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Show 4-3 the titles to me, the long names that were so unfamiliar, she told me how she dreamed of visiting the places in the book, how she planned trips and even looked up the shipping schedules in the New York Times at the Carnegie Library to find out when the next boat was leaving for Hong Kong or Madras. When she went to join the group around the piano, she left the book in my lap where I squatted on the stairs. I stayed there all evening until Mother sent me to bed. And the next day, I too visited the library and found the shelves with the atlases. Ruth and three others continued to come during the war, but two of Mother's friends joined the nurse corps and sailed to Europe. Their letters to the whole group filled many evenings for a year and Ruth and I always found the places they mentioned on our maps. Mother's other group of friends had first come to our house with Uncle Paul who was a student at the Music Academy. He and his friends, all about 20 years old, called themselves "serious musicians." They loved music, loved playing and singing and, I think, loved Mother. She took them seriously, listened to their music, let them talk about themselves and their plans to take over the musical establishment. There were seven of them and when they came, the living room was filled with sound, their laughter, their quick words, the crashes from the piano when they played new pieces they had written. Mother would not allow them to smoke in the house, so they stood on the porch and in the summer the smoke drifted in through the open windows. In the winter, I could see them through the glass on the front door, shivering violently, puffing at their cigars and cigarettes. Father called this group Mother's pets and I'm not sure how he felt about them. He always laughed when I asked him. He didn't leave on the nights they came but stayed, he said, more to protect his whiskey than Mother. |
