“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.
The Morrison children, coming home from school, would find no aches, no carping, no headache. Their noise was not a scandal nor their dirty faces a care. And when the giggles overcame them, why, their mother was giggling too.
Mr. Morrison, coming home, would tell of the day and get listened to, and he would try to retell the drummer’s stories—some of them at least. The supper would be delicious—omelets never fell and cakes rose to balloons of lightness, biscuits fluffed up, and no one could season a stew like Agnes Morrison. After supper, when the children had laughed themselves to sleep, like as not Mr. Morrison would touch Agnes on the shoulder in their old, old signal and they would go to bed and make love and be very happy.
The visit to Dessie might carry its charge into two days more before it petered out and the little headaches came back and business was not so good as last year. That’s how Dessie was and that’s what she could do. She carried excitement in her arms just as Samuel had. She was the darling, she was the beloved of the family.
Dessie was not beautiful. Perhaps she wasn’t even pretty, but she had the glow that makes men follow a woman in the hope of reflecting a little of it. You would have thought that in time she would have got over her first love affair and found another love, but she did not. Come to think of it, none of the Hamiltons, with all their versatility, had any versatility in love. None of them seemed capable of light or changeable love.
Dessie did not simply throw up her hands and give up. It was much worse than that. She went right on doing and being what she was—without the glow. The people who loved her ached for her, seeing her try, and they got to trying for her.
Dessie’s friends were good and loyal but they were human, and humans love to feel good and they hate to feel bad. In time the Mrs. Morrisons found unassailable reasons for not going to the little house by the bakery. They weren’t disloyal. They didn’t want to be sad as much as they wanted to be happy. It is easy to find a logical and virtuous reason for not doing what you don’t want to do.
Dessie’s business began to fall off. And the women who had thought they wanted dresses never realized that what they had wanted was happiness. Times were changing and the ready-made dress was becoming popular. It was no longer a disgrace to wear one. If Mr. Morrison was stocking ready-mades, it was only reasonable that Agnes Morrison should be seen in them.
The family was worried about Dessie, but what could you do when she would not admit there was anything wrong with her? She did admit to pains in her side, quite fierce, but they lasted only a little while and came only at intervals.
Then Samuel died and the world shattered like a dish. His sons and daughters and friends groped about among the pieces, trying to put some kind of world together again.
Dessie decided to sell her business and go back to the ranch to live with Tom. She hadn’t much of any business to sell out. Liza knew about it, and Olive, and Dessie had written to Tom. But Will, sitting scowling at the table in the San Francisco Chop House, had not been told. Will frothed inwardly and finally he balled up his napkin and got up. “I forgot something,” he said to Adam. “I’ll see you on the train.”
He walked the half-block to Dessie’s house and went through the high grown garden and rang Dessie’s bell.
She was having her dinner alone, and she came to the door with her napkin in her hand. “Why, hello, Will,” she said and put up her pink cheek for him to kiss. “When did you get in town?”
“Business,” he said. “Just here between trains. I want to talk to you.”
She led him back to her kitchen and dining-room combined, a warm little room papered with flowers. Automatically she poured a cup of coffee and placed it for him and put the sugar bowl and the cream pitcher in front of it.
“Have you seen Mother?” she asked.
“I’m just here over trains,” he said gruffly. “Dessie, is it true you want to go back to the ranch?”
“I was thinking of it.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
She smiled uncertainly. “Why not? What’s wrong with that? Tom’s lonely down there.”
“You’ve got a nice business here,” he said.