From the Improvement Era, May 1943 –

Gathered in Time

By Dorothy C. Robinson

On a sudden impulse, Jean turned her car to the curb and stopped before the real estate office. She found Mr. Jackson just ready to leave.

“I — I’m sorry.” Jean was slightly confused, not knowing just why she was doing this. “It’s just that I — would you let me have the key to the Connelly place? I should like to see it again.”

“Delighted.” Mr. Jackson’s full, pink jowls quivered with an excess of geniality. “Delighted. I’ll do more than that. I’ll run you out. I was leaving anyway.”

“Oh, no. I mean— I wouldn’t think of having you do that. I have my car, and I can find it.”

“No trouble at all. Far from it. A brisk ride out there with a charming young lady. Besides, I am anxious to sell you the place.”

“Please — you see I — that is,” Jean’s confusion grew, “I thought I should like to see it alone.”

Mr. Jackson shook with laughter at her constraint, her naivete.

“Like to see how you’ll like it when the Mister has gone to work, huh? Don’t mind my saying it, Miss Peterson, but you are refreshing. Most girls would have jumped at the chance for that place. I hope,” he turned mock-serious, “that you are not going to turn down our offer. It is just the location for Mr. Edmunds. You know, prestige, and all that. I’ve told you this before. Better let me take you out.”

“Thank you, but it is near your dinner time. I may be late.”

“Well — if you insist.”

As soon as she could, Jean fled to her car. Turning the wheel, she swung it back into traffic. Instead of turning east toward Hillview Heights, she followed the highway south. She must come to a decision. Todd had been a little tight-lipped last night. “I have heard of girls who married without a house,” he said, a little grimly, “but they were in love.”

“Todd,” she cried. “You know it isn’t that, darling. It’s just that-— that — ”

But how could she tell him when she, herself, did not know. She wanted to please Todd. Marriage, her marriage must not prove a mistake. Perhaps the buying of this house had become a symbol to her. That was why she must see it again, alone.

She passed the business district, a section of apartment and boardinghouses, passed numerous small homes, and then turned to the right down an unkept street. She stopped before a house set back in a big yard. Its bricks were faded, and the painting on the cornices was beginning to peel. There was a big window at the front. In the back was a wide spreading tree with a swing. The lawn, front and back, was spacious but not particularly well-kept. Suddenly a screen slammed at the back, and Jean became conscious that she was parked directly before the house. Turning quickly she drove away.

She turned east toward Hillview Heights. Immediately she was conscious that spring was in the air. Signs denied it. The sky was gray. A notional wind played hide-and-seek with bits of paper and spurts of dust. One moment pedestrians were throwing open their coats and the next clutching them together for warmth. From the sidewalk a man’s hat went sailing out into the street, skittishly avoiding cars. The owner pushed his heavy vanguard after it but just as his fingers would have grasped it the wind in sudden caprice picked it up and set it down on the sidewalk. Jean laughed aloud, and the uncertainty that had wrapped her like a blanket lifted for the moment.

She was happy, happy, happy. She loved Todd and was going to marry him, but life so often handed out unexpected punches. Things, people, were so uncertain. Like Todd. He looked so well, so utterly untouched by any — any defect. Yet there was the report of his examining board. Now he was working with chemicals in the Bretherton Plant. Marriage could not be uncertain. One must make a go of it.

Before the Connelly house she parked, and this time she got out, locking the car door after her. As she went up the short walk, she glanced at the well-trimmed lawn, the exactly placed shrubs, the correct houses on both sides. Mr. Jackson was right. This was just the house for a man of Todd’s earning capacity, only — only — ! At the front door she used the key Mr. Jackson had given her. She went inside.

She inspected each room carefully, opened cupboards, peered into cedar-lined closets, even went into the basement and out into the back yard. Nothing escaped her; but she saw not one incongruity, one mis-matched detail. The house might well be called “Unprecedented Fulfillment.” It just did not seem possible that any young couple could begin married life in a house so complete. Mrs. Connelly must have hated leaving it. She had taken such good care of it. Now it was to be hers, Jean’s, if she wanted it. And there were only ten days left. Ten days. An upsurge of happiness enveloped her. Todd was so right, and yet —

She went to the big front window and pulled aside the draperies. The city lay sprawled below. As she watched, two neon lights switched on. Soon now the semi-darkness would turn to pin points of light. It was fascinating to watch. In the valley at home the lights were so far apart.

Suddenly the brick walls, the concrete walks, the electric wires and lights faded, and she saw in fancy the view from her bedroom window at home, hers and Cherry’s, her year-apart-twin.

