hannah lynch decided, that day, that she would go shopping and that if rufus wanted to go, she would like to take him with her. she telephoned rufus’ mother to ask whether she had other plans for rufus that would interfere, and mary said no; she asked whether so far as mary knew, rufus had planned to do anything else, and mary, a little surprised, said no, not as far as she knew, and whether he had or not, she was sure he would be glad to go shopping with her. hannah, in a flicker of anger, was tempted to tell her not to make up children’s minds for them, but held onto herself and said, instead, well, we’ll see, and that she would be up by the time he came back from school. mary urgently replied that she mustn’t come up—much as she would like to see her, of course—but that rufus would make the trip instead. hannah, deciding not to make an issue of it, said very well, she would be waiting, but he wasn’t to come unless he really wanted to. mary said warmly that of course he would want to and hannah again replied, more coolly, “we’ll see; it’s no matter”; and, getting off the subject, asked, “have you had any message from jay?”
for mary had telephoned her father, that morning, to explain why jay could not be at the office. “no,” mary said, with slight defensiveness, for she felt somehow that criticism might be involved; and hadn’t expected to unless, of course ...
“of course,” hannah replied quickly (for she had intended no criticism), “so no doubt we needn’t worry.”
“no, i’m sure he would have called if his father had—even if there was any grave danger,” mary said.
“of course he would,” hannah replied. was there anything she could bring mary? let’s see, mary said a little vaguely; why; aah; and she realized that catherine could well use a new underwaist and that—and—but suddenly recalled, also, that it was sometimes difficult to persuade her aunt to accept money, or even to render account, for things she bought this way; and lied, with some embarrassment, why, no, thank you so much, it’s very stupid of me but i just can’t think of a thing. all right, hannah said, honoring her embarrassment, and resolved to take care to embarrass her less often (but after all, little gifts should be possible from time to time without this silly pride); all right; i’ll be waiting, till three, and if rufus has other things to do, just let me know. all right, aunt hannah, and it’s so nice of you to think of him. not a bit of it, i like to take him shopping. well that’s very nice and i’m sure he likes it. perhaps so. why certainly so, aunt hannah. all right. all right; good-bye. you’ll let us know if you do hear from jay? of course. right away. but by now i don’t really expect to. he’ll very likely be back by supper time, or a little after. he was sure he could—if—everything was, well, relatively all right. all right. all right; good-bye. good-bye. good-bye, mary’s voice trailed, gently.
“jay?” andrew called over the banisters.
“no, just talking to mary,” hannah said. “i guess it can’t be so very serious, after all.”
“let’s hope not,” said andrew, and went back to his painting.
hannah made herself ready for town. when rufus arrived, all out of breath, he found her on a hard little couch in the living room, sitting carefully, not to rumple her long white-speckled black dress, and poring gravely through an issue of the nation which she held a finger length before her thick glasses.
“well,” she smiled, putting the magazine immediately aside. “you’re very prompt” (he was not; his mother had required him to wash and change his clothes) “and” (peering at him closely as he hurried up) “you look very nice. but you’re all out of breath. would you really like to come?”
“oh, yes,” he said, with a trace of falseness, for he had been warned to convince her; “i’m very glad to come, aunt hannah, and thank you very much for thinking of me.”
“huh ...” she said, for she knew direct quotation when she heard it, but she was also convinced that in spite of the false words, he really meant it. “that’s very nice,” she said. “very well; let’s be on our way.” she took her hard, plain black straw hat from its place on the sofa beside her and rufus followed her to the mirror in the dark hallway and watched her careful planting of the hat pin. “dark as the inside of a cow,” she muttered, almost nosing the somber mirror, “as your grandfather would say.” rufus tried to imagine what it would be like, inside a cow. it would certainly be dark, but then it would be dark inside anybody or anything, so why a cow? grandma came prowling dim-sightedly up the hallway from the dining room, smiling fixedly, even though she fancied she was alone, and the little boy and his great-aunt drew quickly aside, but even so, she collided, and gasped.
“hello, grandma, it’s me,” rufus shrilled, and his aunt hannah leaned close across her to her good ear at the same moment and said loudly, “catherine, hello; it’s only rufus and i”; and as they spoke each laid a reassuring hand on her; and upstairs rufus heard andrew bite out, “oh, g-godd”; but his grandmother, used to such frights, quickly recovered, laughed her tinkling ladylike laugh (which was beginning faintly to crack) very sportingly, and cried, “goodness gracious, how you startled me!” and laughed again. “and there’s little rufus!” she smiled, leaning deeply towards him with damaged, merry eyes and playfully patting his cheek.
