, "it's not that bad, Be-at-rice." I cried out and said, "It's very
good," and I ran from the cellar as he stood there laughing at me.
He told my mother about it and she laughed too. But it wasn't the clam. The clam
had nothing to do with it. I couldn't stand Uncle Ted not knowing.
It must have been the last week before school that I went down to the old coffin
factory to sit awhile. There wasn't any factory there any more, except for the
foundation. It was all grown over with grass and tall weeds. But the steps were
still there and from them we could see the water rush with a wild swoop over the
dam. So I went down there to sit and look at the water and that's where Unlce
Ted found me.
I saw him first. I saw him coming up the path with his head down, his fishing
rod training in the sand at his feet. Uncle Ted was always so careful of his
rod, too. At first I though he was crying, because his shoulders were moving.
When he looked up and saw me, though, he smiled. Then I knew he was alright.
He sat down next to me and put his arm around me. He pushed his cap back on his
head so I could see the damp curls on his forehead and he said, "And how's my
girl?"
I couoldn't help it. I leaned my head against his chest and cried. "Baby girl,"
he said, "Stop that." I couldn't stop, not right away. So he patted my shoulder
and pretty soon I stopped, except for a fewhiccups.
"So it wasn't the clams," he said.
"No."
"What is it?"
"Nothing," I said. But he knew better.
He put his hand under my chin and tilted my face so I could look at him. He
pushed my bangs away and dried my tears with his big handkerchief. Then he said,
"No secrets now. Tell me."
"Everybody knows and you don't know," I said. "Everybody. Mama and Max and the
Holdens and everybody but you. And when we come near them they all say,'Shh....the
children.' And they don't think we know. But even Dick and I know. And you
don't!"
I was afraid to look at him, he was so quiet. My head was hard against his chest
and I could hear him breathing and the hard thump of his heart. He moved a
lottle and took his knife ouit of his pocket. He reached for a stick near the
stairs and began to whittle.
"What would you like? Would you like a whistle? Would you like a little walking
stick?"
"I don't care."
"I'll make you a nice little walking stick," he said. "So when you and Dick walk
by the river you can hold onto it and make believe you're a very old lady."
"I don't want to be an old lady," I cried. "I don't want to grow up."
I could feel he was smiling then, so I looked up.
"You'll grow up and you'll be a pretty girl and then some day you'll be an old
lady too, and it will all come natural."
I thought he was laughing at me then so I didn't say anything.
"Beatrice," he said, "Do you remember the time when that little speckled dog the
Vertrates had, got run over in the village?" I said "yes."
"Do you remember how we put a splint on his leg and after awhile he was good as
new?"
"He only limped a little." I remembered.
"Yes. Only a little. But for awhile he was very sick, wasn't he?"
I said I thought so.
"But he got well, Uncle Ted said. "And pretty soon if you hadn't know he was run
over, you would not even notice his limp."
I looked up [at] him and he was whittling my walking stick. He was making a
curve at the top end and the splinters were falling like soft pieces of silk
onto the sandy path.
"Then do you remember the Spring the baby robin fell near your store?"
"That was this Spring."
"It was a very sick little bird. And remember how we had to feed it tiny bits of
food to help it eat? And do you remember how one day all of a sudden, it stood
up on its skinny little legs and tried to fly?"
"It couldn't right away," I said.
"No of course not. But soon it did. And when it was all well it flew away by
itself."
"Yes," I said.
"When human beings are sick," Uncle Ted said, "it doesn't always show on the
outside. Sure, you can see them, when they're run over or when they have a cold
or when they fall down and hurt themselves. But sometimes they can be sick
inside."
"I have stomach aches," I said.
"Something like that. But even a stomach ache shows on your face a little. There
are other kinds of sickness that don't show at all. Only in the eyes, if you
love the person very much, can you see it. And sometimes not that, if she keeps
her eyes turned away from you. But if you love somebody very much, you know."
"Is Aunt Jo sick?"
"I'd say yes," Uncle Ted said.
"What's the matter with her?"