Their room was on the second floor and faced south and west. In the blue distance were the Owyhee Mountains where lights and shadows played a continuous game of tag. Near was the grove where, as children, she and Cherry had hunted birds’ nests, built playhouses, and hidden in breathless suspense from the younger children. Lazy afternoons she had spent in the crotch of the old Cottonwood with a book and her dreams. To the right of the grove was the eternal pasture where generations of Old Brindles had kicked up their heels and raced in bovine well-being. Jean could feel the dew on her bare feet, and see the marks her shoes made when frost had silvered the grass.

This view, these things she was seeing in her mind’s eye were so fixed, so permanent. They were the warp and woof of her being. They were her anchor to which troubled spirits might cling, and clinging grow calm again. All had been part of her preparation for the hour that was nearly come. The hour when she and Todd started building together. The structure must be just right.

A long running stride on the walk brought her abruptly back to the present. She saw a cab pull away from the curb. She went quickly to the door and released the lock.

“Uh-huh. Caught you red-handed.” Immediately she was in Todd’s arms. The shadow of a doubt passed fleetingly over his face. “I had a feeling you would be here.”

He paused, obviously waiting. She withdrew from his arms.

“You’re funny,” and now the doubt edged his voice. “Does it always take you so long to decide? I don’t remember your being so uncertain about me; or, was I easy?”

“Silly. I knew at once about you, but the house — I — I don’t know. Todd, would you mind if we looked at another place?”

“I shouldn’t mind about the house particularly, but, look here, Jean,” by now the laughing lines about his mouth had settled a little grimly. “Let’s get this straight. Are you sure you are not using the house as an excuse? I know I’m no prize package.”

“Todd.” At the very evident pain in her voice, his heart leaped to gladness. It couldn’t be that she wanted something better. Whatever it was, this shadow must be expelled now.

With one finger he lifted her chin. “You know me, Jeanie. ‘Whither thou goest,’ I am the man you promised to marry, remember?”

“As if I could forget; and, darling, you must be satisfied. If you want to take this Let’s sit on the front step a few minutes.”

They sat on the top step. A few minutes passed but she said nothing.

“Todd,” she asked out of a long silence, “what do you remember oftenest about your home?”

“Which one, Sweet? There have been so many.”

“So many homes?”

“So many apartments, then. Why?”

“I am wondering what memories our children will have?”

His quick infectious laughter rang out. A couple strolling by looked up and smiled in understanding.

“Every child has memories. Why worry about the particular ones ours shall have? Isn’t that a form of living in the past?”

“That is the point. The past is never really past. It is always part of the present and the future. What memories from your childhood help you when you are discouraged or out of work, or, just uncertain? Just what do you remember when you have never ridden on loads of sweet-smelling but prickly loads of hay? When you’ve never been pulled out of bed at dawn to go to the pasture for cows?”

“To be truthful, Infant, my most vivid remembrance is mother’s voice saying, ‘Hurry, dear. I must catch the eight-thirty.’ Believe me, there are memories — and memories.”

“I know. That is why I must be so sure about the house.”

He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t get it.”

She rose abruptly and went back into the house. Todd followed, his easy length looming beside her in the semi-darkness.

Suddenly Jean knew why she had been unable to decide about the house. There was no dining room. She had been seeing and weighing the house in terms of the dining room at home. No other room held such memories for her. The living room had been reserved for more formal occasions; but the dining room had been the family sanctuary and proving ground. What it could tell of plans and disappointments; violent arguments and fierce loyalties.

And the dining room table. Jean could see it with the family seated for dinner. Dad at the head, with Jim and Burley, the big boys on each side. Between Dad and Jim, at the corner, the high chair had always stood holding the current baby. Larry had been the last to use it. Dad had always been baby feeder even at haying times. Quiet Jim had always pinched-hit when Dad was busy or away. Next to loud-blustering Burley had once been Kate’s place, the sister Jean could just remember. Dora had it later with Tom between her and Mother, at the other end. Next to Jim was Cherry’s place, then Jean’s.

Three times a day in summer and at least two in winter all of them had been in their places. There they talked and kept mum, plotted and exposed, praised and blamed. There the day’s work, or the season’s was discussed in detail and each given his or her part. Closely knit, one in ideals and loyalties, yet ten distinct entities. How that table had welded them together.

It was around the dining room table that Burley had taught her to dance. At the dining room table Jim had helped her with arithmetic and later algebra. At the same table Dora had taught her to “do” her nails. There was still a mark on it where Larry had overturned the polish. Kneeling before that table she had learned to pray.

