Slapstick Or Lonesome No More! Part 3

Yes, and Mother, because she was a symphony of chemical reactions like all other living things, gave a terrified shriek. Her chemicals insisted that she shriek in response to the bang bang.

After the chemicals got her to do that, though, they wanted a lot more from her. They thought it was high time she said what she really felt about Eliza and me, which she did. All sorts of other things went haywire when she said it. Her hands closed convulsively. Her spine buckled and her face shriveled to turn her into an old, old witch.

"I hate them, I hate them, I hate them," she said.

And not many seconds pa.s.sed before Mother said with spitting explicitness who it was she hated.

"I hate Wilbur Rockefeller Swain and Eliza Mellon Swain," she said.

10.

MOTHER WAS TEMPORARILY insane that night. insane that night.

I got to know her well in later years. And, while I never learned to love her, or to love anyone, for that matter, I did admire her unwavering decency toward one and all. She was not a mistress of insults. When she spoke either in public or in private, no reputations died.

So it was not truly our mother who said on the eve of our fifteenth birthday, "How can I love Count Dracula and his blus.h.i.+ng bride?"-meaning Eliza and me.

It was not truly our mother who asked our father, "How on Earth did I ever give birth to a pair of drooling totem poles?"

And so on.

As for Father: He engulfed her in his arms. He was weeping with love and pity.

"Caleb, oh Caleb-" she said in his arms, "this isn't me."

"Of course not," he said.

"Forgive me," she said.

"Of course," he said.

"Will G.o.d ever forgive me?" she said.

"He already has," he said.

"It was as though a devil all of a sudden got inside of me," she said.

"That's what it was, Tish," he said.

Her madness was subsiding now. "Oh, Caleb-" she said.

Lest I seem to be fis.h.i.+ng for sympathy, let me say right now that Eliza and I in those days were about as emotionally vulnerable as the Great Stone Face in New Hamps.h.i.+re.

We needed a mother's and father's love about as much as a fish needs a bicycle, as the saying goes.

So when our mother spoke badly of us, even wished we would die, our response was intellectual. We enjoyed solving problems. Perhaps Mother's problem was one we could solve-short of suicide, of course.

She pulled herself together again eventually. She steeled herself for another hundred birthdays with Eliza and me, in case G.o.d wished to test her in that way. But, before she did that, she said this: "I would give anything, Caleb, for the faintest sign of intelligence, the merest flicker of humanness in the eyes of either twin."

This was easily arranged.

Hi ho.

So Eliza and I went back to Eliza's room, and we painted a big sign on a bedsheet. Then, after our parents were sound asleep, we stole into their room through the false back in an armoire. We hung the sign on the wall, so it would be the first thing they saw when they woke up.

This is what it said: DEAR MATER AND PATER: WE CAN NEVER BE PRETTY BUT WE CAN BE AS SMART OR AS DUMB AS THE WORLD REALLY WANTS US TO BE.

YOUR FAITHFUL SERVANTS,.

ELIZA MELLON SWAIN.

WILBUR ROCKEFELLER SWAIN.

Hi ho.

11.

THUS DID E ELIZA AND I destroy our Paradise-our nation of two. I destroy our Paradise-our nation of two.

We arose the next morning before our parents did, before the servants could come to dress us. We sensed no danger. We supposed ourselves still to be in Paradise as we dressed ourselves.

I chose to wear a conservative blue, pinstripe, three-piece suit, I remember. Eliza chose to wear a cashmere sweater, a tweed skirt, and pearls.

We agreed that Eliza should be our spokesman at first, since she had a rich alto voice. My voice did not have the authority to announce calmingly but convincingly that, in effect, the world had just turned upside down.

Remember, please, that almost all that anyone had ever heard us say up to then was "Buh" and "Duh," and so on.

Now we encountered Oveta Cooper, our practical nurse, in the colonnaded green marble foyer. She was startled to see us up and dressed.

Before she could comment on this, though, Eliza and I leaned our heads together, put them in actual contact, just above our ears. The single genius we composed thereby then spoke to Oveta in Eliza's voice, which was as lovely as a viola.

This is what that voice said: "Good morning, Oveta. A new life begins for all of us today. As you can see and hear, Wilbur and I are no longer idiots. A miracle has taken place overnight. Our parents' dreams have come true. We are healed.

"As for you, Oveta: You will keep your apartment and your color television, and perhaps even receive a salary increase-as a reward for all you did to make this miracle come to pa.s.s. No one on the staff will experience any change, except for this one: Life here will become even easier and more pleasant than it was before."

Oveta, a bleak, Yankee dumpling, was hypnotized-like a rabbit who has met a rattlesnake. But Eliza and I were not a rattlesnake. With our heads together, we were one of the gentlest geniuses the world has ever known.

