The Cost of Living Read online

  “He’s yellow today,” Jane would sometimes venture.

  “Ah, so!” Frau Stengel would reply, her eyes getting bigger and bigger. Sometimes, after thinking it over, she wept, but not always.

  For the past few days, however, Frau Stengel had been less diverting; she had melted less easily. Also, she had spoken of the joyous future when she and Herr Stengel would emigrate to Australia and open a little shop.

  “To sell what?” said Ernestine, threatened with change.

  “Tea and coffee,” said their governess dreamily.

  In Australia, Frau Stengel had been told, half the people were black and savage, but one was far from trouble. She could not see the vision of the shop clearly, and spoke of coffee jars painted with hearts, a tufted chair where tired clients could rest. It was important, these days, that she fix her mind on rosy vistas, for her doctor had declared, and her horoscope had confirmed, that she was pregnant; she hinted of something to the Kennedy children, some revolution in her life, some reason their mother would have to find another governess before spring. But winter, the children knew, went on forever.

  This morning, when Jane and Ernestine knocked on her door, Frau Stengel was sitting by her window in a glow of sunshine reflected from the snow on the mountains. “Come in,” she said, and smiled at them. What pathetic little orphans they were, so sad, and so fond of her. If it had not been for their affection for her, frequently and flatteringly expressed, Frau Stengel would have given them up days ago; they reminded her, vaguely, of unhappy things. She had told them so many stories about the past that just looking at the two little girls made her think of it all over again—dolorous thoughts, certain to affect the character and appearance of the unborn.

  “Mother doesn’t want us to go to the movies with you,” began Jane. She looked, expectant, but Frau Stengel said placidly, “Well, never do anything your mother wouldn’t like.” This was to be another of her new cheerful days; disappointed, the children settled down to lessons. Ernestine colored the pictures in a movie magazine with crayons, and Jane made a bracelet of some coral rosebuds from an old necklace her mother had given her.

  “It’s nice here today,” said Jane. “We like it here.”

  “The sun is shining. You should go out,” said Frau Stengel, yawning, quite as if she had not heard. “Don’t forget the little rubbers.”

  “Will you come?”

  “Oh, no,” Frau Stengel said in a tantalizing, mysterious way. “It is important for me to rest.”

  “For us, too,” said Ernestine jealously. “We have to rest. Everybody rests. Our father rests all the time. He has to, too.”

  “Because he’s so sick,” said Jane.

  “He’s dead,” said Ernestine. She gave Gregory Peck round blue eyes.

  Frau Stengel looked up sharply. “Who is dead?” she said. “You must not use such a word in here, now.”

  The children stared, surprised. Death had been spoken of so frequently in this room, on the same level as chocolate biscuits and coral rosebud bracelets.

  “He’s dead,” said Ernestine. “He died this morning.”

  Frau Stengel stopped rocking. “Your father is dead?”

  “Yes, he is,” said Ernestine. “He died, and we’re supposed to stay here with you, and that’s all.”

  Their governess looked, bewildered, from one to the other; they sat, the image of innocence, side by side at her table, their hair caught up with blue ribbons.

  “Why don’t we go out now?” said Jane. The room was warm. She put her head down on the table and chewed the ends of her hair. “Come on,” she said, bored, and gave Ernestine a prod with her foot.

  “In a minute,” her sister said indistinctly. She bent over the portrait she was coloring, pressing on the end of the crayon until it was flat. Waxy colored streaks were glued to the palm of her hand. She wiped her hand on the skirt of her starched blue frock. “All right, now,” she said, and got down from her chair.

  “Where are you going, please?” said Frau Stengel, breathing at them through tense, widened nostrils. “Didn’t your mother send a message for me? When did it happen?”

  “What?” said Jane. “Can’t we go out? You said we could, before.”

  “It isn’t true, about your father,” said Frau Stengel. “You made it up. Your father is not dead.”

  “Oh, no,” said Jane, anxious to make the morning ordinary again. “She only said it, like, for a joke.”

