Adam walked up the wide veranda steps and rang the bell. Olive came to the door and opened it a little, while Mary and John peeked around the edges of her.
Adam took off his hat. “You don’t know me. I’m Adam Trask. Your father was a friend of mine. I thought I’d like to pay my respects to Mrs. Hamilton. She helped me with the twins.”
“Why, of course,” Olive said and swung the wide doors open. “We’ve heard about you. Just a moment. You see, we’ve made a kind of retreat for Mother.”
She knocked on a door off the wide front hall and called, “Mother! There’s a friend to see you.”
She opened the door and showed Adam into the pleasant room where Liza lived. “You’ll have to excuse me,” she said to Adam. “Catrina’s frying chicken and I have to watch her. John! Mary! Come along. Come along.”
Liza seemed smaller than ever. She sat in a wicker rocking chair and she was old and old. Her dress was a full wide-skirted black alpaca, and at her throat she wore a pin which spelled “Mother” in golden script.
The pleasant little bed-sitting room was crowded with photographs, bottles of toilet water, lace pincushions, brushes and combs, and the china and silver bureau-knacks of many birthdays and Christmases.
On the wall hung a huge tinted photograph of Samuel, which had captured a cold and aloof dignity, a scrubbed and dressed remoteness, which did not belong to him living. There was no twinkle in the picture of him, nor any of his inspective joyousness. The picture hung in a heavy gold frame, and to the consternation of all children its eyes followed a child about the room.
On a wicker table beside Liza was the cage of Polly parrot. Tom had bought the parrot from a sailor. He was an old bird, reputed to be fifty years old, and he had lived a ribald life and acquired the vigorous speech of a ship’s fo’c’sle. Try as she would, Liza could not make him substitute psalms for the picturesque vocabulary of his youth.
Polly cocked his head sideways, inspecting Adam, and scratched the feathers at the base of his beak with a careful foreclaw. “Come off it, you bastard,” said Polly unemotionally.
Liza frowned at him. “Polly,” she said sternly, “that’s not polite.”
“Bloody bastard!” Polly observed.
Liza ignored the vulgarity. She held out her tiny hand. “Mr. Trask,” she said, “I’m glad to see you. Sit down, won’t you?”
“I was passing by, and I wanted to offer my condolences.”
“We got your flowers.” And she remembered, too, every bouquet after all this time. Adam had sent a fine pillow of everlastings.
“It must be hard to rearrange your life.”
Liza’s eyes brimmed over and she snapped her little mouth shut on her weakness.
Adam said, “Maybe I shouldn’t bring up your hurt, but I miss him.”
Liza turned her head away. “How is everything down your way?” she asked.
“Good this year. Lots of rainfall. The feed’s deep already.”
“Tom wrote me,” she said.
“Button up,” said the parrot, and Liza scowled at him as she had at her growing children when they were mutinous.
“What brings you up to Salinas, Mr. Trask?” she asked.
“Why, some business.” He sat down in a wicker chair and it cricked under his weight. “I’m thinking of moving up here. Thought it might be better for my boys. They get lonely on the ranch.”
“We never got lonely on the ranch,” she said harshly.
“I thought maybe the schools would be better here. My twins could have the advantages.”
“My daughter Olive taught at Peachtree and Pleyto and the Big Sur.” Her tone made it clear that there were no better schools than those. Adam began to feel a warm admiration for her iron gallantry.
“Well, I was just thinking about it,” he said.
“Children raised in the country do better.” It was the law, and she could prove it by her own boys. Then she centered closely on him. “Are you looking for a house in Salinas?”
“Well, yes, I guess I am.”
“Go see my daughter Dessie,” she said. “Dessie wants to move back to the ranch with Tom. She’s got a nice little house up the street next to Reynaud’s Bakery.”
“I’ll certainly do that,” said Adam. “I’ll go now. I’m glad to see you doing so well.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m comfortable.” Adam was moving toward the door when she said, “Mr. Trask, do you ever see my son Tom?”
