Poor Cousin Evelyn

EVEN before the trouble with poor cousin Evelyn, we all knew whul a terror Uncle Hyman could be when something went wrong. Something going wrong, for Uncle Hyman, meant somebody disagreeing with him, contradicting one of his opinions on business affairs, interrupting one of his long complicated speeches about the political situation, ignoring his advice on some subject or other, or just bothering him in some completely unintentional way. Like the time cousin Marvin’s little boy, Johney, pointed his finger at Uncle Hyman’s stomach and said, “You have a pothelly!” Johney was only three and a half years old at the time, but for a whole six months after that Uncle Hyman and Aunt Selma wouldn’t let Marvin and Julia into their apartment.

Uncle Hyman was the richest member of the family. He lived in a big penthouse on Park Avenue, and his business, which he had built up by himself since he was a young man, was so successful that it put him in a completely different class from any of the other uncles. But even in the old days, when Uncle Hyman popped out of nowhere and married into the family, his success was already a little staggering. For this reason — and quite rightly, I think — Uncle Hyman had always commanded an extra amount of respect from the rest of us. Without implying for one moment that any of us were actually afraid of him, I may say that there was hardly a single one of us who hadn’t received, at one time or another, a taste of Uncle Hyman’s temper.

Only temper isn’t really the right word. Never once, in all these years, did Uncle Hyman raise his voice or lose control of himself. Mad as he may have been, he always stayed perfectly calm and cool, so when he opened his mouth to talk, you couldn’t positively be sure that he was mad at all —until you heard the things that he said. And though he never wasted words, Uncle Hyman could say things that — well, that you would never forget all the rest of your life. Without blinking an eye, he could say things that would strip away every bit of self-respect and self-defense that a person had, and go right to the spot where it hurt most.

But of course, none of us ever saw him so mad as he was that time with poor cousin Evelyn.

When cousin Harry Shapiro — Aunt Fanny’s son from New York, not cousin Harold from Denver — announced his engagement to Evelyn Rosen from St. Louis, the family opinion was divided. Half of the family thought that Harry had made a very nice choice. Evelyn Rosen was a sweet, pretty little girl from a fine St. Louis family. Her father was a doctor — a professional man — and in our family, where most of the men have gone into business— except for Uncle Stanley, who never went to work at all — we have a great deal of respect for professional men.

Evelyn herself was not only sweet and pretty, but also highly intelligent. She was a graduate of Vassar College, where she had studied social psychology. For three years after college, she had practiced her social psychology by visiting the poor in St. Louis, and as Aunt Fanny explained to us, “doing a lot of good work.” To many of us, it seemed like a very good thing that Harry should be getting such an enterprising, independent girl. Nobody for one minute would accuse Harry of being lazy, but it is true that he has always had a tendency to be a little too easygoing, to sit back and just sort of let things happen around him. Not that Harry is Stupid or anything — on the contrary, he was always a bright boy, and he did very well at Columbia — but he just needs a little extra push from time to time, and it seemed to many of us that Evelyn was the right kind of person to give it to him.

2

IN FACT, before any of us had even met her, we had a good idea of Evelyn’s cleverness. Harry showed around some of the letters which she wrote to him from St. Louis, before she finally came to New York for the wedding. (I ought to explain that, since Evelyn’s mother was dead and she had no other relations but her father, Dr. Rosen, the usual custom was reversed and the wedding was given by Aunt Fanny in New York.) Anyway, her letters were surprisingly clever and bright, full of funny turns of phrase and especially little bits of poetry. Evelyn had a wonderful talent for writing poetry, Harry told us. She could whip up a verse or two for any occasion, in practically no time at all. She turned them out so quickly that sometimes Harry thought that her mind must work in rhyme. Evelyn’s friends in St. Louis, Harry told us, wouldn’t think of giving a party without asking Evelyn to write some poems for the invitations or the place cards.

In one of the letters that Harry showed us there was a little poem about her coming marriage which gives an idea of Evelyn’s cleverness: —

It went on for a few verses more, and in every verse there was a different rhyme. So those of us who thought that Harry had made a good choice could always hold up Evelyn’s talent and intelligence as evidence.

As a matter of fact, even the people whose opinions weren’t so favorable didn’t deny Evelyn’s cleverness. It was wonderful that she was so clever, they said. It was almost too wonderful. They suggested that Evelyn had too good a notion herself of how wonderful it was. She was a little bit snooty maybe about her Vassar education, her professional family, and her poetical gift, and maybeshe thought herself too high for a family that didn’t have any greater ambitions than to run honest businesses, and make good livings, and lead ordinary, decent lives.

But there is no sense going into any more detail about this opinion. Some of it was pure jealousy and envy, and carried to extremes, it became just plain silly. Like when Aunt Caroline said, at Grandma’s house one Sunday afternoon, that in her opinion Evelyn was nothing more or less than a scheming little gold-digger who was marrying Harry for his money. Though everybody knew that Harry didn’t have any money, except the small insurance annuities which he and Fanny had been collecting since Ed’s death, and the salary which Harry got, working for Uncle Mike in the retail shoe business — and know ing Uncle Mike, we were all pretty sure that Harry wasn’t getting to be any millionaire that way. And as for poor Evelyn being a scheming gold-digger, or a scheming anything else for that matter, all you had to do was talk to her for half an hour, and you could see how ridiculous that was.

On the other hand, not all of Evelyn’s critics were as wild and hysterical as Aunt Caroline — who hated to see anybody in the family get married — but there were even a lot of sensible, convincing ideas put forth. Right from the start, for instance, there were certain habits of Evelyn’s which could hardly escape notice — the way she was always the first one to laugh after someone made a joke, but her laughter was always the quickest to die away; the way she smiled at everybody and everything, even when there was nothing to smile at; the way she pushed forward her sharp little head, her sharp little nose and chin, when she had something to say, but darted them to the right and left, rolled her eyes, and forced back her yawns, when anybody else was talking. There were certain members of the family — and especially Uncle Stanley, with his notorious sense of humor —who never failed to allude to one or another of these habits whenever Evelyn was brought into the conversation.

I for one didn’t belong to either party, but preferred to reserve my opinion until I knew cousin Evelyn better.

In any case, regardless of individual feelings, the treatment which Evelyn received, when she and Dr. Rosen arrived in New York a week before the wedding, was equally generous and warmhearted from all quarters. Not a night went by that she wasn t invited to dinner, taken to the theater, or entertained with a party. In the afternoons, the various aunts and female cousins took turns going shopping with her and giving her tea. She couldn’t live on West End Avenue, in Fanny’s apartment, of course because Harry was there—so Aunt Rita and Encle Mike, who was Harry’s boss and had always taken a kind of fatherly interest in him, pul Evelyn up in their place on Central Park West — there was a spare room, while Teddy was at college and everyone said that they had never seen Uncle Mike spend so much money in his life. And in short, everyone pitched in to show a wonderful time to the girl who was going to be Harry’s wife, because we were all very fond of Harry. We all remembered him as a boy of sixteen, the year after Ed died, going out to a dance in his first tuxedo — we remembered him at his graduation from Columbia, looking so studious in his cap and gown — we remembered him as a very little boy, the youngest of the male cousins, singing the songs at the family Seder, on the Passover. And so, not in a million years, no matter how strongly they might feel, would anybody in the family do or say anything to disappoint Harry.