Uncle Ted smiled a little. He was down to the point of the stick now, taking
very small flicks at the wood with his jackknife. "Well," he said, "I''m a good
deal older than Aunt Jo, you know."
"My father is older than my mother, I think."
"Yes. And sometimes when people are older, they forget a little how to play
games."
"You play games with us."
"These are the games we play when we are small," Uncle Ted said. "But there are
other games a young woman loves. Games of the eyes and the heart, too. Sometimes
when you love somebody very much, you forget that being married should be a game
and you stop making play with your eyes. Or with your words. You just feel the
other one should know of the love and you are busy with other things, too. And
then suddenly you find that the other one is playing her own game."
"Do you get sick then too?" I asked.
"A little. Just a little. But you are older, in your sickness and you say to
yourself, this is only a game with her. It will pass. She will be well again."
Uncle Ted stopped whittling. "For awhile I thought he should be much sicker," he
said. For a little while I thought he would be better dead."
I was afraid then. Uncle Ted's knife came down hard on the stick. Then he
laughed. He handed the stick to me. "Try it for size," he said. I stood up and
leaned against the stick.
"Do I look like an old lady now," I asked him.
He laughed. "Very much like. Now all you need is a fur coat and a shawl around
your head."
"Will Aunt Jo have a walking stick and a fur coat when she is old?"
"Pray God she does," he answered. "And that I will be there to give them to
her."
Uncle Ted stood up. I had never before realized how tall he was. I remember
standing against him, looking up into his face to see his eyes so blue, his cap
so far back on his head.
"We know this thing together," he said.
"May I tell Dick?"
"No, I think not. It is something between you and me. Just the two of us."
"But everybody else knows," I said. "Doesn't everybody else know that Aunt Jo is
sick?"
"Even doctors don't agree on sickness sometimes," he said. "What they think they
see is something different than what I see. This time I must be my own doctor.
Come. We'll go home now."
We didn't talk much on the way home. But when Uncle Ted said good-bye, he leaned
down and kissed me. "I will make you a promise," he said. "I will promise you
Aunt Jo will be well again. Will that make you happy?"
"Yes," I said.
So you see. That's practically all there was to it. Except one thing more. It
happened the next year. We had been in New Haven when my father could do his
work as a pants cutter and Mama could stay home and take care of us. When summer
came, Mama said we could go to Haven's Point and stay at Uncle Zelick's boarding
house a few weeks and I was never so happy about anything.
While we were there, a note came from Uncle Ted and Aunt Jo. They called us up
long distance at Uncle Zelick's. Aunt Jo was talking so fast and laughing so
much, Mama could hardly hear her. "You must let them come to us," she said.
"We're living up at Old Cove now and they must come and visit."
Uncle Ted called for us at the ferry landing at Old Cove, Dick and I. We had
never been so far up the river. Aunt Jo was standing by the landing when we came
to their house. They lived on a hill above the river, in a little grove of trees
and a house that looked as though it had grown out of the pink granite. She was
standing there with her black hair in pigtails the way she used to fix it for us
and she was prettier than I had remembered her.
"All of you hello," she said. "And welcome to the new Thompson castle on the
hill." We all laughed because the house was too small to be a castle and we knew
she was playing queen again.
We walked up their hill, hand in hand, skipping and running in a hurry to be
there. The house was the way we wanted it to be, small and fine with white
curtains at the windows.
At the door Uncle Ted stopped. "it is the custom of the house," he said, "for
the master to carry his guests inside."
He picked us up, one at a time and put us inside the door. Aunt Jo stood there
in the sun, laughing at him. Finally he came to her. "You, Madam, are the last,"
he said.
Then he lifted her high into the air and her pigtails flew out and she kicked
her feet out at him. "Put me down, put me down Uncle Ted," she said.
He put her down inside the door and she leaned against him a minute. He pulled
her pigtails gently and said, "As you wish, madam." She leaned up and pinched
him on the cheeks with both hands. "Thank you my darling," she said.
And I knew my Aunt Jo was well again.