Radio mirror (July-Dec 1943)

to be a success, and when they both were planning on having a big family. Papa was a watchmaker and jeweler, and in those days, early in the century, he took it as a matter of course that eventually he'd have his own store on Main Street. He never did. On the day he died, suddenly, at his workbench, he was still working for Marbery and Son. Their dreams of having a big family, too — they were just dreams. There were two boys born before me, but they died when they were babies, and after me Mama didn't have any more. We lived together in the big house, Papa, Mama, and me. And The Mortgage. WHEN I was a little girl, I used to think that The Mortgage was a man with fierce black whiskers who might come any day and take the house away from us. Later, of course, I learned what it really was, but I'm not so sure my childhood impression wasn't the right one. What made them go on, those two people, struggling to pay for a house that was too big, too hard to heat, too top-heavy with taxes, too expensive in every way? I think I know. It was a symbol to them. It was their place in the world. Papa might come home at night with his eyes red-rimmed and streaming from peering all day at his delicate work, and Mama might get a job clerking in Rosson's department store at Christmas time, to get money for a few presents — but as long as they had the house, they could hold their heads up among their neighbors. We were the Clays, who lived in that lovely big house on Whittier Street. We were all fiercely proud of the house. It was a burden, but Mama and Papa loved it. Even I loved it, for I realized only dimly that it and its demands were the reasons I couldn't have ice-skates when all the other children did, couldn't jingle a few coins in my purse to spend on Saturday afternoons, couldn't have a dress that was bought in a store instead of painfully fitted and sewed by Mama at home. I loved it, I guess, because Papa and Mama did, and they loved it, next to me, because it was their one possession. ' Well, I grew up there, in that atmosphere of never enough money to go around. I graduated from high school — a slight, slender girl with wide, inquiring brown eyes and hair that I could wear in a long bob because it was softly heavy and a little waved — and went to work as an office nurse for Dr. Ray Adamson. I was eighteen, and I knew Dr. Adamson had hired me simply because I was the prettiest thing he'd ever seen. I knew it because one afternoon he told me so. Fictionized from a true problem, presented on John J. Anthony's Good Will Hour, heard Sundays at 10:00 P.M., over the Blue Network. He was like that-impulsive, frank gay. I'd never known anyone like him, and he puzzled and fascinated me. He was young, only a year out of medical school, and as handsome as any girl's secret dreams, with dark hair and skin and a wide, delighted smile that seemed to invite you to share with him the vast joke which was the world. He worked like a fiend, and loved it— but, on the other hand, when there were no patients in the waiting room he'd come into it, throw himself down into a chair and cock his long legs up on another one, and talk nonsense until someone came in or I made him go out on a call. In less than a year he'd built un very good practice in Malverne and a was still growing, but he didn't se " to care at all how much money t"1 made. ne "I'll cure 'em— if I can," he "And you collect from 'em, Penny ■« you can." I usually did, and the rnon went into the bank. I'm sure he nev V knew how much he had there. Eve" now and then he'd remark serious^ "I really ought to save. Someday \ want to give up general practice aJ specialize." Then, the next day, he'd go out and buy an expensive new'pje of surgical equipment and be T thrilled with it as a little boy with "e«I scolded him, he'd grin and throw arm around my shoulders. "You're ■M" he'd say "Tel1 me' how can ^fyone as beautiful as you be so nractical?" 9 1 couldn't take him seriously, not even when he began asking me to go Lt with him at night. I never knew whether he was playing or not— never until a night when the moon hung like ripe pumpkin in the sky, and he narked the car on a little bluff a few miles from town and turned to me, his black eyes sparkling. "Let's get married, Penny," he said. "Let's get married so we can always be together and 1 can think about something else besides you, for a change " "Married!" I gasped. "You mean you really— Don't joke, Ray. Please." "I'm not joking," he told me. "Oh I know I kid around a lot, but that's because I'd rather laugh than pull a long face. And I can't see why marriage shouldn't be fun. Do you?" | "No, but — Do you love me, Ray?" I'd been so careful to keep reminding myself that he didn't, I still couldn't quite believe he did. This time there wasn't even a trace of laughter in his voice. "I love you so much I want to touch you every minute. So much that I can't imagine anything in the world better than hearing you say you love me, too." Wonderingly, I listened, feeling a strange mixture of tenderness and joy. He was so big and strong and brilliant — a"nd he loved me! It was beautiful, being loved. It was like perfume, like wine, like sun on your skin. It was like being given the world for a present. So — "I love you too, Ray," I said. But we weren't married as soon as we planned, because only two weeks later they brought Papa home from the store, dead. Just that summer he'd He got down beside her, and I think he said something to her, but I don't remember. I was too busy trying to silence the roaring in my ears. made the last payment on the house. It was as if buying it had been his lifework and, once it was accomplished his heart had stopped beating. Mama didn't cry, after the funeral, but she changed. Nothing seemed to matter a great deal to her— nothing but the house. I think, in some strange way, that being in the house made her feel Papa was still with her. She used to sit in the living room, not reading or sewing, just looking about her with a kind of quiet pride. And she insisted on keeping it as spotlessly clean as ever, doing most of the work during the day, when I was working at the office and couldn't help her. I kept my job, of course, because my salary was about all we had to live on. Ray was sweet and considerate all through that difficult time. I knew he was anxious to talk about our own future, but he didn't press me. Finally, about a month after Papa's death, I knew what I wanted to do. I told him, late one afternoon in the office, after the last patient had gone. "I can't leave my mother, Ray," I said. "She's so alone now — I just can't. Would you mind very much if we all three lived together in the big house, after we're married?" He considered it, an unaccustomed little frown creasing his forehead. "Wouldn't she be more comfortable if we fixed up an apartment for her — someplace all her own?" he asked. "Oh, no!" I said. "I couldn't ask her to leave the house. It means so much to her, more than we can imagine. And it's plenty big enough for all three of us. If we wanted to, we could fix it up so it was more modern, and it would still be cheaper than buying and furnishing a place of our own." "Yes, that's true," he admitted. "Except that I wouldn't buy a house— we'll probably want to leave Malverne in a few years," he added carelessly. He looked into my serious face, and suddenly his own lightened. "Heck, darling, we'll live anywhere you want to. On a bench in the park, if you say so. Just as long as you think you and your mother can hit it off together, with you being Mrs. Adamson— that's all I care about." I was in his arms, held close to his big, muscular body, feeling its assurance, its protectiveness. I loved him. But a part of my love was the knowledge that he would always give me what I wanted. A part of my love was a sense of power. We were married, quietly, in January 1936, and we spent our honeymoon in Chicago and returned to live in the big house on Whittier Street. At first, it was the same house I'd always known, but that spring it underwent a transformation. We started out modestly, planning on new wallpaper throughout and a different, more graceful front ddor. But while we were at it it seemed foolish not to modernize the kitchen and bathroom, and then we decided to have another bathroom downstairs, and the new front door Wd have looked too dreadfully new Twe hadn't gone ahead and remodeled the whole side (Continued cm pagebD*