When a certain great man was dying, he said, “Dieu me pardonnera, c'est Son metier,” which Mama in her inexpensive French translated as, “Of course God will forgive me … that's His business.” And Mama always felt that way when she spoke of her age. People said at twenty she looked twenty-five, at thirty, twenty-two, and at forty, twenty.
I don't ever remember her as anything but young … even in the days when I towered two feet above her. To Papa she was always a brilliant child who couldn't understand double-entry bookkeeping and the proper way to make out a bank check. Yet, as time went on and the first war ended, and everyone went back to build up enough hate to start another, Mama slowed up. She did not stop, she did not go around carrying soup for old people, or take to Yogi or uncooked nuts or chin creams. She went right on being Mama, but just a little less so.
I think it was the Painter who really brought Mama safely to middle age … or maybe just a little beyond it. He was a tall man with a wild mat of red hair and a beard like the half-plucked bottom of a lean hen. He had big dark eyes and a habit of wiping his paint-soiled hands on his shirts. He painted huge paintings of unrelated, partly decayed objects, and sections of iron women cut into slices and carrying wilted roses in their black-covered arms. The Painter was a friend of Uncle Willie's, who often took him (twice a year) to a barber.
Mama found him by accident at a party we were giving. The Painter was inside the icebox (we had a huge one for country needs), and he was hunting a gray cheese that he could smell, but not see. Mama was impressed by his way of cutting rye bread and the breadth of his shoulders.
I remember, about a week later, Mama came to the table carrying one red-black rose from her best bush. She had washed her face very hard and knotted her hair behind her ears.
Papa said, “You have time to dress, Sara.”
“I am dressed,” said Mama. “Do you mind my bringing flowers to the table?”
“Now, Sara,” said Papa, “I hope you don't intend to try rose salad again.”
“Paul,” said Mama, “Paul is calling for me later. We are going to look at a Picasso together.” Paul was the Painter's name … well, almost Paul … after all, his dealer is still alive and supports a wife and two children on the sales of Paul's still-remaining pictures.
Papa said, “I've seen a Picasso. You, too, from the top of a Fifth Avenue bus … going uptown.”
“Paul says I've never really seen a Picasso.”
And so Papa went into the kitchen to see how dinner was coming along (it was one of those times when our hired help was gone, and Mama not in a cooking mood).
Picasso gave way to Aunt Weiner Longstrasser, a dish brought over from Hungary by a great-aunt of Gramp's. Papa made it by melting into a saucepan four ounces of butter, and browning in it two big red onions sliced thin. Then three pounds of veal cut into two-inch cubes were added, two cloves, a clove of garlic crushed smooth, salt to taste, an ounce of paprika, two chopped tomatoes, and half a dozen whole peppercorns.
Papa would cover all this with just enough water, and let it simmer; and when the veal was tender, he would add one cup of sour cream. After that, all that was to be done was to serve and eat. And we did. Aunt Weiner Longstrasser was a dish that everyone in the family liked.
Mama ate it … but we could see her mind was on Picasso.
Papa refilled her plate and patted her arm. “Now, Sara, you just do as you please … but eat.”
“I am eating,” said Mama. “You want me fat, so I can only lie on sofas and eat candy.”
“Could I, Mama?” I asked.
“No, Stevie. I don't like fat boys.”
“Now, Sara,” said Papa, “I wasn't talking about over- eating. But your causes do take your mind off food.”
“A good cause is worth hunger,” said Mama. “Still, I will have just a little more.”
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.”
Mrs. Shibley was the town gossip, and Mrs. Shibley was also a beef tongue dish that Joe made better than anyone else. I've often watched him prepare it.
In a deep pot put a clean six-pound ox tongue—a fresh one, not smoked. Also some beef bones, two sliced onions, two diced carrots, a leek, and a white turnip, and some bay leaf, parsley, a sprig of thyme (Joe cooked these in a small bag), a clove of garlic, and a whole package of the stuff sold as pickling spices. Boil and skim Mrs. Shibley, and add more water when needed. And when the skimming job is done, let it all simmer slowly for four hours. Cool and peel the tongue. Strain the liquid in which the tongue was cooked and add a pint of mixed chives, tarragon, chervil, and shallots, and season with salt, red pepper, and lemon salt. Dissolve some plain gelatin into this, using one package gelatin to a pint of liquid, and then pour over the tongue in a mold. Serve with hard-boiled eggs and lean ham. That is Mrs. Shibley!
