Marilyn’s mother was one of those naturally powerful women whose strength drains off in middle age, leaving raw debility behind. She had led a back-breaking, penny-balancing life and she had not had time to spare herself; besides, she was going through a trying menopause. “I’ve got change of life, falling of the room rent, varicose veins, and bad feet,” Mrs. Soames said to Celeste with grim humor, “but I’d like to see the Sutton Place lady who can bake a better berry pie,” adding, “when there’s money for berries.” Often she had to lie down from weakness, but it was impossible to keep her in bed during the day for longer than a few minutes. “You know what Dr. Ulberson said, Edna,” her husband would say anxiously. “Oh, you and your Dr. Ulberson,” she would snort. “I’ve got the week’s wash to do.” Mrs. Soames was obsessive on the subject of her laundry. She would never let Marilyn touch it. “You girls these days expect soap to do your scrubbing for you,” she would say scornfully. But to Celeste Mrs. Soames once said, “She’ll have wash enough to do in her life.” Mrs. Soames’s single self-indulgence was the radio. There was only one machine in the house, a small table model which usually occupied the center of the catchall shelf above the kitchen range; this Mrs. Soames had placed with a sigh at little Stanley’s bedside. When Celeste ruled that Stanley might listen to the radio for no more than two hours a day, at selected times — and selected those times which did not conflict with his mother’s favorite programs — Mrs. Soames looked guiltily grateful. She never missed Arthur Godfrey, she told Celeste, or Stella Dallas, Big Sister, and Double or Nothing. And she confided that “when our ship comes in, Frank’s going to get me a television set,” adding dryly, “At least, that’s what Frank says. He’s that sure one of those Irish Sweepstakes tickets he’s always buying will come through.”
Stanley was the youngest child, a thin little boy with blazing eyes and an imagination which ran to mayhem and gore. In the very beginning he was suspicious of Celeste and she could get hardly a word out of him. But late that first day, when she was giving his bony body a massage, he suddenly said: “You a real nurse?” “Well, sort of,” smiled Celeste, although her heart skipped a beat. “Nurses stick knives into you,” Stanley said glumly. “Whoever told you a story like that?” “Yitzie Frances Ellis, that’s my teacher.” “Stanley, she didn’t. And where did you get that awful nickname of ‘Yitzie’ for a perfectly nice lady teacher?” “The principal calls her that,” said Stanley indignantly. “Yitzie?” “The principal calls Miss Ellis Yitzie-Bitzie when nobody’s around.” “Stanley Soames, I don’t believe a single—” But Stanley had screwed his little head about, his eyes bugging with horror. “Lie still! What’s the matter?” “You know something, Miss Martin?” whispered Stanley. Celeste heard herself whispering back, “What, Stanley, what?” “I got green blood.” After that, Celeste digested Master Stanley’s remarks, revelations, and confidences with great quantities of salt. She often had to exercise judgment to distinguish fact from fancy.
Stanley was thoroughly familiar with the Cat. He told Celeste solemnly that he was the Cat.
Between her patient and Marilyn there were two other children: Eleanor, 9, and Billie, 13. Eleanor was a large calm child with an unhurried attitude toward life; her rather plain features were illuminated by a pair of remarkably direct eyes, and Celeste hastened to make friends with her. Billie was in junior high, a fact which he accepted philosophically. He was clever with his hands and the apartment was always turning up things he had built for his mother out of “nothing,” as Mrs. Soames said. But his father seemed disappointed. “We’ll never make a student out of Billie. His heart isn’t in it. All he does is hang around garages after school learning about motors. He can’t wait till he’s old enough to get his working papers and learn some mechanical trade. The scholars in my family are the girls.” Billie was in the weedy age, “a regular Ichabod Crane,” as Mr. Soames put it. Frank Soames was something of a reader; he generally had his nose buried in some library book and he owned a prize shelf of decrepit volumes which he hoarded from young manhood — Scott, Irving, Cooper, Eliot, Thackeray — authors whom Billie characterized as “squares”; Billie’s reading was restricted almost entirely to comic books, which he acquired in wholesale quantities by some complex barter-system incomprehensible to his father. Celeste liked Billie — his overgrown hands, his rather furtive voice.
And Marilyn was a darling; Celeste fell in love with her immediately. She was a tall girl, not pretty: her nose was a little broad and her cheekbones were pitched too steep; but her dark eyes and hair were lovely and she carried herself with a defiant swing. Celeste understood her secret sorrow: the necessity of earning a living to help her father carry the weight of the family’s needs had kept her from going on from high school to the higher education she craved. But Marilyn was no complainer; outwardly she was even serene. Celeste gathered that she had another, independent life, a vicarious one: through her work she kept in touch with a sort of malformed, teasing shadow of the creative and intellectual world. “I’m not the best manuscript typist in the business,” she told Celeste. “I get too blamed interested in what I’m typing.” Nevertheless, she had built up a good clientele. Through a former high school teacher she had got in with a young playwrights’ group whose art was, if nothing else, prolific; one of her accounts was a Columbia full professor who was engaged with writing a monumental work of scholarship, “a psychological outline of world history”; and her best client was a famous journalist author who, Mr. Soames said proudly, swore by her — “and sometimes at me,” added Marilyn. Her earnings were capricious and the importance of maintaining them kept Marilyn a little on the grim side. For the sake of her father’s self-esteem she preserved the fiction that her co-producing role in the family was a temporary one, “to tide us over the high prices.” But Celeste knew that Marilyn knew there would be no escape for many years, if ever. The boys would grow up, marry, and move off; there was Eleanor’s education to provide for — Marilyn was firm that Eleanor should go to college, “she’s really a genius. You ought to read the poetry she writes right now, at 9”; Mrs. Soames was headed for invalidism; Frank Soames was not a well man. Marilyn knew her fate and was prepared for it. Because of this she discouraged the romantic advances of several men who were pursuing her, “at least one of them,” Marilyn said with a laugh, “with honorable intentions.” Her most persistent pursuer was the journalist author — “he’s not the one. Every time I have to call for a new chapter — he writes in longhand — or deliver one I’ve typed, he chases me around his apartment with an African war club he picked up in his travels. It’s supposed to be a gag, but it’s gagging on the level. One of these days I’m going to stop running and poke him one. I’d have done it long ago if I hadn’t needed his work.” But Celeste suspected that one of these days Marilyn would stop running and not poke him one. She persuaded herself that the experience would do Marilyn good; Marilyn was a passionate girl who had kept herself, Celeste was sure of it, rigidly chaste. (It also occurred to the sophisticate that this was true of a certain Celeste Phillips as well; but at this point Miss Phillips dropped the whole subject out of her thoughts.)