Carnival of the Animals

DOUGLAS O. SPETTIGUE

I STARTED another story once, when I was alone, but all I got written was the beginning because Willson was only away for the one night. That was just after we were married and I was trying to please Willson and not thinking of the future; but he thought it was a good beginning so now that he is going to be away longer, here I go again.

Of course the first one seems silly now. I wrote it — started to write it — while I was listening to Julie Andrews and it was sort of my own version of learning to say “The rain in Spain. . . .” But I did not have an ending for it because Willson gave up teaching me.

So this is the sequel to a story that was never written, a finale for an unfinished symphony. No,

I shouldn’t say that because it is not final. Nothing really happened; I mean. I’m sure nothing is changed. In fact, this is not a story about a happening at all. It is just a little something . . . about Willson, I guess. Or not exactly about Willson, but about our housewarming, with our Wedgwood and my little china animals mixed in.

Now that I have told you what my story is about, I shall proceed to tell you my story. Whenever I ask Willson how to start he always says the same thing: start at the beginning and stop at the ending and have a middle in between. And every time I ask him. “How do I know what beginning to start at?" he just laughs. So I shall start at us getting our little apartment and stop at my Wedgwood demitasses getting broken and put Jack and Dolly and the housewarming in between.

The first thing we had in the apartment, except for Willson’s desk, was the bookcase. Right away when I saw the waist-high partition at the top of the stairs T said, “Won’t that be perfect for my animals!” But Willson had been through the apartment before and he said it was the obvious place for bookshelves. Of course he was right and they do look very nice. I should not have said bookcase because they are shelves, just three boards between bricks and a half shelf on top to look artistic. Willson bought the boards and sandpapered them and painted them white, and as soon as the top sides were dry we put his books in. He was going to put books on the very top but it was a bit shaky so I got it for the demitasses and put my little animals in a row on the partition.

The first thing Jack said when he saw it was, “Jeeze, Willy, you got taken on your lumber.”because the boards are warped a bit as you can see from the top shelf especially. But it was rather rough to mention it because nobody likes to be told they have been taken, least of all men who are very clever. I put that bit in because it is a good introduction to Jack.

Now I have come to the middle already because Jack was only here the once and that was the housewarming which was to be the middle of my story. So I shall conclude this part. Anyway, the only other thing to mention about moving in was that Willson’s desk arrived before we did. We had to put it in the bedroom because we have only three rooms at present but eventually he hopes to have a study. Willson says good living is as much a duty as high thinking. That is why we waited to buy imported living-room and dining-room suites even though they are crowded together just now. There is supposed to be a connection between what you think and what you have. So we have a couch and chairs in chocolate and turquoise, lamps and incidental cushions in scarlet and tangerine. The bricks are buff and the bookshelves white like the top of the partition. All this doesn’t matter to the story except that Will’s desk reminded me of it, and the desk was all we had to start with besides the bookshelves.

I’M ALL mixed up already because I didn’t start in the right place. It doesn’t make sense to say I have Wedgwood demitasses in one breath and silly little china animals in the next unless you know that we got the Wedgwood after we were married and the animals are mine from before. Jack belongs to Will’s past and Dolly to mine.

See, Dolly and I used to work together, in the same office in Toronto. We were not particular friends but we talked at coffee break and occasionally made up a foursome. And Mr. Mason was our boss. One day he gave me a letter to someone who turned out to be Willson about him giving extra lessons to Mr. Mason’s boy: Mr. Mason was nice, really nice: he’d do anything for you. For instance, he got me to night school and was very patient with my shorthand. So after I had typed this letter he said, “Bet you didn’t think I knew any professors, did you?” And I said no, I didn’t, because he wasn’t the type. This is all beginning again so I shall just skip through it. Anyway, we were over at Mr. Mason’s one night at a house party. He has a gorgeous place, and Willson was there, being very intellectual and looking like a fish out of water. Later on we were playing ping-pong in the ree room. Willson didn’t know how to play so he just sat and watched us and we got more and more embarrassed.

First he watched Dolly who is tall and has a good figure and a long reach, and then me who am — is? — only live feet and have to hop around more. We kept asking him if he wanted to play and he kept saying no and we played until Mr. Mason came down to say there was going to be hypnotism upstairs and we went up to sec that. Willson came over and sat by me so we had our first conversation there. He said I’d be a good subject but I said I’d want to know what people were doing to me when I was under. He laughed. He was always laughing at me when we were first going together.

The funny part is, I didn’t like him at first. He wouldn’t let himself go. you know, as though it was beneath his professor’s dignity to dirty his hands or sweat. But after we’d been out a couple of times I decided he was just shy. I was still afraid of him because he knew everything and I was so ignorant, until I found out I could make him blush and then we got along much better.

