Half Portions Part 4

Miz' Merz, damply calicoed, rose from a corner and came forward, wiping a moist and parboiled hand on her skirt. "Ha' do, Pinky. Ain't forgot your old friends, have you?"

"It's Mrs. Merz!" Pinky put her cool, sweet fingers into the other woman's spongy clasp. "Why, h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Merz! Of course when there's house cleaning--I'd forgotten all about house cleaning--that there was such a thing, I mean."

"It's got to be done," replied Miz' Merz, severely.

Pinky, suddenly looking like one of her own magazine covers (in tailor clothes), turned swiftly to her mother. "Nothing of the kind," she said, crisply. She looked about the hot, dusty, littered room. She included and then banished it all with one sweeping gesture. "Nothing of the kind. This is--this is an anachronism."

"Mebbe so," retorted Miz' Merz with equal crispness. "But it's got to be cleaned just the same. Yessir; it's got to be cleaned."

They smiled at each other then, the mother and daughter. They descended the winding attic stairs happily, talking very fast and interrupting each other.

Mrs. Brewster's skirt was still pinned up. Her hair was bound in the protecting towel. "You must telephone father. No, let's surprise him.

You'll hate the dinner--built around Miz Merz; you know--boiled. Well, you know what a despot she is."

It was hot for September, in Wisconsin. As they came out to the porch Pinky saw that there were tiny beads of moisture under her mother's eyes and about her chin. The sight infuriated her somehow. "Well, really, mother!"

Mrs. Brewster unpinned her skirt and smoothed it down; and smiled at Pinky, all unconscious that she looked like a plump, pink Sister of Mercy with that towel bound tightly about her hair. With a swift movement Pinky unpinned the towel, unwound it, dabbed with it tenderly at her mother's chin and brow, rolled it into a vicious wad, and hurled it through the open doorway.

"Now just what does that mean?" said Mrs. Brewster, equably. "Take off your hat and coat, Pinky, but don't treat them that way--unless that's the way they're doing in New York. Everything is so informal since the war." She had a pretty wit of her own, Mrs. Brewster.

Of course Pinky laughed then, and kissed her mother and hugged her hard.

"It's just that it seems so idiotic--your digging around in an attic in this day and age! Why, it's--it's--" Pinky could express herself much more clearly in colours than in words. "There is no such thing as an attic. People don't clean them any more. I never realized before--this huge house. It has been wonderful to come back to, of course. But just you and dad." She stopped. She raised two young fists high in impotent anger. "Do you _like_ cleaning the attic?"

"Why, no. I hate it."

"Then why in the world--"

"I've always done it, Pinky. And while they may not be wearing attics in New York, we haven't taken them off in Winnebago. Come on up to your room, dear. It looks bare. If I'd known you were coming--the slip covers--"

"Are they in the box in the attic labelled 'Slp Cov Pinky Rm'?" She succeeded in slurring it ludicrously.

It brought an appreciative giggle from Mrs. Brewster. A giggle need not be inconsistent, with fifty years, especially if one's nose wrinkles up delightfully in the act. But no smile curved the daughter's stern young lips. Together they went up to Pinky's old room (the older woman stopped to pick up the crumpled towel on the hall floor). On the way they paused at the door of Mrs. Brewster's bedroom, so cool, so s.p.a.cious, all soft grays and blues.

Suddenly Pinky's eyes widened with horror. She pointed an accusing forefinger at a large, dark object in a corner near a window. "That's the old walnut desk!" she exclaimed.

"I know it."

The girl turned, half amused, half annoyed. "Oh, mother dear! That's the situation in a nutsh.e.l.l. Without a shadow of doubt there's an eradicable streak of black walnut in your gray-enamel make-up."

"Eradicable! That's a grand word, Pinky. Stylis.h.!.+ I never expected to meet it out of a book. And, fu'thermore, as Miz' Merz would say, I didn't know there was any situation."

"I meant the attic. And it's more than a situation. It's a state of mind."

Mrs. Brewster had disappeared into the depths of her clothes closet. Her voice sounded m.u.f.fled. "Pinky, you're talking the way they did at that tea you gave for father and me when we visited New York last winter."

She emerged with a cool-looking blue kimono. "Here. Put this on.

Father'll be home at twelve-thirty, for dinner, you know. You'll want a bath, won't you, dear?"

"Yes. Mummy, is it boiled--honestly?--on a day like this?"

"With onions," said Mrs. Brewster, firmly.

Fifteen minutes later Pinky, splas.h.i.+ng 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 p.r.i.c.kly 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 decorating 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 ap.r.o.n. "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 suns.h.i.+ne. Standing there in the centre of the big room, freshly napped, smartly coifed, 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.

Still, as one saw Mrs. Brewster's tired droop at supper that night, there is no denying that there seemed some justification for Pinky's volcanic remarks.

Hosea Brewster announced, after supper, that he and Fred were going to have a session with the furnace; she needed going over in September before they began firing up for the winter.

"I'll go down with you," said Pinky.

"No, you stay up here with mother. You'll get all ashes and coal dust."

But Pinky was firm. "Mother's half dead. She's going straight up to bed, after that darned old attic. I'll come up to tuck you in, mummy."

And though she did not descend to the cellar until the overhauling process was nearly completed she did come down in time for the last of the scene. She perched at the foot of the stairs and watched the two men, overalled, sooty, tobacco-wreathed, and happy. When, finally, Hosea Brewster knocked the ashes out of his stubby black pipe, dusted his sooty hands together briskly, and began to peel his overalls, Pinky came forward.