3

I OUGHT to explain at this point that the only member of the family that Evelyn didn’t meet, during this week before the wedding, was Uncle Hyman. She met Aunt Selma, who was charmed with her and invited her twice for dinner in the penthouse on Park Avenue, but Uncle Hyman was away on a business trip, and he wouldn’t get back until late Saturday night, the day before the wedding.

Evelyn, of course, heard a lot about Uncle Hyman from Harry and from the rest of us. She was practically one of the family, wasn’t she? — this is the way everybody reasoned — so why shouldn’t she be let in on the family gossip? Besides, if nobody else told her, Fanny certainly would, because poor Fanny just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. So, in that week before the wedding — as Evelyn went from house to house, from Shapiro to Shapiro, with pudgy little Dr. Rosen always standing a few steps behind her and smiling vaguely — she picked up bit by bit all the family legends about Uncle Hyman, all the stories that nobody dared repeat to Uncle Hyman’s face.

From Aunt Rita, she heard about the time Uncle Hyman was coaxed into giving a thousand dollars to Aunt Rita’s favorite charitable organization — the Home for the Jewish Orphans of Something-orOther — and then, because of a secretarial mistake, he never received an official acknowledgment of his contribution. Believe it or not, Uncle Hyman actually phoned his bank and stopped the check. And from that day to this, he refused to give one cent, to any charity that Aunt Rita had anything to do with.

From Uncle Mike, Evelyn heard the story of the big underwear manufacturers’ dinner—that was Uncle Hyman’s business, underwear — at which Uncle Hyman was supposed to make the leading speech. He was in the middle of a long series of statistics about the relationship of income taxes to price grades when one of the minor underwear manufacturers, a little man named Goldfarb, who had drunk a few too many Martinis before dinner, suddenly interrupted the speech with a loud, clear belch that sounded through the room, like the striking of a gong. Poor Goldfarb turned all colors and tears came to his eyes. Uncle Hyman just looked at him for a moment, then went on with his statistics in the same deep, droning voice. But two months later, Goldfarb was out of business.

Evelyn listened to these stories, and to a lot more — Aunt Caroline had a specially large stock of them — and her reaction to them wasn’t at all what anybody expected. Instead of cringing, or wringing her hands, or gasping nervously, which was the usual procedure among female members of the family when they looked forward to an encounter with Uncle Hyman, Evelyn simply raised her sharp little chin, showed her bright neat teeth, and laughed. Her laugh was as sharp as her face, with a kind of a businesslike edge to it that expressed much better than words all the natural self-confidence of a person who had studied social psychology at Vassaland therefore knew how to handle people.

This was the laugh that Evelyn produced one afternoon, three days before the wedding, when the whole family was gathered at Grandma’s. The only person who wasn’t there was Aunt Selma — she was in bed with the sniffles; there was never a woman like Aunt Selma for going to bed with the sniffles — so Uncle Stanley took the opportunity to tell the story of Uncle Hyman and Aunt Selma on their wedding night. I will not bother to repeat this story in detail the facts of it have always been extremely obscure, anyway—suffice to say, it has something to do with Uncle Hyman being called away from his apartment on his wedding night by an important business deal — though one version of the story says that it wasn’t his wedding night at all, but the night after — in any case, nobody is really sure that the whole thing ever happened in the first place —Uncle Stanley is really the only one of the family who still claims to believe in it — and indeed, there are strong reasons to suppose that Uncle Stanley may have made up the story himself.

Anyway, on the afternoon of which I speak, Uncle Stanley finished telling this story to Evelyn and settled back in his chair, with his long legs stretched out in front of him and one of his cool, ironic smiles on his face.

Evelyn laughed for a while, and then she smiled at all of us. “You know what I think?” she said. “I think you’re all wrong about Uncle Hyman. I don’t think he’s the way you say he is at all.”

“That’s the truth,” Aunt Caroline said. “We haven’t told you the half of it yet.”

Evelyn shook her head, politely but firmly. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t believe that this terrible monster really exists. It’s just that you’re all a little scared of him, because evidently he has a very commanding personality — ”

“To put it mildly,” said Aunt Rita, under her breath.

“— but it’s my experience that the people with the most commanding personalities are really the shyest, most timid people on earth. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Uncle Hyman wasn’t suffering from an inferiority complex. Now tell me frankly, have any of you ever really tried to know him, to get close to him, I mean?”

Uncle Stanley laughed. “Have you ever tried to get close to a man-eating lion?”

“Oh, nonsense!" Evelyn cried. “Uncle Hyman’s no man-eating lion. I’m sorry, you can’t convince me of tha., He’s got his human side, just like anyone else, and it’s simply a question of finding out what it is and catering to it.”

“And you expect to do the catering?" Uncle Stanley said.

“I certainly do.” Evelyn gave a very positive nod of her head. “I’m sure I know enough about psychology, and human nature, to get along with anybody. And I certainly don’t intend to start off in Harry’s family by being afraid of one of his uncles. You wouldn’t want that, would you, deart

She looked at Harry. He looked back at her with his eyes wide and his cheeks glowing, absolutely unable to say a word.

“Well, I’m all lor it,” said Uncle Mike, in his heartiest manner. “If Evely n can find some sort ol a human side in Hyman, then by God, more power to her, I say.”

“But she’ll never do it, said Aunt Caroline.

“Oh, won’t I?“ Evelyn said. You just watch. I’m willing to bet lhat your horrible Lncle Hyman turns out to he the sweetest, gentlest little lamb in t he world.”

At this we all started laughing. And as the laughter faded away. Aunt Fanny nodded her head, and smiled, and spoke in her quiet, placid voice, “Well, you know, I really think, if anybody can do it, Evelyn is the one.”

The conversation moved on to other things, and i he afternoon finally broke up with Evelyn reading a poem which she had written for Grandma. Il hega n: —

As Evelyn recited, Grandma sat huddled forward in her chair, nodding her head and trembling and not hearing a word. But the rest of the family was very impressed, and we applauded enthusiastically at the end.

4

I WILL now skip, with no further introduction, to Sunday, the day of the wedding. It wasn’t the biggest wedding the family had ever seen — it didn 1 compare with the wedding that Aunt Selma and Uncle Hyman gave for their daughter, Grace, when she married the Lustig boy from Detroit two whole floors in the Hotel Pierre were taken up by lhat wedding, and nobody could ever count the cases of champagne. Fanny, of course, couldn’t afford to entertain on such a scale, even with the help she got from Uncle Mike and Aunt Rita. The wedding was held in Fanny’s living — room young Rabbi Schickman, who had succeeded old Rabbi Samuels, performed the ceremony, and only the immediate family, little Dr. Rosen, and a few close friends attended. Then everybody took taxis to Uncle Mike’s apartment for the reception.