To finish up this part, we got married and right away moved out of Toronto because Will was dissatisfied there and moved into this apartment. We slept on the floor for weeks until some furniture came, which brings up something I learned about professors: they like nice things but they do not have very much money. That is partly why I am writing this story. We could not afford a bed until nearly Christmas because Will paid four hundred dollars for one of these modern Danish sofas that are nice and light but you cannot sleep two on them. And we were going to go to all sorts of plays and concerts and musical things so I would have a broader outlook but now we cannot afford to. We were supposed to travel in the summers because Will gets four months holidays and this year we were going to New York, but it turns out those four months are a study period for next year, so . . . Still, we have been to two or three shows and the opera when it came to the arena, and Willson has told me a lot about the drama and we have bought some pretty records which makes me realize how much there is to learn. Willson says I have come a long way so I guess I am more fortunate than most.

THE second part is about the housewarming. There are so many things that you need to know to understand. I keep trying to put them in and then I forget where I am. Well, Jack was Will’s friend in Toronto. They used to go to school together but Jack never developed his gift so he just has a job. This is what Will said when Jack called and said he wanted to come and see us — he just invited himself Will said: “I want you to he tolerant of Jack for my sake, if he seems a bit silly. He has never matured, that’s his trouble. He’s attractive and — well, a playboy, if you know what I mean. I’ve always kept a paternal eye on him.”

Jack arrived all playboy, sport-shirted and sandaled, carrying a shy seriousness that broke into a grin like the sun bursting through when you looked at him. And all the trimmings, from tennis racquet to a cardboard carton of dance records that he dumped with his overnight bag on the sidewalk while he greeted Will, met me, praised our little place, and showed off his car. It is a beautiful car, a cream-colored hard-top with sporty red interior. I told Jack I would give anything to drive it and right away he said, would I like to go for a spin so off we went, Jack lounging beside me, not worrying about a thing, and Willson leaning over my shoulder from the back seat and saying, “Can you feel the road, dear?" till I could have screamed at him.

I took it out to the clover leaf and Jack just grinned when I swung on to Number 401. Willson said, “We don’t want to be long. Jack’s bags are on the sidewalk at home.” Jack said, “It’s shady there, isn’t it, Willy?”

Willson said, “The people downstairs will think I’m crazy, leaving those things outside.”

“Is that what they’ll think, Willy?” Jack has a way of answering that would be maddening in anybody else.

“We’d better go back,” I said. There was no place for miles to turn around.

Willson asked what was in the overnight bag.

“Just my stamp collection,” Jack said. Of course Willson had to say he did not know Jack was a philatelist and back came Jack with his innocent little, “Didn’t you know that, Willy?” Then he asked me if I had any stamps and I couldn’t help it, I got the giggles. Willson said, “Take it easy,” because I was doing about seventy. Jack gave me a sign and I slowed right down to forty. Will sat back and sulked then so Jack said, “Move this thing,” and I shoved it up to ninety. Ever feel glorious!

“Do you know any nice girls?” Jack asked me. I said no, that we had not had many people in and really had not got acquainted with anybody. Will came to life then and said Jack already knew all the single girls. Jack swore he was as pure as a little lamb. Then he asked me again, “Don’t you really know any girls?”

So we ended up driving all the way to Toronto just the way we were. We had a terrible time finding Dolly until Willson came out of his sulk and found her for us. She had been swimming and her hair was straight and her face was dry. She looked older than I remembered, and not so peppy as I had told Jack she was. I was afraid he wouldn’t like her. But he was the perfect gentleman for the time and Will fixed it up with her mother and back we all came. This time I rode with Willson. Halfway home he whispered to me, “How do you plan to accommodate these two?” I had not given it a thought.

“You and Jack will have to sleep on the floor,” I said.

Willson said, “Thank you.”

I started out to write a story about how the demitasses got broken and now I do not know where I am. I have not even put in about the housewarming which was to be the middle part. Or maybe I have, because it was not official at all, just having Jack in for Saturday night and then adding Dolly and having the four of us there together in our three little rooms. I call it the housewarming because as soon as Jack arrived things started to warm up and they got warmer by the hour.

Jack asked me if Dolly would take a drink. I said I supposed she would only Willson and I did not and Willson might not approve. Jack said, “Is that right, Honey?” because Will had called me that once, and he grinned like a little boy playing with firecrackers. Next thing I knew he was taking a bottle of gin from his bag.

We played records after dinner. Ours are more expensive than Jack’s and very la-di-da. Jack has some terrific dance records, for instance a Glenn Miller original that is so smooth you think you are dreaming, and a medley for people in love. Our guests were getting on very well by this time. They had gone off to get some mix, they said, and came back quite chummy, with a present for me.