But even big cuts of Mrs. Shibley didn't make Jed and Papa any happier.
The next week Mama was very busy. There was going to be a great art show of Paul's paintings, and Mama was arranging for space at the Quackenbush Undertaking Parlors. All shows were held in the Parlors. They were a large, waxed square of fumed oak, and the best people came there, dead or alive.
Papa said to Mama, “I hope Fran is not being foolish again.”
“Again?” said Mama, as if Papa had said Aunt Fran made moonshine whisky or traded in bad dollar bills.
“Well, you know she likes people … men … I mean, you know, she and Jed are being married soon.”
“You have a low mind,” said Mama. “Now get me sixteen old-fashioned picture frames and a gallon of white paint.”
“What for?”
“To paint the frames … for Paul's pictures. And Stevie and I want you to pass out posters in all the stores for the exhibit.”
“Can I see the show?” I asked.
“Well, I think so … don't you, Henry?”
Papa said, “Ye-es, Paul's NUDES aren't really very naked … just sort of sawed apart. …”
“Cubic,” said Mama. “What were you going to say about Fran?”
“Nothing,” said Papa. “I guess it's nothing important or you'd have seen about it.”
Mama went through her list of things needed, and recited to herself something that sounded like a poem …
“At six in the morning they swung him high
At seven the turf on his grave was dry
At eight she drank her wine
And sang with laughter. …”
“What's that?” asked Papa.
Mama said, “It's a poem Paul knows. … Oh, Henry, couldn't you speak to Mr. Quackenbush about not doing any embalming while the show is going on?”
Papa said to his vest very low, “I guess the painting don't want a contest with any other odors …” and he went out and I followed him to the railroad station.
We found Jed under a sixteen-coach special explaining something to two little Italians who knew no English, and who nodded they understood just what he wanted done to the connections.
Papa took Jed aside. “It's reached a stage where you must step in. Poetry.”
“I don't know any,” said Jed, “unless it's something like The Shooting of Dan McGrew. …”
Papa shook his head. “No, the girls are reciting it. That's bad.”
“It is?”
“Well, poetry acts on a woman. I don't mean anything foolish will happen.”
“Maybe we don't agree, what is and what ain't foolish,” said Jed.
“I think we ought to go to the private hanging tonight.”
Jed smiled. “Say, so the boys are taking care of things! I got a good length of rope I'm not in need of.”
“I mean of the paintings.”
“Oh … art, huh?”
“Art,” said Papa.
That night Aunt Fran was dressed early. She didn't look as if she forgot anything except the rose in her teeth. Mama was wearing her “Goya gown,” … something the local Singer sewing machine agent's wife had run up for Mama while looking at a bad reproduction of a painting.
“Be good,” said Mama, kissing me goodnight.
Aunt Fran wet her finger in her mouth, and spun a wet curl into place over her ear. “I hear the taxi, Sara.…”
“Have a good time,” said Papa.
“We will,” said Mama, and I went out to help them to the village taxi driven by Old Man Duffy, who had driven the village arc light wagon in his youth … and my very early childhood. His job in those days was to lower the great carbon are lights from the poles in the streets, and replace the burned up carbon stick. The discarded stick we kids would fight over. It made a swell crayon to mark up streets and fences. In time, the electric light re- placed the carbon arc, and Old Man Duffy went into the taxi business.
“Hello, Mr. Duffy,” I said.
“Hello, Small Fry … say, don't the ladies look fancy tonight!”
Mama got in the taxi and Fran followed her, and Mama said, “To the Quackenbushes, please, and don't drive fast.”
Old Man Duffy threw in his gears. “House or hearse?”
Mama said, “We want the business address.”
Twenty minutes later Jed was at our house. “Well?”
Papa put on his best gloves and took his second-best cane from the chipped china umbrella stand. “Stevie, go to bed.”
“Can't I go?” I asked. “For the fun?”
“No, Stevie … go to bed.”
So I went to bed. But the next day Old Man Duffy told me what had taken place at “the private hanging.”
