But Papa could see she was just pleasing him, and he was worried. Mama, big with cause, was like a queen with child, after sixteen daughters. Papa hoped for the best, but like the king, he wasn't expecting too much.
Now, Mama always took to a thing with energy. If she liked smoked salmon, we had it three times a day. If she enjoyed little dogs, the house was full of them. Gramp, Papa, and myself, we hated dogs in any form … we disliked small, damp, sniffy, domestic animals of any kind (although I will admire a pet frog); and when Mama was in her dog period, Gramp swore a great oath that only the people who loved dogs could stand to see Chinese and Hindus and other people enslaved and tortured.
But Mama got over her loves … until the Painter entered her life. I don't know when he painted; he may have hired an expert forger of Corots that Papa knew to do his painting, for Mama took up all his time. She washed his shirts (they had to be discarded, since she used no soap), she did over his house and designed a wonderful studio, except that the light came from the wrong direction, and she trimmed his beard and got the town banker and the biggest lawyer to buy Paul's paintings.
Papa was a little worried over this affair. I remember the day I was supposed to be busy in the garden, when he and Aunt Fran talked it over.
“You see, Fran … I'm worried.”
“After all these years,” said Aunt Fran.
“I admit it … I'm worried.”
“Sara is no child.”
“I'm not worried about her. I'm worried about Paul.”
“He can take care of himself.”
Papa shook his head. “He doesn't know Sara … her warm heart, her ideas … he may become so emotionally involved that it will ruin his life.”
Aunt Fran, who was going to marry the railroad stationmaster, and liked rum in her drinks, and who had been around to the better clam bakes and beer picnics, said, “You mean he may make a pass at Sara?”
Papa smiled. “I have a feeling he may be that foolish. Sara, for all her size, has the punch of a good heavyweight.”
Fran said that in that case she would save the Painter from a black eye. She would have a heart-to-heart talk with him.
Aunt Fran must have taken her job very seriously, for Jed, the stationmaster, was over after supper the next night (dinner at evening was on week ends), and he offered Papa a good cigar, and we all sat on the front steps watching the fireflies wink themselves tired until they ran down like cheap flashlights.
Jed said, “I hear Fran's seein' this painter a lot?”
Papa sniffed the cigar. “So is Sara. Culture takes time to soak up.”
“Well, don't you figure this mug isn't the kind of guy you'd like your wife to see?”
Papa shook his head. “Sara comes from a family that does things their own way. They can take a mere copyist of Renoir in their stride.”
Jed scowled. “I don't know any Renoir. I'm talking about the monkey in the muff who spoils good tent canvas.”
“They gather every night to talk about art.” Jed looked at the moonlight over our house. “I could think of better things to do with my free time. Fran ain't got no right to do this before we're married.”
Papa choked on his cigar and I slapped his back, and he kept coughing for a long time. Finally he said, “Let's go to Joe's Diner.”
Joe's Diner was not just a place of hamburger smells and cola bottles stacked in cases. It was the political, social, and literary club of our town (the newest Racing Forms were always on file, and the direct wire to the track always open).
Jed and Papa and I used to go to Joe's Diner when we wanted to get away, or to talk about Mama and Fran. Ladies didn't go to Joe's Diner—only the cigar factory girls, nurses off duty at the hospital, and some of the night crew at the telephone building. Since they were all wonderful people, I often wondered why the town ladies didn't come in to say, “Hi, Joe … I'll take some Mrs. Shibley.”
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