I knew from the variety shop box that it was china and was pretty sure it would be a set of animals but I can’t help getting excited even when I know. I took out the first two and thought they were lambs, which I already had, only these had spots on, so I said they were cute anyway.

“Look at the third one,” Jack said and when I saw the horns and little black beard I was really surprised because I didn’t expect to get a goat. I put them up with the other sets at the front of the row and said how darling they were.

Dolly was not much good in the kitchen. She offered half a dozen times and would start to dry a dish and then would wander into the living room and leave it there. I did not mind as long as I could see whatever was going on. Poor Will tried to point out to Jack the beauties of some of his semiclassicals and Jack pretended to despise them. At the beginning of the Tchaikovsky Concerto Number One, though, where you get all the thumping, Jack was really carried away. “Oh, God!" he would exclaim, putting his hands over his eyes and stamping his feet on the floor. Will says he used to be quite a pianist. But as soon as the loud part was over he lost interest and started teasing Dolly.

“Dolly,” he would say, “do you think I’m silly?” followed by shouts to me in the kitchen: “Honey, Dolly thinks I’m silly.” Or, taking a drink himself, “Honey, don’t you think Dolly should have some ginny?” Then he would ask Dolly if she wanted to go into the bedroom and see his stamp collection. Dolly pretended to listen to the records because we were there so Jack pushed the button to drop a rock-and-roll and turned up the volume. Willson began telling Dolly loudly that in his opinion a driver had every right to break his own neck if he could guarantee that no other necks would be broken; but if he carried passengers he was morally bound to the speed limit, or something like that.

Jack grabbed Dolly and began to dance. Willson very solemnly moved the coffee table. Jack and Dolly danced crazily in the direction of the bedroom. I got scared and hollered did they want to wash up for a snack. From the bedroom Jack laughed.

“We can’t let them be in there,” I whispered to Willson.

He said, “They’re old enough to know their business.”

I said they couldn’t do that in our apartment.

Willson said, “Do what?” but his face was flushed.

I called Dolly to come and make the coffee. She came out perfectly calm and her chemise unwrinkled. I was madder at Will for staring than I was at her. Jack followed with pretended grief and said, “Honey, Dolly won’t look at my stamps.” I said he should be ashamed of himself but that only pleased him. “Should I be ashamed of myself. Honey?” he kept asking me.

THAT is enough about the housewarming. Probably too much, because these little embarrassments should not matter in the long run. I can honestly say that nothing really happened, unless you call a feeling a happening. Because I got a feeling about Willson that somehow is tied up with the way I feel about the broken demitasses.

I have said how I first met Will. The next Friday after the Saturday at Mr. Mason’s he called me at the office and requested the pleasure of my company at lunch. He was so formal he scared me. I didn’t know what to say and in the silences I wanted to laugh which would have been awful. I called Mom as soon as he hung up and told her I looked horrible. She said I could wear the blouse she had bought for my twentyfirst birthday. She brought it down to the office and I changed there.

We went to Mary-John’s for something different. Will ordered spaghetti but I asked if I could have chili. He said my blouse was pretty and I couldn’t even say thank you. I suppose he could see that it was new.

I do not know how to say what it felt like. I was too scared and embarrassed to say a word and at the same time I wanted to burst right out. I wanted to be away from him but just so I could tell somebody else how wonderful it was.

Dolly said after that I should have slapped his face. He told me my life was barren, wasted. I did not have to think what to say to him because he kept at me all through lunch. What did I do outside the office? Go to shows? Dance? Memorize the hit parade? Take a gang to the car hop? Baby-sit? I nodded to everything. He said, “What does it add up to?” I couldn’t say so but it seemed to me to be a lot. And there were things he didn’t know about.

Where am 1? I was going to write an ending about the demitasses but they do not seem to matter now. They got broken and that was that. Maybe what I really started to do was write out what I could not say to Willson, but I find I cannot write it either. What I was wondering last night, and the thing that bothered me when I first met Jack, was what Willson saw in him — or the other way around — what they had in common.

All I could think of to start with was music, which I knew was not right but it put me on the track to other things. “For one thing,”I said to myself, “they both enjoy music. When Jack comes here he brings his records and the first time I went to Will’s apartment before we were married it was to hear his records.” But then I stopped and said, “Enjoy is not the right word,” thinking of Jack’s reaction to Tchaikovsky. And Jack has some good records, too; don’t think he doesn’t. Then I thought of me being at Will’s apartment that first time, and sitting so stifT and proper while he explained to me that somebody’s violin concerto was so difficult that the person it was written for could not play it. He used to tell me that a whole new world opened up for you when you learned to love music. Every payday I would buy him a new record and he would invite me up to hear it on his hi-fi. That, by the way, is why the first story I tried to write was like. My Fair Lady: I bought him the record because I thought it was the same as us and I wanted so much to learn from him. But I guess I was not good enough because he quit teaching me and married me instead. Maybe he just gave me up. Or maybe he gave himself up.

