left town, but Mary Jo rents two rooms above the Rites of Passage travel agency and collects antiques and reads books of history, mostly medieval. My daughter invited her over for Christmas dinner but she said no, she’d rather just sit cozy by her own fire, surrounded by her things. “Her nice old things,” was how it was reported.
Evelyn Addison liked nice things, too, but in her case they had to be modern—D.R. sofas covered in Haitian cotton, Danish end tables with rounded edges, butterfly chairs. Where are they, I wonder, all those heavy iron frames for the worn-out canvas slings of those butterfly chairs we used to sit on? A man could straddle one of the corners, but a womanjust had to dump herself in, backside first, and hope that when the time came to go her husband would be around to pull her out. They had an authentic 1690 house, the Addisons, on Salem Street, and curiously enough their modern furniture fit right into those plain old rooms with the exposed beams and the walk-in fireplaces with the big wrought-iron spits and dark brick nooks the Puritans used to bake bread in. It may be that’s what Mary Jo is trying to get back to with her antiques. She dresses that way, too: dusty-looking and prim, her hair pulled into a tight roll held by a tortoiseshell pin. Her mother’s auburn hair, but without the spark rinsed into it. None of these girls, the daughters of our old crowd, seem to wear makeup.
The New Year’s right after Fred had moved out, I remember walking Evelyn home from the Langhornes’ up Salem Street just before morning, an inch of new snow on the sidewalk and everything silent except for her voice, going on and on about Fred. There had been Stingers, and she could hardly walk, and I wasn’t much better. The housefronts along Salem calm as ghosts, and the new snow like mica reflecting the streetlights. We climbed her porch steps, and that living room, with its wide floorboards, her tree still up, and a pine wreath hung on an oak peg in the fireplace lintel, hit me as if we had walked smack into an old-fashioned children’s book. The smell of a pine indoors or a certain glaze on wrapping paper will do that to me, or frost in the corner of a window-pane: spell Christmas. We sat together on the scratchy D.R. sofa so she could finish her tale about Fred and I could warm up for the long walk back. Day was breaking and suddenly Evelyn looked haggard; I was led to try to comfort her and right then, with Evelyn’s long hair all over our faces, and her strong eyebrows right under my eyes, we heard from on highMary Jo beginning to cough. We froze, the big old fireplace full of cold ashes sending out a little draft on our ankles and, from above, this coughing and coughing, scoopy and dry. Mary Jo, about fifteen she must have been then, and weakened by the anorexia, had caught a cold that had turned into walking pneumonia. Evelyn blamed Fred’s leaving her for that, too—the pneumonia. Coughing and coughing, the child, and her mother in my arms smelling of brandy and tears and Christmas. She blamed Fred but I would have blamed him less than the environment; those old wooden houses are drafty.
Thinking of upstairs and downstairs, I think of Betsey Clay at the head of her stairs, no longer in a white nightie seeing the moon but in frilly lemon-colored pajamas, looking down at some party too loud for her to sleep through. We had come in from the patio and put on some old Twist records and there was no quiet way to play them. I was sitting on the floor somehow, with somebody, so the angle of my vision was low, and like a lesson in perspective the steps diminished up to her naked feet, too big to leave rabbit tracks now. For what seemed the longest time we looked at each other—she had her mother’s hollow-eyed fragile look—until the woman I was with, and I don’t think it was Maureen, felt my distraction and herself turned to look up the stairs, and Betsey scampered back toward her room.
Her room
Evelyn Addison liked nice things, too, but in her case they had to be modern—D.R. sofas covered in Haitian cotton, Danish end tables with rounded edges, butterfly chairs. Where are they, I wonder, all those heavy iron frames for the worn-out canvas slings of those butterfly chairs we used to sit on? A man could straddle one of the corners, but a womanjust had to dump herself in, backside first, and hope that when the time came to go her husband would be around to pull her out. They had an authentic 1690 house, the Addisons, on Salem Street, and curiously enough their modern furniture fit right into those plain old rooms with the exposed beams and the walk-in fireplaces with the big wrought-iron spits and dark brick nooks the Puritans used to bake bread in. It may be that’s what Mary Jo is trying to get back to with her antiques. She dresses that way, too: dusty-looking and prim, her hair pulled into a tight roll held by a tortoiseshell pin. Her mother’s auburn hair, but without the spark rinsed into it. None of these girls, the daughters of our old crowd, seem to wear makeup.
The New Year’s right after Fred had moved out, I remember walking Evelyn home from the Langhornes’ up Salem Street just before morning, an inch of new snow on the sidewalk and everything silent except for her voice, going on and on about Fred. There had been Stingers, and she could hardly walk, and I wasn’t much better. The housefronts along Salem calm as ghosts, and the new snow like mica reflecting the streetlights. We climbed her porch steps, and that living room, with its wide floorboards, her tree still up, and a pine wreath hung on an oak peg in the fireplace lintel, hit me as if we had walked smack into an old-fashioned children’s book. The smell of a pine indoors or a certain glaze on wrapping paper will do that to me, or frost in the corner of a window-pane: spell Christmas. We sat together on the scratchy D.R. sofa so she could finish her tale about Fred and I could warm up for the long walk back. Day was breaking and suddenly Evelyn looked haggard; I was led to try to comfort her and right then, with Evelyn’s long hair all over our faces, and her strong eyebrows right under my eyes, we heard from on highMary Jo beginning to cough. We froze, the big old fireplace full of cold ashes sending out a little draft on our ankles and, from above, this coughing and coughing, scoopy and dry. Mary Jo, about fifteen she must have been then, and weakened by the anorexia, had caught a cold that had turned into walking pneumonia. Evelyn blamed Fred’s leaving her for that, too—the pneumonia. Coughing and coughing, the child, and her mother in my arms smelling of brandy and tears and Christmas. She blamed Fred but I would have blamed him less than the environment; those old wooden houses are drafty.
Thinking of upstairs and downstairs, I think of Betsey Clay at the head of her stairs, no longer in a white nightie seeing the moon but in frilly lemon-colored pajamas, looking down at some party too loud for her to sleep through. We had come in from the patio and put on some old Twist records and there was no quiet way to play them. I was sitting on the floor somehow, with somebody, so the angle of my vision was low, and like a lesson in perspective the steps diminished up to her naked feet, too big to leave rabbit tracks now. For what seemed the longest time we looked at each other—she had her mother’s hollow-eyed fragile look—until the woman I was with, and I don’t think it was Maureen, felt my distraction and herself turned to look up the stairs, and Betsey scampered back toward her room.
Her room
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