They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell

Author:William Maxwell [Maxwell, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-0-307-49182-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1964-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

5

The next few days were like a party, it seemed to Robert. There were cut flowers from the greenhouse and callers every afternoon. And Sophie had to spend most of her time running back and forth with the teapot.

All his mother’s friends came to see her—“Aunt” Amelia, “Aunt” Maud, “Aunt” Belle—and stayed often until the stroke of six. Robert could not remember when the library had been so full of women drinking tea and talking about necklines. Or when his mother had been more happy, more like herself.

“Having a baby,” she said to him privately, “is no worse than spring house-cleaning. It isn’t even as bad. You don’t have to take the curtains down.”

He was not allowed to go out of the yard, and Irish couldn’t come there and play. But one way and another (letting him stay up later, having his favorite desserts, listening to what he had to say about the high school football team) his mother made it up to him, so that after a while he didn’t really mind.

What she wanted, apparently, was to make things up to everybody. She paid the paper boy six weeks in advance. And nothing would do but that old Miss Atkins, who came every Saturday with Boston brown bread and potholders (there were stacks of them in the linen closet), must stay to lunch. And the best blue china must be brought out for her.

Sophie alone was red-eyed and disagreeable. Robert and his mother agreed that it was on account of Karl. It was because Karl was going back to Germany.

“What I don’t see,” Robert explained, “is why she doesn’t go to Germany with him.”

“Perhaps she would,” his mother said, “if Karl asked her to.”

“Why does he have to ask her to?”

“For the looks of things.”

“Couldn’t she ask him?”

“She could but she won’t.”

“Then why doesn’t she just go by herself?”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Whatever you do, don’t put that idea in her head. It might be years before I could get some one to make as decent pie-crust as Sophie does.”

“No,” Robert said, gloomily, “I won’t.”

“As for our going away, that’s arranged now—everything but the railroad tickets. And I do believe that with the least encouragement your father would go right down and get them. You know how he likes to have everything ready beforehand…. The only thing I have to do is to make sure that the baby is a girl. I don’t care, particularly. I like scissors and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails. But your father has his heart set on a girl. And if it turns out to be another boy, we may have to send it back. There’s no telling…. Irene is going to stay with you and Bunny at night, so that you won’t be alone…. If anything comes up, you’re to call Dr. Macgregor. Only you’re not to bother him unless it’s something important—unless, for example, the house is on fire, or you catch Sophie upstairs trying on my hats. Do you understand? … You’re old enough, Robert, to take on responsibility, the way your father is always saying.

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