Toll and Ames are hard to catch. They keep an eye out. If Mrs. Mean leans on her rake and yells pleasantries at Mrs. Cramm — unfortunate Mrs. Cramm — Toll and Ames push each other from their wagons; but they keep an eye out. The sudden leap of Mrs. Mean across the tulip bed deceives only tiny Tim, his finger in his nose. Mrs. Cramm pales and shrinks and endures it like a slave.
Once I went to a lavish dinner party given by a most particular and most obstinate lady. The maid forgot to serve the beans and my most particular dear friend, rapt in a recollection of her youth that lasted seven courses, overlooked them. I did not nor did the other guests. We were furtive, catching eyes, but we were careful. Was it asparagus or broccoli or brussels sprouts or beans? Was she covering up the maid’s mistake like the coolest actress, as if to make the tipped table and the broken vase a part of every evening’s business? She enjoyed the glory of the long hours of her beauty. The final fork of cake was in her mouth when her jaws snapped. I would have given any sum, then, performed any knavery, to know what it was that led her from gay love and light youth to French-cut green beans and the irrevocable breach of order. She had just said: “We were dancing. I was wearing my most daring gown and I was cold.” She went on a word or two before turning grim and silent. By what Proustian process was the thing accomplished? I suppose it was something matter-of-fact. She shivered — and there in her mind were the missing beans. She rose at once and served them herself, cold, in silver, before the coffee. The hollandaise had doubtless separated so we were spared that. But only that. We ate those beans without a word, though some of us were, on most occasions, loquacious, outspoken, ragging types. Our hostess neglected her own portion and rushed sternly back to glory. Of her sins that evening I never forgave the last.
Mrs. Mean bounds over the tulip bed, her rake falling from her, her great breasts swinging like bells, her string hair rising and whirling, while Mrs. Cramm pretends that Mrs. Mean is calm against the end of her implement and finishes her quiet sentence in her quiet voice and looks straight ahead where her neighbor was as if she were, as good manners demanded, still respectably there. Mrs. Mean roars oaths and passes the time of day. She fails even a gesture of interruption. So Toll and Ames, the older and the wiser ones, keep a good lookout and keep in motion. Mrs. Cramm, however, remains as if staked while Mrs. Mean genially hammers her deeper with rough platitudes and smooth obscenity.
Mrs. Cramm is a frail widow whose shoes are laced. Her misfortune is to live by Mrs. Mean and to be kind. She bestows upon the children, as they flee, the gentlest, tenderest glances. Compassion clothes her, and docility. She flinches for boxed ears. She grimaces at the sight of Mrs. Mean’s stick, but unobtrusively, so much against her will to show the slightest sign that Mrs. Mean, who reads in the world only small words written high, misses it all — the tight hands and nervous mouth and melting eyes. Too stupid to understand, too stupid, therefore, to hate, Mrs. Mean nevertheless plays the tyrant so naturally that her ill will could hardly prove more disagreeable to Mrs. Cramm than her good.
It would almost seem that Mrs. Mean is worse for witnesses. She grows particular. What passed unnoticed before is noted and condemned. The wrestling that was merely damned is suddenly broken by violence. The shrill commands rise to shouts and change to threats. It is as if she wished to impress her company with the depth of her concern, the height of her standards. I knew a girl in college who spent her time, while visiting with you, cleaning herself or the room, if it were hers: lifting lint from her skirt or the hairs of her Persian cat from sofas and chairs; pinching invisible flecks of dirt off the floor, sleeving dust from tables, fingering it from the top edge of mirrors; and it never mattered in the least as far as I could discover whether you came unexpectedly or gave her a week of warning or met her at a play or on the street, she tidied eternally, brushing her blouse with the flickering tips of her fingers, sweeping the surrounding air with a wave of her hand.
It’s early. I’m waiting for the bus when Mrs. Cramm scuttles anxiously from her house carrying a string bag. I prepare to tip my hat and to be gracious for I’ve had little commerce with Mrs. Cramm, and what knowledge that frail lady must possess! Mrs. Mean is then in her doorway crying: “Cramm! It’s a peach of a day, Mrs. Cramm, isn’t it? Come over here!” And Mrs. Cramm, most hesitantly, leaves me. “A peach. Grass is a little thin in back. It’s been too hot for green things. God damn you, Toll, don’t you move. Don’t you move a shitting inch! Here. Scrubbed the kitchen floor. You can’t be too particular. Kids pick up things. Nancy. Be careful. Cut her finger on Dad’s razor. Nancy! Bring your finger. Show Mrs. Cramm your soresore. There. Like to scare us to death.” Mrs. Cramm is murmuring, bending, the wounded finger thrust at her nose. “Bled too,” says Mrs. Mean. “Got on her dress, damn her. How’s your sore-sore now, Nennie? The hell it needs more medicine. Kids, kids. Barely broke the skin. Run and play, go on.” Mrs. Mean pushes the child off. I avert my eyes and turn my back. She stares at me — I feel her face — and her voice drops for an instant. When it rises again it is to curse and to command. “Keep your brother off that floor, my god!” The bus comes into view and I lose all talk in its noise. Mrs. Cramm does not board with me. She takes the next bus, or none, I can only presume.
Thus they flee: Ames, Nancy, Toll, and Tim. They pick the flowers next door to me. They tramp the garden down the street. They run through Mr. Wallace’s hedge, and while Mr. Wallace bellows like a burnt blind Polyphemus, they laugh like frightened crystal. I’ve had no trouble myself. Maybe she’s warned them. No. She wouldn’t. I don’t exist. And out of her reach a warning is laughter. They are a curse to Miss Matthew, to Dumb Perkins, Wallace, Turk, yet not to me. So she may cry them out of Christendom if she likes, as she would if she were put in garden charge of all the Christian grass.
Ames, Nancy, Toll, and Tim: they go. Wires are strung on little sticks and strips of cloth are bowed upon the wires. Orders are promulgated. Threats are rung over the neighborhood, and Mrs. Mean takes her turn in the famished grass, spinning like a wind-turned scarecrow, stubbornly and personally plump with her ambition.
It’s no use. Her children pour repeatedly, end on end, across it. They find the natural path. They scuff the grass. They chafe it. They stamp and jump and drive it. They scream it down. The wires sag. The bows drag in the mud. The sticks finally snap or pull out. Nancy wraps her foot in a loop of wire and is hauled up briskly like a hare, howling; and Mr. Mean appears, sullenly rolls the wire around the sticks, over the bows, signaling his wife’s surrender. The children stand in a line while Mrs. Mean watches from between her kitchen curtains.
The surrender is far from unconditional. Mrs. Mean vents her hate upon the dandelions. She scours them out of the earth. She packs their bodies in a basket and they are dried and burned. She patrols with an anxious eye the bordering territory where the prevailing winds blow the soft heads from the plants of her negligent neighbor — not, of course, Mrs. Cramm, who has a hired boy, but the two young worshipers of flesh who live on her right and who never appear except to hang out towels or to speed in and out of the late afternoon in their car. Their hands are for each other. They allow the weeds all liberty. There the dandelions gloriously flourish. From their first growth across her line, she regards them with enmity. Their blooming fills her with fury and the instant the young couple drive off in their convertible, Mrs. Mean is among the bright flowers, snapping their heads until her fingers are yellow; flinging the remains, like an insult, to the ground where no one but the impervious pair could fail to feel the shame of their beheaded and shattered condition. With a grand and open gesture, unmistakable from where my wife and I boldly sit and enjoy it, and meant for the world, Mrs. Mean lifts her soiled hands above her head and shakes them rapidly.