  “A joke? You come here and frighten me in my condition for a joke?” Frau Stengel could not deliver sitting down the rest of the terrible things she had to say. She pulled herself out of the rocking chair and looked down at the perplexed little girls. She seemed to them enormously fat and tall, like the statues in Italian parks. Fascinated, they stared back. “What you have done is very wicked,” said Frau Stengel. “Very wicked. I won’t tell your mother, but I shall never forget it. In any case, God heard you, and God will punish you. If your father should die now, it would certainly be your fault.”

  This was not the first time the children had heard of God. Mrs. Kennedy might plan to defer her explanations to a later date, in line with Mr. Kennedy’s eventual decision, but the simple women she employed to keep an eye on Jane and Ernestine (Frau Stengel was the sixth to be elevated to the title of governess) had no such moral obstacles. For them, God was the catch-all answer to most of life’s perplexities. “Who makes this rain?” Jane had once asked Frau Stengel.

  “God,” she had replied cozily.

  “So that we can’t play outside?”

  “He makes the sun,” Frau Stengel said, anxious to give credit.

  “Well, then—” Jane began, but Frau Stengel, sensing a paradox, went on to something else.

  Until now, however, God had not been suggested as a threat. The children stayed where they were, at the table, and looked wide-eyed at their governess.

  Frau Stengel began to feel foolish; it is one thing to begin a scene, she was discovering, and another to sustain it. “Go to your room downstairs,” she said. “You had better stay there, and not come out. I can’t teach girls who tell lies.”

  This, clearly, was a dismissal, not only from her room but from her company, possibly forever. Never before had they been abandoned in the middle of the day. Was this the end of winter?

  “Is he dead?” cried Ernestine, in terror at what had become of the day.

  “Goodbye, Frau Stengel,” said Jane, with a ritual curtsy; this was how she had been trained to take her leave, and although she often forgot it, the formula now returned to sustain her. She gathered up the coral beads—after all, they belonged to her—but Ernestine rushed out, pushing in her hurry to be away. “Busy little feet,” said an old gentleman a moment later, laboriously pulling himself up with the aid of the banisters, as first Ernestine and then Jane clattered by.

  They burst into their room, and Jane closed the door. “Anyway, it was you that said it,” she said at once.

  Ernestine did not reply. She climbed up on her high bed and sat with her fat legs dangling over the edge. She stared at the opposite wall, her mouth slightly open. She could think of no way to avert the punishment about to descend on their heads, nor could she grasp the idea of a punishment more serious than being deprived of dessert.

  “It was you, anyway,” Jane repeated. “If anything happens, I’ll tell. I think I could tell anyway.”

  “I’ll tell, too,” said Ernestine.

  “You haven’t anything to tell.”

  “I’ll tell everything,” said Ernestine in a sudden fury. “I’ll tell you chewed gum. I’ll tell you wet the bed and we had to put the sheets out the window. I’ll tell everything.”

  The room was silent. Jane leaned over to the window between their beds, where the unaccustomed sun had roused a fat, slumbering fly. It shook its wings and buzzed loudly. Jane put her finger on its back; it vibrated and felt funny. “Look, Ern,” she said.

  Ernestine squirmed over on the bed; their heads touched, their brea
th misted the window. The fly moved and left staggering tracks.

  “We could go out,” said Jane. “Frau Stengel even said it.” They went, forgetting their rubbers.

  Mrs. Kennedy came home at half past six, no less and no more exhausted than usual. It had not been a lively day or a memorably pleasant one but a day like any other, in the pattern she was now accustomed to and might even have missed. She had read aloud until lunch, which the clinic kitchen sent up on a tray—veal, potatoes, shredded lettuce, and sago pudding with jelly—and she had noted with dismay that Mr. Kennedy’s meal included a bottle of hock, fetched in under the apron of a guilty-looking nurse. How silly to tempt him in this way when he wanted so much to get well, she thought. After lunch, the reading went on, Mrs. Kennedy stopping now and then to sustain her voice with a sip of Vichy water. They were rereading an old Lanny Budd novel, but Mrs. Kennedy could not have said what it was about. She had acquired the knack of thinking of other things while she read aloud. She read in a high, uninflected voice, planning the debut of Jane and Ernestine with a famous ballet company. Mr. Kennedy listened, contentedly polishing off his bottle of wine. Sometimes he interrupted. “Juan-les-Pins,” he remarked as the name came up in the text.