The reception was bigger, and included not only the immediate family, but the distant family also, second, third, fourth, and fifth cousins, once, twice, and three times removed, their wives, children, and in-laws, as well as friends of the bride and groom, and a few miscellaneous friends who were almost members of the family themselves, like old Mr. Julius Gold, who used to be Grandpa’s partner in the jewelry business, and old Mrs. Callahan, who had been the family nurse and had been taking care of us all when we got sick as long as most of us could remember. Besides these people, the only strangers that I can think of offhand were Evelyn’s bridesmaid, a little Southern girl named Sally, who had also graduated from Yassar, and Sally’s mother, a dignified gray-haired Southern lady, who sat in a corner most of the time, fanning herself with her handkerchief — though it was a cool autumn day — and becoming slowly dizzy on champagne.

Evelyn looked charming all the way through. She wasn’t really a very beautiful girl, but she had nice pleasing features, especially in repose, and she could look quite pretty when she got herself up. Her appearance in the archway of Aunt Fanny s living room, in her long white wedding dress, was very impressive, even stunning. And as she started walking, with Dr. Rosen next to her, between the rows of chairs to the other end of the room, where Harry and Rabbi Schickman and cousin Marvin, who was Harry’s best man, were standing, many of the family who had been most suspicious and antagonistic lost all their suspicions and antagonism in a moment.

Evelyn changed her clothes before the reception, and appeared at Uncle Mikes in a pink organdy evening dress which, though it wasn’t quileas stunning as her wedding dress, was still very nice indeed. It was at this reception that Evelyn would finally be introduced to Uncle Hyman, and for some of us this promised to be the most interesting event of the day. It didn’t take place, however, for nearly half an hour. According to custom, as soon as all the guests had arrived, Evelyn and Harry, with Fanny and Dr. Rosen, took their places in one corner of Uncle Mike’s big living room, and everyone else filed past in a long line to shake Harry’s hand and kiss Evelyn’s cheek and wish them congratulations.

When I say everyone, I mean of course everyone except Uncle Hyman and Aunt Selma. They were seated together on the most comfortable sofa, in the middle of the room — Uncle Hyman was settled back against the cushions with his arms folded over his chest and his fat cigar sticking from his mouth; Aunt Selma was squeezed into the space that remained, watching Uncle Hyman constantly with her flickering little eyes, jumping to her feel whenever he grunted at her, and scurrying off to fetch him a drink or a sandwich or a match for his cigar. If Evelyn and Harry wanted congratulations front Uncle Hyman, they would have to go to him and get them. And what’s more, none of us found this strange or unusual. In fact, we would have found it much more strange and unusual if we had seen Uncle Hyman standing in line with everybody else.

Finally, the kissing and handshaking were over, and then Aunt Fanny, very flustered and nervous, took Evelyn with one hand and Dr. Rosen with the other, and nodded at Harry to follow behind, and led them all over to Uncle Hyman’s sofa. They stopped in front of Encle Hyman, and Fanny shifted on her feet and sighed a little, and shifted some more, until finally Harry had to step forward and speak out, in a steady voice — maybe a little bit steadier than he felt — “Uncle Hyman, I want you to meet my wife, Evelyn, and her father, Dr. Rosen.”

Evelyn didn’t seem in the least bit nervous, though her manner was somewhat more subdued than usual. She took a step forward, held out her hand, and said, in a small, almost girlish voice, “I’m so glad to meet you.”

Whether or not Uncle Hyman was glad to meet her, he didn’t say right away. For almost a whole minute, he looked Evelyn up and down with his heavy jaw thrust forward and his arms folded over his chest. The expression on his face remained exactly the same— that is, no expression at all — and the smoke appeared regularly from his cigar.

Suddenly he unfolded his arms and shoved out his hand towards Evelyn, though he ignored Dr. Rosen completely. “You’re prettier than they told me,” he said. He covered Evelyn’s little hand in a tight grip. “ How did you get such a pretty girl, Harry?” Encle Hyman’s cigar shifted to the other side of his mouth, and his thick lips curled into something like a smile. “I tell you what, Evelyn, how would you like to sneak away from this guy after the parly, and you and me can make a night of it?”

All around Evelyn, there rose a sigh of relief. Uncle Hyman was in one of his good moods; his business trip must have turned out well. Aunt Fanny smiled placidly, and Aunt Rita giggled, and Harry grinned. But Evelyn didn’t seem at all excited by her good luck. She laughed loudly, the same sharp confident laugh that we all knew quite well by that time. “Well, you’re not as tough as everyone makes out,” she said.

Our laughter calmed down, and we all looked a little uncertainly at Uncle Hyman. But his good humor was evidently indestructible tonight. “Oh, I’m not, am I?” he said. “Wait till you know me better.” Then he reached out and gave Evelyn a loud, hard slap on her thigh. Then he threw back bis head and began to roar with laughter, booming out as I’ve heard him do only one or two other tune’s in my life, while his whole body, from his big heavy feet to the tip of his cigar, shook. Pretty soon, everybody else started laughing, too.

Finally, Uncle Hyman’s roar subsided to a chuckle. “Selma’s been telling me, you’re some kind of a genius or something. Is that right?”

Evelyn lowered her eyes, very pleased. “Oh, now why do people have to tell stories like that —?”

Uncle Hyman interrupted her. “That’s okay. I like smart women. Too damned few of them these days. Especially in this family.” He looked around from Aunt Caroline to Aunt Rita to Aunt Fanny, and ended up with on especially long look at Aunt Selma. Then he turned back to Evelyn. “Okay, Ev, old girl! Go get me a drink, will you?”

Evelyn gushed out that she certainly would, but was he sure he could hold it at his age? Uncle Hyman answered that he damned well could, and would she like to find out what else he could hold at his age? This brought on more laughter, then Evelyn hurried off with Harry to the champagne, and (he rest of us began to talk among ourselves. We talked in low hushed voices, trembling slightly with amazement and bewilderment.

5

IN the months that followed, our amazement grew. Was it possible that Evelyn had been right about Encle Ilyman. and the rest of us were wrong? This was a question that Evelyn discussed with us frequently, after she and Harry got back from their honeymoon to Bermuda, and I must admit that we listened to her now with a good deal more attention. “It’s simply a matter of knowing how to deal with him,” Evelyn said. “Psychology, knowledge of human nature, common sense, a good sense of humor — that’s all you need with Uncle Hyman. Why on earth,” Evelyn asked, “didn’t you tell me what a wonderful man he is? So generous, so kindhearted, so genuinely human. And the stories he tells! Why on earth didn’t you warn me that he was such a marvelous storyteller?” And every time Evelyn and Uncle Hyman met, her opinion of him seemed to be confirmed-. He would become bright and jovial at once, he would make jokes with Evelyn at everybody else’s expense, and he would react to the most blatant interruptions, disagreements, and sarcastic remarks — as long as Evelyn made them —with nothing more deadly than a loud laugh.

There were some of us who still believed that Uncle Hyman’s conduct didn’t go as deep as Evelyn claimed, and didn’t represent a complete upheaval in his nature so much as it did a kind of momentary fancy he had taken to Evelyn — the way a king will take a fancy to a court jester. This point of view was expressed in its extreme form by Aunt Caroline: “Hyman’s just trying to be funny,” she said. “He’s going ill rough all this foolishness with Evelyn because he knows it’ll infuriate the rest of us.” Uncle Stanley’s view was a little bit milder: ”lt’s a fine thing for Hyman,” he said. “He’s found a toy, to amuse himself. And there’s no reason why it shouldn’t take a long time before he gets tired of it.”