The way I heard it, the hanging was going very well, but the drinks were going a little slower, since Mrs. Quackenbush had mixed them, and there were some who did not think an undertaker's wife (even if she was having an affair with the prose of Alexandre Dumas) who helped her husband should mix drinks.…
The paintings were glowing from the walls, and only about six people in the room really knew what Paul was trying to do … which Mama said was “to take the best part of Renoir's color and love of flesh, and cross it with the form and content of Cezanne's cubes and cones.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Quackenbush to Old Man Duffy, who had been hired to help serve the drinks, “and I just love the covers on The Saturday Evening Post, too.”
At that moment Jed and Papa came in, and Aunt Fran, who had been hanging on Paul's arm, said, “Dear me, how nice, Jed.”
And Jed went over to Paul and held him by the tie and swung at his shaggy chin, yelling, “This will take care of you, you paint-splashing bum.”
But it didn't, for Paul ducked and swung a haymaker of his own, and Jed flew back against the punch bowl, spilling it, and came up shedding sliced lemon, and then Paul gave him a fast one-two on the chin. (“Better than I ever seen ol' John L. do it himself,” said Old Man Duffy. “Fast, like a Buick taking Lieberman Hill!”)
Poor Jed just fell asleep on the floor, and Aunt Fran said Paul was a low brute, and she and Papa took Jed out to Mr. Quackenbush's best slab and fed him chipped ice … but his jaw was all on one side, and a wonderful black eye was appearing over his worried nose.
That ended the art show. Mama's heart was broken for two days, and then she had to take time out and get ready for Fran's wedding (they had decided, why wait?). Paul packed his pictures and went back to Paris, where he started a new school so long ago that today it's new again, and called sur- realism, and someone else has taken most of Paul's best ideas and sold them by cheap press-agent tricks to the public.
Anyway, after Paul went, and after Fran and Jed were married, Mama sort of settled down. She had fought for so many causes from the lost side, she had sent out her little crusades so often and so long, that now she rested.
The platform, the stage, the newspaper columns, the protest groups did without her. In the late fall she would walk with the village leaves, all gold and brown, through the streets; in the spring, after a winter of reading and just keeping her journal, she would drive out into the country and watch the great green fields creep in the rains of April toward the woods for shelter; and in the summer, in those great, red- gold Indian summers of cut hay and cottonwood trees dropping their grasshopper seeds along the walks, she was always transplanting into many pots the green, growing things she loved.
All time seemed to have passed, all history to have been written, all deeds done, and she was but part of the season's walking, a cycle that came around again and again, on time, like the clanging trolley that passed our door.
The world changed; its talk grew as bad as its manners, its heroes were fools and madmen, and again, soon, the sky was to burn and the corners of the world to smell; but she knew, somehow, that it didn't matter, that in her time the world would still hold together, that anything that was to happen, would happen after her. …
She had been a great walker, but now her walks grew shorter; she had been a reader of many things, now a few passages from her best-kept books were enough. Of all the graces, she had the best of all—dignity. The dignity of being human, of being a member of a race that, even though it still made footprints across its own many-colored faces, was very shortly to begin to learn that Mama was right, that without dignity one did not live, but merely existed.
One day there was a great art show of a dead man's paintings. And they wrote to Mama to borrow her painting, The Handsome Torso. It hung in our living room, very high up, and very few people noticed it. If they did, they only mocked and said it was nothing as good as the last out-house painter that America was trying to accept as a great artist. But Paul's painting outlived the rage over Benton, Wood, Marsh, Curry, and the other barn boys … and the great show in New York was a huge success.
I remember Papa crating The Handsome Torso, and looking at its sliding forms, its great lines, and the bold, flat colors.
“Now, Sara, don't worry. It will be packed right.”
Mama shook her head. “I hope so … I always had trouble with Fran in those days.”
Papa hit his thumb and dropped the nails. “Who?”
“I remember the day Fran posed for it.”
Papa picked up his hammer. “I'd better crate it fast … Jed and Fran are coming to dinner.”
Mama nodded, and Papa drove in the nail, and Mama stood there as tiny and straight as ever, and somehow Papa knew and I knew she was thinking how fast you could finish with your past; and the shortness of life was in every hammer blow Papa drove home.
And Mama smiled and pinched my ear, and I guess there isn't more to tell about Mama, except that I think she was one of the great men of our time. …