Todd waited while the dusk of the room deepened and Jean basked in richness of feeling, in a kinship with brothers and sisters. He sensed it but was no part of it.

The dining room had given something that was inextricably a part of what she was and would be. Could a breakfast nook do as much for her family?

“No, no,” she cried aloud sharply. “I don’t want it. I don’t know why. I don’t want it.”

Without a word Todd took her arm, and they went out, locking the door after them. In silence, he opened the car door for her and then went around and slid in behind the wheel.

“Where to?” he asked and his voice was tight and hard.

“If you don’t mind, I should like to go this way.” She gave directions and after awhile they were before the oldish house she had watched earlier in the evening. They parked back where they could see without being seen.

“Would you mind,” he asked at length, “telling me what this is all about? And what about this down-at-the-heel place?”

Because words always came hard to her, she was slow to reply.

“This place reminds me, just a little, of home. The big yard, the tree with the swing. You can’t see it now, but it is in the back. See the dining room window where the light is shining?”

“What does that have to do with buying the other house? You wouldn’t want a place like this.” At the unintentional note of scorn in his voice she stiffened.

“Please. Don’t draw away.” His arm that was about her tightened. “Can you tell me what is troubling you?”

“I — I don’t know,” she half-whispered. “I only know I must be sure. The world is so full of confusion. How can we make home secure for our children unless we have the right kind of a house?”

“Home is where the heart is,” he quoted.

“But that is the point. There must be a heart to the home. There isn’t any to the Connelly house.” Then, as coherently as she could, she told him about the dining room at home; how its strength had held her in times of uncertainty; how its prayers had weak- ened temptation. She must have that for her children. Children could not always be home, so home must follow them.

As he listened, the hard lump of uncertainty within Todd began to relax. He understood, partly, her talk of memories. It had been his memory of apartments and moving that had made the Connelly house so appealing to him. He understood, too, for the first time, whence came that something special about her, that richness of belonging he had loved from the beginning.

Yet pride and love were confused in him. Into her richness of experience he could never more than merely enter. Where did he fit in? Or did he? Granting she was what she was because of her background, her memories, was the house so important? Or was it the family? What a heart she would make for any house. Hey. Wait a minute. He believed he had something.

“Listen, Sweet,” he said, “in any other house would your family have been the same?”

She turned quickly to face him. By the light from the street lamp he could see the startled look in her eyes. His own assurance grew. For a moment she faced him.

“I see what you mean. Yes. I — I think so. I am sure of it.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why, because — I just think we would have been. It is hard to imagine us any other way.”

“Isn’t it because the builders, your parents, would have built similarly wherever they had lived?”

“But the house was such a part of us. It was — is important.”

“Yes, but only to shelter that intangible thing that is built by the spirit. Your parents built a house that would cover the needs of the home they were creating. Isn’t that it?”

Yes. Yes. That was it. Modern houses were built for modern families, not for the oversize, romping, mind-of-its-own family of which she had been a part. Wait. Todd’s eyes were meaning something more. There had not always been a dining room. For some years after moving on the farm, there had been but three small rooms. The house served only as a means for the fulfillment of the parents, what they were and what they wanted to be. The house was the home materialized.

At that moment the front screen of the brick house burst open and a girl, seventeen, perhaps eighteen, flung herself out toward the street. Her sweater was too tight; her skirt too short; her heels too high. Even in the dusk one sensed her make-up was too garish. As she came out, a high shrill voice followed her.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she flung back. “I’ll come home when I get good and ready, and you might as well save your breath. Who’d want to come back to this lousy place?”

She had to run to catch the bus at the corner. When the confusion had passed and the cool night air had become sweet again, Jean expelled her breath in a huge sigh of relief. The little act had told so very eloquently what he had tried to say.

“Let’s go,” she said in a small whisper.

They were nearly back to town when her reserve broke in a rush of words that tumbled over each other in her eagerness to get them said.

“I think it was the newness, the completeness of the house that puzzled me. It was too perfect to be real. It left nothing to go on to. I felt the security of my own home and short-sightedly looked for a parallel. Of course it was not the house. Am I making sense?”

“More than you know. It was the going-on-to that I had overlooked. I was forgetting the home comes first. No house can be a home if it is purchased by overreaching financially. So we are not buying the Connelly house.”

“Oh, Todd.”

She grasped his arm with both hands. In her touch was everything she had been trying to understand and could not say. The last vestige of misunderstanding was gone. Wherever they went now, whatever they bought would be all right, for their foundation was sure.