The wing was empty. There were three rooms upstairs in the wing and an extra bathroom, and downstairs, the big empty library and the hall with the wing door, as we called it. Papa was expecting an assistant to live there, and maybe Eric would come too. Eric and Mr. Evans, whom we had just met, would move into the wing later; then the wing would be full. Now the wing was empty. Ida had a big room over the kitchen. There was Annie, too, but Annie was sitting upstairs with the baby.
There was a farm beyond, fields, and cows in a shed. The wind blew through the maple branches, and Ida had put down the coal scuttle. Harold had brought back the glass of water for the paste brush. “Here, give it to me, Gilbert,” Mama said, for Gilbert had not been able to unscrew the top of the new paste pot. In a minute, maybe Papa would come in with his beard and his fur cap and his high boots, then maybe Mama would send us all to bed. This minute must last forever. It would last forever.
The clock in the hall ticked off this minute, so this minute belonged to the clock in the hall, it belonged to Mamalie and to Papalie who was dead. The clock in the hall would strike but even if it struck, it would not matter. Now Mama did not send us off to bed so early. Mama was unscrewing the top of the new paste pot. She set it down on the table and put the sticky lid on the brown paper. All around us were the table, the dining room chairs, the sideboard and the china cupboard with dishes that Aunt Mary (who wasn’t a real aunt) had painted for Mama’s wedding, with bluebells and daisies and wild roses.
The university ladies would say, “But aren’t you afraid, cut off like this, miles from a doctor?” Then they would hush their voices and whisper behind the folding door, you could almost hear what they said. The folding door might be shut but even so, there was a large crack; “Now run along Hilda” or “Run along Sister,” Mama would say, and I would go out, maybe possibly to ask Ida to bring in tea on a tray. It was different here, the ladies had to hear everything over and over, maybe even, one had not heard of the Moravians or the Bach choir, or else like Mrs. Schelling, they would talk about Vienna and where they had gone.
Mama had been to Europe on her honeymoon; there were the pictures. Paul Potter’s Bull was over the bench in the hall that had a lid and was a box really for our leggings and our overshoes. The Venus de Milo was in the sitting room, there were those two rooms and now here, the dining room. There was a narrow hall with two swing doors from the dining room to the kitchen. There was a hen on the chest across the table. It showed just over Harold’s head. It was a white hen. It was sitting on a china basket; if you picked it up, you saw that it was hollow, the china nest was for boiled eggs. Mamalie had one too, hers was grey and speckled. The hen sat on the dresser opposite the table. It was the same hen that had sat on the same dresser in the old dining room.
Aunt Jennie brought Hilda some Chinese lily bulbs and showed her how to plant them in a bowl with water and pebbles. Mama said Hilda could have them in their bowl in the old dining room on the window ledge. There was that window that looked out on the alley, which was really not an alley but a lane, but Uncle Hartley said allée was French really, and maybe their alley was named allée by the Marquis de Chastellux when he came to visit the town. Uncle Hartley made fun of all the old things, and all the same they were true, Aunt Aggie said.
There were two other windows in the old dining room and a door, through a hall like this, to the kitchen, and another door leading up a few steps to the back stairs and through to the kitchen that way. There were two other windows in the old dining room, but rather dark as they opened on the porch that was roofed over and anyhow, had the vines growing.
This room has four windows, set even, like windows in a doll house. The table is in the middle. There are three doors; one leads out to the hall, one to the sitting room, one to the kitchen. Hilda seemed to be running this over ritualistically in her head, as if it were necessary to remember the shape of the house, each room, the hen on the dresser, the dishes shut away in the sideboard, before she dared turn her eyes actually to the table, to the tangled heap of tarnished tinsel, to the empty box that had held the glass balls, to the miscellaneous collection of gilt stars, red, blue and pink cornucopias and paper chains that were torn, that Mama called the paper things; there were dolls too in that lot, several babies in paper gilt highchairs, some dancers in fluffed-out short white petticoats, standing on one toe, and angels sprinkled with glistening snow that was beginning to peel off.
Ida said could she go upstairs, was there anything, but she stood at the door. She had on her blue kitchen-apron. She came in and the door swung-to behind her. She looked at the things on the table. She said, “Could I take the baby in my room?” She wanted the baby in her room. I should have liked the baby in my room, but he did not like me very much. Mama said, “Leave him in the crib if he is asleep.” Ida might wake him up, she could, why couldn’t she take him to her room? What did the Philadelphia ladies whisper about? The house was very quiet. The clock in the hall ticked — you could hear it tick even if you did not stop to listen. There was scraping on the front doorsteps, that might be Papa coming in — or it might be — what did the Philadelphia ladies think could happen?
We were not all alone, there was Mama, there was Ida, there was Annie with the baby upstairs. Upstairs seemed rather far away. In the old house, the clock was at the top of the stairs, and the stairs went straight up; here they turned on a landing and you could not slide down the bannisters. On the stair wall were some of the photographs of Venice; there was a lady too, lying on the ground with a big book open and a skull (like Papa’s Indian skull on his bookcase); she was someone in the Bible, Mary-someone in a cave with long hair.
We would get some small rocks from the stream that ran in the little valley several fields below the house, for the cave on the putz. Ida had found another box on the floor; she said, “You’ve forgotten a box on the floor.” Gilbert said, “No, I put it there.” Ida lifted the box from the floor, none of us had forgotten it, it was a heavy cardboard box tied with string. It was the most important. It was the box with the animals and the little hut and the wooden fence that folded up, that would run round the edge of the moss and make a field for the sheep to graze in. Ida said, “Where are the scissors?” She cut the string of the box.
There was a picture of Pandora and her box in the Tanglewood Tales that Miss Helen read us, Friday afternoons if we were good, instead of lessons. Pandora let all evil things out of the box, but there was one good thing left; Miss Helen explained it was a myth. The good thing left was hope.
Everything would turn evil in the box but there was hope left, after everything evil had flown out.
We knew what was in this box, it was an ordinary cardboard box, a large one of very tough brown paper. Ida started to roll up the string the way she did, then came to the knots and looked at the string. Then she dropped it on the spread-out brown paper that was for the scraps. It was not time to take out the animals, we did the Christmas-tree things first, but now Gilbert jerked at the top of the box that did not fit like a lid, but was like a box over another box. It stuck and Gilbert jerked at it.