Tender Heir

Other people, too, Ellen’s contemporaries, had not responded as she had expected, though what that was exactly, she probably could not have said. She knew only that when Lotty’s first child was born the following September, she felt hurt and disappointed not to have been permitted to share her experience. Ellen even felt that her friend’s complete reticence about any but the most impersonal facts (date, weight, sex, name) was to be construed as a reproach. It seemed to Ellen that Lotty was saying, ‘Well-bred people, don’t, you know, say these things, no matter how intimate they may be with each other.’

Chastened, Ellen at first regretted having so generously tried to share her experience, but then, her better self rising to the fore reminded her that generosity is never misplaced, really. It might even be (her worse self elbowing forward) a case of "pearls before swine". The next moment again, she felt ashamed--of her ungenerous thoughts (Lotty was not "swine") as well as of her generous first impulse to share.

But still another blow awaited her. One of the people she had written in the first weeks after the Event had been the aging missionary doctor for whom she had worked the summer of her engagement to Andy. His answer, slow in coming, was penned by his wife. Could it be, Ellen wondered, that Doc, her hero, a man old enough to be her grandfather, had been shocked by her letter? "Ed has asked me to answer your letter," his wife wrote; and, "I’m sure you were a very good patient." These were some of the phrases she had chosen. But Ellen expected little more of her. The most one could say of Mrs. Larrabee was that she frankly recognized that everyone loved her husband more than herself-- which, after all, was admitting a lot. Still, admit that her admission enlarged, and there was then little more to be said in her favor. "I’m sure you were a very good patient." Ellen cringed when she read it. Was that all they had gathered from her letter? Worse--could it be that she, Ellen, had written with an unconscious desire to be praised for her "heroism"? Oh, there was no end to the thoughts that swarmed around that sentence! The longer she contemplated it, the more it plagued her.

During those first years of marriage, it was true, her sense of humor had got misplaced, though not completely lost and not all at once. The incident of the blue ribbon took place in August (their wedding, in July). By early October, when the incident of the broken glass occurred, these once-characteristic flashes of humor were rare enough for Ellen to feel she ought to be congratulated for turning a minor mishap which might have led to anger and hurt feelings into cause for half-hearted laughter--a tiny triumph which, before her marriage, would have seemed too trivial and commonplace for applause. By October, the playfulness which had made the August incident seem so natural had vanished and she would no more have thought of tying a blue ribbon on Andy while he was asleep than he would have thought of lying completely and vulnerably naked on their bed. Alfreda would not have been brought into the joke if Ellen had been able to control her laughter or if Andy’s delighted snort of discovery when he awoke from his siesta had not been clearly audible. But the giggling did require an explanation and there was nothing for it but to tell her mother while Andy was dressing in the bedroom. (This incident, along with Alfreda’s shocked glimpse of Ellen planting a loud kiss on Andy’s bare bottom as he was getting--or trying to get--dressed, would give rise to her hints to Louise more than a year later of "goings-on" and "orgies".)

If Alfreda had been present in October the incident of the broken glass would not have occurred at all. For one reason, Andy would not then have been helping Ellen with the supper dishes and, for another, she would not have risked humiliating him in her mother’s hearing. He had already broken two of the fragile glasses--wedding gifts from one of his cousins--when Ellen said, "Well, but you’re not doing it right! Here! Let me show you how." Then she took the towel from him impatiently and wiped the third glass slowly, gently. When it, too, broke, she stood with the pieces in her hands, her mouth agape. Already Andy’s triumphant, derisive laughter was bubbling in his throat. What could she say? The once-familiar stance came to her now only slowly and with difficulty. She almost failed to get it right; but, just in time, she said, "There! That’s how you should do it! From now on, be more careful!"

Yes, humor--good humor, a sense of humor--was in short supply that year. Otherwise, she surely would have seen the humor implicit in those typewritten poems tacked up next to the bathroom mirror. She and Andy were to have competed in memorizing them, according to a plan Ellen had formed early in life. Her grandmother (Aunt Ethel’s and her father’s mother) went blind at the age of 65 but had had sufficient warning beforehand to be able to prepare herself in some small measure for the ordeal to come. Accordingly, she had gone about memorizing a great deal of poetry, "laying up riches for the mind to feed on". Ellen did not expect to go blind at the age of 65--or ever--but she did like the idea of being able at odd moments--while doing the housework, perhaps, or walking to market--to dredge up treasures with which to brighten her daily chores.

The first sonnet started:

"From fairest creatures we desire increase,

"That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

"But as the riper should by time decrease,

"His tender heir might bear his memory..:"

This one both had memorized and the second one as well. The third ("Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest,/ Now is the time that face should form another...") only Ellen managed to learn. The fourth remained on the wall until, yellowed by steam and splashes of toothpaste and shaving soap, it had fallen unnoticed behind the wood-box. During the weekly cleaning Ellen, sighing, swept it up and put it in the geyser stove and that had been the end of that.