Meanwhile, for the first six months, everything went wonderfully with Harry and Evelyn. It was obvious that they were crazy about each other. Harry went around almost constantly in a daze, like an adolescent, and he hardly talked about any other subject except Evelyn. Every motion she made, every word she said, every new thing that happened to her — Harry was ready every morning with a complete report, which he would repeat very seriously, a hundred times during the day, to friends, relatives, people who came to do business with him at Uncle Mike’s office, elevator boys, taxi drivers, cleaning women, in short, anybody at all who was willing to listen. One day the big news was Evelyn’s opinion of the play that she’d seen the night before; another day, it was the way Evelyn cooked the eggs that morning; a third day, it was the contents of a letter Evelyn had received from her father, and her exact reaction to every part of it. After a while, people began to accept these daily bulletins from Harry as a matter of course, to wink behind his back, and even to make a few thinly disguised, sarcastic remarks—in which case, Harry would stop himself in confusion, grin and blush, and join in on the laughter as loud as anyone else. But an hour later, he would be off on the subject of Evelyn again, as solemnly and seriously as before.

Evelyn’s affection for Harry showed itself just as strongly, mainly when the two of them were together in public. Then she would adopt a kind of watchful, protective attitude towards him, as if he were a small boy who didn’t quite know how to take care of himself. She would fuss oxer his appearance, creep up behind him to straighten his collar or to pull a thread off his lapel, informing people all the time what a baby he was, and how she spent most of her time keeping him out of trouble, and what a terrible life he must have led his mother before he got married.

Therefore, as the days went by, the skeptics and scoffers were forced to admit — and not at all grudgingly; we never hold grudges in our family; on the contrary, it’s one of our greatest weaknesses that the slightest change of circumstances is liable to make us rex erse, in one minute, all our deepest and stubbornest opinions — as I say, the skeptics and scoffers began lo admit at last that Evelyn was probably going to make Harry a good wife. I must mention that there was one possible exception to this: I refer to Uncle Stanley, who, whenever the subject was brought up, didn’t exactly come right out and disagree, but contented himself with sinister smirks and inward smiles and mysterious remarks, obviously full of significance, though nobody could figure out what it was.

Meanwhile, Harry and Evelyn xvere making all sorts of important changes in their manner of living. After the honeymoon, they lived with Aunt Fanny for a while, until Evelyn found a small inexpensive apartment on Thirty-fifth Street, near Harry’s office. But this didn’t satisfy her — it was really no more than two small rooms and a kitchenette. What she really wanted — and in fact, il was the ambition of her life at this time was a house in the suburbs. In New Rochelle, for instance, where Marvin and Julia lived. With the money they had received as wedding presents from Uncle Mike and Dr. Rosen and a few others, Evelyn and Harry could just about afford the first year’s rent on a very modest little place, if such a place could be found. So Evelyn spent the first five months of her marriage trying to find it. Her nervous, energetic little figure, and her sharp businesslike voice, soon became familiar in a number of real-estate offices downtown. She was constantly haxmg consultations, examining lists, making phone calls, driving all over New Rochelle in real-estate agents’ cars, flitting and pecking and peering about in a hundred different directions at once.

God knows how she managed it, because at the same time she seemed to dexoto herself just as energetically to all her other activities. She kept house for Harry. She went out with him at night to the theater and concerts (all her life she had dreamed of living in New York, she told us, so she could take advantage of what she called its “cultural facilities”). She joined in on all the family conferences, the bridge parties, the Sunday afternoons at Grandma’s, the birthday celebrations, the Christmas dinner. She became a member of several of Aunt Rita’s favorite charities, and also of Aunt Rita’s weekly discussion group—the Literary Ladies. She gave a book report that was considered to be one of the most brilliant and interesting that the Literary Ladies had ever heard. She turned out pages and pages of poetry. There was one poem, dedicated to the Literary Ladies, which was especially admired. I will quote the first verse only: —

Well, I cannot resist the temptation. 1 must quote the second verse, too.

And yet, in the midst of all this furious creative activity, Evelyn finally found her house.

To be sure, it was a small house — two stories and five rooms — but in exery respect it was exactly what Exelyn wanted. It was the perfect color — gray brick with a red roof and green shutters on the windows — Evelyn had always wanted to live in a house with green shutters; somehow there was something so “homey” and “domestic” about green. Her house also had a small front lawn and a larger back yard. In one corner of the back yard, Evelyn planned to build a big stone oven — that is, Harry would build it — so that they could have outdoor cookouts on the warm summer evenings. Evelyn had a great fondness for outdoor cookouts; what would suburban life be without outdoor cookouts? The greatest charm of the new house, however, was a large porch which ran along one side, and which, if it were done over in glass, could be turned easily into a delightful sun porch. There was nothing like a bright cheery sun porch, Evelyn said, for entertaining your friends in the afternoons, for lounging around with iced drinks, and for serving chicken-salad luncheons. So she gave herself one month to fix up the house the way she wanted it, and announced that she and Harry would positively move in at the end of February, and on the first of March would give a big housewarming party for their family and all their friends.

6

FOR the next month, Evelyn threw herself into the preparations with a fury, an almost superhuman fury, that absolutely amazed us all. The prospect of entertaining the whole family in a house of her own was possibly not the smallest motive for her energy — though I cannot agree with Uncle Stanley that it was solely for the pleasure of giving a housewarming party that Evelyn had made Harry buy the house in the first place, and that after the party was over she would probably start looking around for another house so she could give another housewarming party. Uncle Stanley has a great sense of humor, but sometimes he exaggerates things.

Still, it was pretty clear that no young girl ever looked forward to her first formal dance with greater excitement than Evelyn did to this housewarming. For the whole month, she hardly talked about anything else. She told us how she had always loved to give parties, ever since she was very small, and how she had something of a reputation in St. Louis as a party-giver. Many people, she explained to us, have an idea that giving a party is a simple thing —■ you just invite people and serve refreshments and that’s all there is to it — but these people couldn’t be more mistaken. To give a party the way a party really ought to be given, you had to have ingenuity and imagination and a knowledge of human nature. If there was anything commonplace or ordinary or run-of-the-mill about your party, then you couldn’t consider it to be a success. From the very beginning — the moment your guests opened up their invitations — to the very end — the moment they kissed you good-bye at the door—they had to be struck by the absolute unusualness of your party. They had to remember your party for the rest of their lives; otherwise it wasn’t worth giving at all.

Evelyn flattered herself that there were large numbers of people in St. Louis who wouldn’t easily forget the parties she had given. But she assured us that this housewarming party would be the most memorable of all. She was making plans, she said — and when any of us asked her to give us at least a hint as to what these plans might be, she would answer by laughing coyly, raising her eyebrows, and rolling her eyes mysteriously. Whatever her plans were, we knew they must have been very special. I never saw her once during that month when the color wasn’t high in her cheeks, when her little eyes weren’t bright, when she wasn’t completely incapable of sitting still for two minutes in a row.