  “We were there.” This was the chief charm of the novels, that they kept mentioning places Mr. Kennedy had visited. “Aix-les-Bains,” he remarked a little later. Possibly he was not paying close attention, for Lanny Budd was now having it out with Göring in Berlin. Mr. Kennedy’s tone of voice suggested that something quite singular had taken place in Aix-les-Bains, when as a matter of fact Mrs. Kennedy had spent a quiet summer with the two little girls in a second-class pension while Mr. Kennedy took the mud-bath cure.

  Mr. Kennedy rang for his nurse and, when she came, told her to send in the doctor. The reading continued; Jane and Ernestine found ballet careers too strenuous, and in any case the publicity was cheapening. For the fortieth time, they married. Jane married a very dashing young officer, and Ernestine the president of a university. A few minutes later, the doctor came in; another new doctor, Mrs. Kennedy noted. But it was only by constantly changing his doctor and reviewing his entire medical history from the beginning that Mr. Kennedy obtained the attention his condition required. This doctor was cheerful and brisk. “We’ll have him out of here in no time,” he assured Mrs. Kennedy, smiling.

  “Oh, grand,” she said faintly.

  “Are you sure?” her husband asked the doctor. “There are two or three things that haven’t been checked and attended to.”

  “Oh?” said the doctor. At that moment, he saw the empty wine bottle and picked it up. Mrs. Kennedy, who dreaded scenes, closed her eyes. “You waste my time,” she heard the doctor say. The door closed behind him. She opened her eyes. These awful rows, she thought. They were all alike—all the nurses, all the clinics, all the doctors. Mr. Kennedy, fortunately, did not seem unduly disturbed.

  “You might see if you can order me one of those books of crossword puzzles,” he remarked as his wife gathered up her things to leave.

  “Shall I give your love to Jane and Ernestine?” she said. But Mr. Kennedy, worn out with his day, seemed to be falling asleep.

  Back at the hotel, Jane and Ernestine were waiting in the upper hall. They clung to Mrs. Kennedy, as if her presence had reminded them of something. Touched, Mrs. Kennedy said nothing about the mud on their shoes but instead praised their rosy faces. They hung about, close to her, while she rested on the chaise longue in her room before dinner. “How I should love to trade my days for yours,” she said suddenly, thinking not only of their magic future but of these days that were, for them, a joyous and repeated holiday.

  “Didn’t you have fun today?” said Jane, leaning on her mother’s feet.

  “Fun! Well, not what you chicks would call fun.”

  They descended to dinner together; the children held on to her hands, one on each side. They showed, for once, a nice sensibility, she thought. Perhaps they were arriving at that special age a mother dreams of, the age of gratitude and awareness. In the dining room, propped against the mustard jar, was an envelope with scrolls and curlicues under the name “Kennedy.” Inside was a note from Frau Stengel explaining that, because she was expecting a child and needed all her strength for the occasion, she could no longer give Jane and Ernestine their lessons. So delicately and circuitously did she explain her situation that Mrs. Kennedy was left with the impression that Frau Stengel was expecting the visit of a former pupil. She thought it a strange way of letting her know. I wonder what she means by “harmony of spirit,” she thought. The child must be a terror. She was not at all anxious to persuade Frau Stengel to change her mind; the incident of the book at breakfast, the mention of movies, the mud on the children’s shoes all suggested it was time for someone new.

  “Is it bad news?” said Jane.

  Mrs. Kennedy was touched. “You mustn’t feel things so,” she said kindly. “No, it is only that Frau Stengel won’t be your governess anymore. She is expecting”—she glanced at the letter again and, suddenly getting the drift of it, folded it quickly and went on—“a little boy or girl for a visit.”