“Well, no, I don’t. You see, I haven’t been off the ranch.”
“I wish you would go and see him,” she said quickly. “I think he’s lonely.” She stopped as though horrified at this breaking over.
“I will. I surely will. Good-by, ma’am.”
As he closed the door he heard the parrot say, “Button up, you bloody bastard!” And Liza, “Polly, if you don’t watch your language, I’ll thrash you.”
Adam let himself out of the house and walked up the evening street toward Main. Next to Reynaud’s French Bakery he saw Dessie’s house set back in its little garden. The yard was so massed with tall privets that he couldn’t see much of the house. A neatly painted sign was screwed to the front gate. It read: Dessie Hamilton, Dressmaker.
The San Francisco Chop House was on the corner of Main and Central and its windows were on both streets. Adam went in to get some dinner. Will Hamilton sat at the corner table, devouring a rib steak. “Come and sit with me,” he called to Adam. “Up on business?”
“Yes,” said Adam. “I went to pay a call on your mother.”
Will laid down his fork. “I’m just up here for an hour. I didn’t go to see her because it gets her excited. And my sister Olive would tear the house down getting a special dinner for me. I just didn’t want to disturb them. Besides, I have to go right back. Order a rib steak. They’ve got good ones. How is Mother?”
“She’s got great courage,” said Adam. “I find I admire her more all the time.”
“That she has. How she kept her good sense with all of us and with my father, I don’t know.”
“Rib steak, medium,” said Adam to the waiter.
“Potatoes?”
“No—yes, french fried. Your mother is worried about Tom. Is he all right?”
Will cut off the edging of fat from his steak and pushed it to the side of his plate. “She’s got reason to worry,” he said. “Something’s the matter with Tom. He’s moping around like a monument.”
“I guess he depended on Samuel.”
“Too much,” said Will. “Far too much. He can’t seem to come out of it. In some ways Tom is a great big baby.”
“I’ll go and see him. Your mother says Dessie is going to move back to the ranch.”
Will laid his knife and fork down on the tablecloth and stared at Adam. “She can’t do it,” he said. “I won’t let her do it.”
“Why not?”
Will covered up. “Well,” he said, “she’s got a nice business here. Makes a good living. It would be a shame to throw it away.” He picked up his knife and fork, cut off a piece of the fat, and put it in his mouth.
“I’m catching the eight o’clock home,” Adam said.
“So am I,” said Will. He didn’t want to talk any more.
Chapter 32
1
Dessie was the beloved of the family. Mollie the pretty kitten, Olive the strong-headed, Una with clouds on her head, all were loved, but Dessie was the warm-beloved. Hers was the twinkle and the laughter infectious as chickenpox, and hers the gaiety that colored a day and spread to people so that they carried it away with them.
I can put it this way. Mrs. Clarence Morrison of 122 Church Street, Salinas, had three children and a husband who ran a dry goods store. On certain mornings, at breakfast, Agnes Morrison would say, “I’m going to Dessie Hamilton’s for a fitting after dinner.”
The children would be glad and would kick their copper toes against the table legs until cautioned. And Mr. Morrison would rub his palms together and go to his store, hoping some drummer would come by that day. And any drummer who did come by was likely to get a good order. Maybe the children and Mr. Morrison would forget why it was a good day with a promise on its tail.
Mrs. Morrison would go to the house next to Reynaud’s Bakery at two o’clock and she would stay until four. When she came out her eyes would be wet with tears and her nose red and streaming. Walking home, she would dab her nose and wipe her eyes and laugh all over again. Maybe all Dessie had done was to put several black pins in a cushion to make it look like the Baptist minister, and then had the pincushion deliver a short dry sermon. Maybe she had recounted a meeting with Old Man Taylor, who bought old houses and moved them to a big vacant lot he owned until he had so many it looked like a dry-land Sargasso Sea. Maybe she had read a poem from Chatterbox with gestures. It didn’t matter. It was warm-funny, it was catching funny.