Well, I won’t talk about this particular period of time any longer. To be absolutely frank, it pains me to do so, in the light of what happened afterwards. So let me hurry on to the rest of my story, and get to the end of it as quickly as possible.

Before I do, however, it occurs to me that there is one important question which I must try and answer. It was the question which bothered the whole family at the time, and which, I’m afraid, was never cleared up to anybody’s satisfaction. The point is simply this: Evelyn’s doing what she did may be explained on the grounds that she was a newcomer to the family, that she had been deceived by a series of circumstances, and so didn’t really know what Uncle Hyman was capable of. But what about Harry? He was no newcomer to the family. He certainly had reason to know, as well as any of us, what Uncle Hyman was capable of. Why, then, during that hectic month — as Evelyn was busily making her plans and plunging headlong into what can only be described as disaster — why didn’t Harry do something about it? Why didn’t he see what was going on, and give Evelyn a talking-to, and put a stop to it before the damage could be done? The whole family, afterwards, tried to answer this question, and every individual member had his or her individual theory.

Aunt Fanny, of course, was the most generous of all. Poor Harry just didn’t know what Evelyn was going to do, she kept it a secret from him as much as she did from everybody else. Some of us wondered how a girl like Evelyn—whose strong point, after all, wasn’t the ability to keep her thoughts to herself—could have gone on for a whole month, making such elaborate arrangements, without once submitting them for her husband’s approval. But we kept our doubts to ourselves; poor Fanny was in a bad enough state as it was.

Aunt Caroline’s theory resembled Fanny’s superficially, but in spirit it was absolutely different. Yes, Aunt Caroline agreed that Evelyn deliberately kept her plans a secret from Harry — because, when the time came, she wanted to stun and humiliate him. Her motives all along were malice and revenge. Having married Harry for his money — as Aunt Caroline told us in the first place, and we might well keep that in mind — she was now taking her revenge, because Harry turned out not to have any money.

Uncle Mike disagreed with both the ladies. Sure, Harry knew about it ahead of time — it was foolish to pretend that he didn’t — but after all (Uncle Mike gave a quiet, meaningful laugh) Harry was Harry: the sweetest guy in the world, but let’s not kid ourselves, not the brightest guy in the world.

Uncle Stanley, on the other hand, held exactly the opposite opinion. Harry had more of a knack for sizing up a situation than we gave him credit for, and this whole business was the proof of it. Evelyn had told Harry all about her plans ahead of time, and he had sized them up immediately, and he had let Evelyn go through with them anyway, for reasons of his own. What these reasons might have been, Uncle Stanley would only suggest with a wink of his eye.

These, generally speaking, were the various family theories. They are all of interest, and perhaps each one of them contains a certain grain of truth, but I for one was not able at the time, nor am I now, to agree with any of them. The truth of the matter, it seems to me, is much simpler and less ingenious. Harry is neither very stupid nor very shrewd — he both did and did not know what Evelyn was going to do. Whatever he might have known, it could hardly have caused him much alarm, because— being, like most human creatures, unable to foresee the future— he could have had no idea what a fuss this housewarming party was going to stir up. If he did feel any traces of alarm, they were most certainly calmed down by his infinite faith in Evelyn’s cleverness, intelligence, and knowledge of human nature. And whatever uneasiness was left over, we may be sure was quickly taken care of by his affection for Evelyn, which would prevent an easygoing, optimistic sort of person like Harry from admitting even the possibility that she could do something to make herself unhappy. At any rate, this is, as far as I can see, the only plausible explanation of Harry’s action — or rather, his lack of action.

Which brings me directly to the first of March, and the evening of the party.

7

IT BEGAN well. With the excitement and hysteria that took over later on, some of the family have tended to forget this fact. But I think, in all fairness to Evelyn, we must admit it: her party began well. The house looked really beautiful. It stood on top of a slight hill, at the end of a row of houses, all much the same size and shape. When your car got halfway up the hill, this was the first house that you saw — and at seven o’clock in the evening, with a kind of gray twilight glow cast over it, and the two thin, straight trees on either side of it framing it like a calendar picture, the house really gave a wonderfully snug and cozy appearance. Just the appearance that Evelyn wanted it to give. “It may not be any palace,” she was always saying, “but it’s our own little nest.”

She greeted her guests at the door of her nest, and she looked, appropriately enough, very birdlike — with a feathery blue dress, and her little head darting from side to side, and her smile flickering on and off. Occasionally she would chirp a word or two at Harry, who stood by her side, when he wasn’t running into the living room to set up more chairs, or into the kitchen for more ice, or upstairs to put away the ladies’ wraps. The arrival of the guests was made particularly pleasant for Evelyn by the fact that each new person gave her a new compliment on the invitations which she had sent out. That same morning, every one of us— though we had all been invited informally a long time ago — had received an invitation, a large piece of paper, printed up in square black letters, with a dateline, and a weather report, and a format just like a newspaper. The name of the newspaper was “The Shapiro Daily Blast,” and there was a big headline, reading: —

“EVELYN AND HARRY GIVE HOUSEWARMING; MAYOR DECLARES CITY-WIDE HOL1 DAY”

And underneath it was a sort of invitation newspaper article, telling the names of all the guests, and written in a very cute and clever style.

By seven-thirty, the living room on the first floor was filled with people, and some of them even overflowed onto the sun porch. Evelyn had invited over forty guests — she was planning to serve a huge buffet supper — and already thirty-five had shown up. In addition to the family, there were several young couples — young wives that Evelyn knew from the neighborhood, or young husbands that Harry know from the office. Of these, the only ones that I had ever met before were Mr. and Mrs. Norman Feinstein, who lived three houses away. Mr. Feinstein was a thin, slightly built young man with a prematurely bald head; Harry mentioned that he was in plastics. Mrs. Feinstein was a big, redheaded woman with large arms and bosom, and a shrill voice. She was interested in sculpture— that was her hobby, she said; she had just finished modeling her husband’s head — and that was mainly what she talked about. There was another young couple, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Griggs. He was an old friend of Harry’s, from Columbia, who had just moved to New York to work for an advertising agency. He was a big, broad-shouldered man, built like a football player, with large handsome features and bright teeth, his wife was a cute little blonde, who didn’t say anything all evening. On the whole, the Griggses were about the most handsome couple in the room. They were Gentiles.

There were a number of other strangers at the party, but I will mention only one more, a certain Mr. Monty Prigman, a big stout good-looking man in his forties, with a fair, clipped mustache that he kept stroking with the little finger of his left hand. In fact, he stood in a corner most of the time and stroked his mustache and smiled at the attractive ladies and, if anybody came over to him, he told them off-color jokes. In the confusion and noise and the crush of people, I’m afraid that I never was able to find out exactly who Mr. Prigman was, who invited him, or indeed what connection he had with our family. He was a bachelor, and somebody’s business acquaintance, and that’s all I ever learned, to this day.

