sort of wimp would put up with this sort of rudeness in women? I am sorry to say
that by 1970 there were plenty of wimps of every sort. The wimps were taking over.
Manly men, gallant gentlemen, the sort who do not wait to be drafted, were growing
scarce.
The principal problem in closing the house lay in the books; what to store, what to
give away, what to take with me. The furniture and the small stuff, from pots and
pans to sheets, would mostly be given to Good Will. We had been in that house
twenty-three years, 1929 to 1952; most of the furniture was that old, or nearly so,
and, after being worked over by a swarm of active children all those years, the
market value of these chattels was too low to justify placing them in storage –
since I had no intention of setting up a proper household in the foreseeable future.
I hesitated over my old upright piano. It was an old friend; Briney had given it to
me in 1909 – second- (third-?) hand even then; it was the first proof that Brian
Smith Associates was actually in the black. Brian had paid fourteen dollars for it
at an auction.
No! If my plans were to work out, I must travel light. Pianos can be rented
anywhere.
Having resolved to give up my piano other decisions were easy, so I decided to start
with the books. Move all books from al over the house into the living – no, into the
dining room; pile them on the dining-table. Pile them high. Pile the rest on the
floor. Who could believe that one house could hold so many books?
Roll in the big utility table; start stacking on it books to be stored. Roll in the
little tea-table; place on it books to take with me. Set up card-tables for books to
go to Good Will. Or to the Salvation Army? Whichever one will come and get the
stuff, soonest, can have the lot – clothes, books, bedclothes, furniture, whatever.
But they’ve got to come and get it.
An hour later I was still telling myself firmly: No! Don’t stop to read anything! If
you must read it, then put that book in the ‘take with’ pile – you can thin it down
later.
Then I heard the mewing of a cat.
I said to myself, ‘Oh, that girl! Susan, what have you dope to me?’
Two years earlier, we had become catless through the tragic demise of Captain Blood,
grandson of Chargé d’Affaires – sudden death from a hit-and-run driver on Rockhill
Boulevard. In the preceding forty-three years I had never tried keeping the house
without a cat. I tend to agree with Mr Clemens, who rented three cats when he moved
into his home in Connecticut in order to give a new house that lived-in feeling.
But this time I resolved to struggle along without a cat. Patrick was eighteen,
Susan was sixteen; each had received his Howard list. It was predictable that each
would be leaving the nest in the near future.
Page 174
Heinlein, Robert A – To Sail Beyond the Sunset.txt
Cats have one major shortcoming. Once you adopt one, you are stuck for life. The
cat’s life, that is. The cat does not speak English; it does not understand broken
promises. If you abandon it, it will die and its ghost will haunt your nights.
At dinner the day Captain Blood was killed none of us ate much and we were not
talkative. At last Susan said, ‘Mama, do we start watching the want-ads? Or do we go
to the Humane Society?’
‘For what, dear?’ (I was intentionally obtuse.)
`For a kitten, of course.’
So I laid it on the Tine: ‘A kitten could live fifteen years, or longer. When you
two leave home this house will be sold, as I have no intention of rattling around in
a fourteen-room house, alone. Then what happens to the cat?’
‘Nothing. Because there is not going to be a cat.’
About two weeks later Susan was a bit late getting home from school. She came in and
said, `Mama, I must be gone a couple of hours. An errand.’ She was carrying a brown