What I mean to say is that I do not believe Willson loves music at all. He just studies and studies it because he thinks he should. And he is so clever that I am sure if you can learn to love by studying he would.

Now I have run out of things to say and 1 havenot got a beginning or an end. Willson would say, “That is life.” But 1 had better tell what happened to the demitasscs to finish up the middle at least.

They were a wedding gift from the kids at the office, Dolly and the rest. Originally they were not the dark blue and white kind that you think of as the best Wedgwood, but the light kind with the wild oats design, if that is what it is, that just seem like ordinary cups and saucers. We got six of them and I wanted to get the teapot to go with them, But after wc had looked at them awhile, Willson said you could not tell them from plain bone china and we ought to get the real thing. We finally took them back and paid the difference for the teapot, creamer, and sugar bowl, as well as the demitasses, in the blue and white. They are what got broken.

I have said that nothing much happened that Saturday night. What I mean is I think Willson exaggerates what happened. Of course he does not say anything. The only change you can notice is that the demitasses are gone and I have moved some of my little animals from the partition onto the top shelf to fill up the space. But Willson blames me, I know. Last year there was a college conference of some sort at this time and we went together. It was our honeymoon. This year he went by himself because I would be bored, he said, to see it twice. That explains why I am alone. But I’d have loved to have had our honeymoon again.

1 try sometimes to tell Willson I’m sorry I’m the way I am. He calls me a silly goose and pats me on the back like burping a baby. Which is kind of him, I’m sure, but does not change the way I feel, about us or the demitasses.

Jack and Dolly did not get too rowdy because fortunately the gin ran out. But they were both noisy and Jack is so funny when he gets going that we were all just in stitches. Even Will thawed out enough to try to put his arms around Dolly and untie the belt of her housecoat. We had got as far as pajamas and housecoats by that time. I had been gradually getting the beds made up for the boys and had piled sheets and a pillow on the couch for Will and some blankets on the floor for Jack—Jack was too long for the couch so Will won out there — when Jack grabbed Dolly and pulled her down on the blankets and a tussle started. Willson shouted at Jack that the people downstairs would think we had gone crazy. Jack raised his head from a wrestling hold on Dolly long enough to say, “Is that your biggest worry, Willy?” I got a pillow and hit Jack on the head. A pillow fight began.

As soon as I got into it Dolly got up, straightened her housecoat and put on a polka, and looked invitingly at Jack. He had got her number at the start so by the time they had finished the gin she was really tumbling after him. He could see it was not the time or place to be serious so he just played and left her sitting around in her white quilted housecoat and blue-flowered pajamas, looking long-limbed and longing at Jack. Seeing he was paying no attention she started making up Willson’s bed on the couch to show me up. Then it was that Willson, maybe for the same reason, began fooling with her and untying her housecoat belt.

I should have thought, “Good for Will. At least he is waking up.”Instead I tried not to pay him any attention. The truth is he looked pathetic and I was ashamed for him, hoping he would not make himself ridiculous or that I would not be looking when he did.

I was going hop-y hop, hop-y hop dancing with Jack, barefoot both, but stamping as hard as we could and swinging crazy circles around the living room till I screamed to look out for the red lamp and then into the bedroom and out again, back and forth and around till the room was spinning deliriously and now and then the copper boat on the wall or the record stack, the crimson lampshade or my little animals swam in procession round and round in a goldfish bowl. I don’t know what happened to Willson with Dolly but I suppose she just looked down at him and held him off. Or maybe it was her idea for him to come for me when the polka had ended and the livingroom was slowly settling down, because one minute Jack’s broad hands at the small of my back were holding me steady and close and the next his big grin vanished behind Willson’s red face and my support was gone. Willson smashed me across the face with a foam-rubber pillow and I hit the bookshelves and down I went with the books and the boards and the Wedgwood in a crash that brought absolute silence because the record was off and we all were very still. And then there was the thumping on the floor from the people beneath and I started to cry like I would never be able to stop.

So that ended the housewarming and the middle of my story. Somehow we lived through the rest of the night and an embarrassed breakfast and they returned to Toronto before noon. Willson restored the shelf and books and said I could put some of my animals on top since they had not been on his shelf and so were undisturbed. But I shall leave my favorites where they are. I am still in bed with a sore back and Willson, as I said, is out of town. I think he will come home. We do not talk about the housewarming when he is here at all. and I have not heard from the kids. But one day last week he said he thought he would look around Toronto for a job. I said no, I would try to make up the demitasses, seeing they were my fault, and we let it go at that.