8

BY a quarter of eight, the confusion of which I have spoken had really grown to immense proportions. It is my experience that there is no more certain way of producing a large volume of noise than by gathering together, in one place and at the same time, all the members of one family. Everybody immediately remembers a hundred and seventy-five things to say to everybody else, questions to ask, gossip to repeat, jokes to tell, old differences of opinion (put aside and forgotten since the last family gathering) to take up again. This is especially true of our family, because — by an accident of birth and heredity — most of us have been endowed with unusually loud and piercing voices. And it is truer still, I may say, whenever drinks are being served.

Evelyn had set up a small bar in a corner of the living room, and a fat, cheerful colored butler, hired for the evening, was making cocktails of all kinds, as the guests called out their preferences. This bar was the center of the clamor. People tugged and pulled and pushed in front of it, and screamed out the names of cocktails in loud voices, oven when they were standing so far across the room that the colored butler couldn’t possibly hear them. It was very difficult indeed to concentrate for any length of time on a sustained conversation, because your attention was constantly being distracted by someone shouting “Bourbon Old-Fashioned!" or “Martini, not too dry!" right in your ear.

Nevertheless, everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was an almost steady stream of laughing and giggling from the women, and roaring and guffawing from the men. Glasses clinked, and liquor spilled on the floor. Uncle Stanley was all over the room, hopping from one group to another, sticking his head in and making a funny remark, then hopping on. He was drinking a little too much maybe, and once I noticed Uncle Mike draw him off to a corner and tell him something in a low voice. Put Uncle Stanley just laughed and slapped Uncle Mike on the back and gave some answer that made Uncle Mike turn red.

Meanwhile, Evelyn was still standing at the open door, where she had been greeting her guests. Only, for the last ten minutes, there had been no new guests for her to greet. Yet she continued to stand at the door, with her head pushed forward intently and her smile flickering on and off. After a while, if you listened closely to the noise of the party, you could delect a slight undertone of restlessness beneatb the gaiety— I might almost say, the hysterical gaiety— of the crowd. You watched people, and they seemed completely absorbed in their drinks and their conversation, and all of a sudden they would look up from both and shoot a quick glance at Evelyn. Certain vague whisperings and murmurings began to mingle with thu shouts and the guffaws. Somebody I think it was that big, loud Mrs. Feinstein—came right out in a shrill voice and said, “Good heavens, but I’m hungry!” Aunt Fanny went over to Evelyn at the door and whispered something in her ear, but Evelyn’s only answer was to press her lips together and shake her head.

And then, a second later, before anything could come of this situation—indeed, before most of ihe guests even realized that there was a situation at all

—a big smile came over Evelyn’s face, she lifted her chin, held out her hand, and sailed through the doorway. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Uncle Hyman and Aunt Selma had pulled up in front of the house in their long black Cadillac, and the uniformed chauffeur was holding open the door for them. In a few minutes, supper would be served.

“Well, here you are at last!" Evelyn cried, starting her sentence before Uncle Hyman and Aunt Selma were halfway up the front walk. “Now, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, getting here so late?”

Uncle Hyman seemed to be in a good mood; his smile was very fat and satisfied, and when he took Evelyn’s arm he gave it a pinch. “That’s okay,”he said. “People should wait around for the guest of honor.”

“Guest of honor, I like that!” Evelyn said with that high, coy laugh. “What makes you think you’re so important, anyway?”

Uncle Hyman chuckled. “I notice you didn’t start eating yet.” He was in the foyer now, with Aunt Selma, white and clinging, behind him. Evelyn shut the front door; there were still a few guests who hadn’t arrived vet, but they would have to attract attention as best they could.

“So this is it,” Uncle Hyman said, planting his feet apart and grunting around his cigar, but he made no further comment.

It’s lovely, Evelyn, dear,” Aunt Selma said, in a low, furtive whisper.

Uncle Hyman shook hands with Harry, who as usual was a little bit paralyzed in front of him. Then Evelyn took Uncle Hyman by the arm and moved him forward to the living room, crying out as she went, “I’d like you to meet my Uncle Hyman, everybody! I don’t believe you know the Griggses, Uncle Hyman. Mrs. Levinson, let me introduce you to Uncle Hyman. Look, everybody, this is Uncle Hyman!” — and interrupting her cries by little asides directed at Uncle Hyman alone, “Won’t you sit down, Uncle Hyman? You must be all tired out after your drive. Will you have a drink before supper, Uncle Hyman? Harry, go get Uncle Hyman a drink. Please sit down, Uncle Hyman, right here on the couch. Norman, dear, make room for Uncle Hyman on the couch, will you? As a matter of fact, Elsie’s just been calling for you, Norman, dear, why don’t you go over and see what she wants. Are you comfortable, Uncle Hyman? Can I get you an ash tray? Hurry up, somebody, an ash tray for Uncle Hyman! — Oh, well, that’s all right, Uncle Hyman, the carpet can’t stay spotless forever.”

Uncle Hyman settled back on the couch, with Aunt Selma hovering over him, and for a while there was a regular procession of people coming up to him with offerings of liquor, ash trays, sandwiches. The mysterious Mr. Prigman came out of his corner, stroking his mustache, and pushed himself forward. “Prigman,” he said, holding out his hand, but it never got to Uncle Hyman, because Aunt Rita swooped in front of it to give Uncle Hyman a kiss.

A little while later, Evelyn clapped her hands together and announced that supper was ready. It was all spread out on the dining-room table, and the guests were directed to go into the dining room, get themselves paper plates, fill them up with food, and come back to the living room to eat. The diningroom doors were thrown open, the crowd started to crush through. “Sit where you are, Uncle Hyman,” Evelyn said. “Harry will fill up a plate for you.”

For the next hour and a half, the guests were busy devouring Evelyn’s supper. This was the crowning success of the evening. The slight delay had made everybody eager to enjoy the food, but not so eager that they couldn’t appreciate it. The sumptuous display of meats, fruits, and vegetables that met their eyes on the dining-room table produced sighs and gasps from every corner. There were platters of roast beef with cherries, duck with sliced oranges, ham with raisin sauce. There were salad bowls filled with lettuce, celery, tomatoes, and stuffed eggs. Every egg was stuffed in a different color, with a different design. In the middle of the table there was a great big silver gourd — a wedding present from Aunt Selma and Uncle Hyman — filled to the brim with potato chips. On a sideboard, next to the table, was a barrel with a spout, and out of the spout came ice-cold beer.

In the first stages of the eating, the noise calmed down a little. Rut pretty soon, as the stacks of meat and potato chips grew lower and lower, and the beer flowed faster and faster, the noise rose up again, louder than ever Uncle Stanley was doing balancing tricks with his paper plate. Aunt Rita sat in a corner and laughed and laughed. The woman, Mrs. Feinstein, was describing, with sweeping gest ures, one of her stat ues Aunt Caroline was screaming at the top of her voice at Grandma, who sat in an easy chair with her plate shivering on her knees. Evelyn moved around the room, from one group to another, but she never stayed away very long from Uncle Hyman and Aunt Selma. She watched Uncle Hyman very carefully as he ate his food, and every time he seemed to be running short of something, she pounced on him with a cry, “Can I get you something, Uncle Hyman? What an appetite you have, aren’t you ashamed of yourself! Here, let me get you some more!”