"We will not be using the tiled diningroom any more," said Eliza's voice. "We have lovely manners, as you shall see. Please have our breakfast served in the solarium, and notify us when Mater and Pater are up and around. It would be very nice if, from now on, you would address my brother and me as 'Master Wilbur' and 'Mistress Eliza.'

"You may go now, and tell the others about the miracle."

Oveta remained transfixed. I at last had to snap my fingers under her nose to wake her up.

She curtseyed. "As you wish, Mistress Eliza," she said. And she went to spread the news.

As we settled ourselves in the solarium, the rest of the staff straggled in humbly-to have a look at the young master and the young mistress we had become.

We greeted them by their full names. We asked them friendly questions which indicated that we had a detailed understanding of their lives. We apologized for having perhaps shocked some of them for changing so quickly.

"We simply did not realize," Eliza said, "that anybody wanted wanted us to be intelligent." us to be intelligent."

We were by then so in charge of things that I, too, dared to speak of important matters. My high voice wouldn't be silly any more.

"With your cooperation," I said, "we will make this mansion famous for intelligence as it has been infamous for idiocy in days gone by. Let the fences come down."

"Are there any questions?" said Eliza.

There were none.

Somebody called Dr. Mott.

Our mother did not come down to breakfast. She remained in bed-petrified.

Father came down alone. He was wearing his nightclothes. He had not shaved. Young as he was, he was palsied and drawn.

Eliza and I were puzzled that he did not look happier. We hailed him not only in English, but in several other languages we knew.

It was to one of these foreign salutations that he responded at last. "Bon jour," he said.

"Sit thee doon! Sit thee doon!" said Eliza merrily.

The poor man sat.

He was sick with guilt, of course, over having allowed intelligent human beings, his own flesh and blood, to be treated like idiots for so long.

Worse: His conscience and his advisors had told him before that it was all right if he could not love us, since we were incapable of deep feelings, and since there was nothing about us, objectively, that anyone in his right mind could could love. But now it was his love. But now it was his duty duty to love us, and he did not think he could do it. to love us, and he did not think he could do it.

He was horrified to discover what our mother knew she would discover, if she came downstairs: That intelligence and sensitivity in monstrous bodies like Eliza's and mine merely made us more repulsive.

This was not Father's fault or Mother's fault. It was not anybody's fault. It was as natural as breathing to all human beings, and to all warm-blooded creatures, for that matter, to wish quick deaths for monsters. This was an instinct.

And now Eliza and I had raised that instinct to intolerable tragedy.

Without knowing what we were doing, Eliza and I were putting the traditional curse of monsters on normal creatures. We were asking for respect.

12.

IN THE MIDST of all the excitement, Eliza and I allowed our heads to be separated by several feet-so we were not thinking brilliantly any more. of all the excitement, Eliza and I allowed our heads to be separated by several feet-so we were not thinking brilliantly any more.

We became dumb enough to think that Father was merely sleepy. So we made him drink coffee, and we tried to wake him up with some songs and riddles we knew.

I remember I asked him if he knew why cream was so much more expensive than milk.

He mumbled that he didn't know the answer.

So Eliza told him, "It's because the cows hate to squat on the little bottles."

We laughed about that. We rolled on the floor. And then Eliza got up and stood over him, with her hands on her hips, and scolded him affectionately, as though he were a little boy. "Oh, what a sleepy-head!" she said. "Oh, what a sleepy-head!"

At that moment, Dr. Stewart Rawlings Mott arrived.

Although Dr. Mott had been told on the telephone about Eliza's and my sudden metamorphosis, the day was like any other day to him, seemingly. He said what he always said when he arrived at the mansion: "And how is everybody today?"

I now spoke the first intelligent sentence Dr. Mott had ever heard from me. "Father won't wake up," I said.

"Won't he, now?" he replied. He rewarded the completeness of my sentence with the faintest of smiles.

Dr. Mott was so unbelievably bland, in fact, that he turned away from us to chat with Oveta Cooper, the practical nurse. Her mother had apparently been sick down in the hamlet. "Oveta-" he said, "you'll be pleased to know that your mother's temperature is almost normal."

Father was angered by this casualness, and no doubt glad to find someone with whom he could be openly angry.

"How long has this been going on, Doctor?" he wanted to know. "How long have you known about their intelligence?"

Dr. Mott looked at his watch. "Since about forty-two minutes ago," he said.

"You don't seem in the least surprised," said Father.

Dr. Mott appeared to think this over, then he shrugged. "I'm certainly very happy happy for everybody," he said. for everybody," he said.

I think it was the fact that Dr. Mott himself did not look at all happy when he said that which caused Eliza and me to put our heads together again. Something very queer was going on that we badly needed to understand.

Our genius did not fail us. It allowed us to understand the truth of the situation-that we were somehow more tragic than ever.

But our genius, like all geniuses, suffered periodic fits of monumental naivete. It did so now. It told us that all we had to do to make everything all right again was to return to idiocy.

"Buh," said Eliza.

"Duh," I said.

I farted.