Gaslight Sonatas Part 51

"Selene!"

"Well, they do. You--you're all right, mama, as up to date as any of them, but how do you think a girl feels, with gramaw always harping right in front of everybody the way granpa was a revolutionist and was hustled off barefooted to Siberia like a tramp? And the way she was cooking black beans when my uncle died. Other girls' grandmothers don't tell everything they know. Alma Yawitz's grandmother wears lorgnettes, and you told me yourself they came from nearly the same part of the Pale as gramaw. But you don't hear them remembering it. Alma Yawitz says she's Alsace-Lorraine on both sides. People don't tell everything they know. Anyway where a girl's got herself as far as I have!"

Through sobs that rocked her, Mrs. Coblenz looked down upon her daughter.

"Your poor old grandmother don't deserve that from you! In her day she worked her hands to the bone for you. With the kind of father you had we might have died in the gutter but for how she helped to keep us out, you ungrateful girl--your poor old grandmother, that's suffered so terrible!"

"I know it, mama, but so have other people suffered."

"She's old, Selene--old."

"I tell you it's the way you indulge her, mama. I've seen her sitting here as perk as you please, and the minute you come in the room down goes her head like--like she was dying."

"It's her mind, Selene--that's going. That's why I feel if I could only get her back. She ain't old, gramaw ain't. If I could only get her back where she--could see for herself--the graves--is all she needs. All old people think of--the grave. It's eating her--eating her mind. Mark Haas is going to fix it for me after the war--maybe before--if he can. That's the only way poor gramaw can live--or die--happy, Selene. Now--now that my--my little girl ain't any longer my responsibility, I--I'm going to take her back--my little--girl"--her hand reached out, caressing the smooth head, her face projected forward and the eyes yearning down--"my all."

"It's you will be my responsibility now, ma."

"No! No!"

"The first thing Lester says was a flat on Wa.s.serman and a spare room for Mother Coblenz when she wants to come down. Wasn't it sweet for him to put it that way right off, ma? 'Mother Coblenz,' he says."

"He's a good boy, Selene. It'll be a proud day for me and gramaw. Gramaw mustn't miss none of it. He's a good boy and a fine family."

"That's why, mama, we--got to--to do it up right."

"Lester knows, child, he's not marrying a rich girl."

"A girl don't have to--be rich to get married right."

"You'll have as good as mama can afford to give it to her girl."

"It--it would be different if Lester's uncle and all wasn't in the Acme Club crowd, and if I hadn't got in with all that bunch. It's the last expense I'll ever be to you, mama."

"Oh, baby, don't say that!"

"I--me and Lester--Lester and me were talking, mama--when the engagement's announced next week--a reception--"

"We can clear out this room, move the bed out of gramaw's room into ours, and serve the ice-cream and cake in--"

"Oh, mama, I don't mean--that!"

"What?"

"Who ever heard of having a reception _here_! People won't come from town 'way out to this old--cabbage-patch. Even Gertie Wolf, with their big house on West Pine Boulevard, had her reception at the Walsingham Hotel.

You--We--can't expect Mark Haas and all the relations--the Sinsheimers-- and--all to come out here. I'd rather not have any."

"But, Selene, everybody knows we ain't millionaires, and that you got in with that crowd through being friends at school with Amy Rosen. All the city salesmen and the boys on Washington Avenue, even Mark Haas himself, that time he was in the store with Lester, knows the way we live. You don't need to be ashamed of your little home, Selene, even if it ain't on West Pine Boulevard."

"It'll be--your last expense, mama. The Walsingham, that's where the girl that Lester Goldmark marries is expected to have her reception."

"But, Selene, mama can't afford nothing like that."

Pink swam up into Miss Coblenz's face, and above the sheer-white collar there was a little beating movement at the throat, as if something were fluttering within.

"I--I'd just as soon not get married as--as not to have it like other girls."

"But, Selene--"

"If I--can't have a trousseau like other girls and the things that go with marrying into a--a family like Lester's--I--then--there's no use. I--I can't! I--wouldn't!"

She was fumbling, now, for a handkerchief, against tears that were imminent.

"Why, baby, a girl couldn't have a finer trousseau than the old linens back yet from Russia that me and gramaw got saved up for our girl--linen that can't be bought these days. Bed-sheets that gramaw herself carried to the border, and--"

"Oh, I know! I knew you'd try to dump that stuff on me. That old, worm-eaten stuff in gramaw's chest."

"It's hand-woven, Selene, with--"

"I wouldn't have that yellow old stuff--that old-fashioned junk--if I didn't have any trousseau. If I can't afford monogrammed up-to-date linens, like even Alma Yawitz, and a--a p.u.s.s.y-willow-taffeta reception dress, I wouldn't have any. I wouldn't." Her voice, crowded with pa.s.sion and tears, rose to the crest of a sob. "I--I'd die first!"

"Selene, Selene, mama 'ain't got the money. If she had it, wouldn't she be willing to take the very last penny to give her girl the kind of a wedding she wants? A trousseau like Alma's cost a thousand dollars, if it cost a cent. Her table-napkins alone, they say, cost thirty-six dollars a dozen, un-monogrammed. A reception at the Walsingham costs two hundred dollars, if it costs a cent. Selene, mama will make for you every sacrifice she can afford, but she 'ain't got the money!"

"You--have got the money!"

"So help me G.o.d, Selene! You know, with the quarries shut down, what business has been. You know how--sometimes even to make ends meet it is a pinch. You're an ungrateful girl, Selene, to ask what I ain't able to do for you. A child like you, that's been indulged, that I 'ain't even asked ever in her life to help a day down in the store. If I had the money, G.o.d knows you should be married in real lace, with the finest trousseau a girl ever had. But I 'ain't got the money--I 'ain't got the money."

"You have got the money! The book in gramaw's drawer is seven hundred and forty. I guess I ain't blind. I know a thing or two."

"Why, Selene! That's gramaw's--to go back--"

"You mean the bank-book's hers?"

"That's gramaw's, to go back--home on. That's the money for me to take gramaw and her wreaths back home on."

"There you go--talking luny."

"Selene!"

"Well, I'd like to know what else you'd call it, kidding yourself along like that."

"You--"

"All right. If you think gramaw, with her life all lived, comes first before me, with all my life to live--all right!"

"Your poor old--"

"It's always been gramaw first in this house, anyway. I couldn't even have company since I'm grown up because the way she's always allowed around.

n.o.body can say I ain't good to gramaw; Lester says it's beautiful the way I am with her, remembering always to bring the newspapers and all, but just the same, I know when right's right and wrong's wrong. If my life ain't more important than gramaw's, with hers all lived, all right. Go ahead!"