Well, I could go on and on about the delights of that buffet supper, but I must be firm with myself. The supper finally came to an end, leaving behind it only the memory of its glory, only the vague atmosphere of joy— an atmosphere which, in the dismal reality of everything that followed, soon came to seem like something that happened only in a dream.

9

THE supper came to an end — all, that is, but the dessert. Evelyn had been making all sorts of hints and subtle allusions to the dessert, since the beginning of the evening, and now — as the waitress cleared away the empty bowls and platters — Evelyn stood up in the center of the living room, raised her hands for silence, and announced that the dessert would appear in one second.

In one second, it did appear, carried by the waitress through the swinging door from the kitchen, across the dining room, and into the living room. It was a cake, but a cake such as I had never before, and have never since, had the pleasure of seeing. It was a big cake, about two feet long and one foot high, made in exactly the shape of Harry and Evelyn’s new house. There were the same gray brick walls — made out of coffee ice cream — the same green shutters — made out of pistachio nuts — the same red roof—raspberry icing — and two small, brown sugar candles, for the chimney stacks. It was a masterpiece of realistic art, and after the first stunned hush, the applause, the cries, the catcalls were deafening. I must confess that I myself was not the least enthusiastic member of the crowd, but clapped my hands together so vigorously that my palms were red for twenty-four hours afterwards.

The waitress set the cake down on the card table in the center of the living room, and then I noticed the one odd, incongruous touch. From the windows of the cake — of the house, I ought to say — clusters of thin red ribbon were dangling. There must have been forty or more strands of ribbon, and to the end of each stranrl was attached a small, white scrap of paper. I was just wondering what these ribbons could possibly be, when Evelyn began to make another speech.

“Does everybody like the cake?” she cried.

There was no doubt about the answer.

“Well, there are more surprises to come,” Evelyn said. “Before we take this beautiful creation apart and eat it, I want you to know that there are things inside of it of personal interest to every single one of you.” She pointed to the cluster of ribbons sticking out of the windows. “Do you see these ribbons? On the end of each of these ribbons is a slip of paper with a name written on it. On the other end of the ribbon is something else—something special, that I know you’ll all enjoy. All you have to do is pull the ribbon with your name on it, and out of the window will come —”She stopped talking and smiled around the room.

“What? What? Out will come what?” Assorted cries, largely from the ladies.

Evelyn laughed. “Wait and see!” She clapped her hands together. “Now, who wants to go first?” There was a silence. “Come on, come on,” Evelyn cried, “isn’t anybody here a sport?”

At ibis, Uncle Stanley rose rather unsteadily to his feet. “Never let it be said —” he began. “That

is, never let it be said —” lie raised one finger in the air. “The pride of the Shapiros!” He stepped forward. Evelyn located his ribbon for him, and then, in the midst of silence, Uncle Stanley gave it a yank.

On the other end of the ribbon was another small slip of paper. We looked at one another, puzzled. “Go on, open it up,” Evelyn said. Uncle Stanley took the slip of paper off the ribbon and unfolded

it. lie blinked down at it for several seconds.

“Go on,” Evelyn said, nudging his elbow. “Read

it out loud.”

A funny thing happened. Uncle Stanley didn’t answer Evelyn for a moment, but instead he looked down at the spot on his elbow where she had touched him. And then, a peculiar twisted sort of grin came over his face, a grin that made him look very ugly and wrinkled

Evelyn kept on laughing. “What’s the matter? Why won’t you let the rest of us in on it?”

Uncle Stanley recovered himself immediately. His old cheerful, sarcastic smile appeared again, and he spoke out in his rapid, breezy manner: “I’d be delighted. Ladies and gentlemen, a poem. A poem from my charming new niece, dedicated to myself. The title of it, appropriately, is ‘Stanley.’” He cleared his throat and lifted the paper.

Uncle Stanley stopped reading and lowered his hand slowly. For a moment, he swayed a little on his feet and smiled around the room. Then he gave a little laugh and moved back to his chair in the corner. Nobody said a word for a long time after Uncle Stanley was seated. The only person in the room with any expression on her face was Evelvn, who was smiling broadly, confident of the applause that was going to follow.

Fortunately, the silence was broken before Evelyn’s smile could waver. It was broken by Uncle Hyman, who began to nod his head and give out a deep, satisfied chuckle. “Pretty good, pretty good!” he said. He was joined immediately, and automatically, by Aunt Selma, with her high thin little laugh that was hardly distinguishable from weeping. And a moment later, Harry’s college friend, Fred Griggs — opening his mouth for the first time since he arrived — boomed out in a loud, hearty voice, “My God, 1 hat’s damned clever, isn’t it? Pretty damned clever!” Then he slapped his knee, rubbed his hands together, and clapped his wife on the back.

By this time, the family had got hold of itself, and seeing that there was nothing much else to do especially with strangers in our midst, as it were — we all began to laugh, too. Not quite so enthusiastically perhaps, but politely enough to be convincing.

Evelyn’s smile grew broader. Her surprise had produced the effect that she wanted, and she kept repeating over and over again, with a girlish kind of squeal, “Well, I’m glad you like it! It’s just a little game, I thought you’d all be pleased. A little joke. Well, I’m certainly glad you like it —”

10

WHEN the laughter had died down a bit, Evelyn raised her hands again, and flushing with joy and excitement, she cried out, “There’s one for everybody— there’s a little poem for everybody! Now who wants to be next?”

The silence was complete and instantaneous.

Evelyn looked around. “Oh, come on, let’s have a volunteer. What’s the matter? Who’s afraid of a little poetry?”

Aunt Fanny gave a deep sigh and a shake of her head. “Well, I suppose it might as well be me,” she said.

“No! Me!” Aunt Caroline’s voice cut in sharply. She stepped forward and stood in front of Evelyn with her hands on her hips, her long neck stretched forward, and her eyes glittering. “ I’ll take my turn now, if you don’t mind. I’m very curious to see what Evelyn has to say about me.”

“Nothing that isn’t nice,” said Evelyn, laughing and giving the end of a ribbon to Aunt Caroline. Aunt Caroline gave it a vicious tug, and her slip of paper came flying out. She opened it up, glared down at it, and read out in a loud, defiant voice:—

Somebody in the room gave a giggle. Aunt Caroline stopped reading and glared in the direction of the giggler. Then she went on reading again, even more loudly: —

Aunt Caroline clamped her teeth together on the last word, lifted her head, and leveled her hard gaze at everyone in the room, individually and collectively. Then she looked down at the slip of paper in her hand. “ Well! ” she said. “Well! Well! Very nice! Very nice, indeed! Well, well, well!” She folded the paper up, clenching her fist over il, raised her chin, and with a short, majestic sniff, she marched back to her chair.

Before she got there, Uncle Hyman’s chuckle filled the room. “Pretty good. Pretty good.” There were some other random chuckles, but they were not from members of the family. The family made very little effort this time to join in on the hilarity. Evelyn, however, didn’t seem to notice at all. She was all wrapped up in her game, like a little child, laughing and getting red in the face, and finally—as we all expected, dreaded even crying out, “Who’s next? Who’s next? Who’s going to go next ?” She clapped her hands together gaily. “Oh, really now! It won’t be so painful! You see how easy it’s been so far! Now, who wants to give himself up for the slaughter? What about you, Uncle Mike? I’ve got a wonderful one for you! Now don’t put on that gloomy expression,

I know you’re just dying to read it. What about you. Aunt Rita? Why, I don’t know what’s the matter with you all. Back in St. Louis, nobody over acted this way. Why, I’ve never seen such a shy bunch of stick-in-the-muds.” She gave a tinkling laugh, and suddenly she pointed her finger straight at me. “What about you? Wouldn’t you like to hear what I’ve written about you?”