  “Our age?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Kennedy vaguely. Would this be a good occasion, she wondered, to begin telling them about…about…But no, not in a hotel dining room, not over a plate of alphabet soup. “I suppose I could stay home for a few days, until we find someone, and we could do lessons together. Would you like that?” They looked at her without replying. “We could do educational things, like nature walks,” she said. “Why, what ever is the matter? Are you so unhappy about Frau Stengel?”

  “Is he dead?” said Jane.

  “Who?”

  “Our father,” said Jane in a quavering voice that carried to every table and on to the kitchen.

  “Good heavens!” Mrs. Kennedy glanced quickly around the dining room; everyone had heard. Damp clouds of sympathy were forming around the table. “As a matter of fact, he is much better,” she said loudly and briskly. “Perhaps, to be reassured, you ought to see him. Would you like that?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  She was perplexed but gratified. “Father didn’t want you to see him when he was so ill,” she explained. “He wanted you to remember him as he was.”

  “In case he died?”

  “I think we’ll go upstairs,” said Mrs. Kennedy, pushing back her chair. They followed her across the room and up the staircase without protest. She had never seen them looking so odd. “You seem all pinched,” she said, examining them by the light between their beds. “And a few minutes ago you seemed so rosy! Where are my little Renoir faces? I’m getting you liver tablets tomorrow. You’d better go to bed.”

  It was early, but they made no objection. “Are you really going to be home tomorrow?” said Jane.

  “Well, yes. I can’t think of anything else to do, for the moment.”

  “He’s dead,” said Jane positively.

  “Really,” said their mother, exasperated. “If you don’t stop this at once, I don’t know what I’ll do. It’s morbid.”

  “Will you read to us?” said Ernestine, shoeless and in her petticoat.

  “Read?” Mrs. Kennedy said. “No, I couldn’t.” With quick, tugging motions, she began to braid their hair for the night. “I don’t even want to speak. I want to rest my voice.”

  “Then could you just sit here?” said Jane. “Could we have the light?”

  “Why?” said Mrs. Kennedy, snapping elastic on the end of a braid. “Have you been having bad dreams?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jane, standing uncertainly by her bed.

  “Healthy children don’t dream,” her mother said, confident that this was so. “You have no reason whatever to dream.” She rose and put the hairbrush away. “Into bed, now, both of you.”

  They crept wretchedly into their separate beds. Mrs. Kennedy kissed each of them and opened the window. She was at the door, her hand on the light switch, when Jane said,
“Can God punish you for something?”

  Mrs. Kennedy dropped her hand. She had been, she found with annoyance, about to say vaguely, “Well, that all depends.” She said instead, “I don’t know.”

  It was worse than anything the children had bargained for. “If she doesn’t know—” said Ernestine. It was not clear whom she was addressing. “—then who does?”

  “Nobody, really,” said Mrs. Kennedy. They had certainly chosen a singular approach to the subject, and an odd time to speak of it, she thought, but curiosity of this sort should always be dealt with as it came up. “Many people think they know, one way or the other, but it is impossible for a thinking person—Father will tell you about it,” she finished. “We’ll arrange a visit very soon.”

  “If you don’t know,” said Jane from her pillow, “then we don’t know what can happen.” She lay back and pulled the bedsheet up to her eyes. Mrs. Kennedy put out the light, promising again an interesting talk with their father, who would explain all over again how he didn’t know, either, and why.

  Just before going to bed, shortly after ten o’clock, Mrs. Kennedy softly re-entered the children’s room. She carried a large dish of applesauce, two spoons, and two buttered rolls for the girls to discover in the morning. The room was totally dark, and stuffy; someone—one of the children—had closed the window and drawn the heavy double curtains straight across. Groping in the dark to their bedside table, she put down her burden of food, and then, as quietly as she could, pulled the draperies to one side. Moonlight filled the squares of the window. The breeze that came in when she unlatched the window smelled of snow. In the bright, cold, clear night, the lights from the villages down below blinked and wavered like stars. It was not often that Mrs. Kennedy had time to enjoy or contemplate something not directly dependent on herself or fated by one of her or her husband’s decisions. For nearly a full minute, she stood perfectly still and admired the night. Then she remembered one of the reasons she had come into the room, and bent over to draw the covers up over her daughters.