In all modesty, I think I can safely say that, considering my natural shock and horror, I handled myself as well as could be expected. I did the only thing which any man could have done under the circumstances. I lowered my head and made no answer.

“All right, then,” Evelyn cried. “If nobody’s going to volunteer, I’ll just have to pick somebody myself.”

Every head in the room was lifted, and for a second everybody held their breath.

Evelyn moved her head from side to side, with her eyes blinking and a coy smile on her face. At last, she stopped moving her head. “Uncle Hyman,” she said. “I think it’s your turn now.”

I think it will be impossible to describe the expression which came over all our faces at this moment. The faces of the members of the family, I mean, because the outsiders couldn’t possibly have had any appreciation of what was happening. On the contrary, they all seemed quite eager to hoar the next poem, and even rather amused by the game. But in the hearts of those of us who belong to the family all sorts of complicated feelings were lighting among themselves. Each one of us felt a deep sense of relief—because we were not the next to be chosen — and at the same time, a deep sense of dread — because Uncle Hyman was. Hut this only begins to describe what we felt.

Uncle Hyman’s face told nothing, as usual. His lips were parted in a slight smile, which on closer inspection hardly seemed to be a smile at all. His eyes were narrowed so that he might have been on the verge of going to sleep. He seemed to be looking at Evelyn — but he also seemed to he looking over her, and around her, and straight through her, as if she wasn’t there at all. His voice, when he finally spoke, was very calm and quiet, almost flat.

“Okay with me,” he said.

“Well, come up now and pull out your ribbon,” Evelyn said. “Or would you rather I pulled it out for you, Uncle Hyman? I think I’d like to pull it out for you. You sit where you are, and don’t disturb yourself, I’m really looking forward to reading this one myself. I have a little confession to make. This is my favorite of them all. My masterpiece, so to speak.”

A slight shiver seemed to go through all of us at once.

Evelyn pulled the ribbon, and out came the slip of paper. She opened it up, looked around the room with a smile in which coyness and gaiety and triumph and even a little hit of mischievousness were all mixed up together, then, in the high trembling, dramatic voice that she reserved for poetry, especially her own, she began to read: —

Evelyn paused to smile at Uncle Hyman. “There’s still another verse,” she said. “Would you like to hear the second verse?” Uncle Hyman didn’t answer. His face was obscured for a moment in a cloud of smoke from his cigar. Without waiting, Evelyn lowered her head and went on reading: —

But Evelyn never finished reading the poem. She was interrupted by Uncle Hyman’s voice, still very calm and quiet. “All right, that’s enough.”

He was talking to Aunt Selma, but his words made Evelyn stop short.

“That’s enough, I said,’ Uncle Hyman went on, rising to his feet and still looking at Aunt Selma. “I told you we shouldn’t have come.”

Aunt Selma stood up, too. Her face was almost white. She twisted her hands together, looked quickly at Evelyn, then back at Uncle Hyman, and finally brought out the words: “But, Hyman—’

“i told you it was a damned fool idea,” he said, not raising Ins voice in the slightest, “doing to a party given by that idiot woman. W hat kind of a parly could she give, that idiot woman?

“But, Hyman —”

Uncle Hyman grunted and started towards the foyer. “Come on, come on,” he said. “I warned you what to expect, from mentally incompetent people.”

Aunt Selma turned her head in several directions,

then hurried after Uncle Hyman. They disappeared into the Cover, and a moment later the front door opened. The last we heard of them was Encle Hyman’s voice, just as flat and calm as before, “So next time, we’ll do what I say, I guess — And the front door shut.

11

FOR a great many minutes afterwards, nobody s;iid a ihing, and certainly nobody looked at Evelyn. Though that, I must admit, is only conjecture on my part, because I for one was staring as hard as I could at Mr. Prigman, who stood in his corner and stroked his mustache madly.

And then, Evelyn spoke. “It’s only a game, she said. “You pull out the ribbon, and there’s a litlle poem for everybody on the other end. A diflerent poem for everybody. I was up till two o’clock last night, finishing the last one. Back in St. Louis She broke off with a little wave of her hand. The suggestion of a smile was still on her face. “ It’s all in fun,” she said. “There’s even a poem that I wrote for myself. I was going to read il the last one. I even wrote a poem for myself — And suddenly, to ihe embarrassment of every one of us, Evelyn’s whole face crinkled up, her eyes got red, and in a low gulping voice, she began to sob.

She just stood in front of us for a while, sobbing quietly. It was one of those moments when nobody knows what to do, or what to say, or even what to think.

And then at last, from an unexpected source, rescue came. Ever since the beginning of the game, Harry had been standing next to the living-room sofa with a pale look on his face, and occasionally giving a tug at his collar. Now, all of a sudden, he seemed to come to life. He stepped over to Evelyn in two quick strides, put his arms around her so that his body was between her and the rest of us, and said in a quiet, steady voice, “Come on, baby. I’ll take you upstairs.”

And with his arms still around her, and whispering in her ear all the time, Harry walked Evelyn slowly across the room and out to the foyer.

Needless to say, the party broke up a few minutes later. The family said good night to the strangers in very low tones, and in even lower tones to one another, and everybody went their separate ways. There was only one little bit of awkwardness. Poor Grandma, whose hearing isn’t what it used to be, became all confused when everybody got up to leave, and she began to cry out in her high, piping voice, “What is? What is? Where s Harry? Where’s Harry?” But Aunt Caroline took her by the arm and hustled her out ol the house as quickly ns possible.

And now I find that there is very little more for me to tell. Evelyn and Harry are still living in New Rochelle. Evelyn has apparently given up her hobby of writing poetry, but of course she is very busy with her domestic affairs. The first baby is expected in September. Uncle Ilyman and Aunt Selma go on much as usual. They never visit at Evelyn’s house, however, nor do they go to any of the family parties at which there is a chance that Evelyn might be present. Which means, of course, that they don’t go to any of the family parties at all. W hich, if you ask my opinion, probably seems like very little of a hardship to Uncle Hyman.

As for the rest of us, we go on much as usual, loo. We attend lo our own business, in our offices or our homes, during the week, and on Sunday afternoons we gather together at Grandma’s. We discuss the news of the day. We argue about politics. We tell stories about Uncle Hyman. The story of that evening at cousin Evelyn’s house has become, I’m afraid, one of the most popular. Family opinion, of course, is divided. One extreme is represented by Aunt Caroline, who declares that it s the biggest disgrace in the family’s history, and we’ll never be able to live it down. The other extreme is represented by Encle Stanley. “I’m not trying to show’ that certain something called charm,’ he says, “but I tell you frankly, I wouldn’t trade that evening for all the other evenings in my life!”

My own point of view lies somewhere between the two.