“so you’re ready to go!” she said brightly to hannah.
hannah nodded conspicuously and leaning again close across her to get at her good ear, cried, “yes; all ready!”
“have a nice time,” grandma said, “and give grandma a good hug,” and she hugged him close, saying “mum-mum; nice little boy,” and vigorously slapping his back.
“good-bye,” they shouted.
“good-bye,” she beamed, following them to the door. they took the streetcar and got out at gay street. there was no flurry and no dawdling as there would have been with any other woman rufus knew; none of the ceremony that held his grandmother’s shopping habits in a kind of stiff embroidery; none of the hurrying, sheepish refusal to be judicious in which men shopped. hannah steered her way through the vigorous sidewalk traffic and along the dense, numerous aisles of the stores with quiet exhilaration. shopping had never lost its charm for her. she prepared her mind and her disposition for it as carefully as she dressed for it, and rufus had seldom seen her forced to consult a shopping list, even if she were doing intricate errands for others. her personal tastes were almost as frugal as her needs; hooks and eyes, lengths of black tape and white tape, snappers so tiny it was difficult to handle them, narrow lace, a few yards, sometimes, of black or white cotton cloth, and now and then two pairs of black cotton stockings. but she loved to do more luxurious errands for others, and even when there were no such errands, she would examine a rich variety of merchandise she had no intention of buying, always skillful, in these examinations, never to disturb a clerk, and never to leave disturbed anything that she touched, imposing her weak eyes as intently as a jeweler with his glass and emitting little expletives of irony or admiration. whenever she did have a purchase to make, she got hold of a clerk and conducted the whole transaction with a graceful efficiency which had already inspired in rufus a certain contempt for every other woman he had seen shopping. rufus, meanwhile, paid relatively little attention to what she was saying or buying; words passed above him, merely decorating the world he stared at with as much fascination as his aunt’s; and best of all were the clashing, banging wire baskets which hastened along on little trolleys, high over them all, bearing to and fro wrapped and unwrapped merchandise, and hard leather cylinders full of money. taken shopping with anyone else, rufus suffered extreme boredom, but hannah shopped much as a real lover of painting visits a gallery; and her pleasure clarified rufus’ eyes and held the whole merchant world in a clean focus of delight. if his mother or his grandmother was shopping, the tape which hung around the saleswoman’s neck and the carbon pad in which she recorded purchases seemed twitchy and clumsy to rufus; but in his great-aunt’s company, the tape and pad were instruments of fascination and skill, and the housewives who ordinarily made the air of the stores heavy with fret and foolishness were like a challenging sea, instead, which his aunt navigated most deftly. she did not talk to him too much, nor did she worry over him, nor was rufus disposed to wander beyond the range of her weak sight, for he enjoyed her company, and of all grown people she was the most considerate. she would remember, every ten minutes or so, to inquire courteously whether he was tired, but he was seldom tired in her company; with her, he never felt embarrassment in saying if he had to go to the bathroom, for she never seemed annoyed, but in consequence he seldom found it necessary to go when they came together on these downtown trips. today hannah bought a few of the simplest of things for herself and several more elaborate things for her sister-in-law and a beautifully transparent, flowered scarf for mary’s birthday, taking rufus into this surprise; then, in the art store, she inquired whether the grammar of ornament had arrived. but when they showed her the enormous and magnificently colored volume, she exclaimed with laughter, “mercy, that is no grammar; it’s a whole encyclopedia,” and the clerk laughed politely, and she said she was afraid it was larger than she could carry; she would like to have it delivered. she must be sure, though, that it was delivered personally to her, no later than may twenty-first, that’s three days, can i be sure of that? no, she interrupted herself, in one of her rare confusions or changes of decision, that won’t do. she explained to rufus, parenthetically, “suppose there was an accident, and your uncle andrew saw it too soon!” she paused. “do you think you can help me with a few more of these bundles?” she asked him. he replied proudly that of course he could. “then we’ll take it now,” his aunt told the clerk, and after careful testing and distribution of the various bundles, they came back into the street. and there his aunt hannah made a proposal which astounded rufus with gratitude. she turned to him and said, “and now if you’d like it, i’d like to give you a cap.”
he was tongue-tied; he felt himself blush. his aunt could not quite see the blush but his silence disconcerted her, for she had believed that this would make him really happy. annoyed with herself, she nevertheless could not help feeling a little hurt.
“or is there something else you’d rather have?” she asked, her voice a little too gentle.
he felt a great dilation in his chest. “oh, no!” he exclaimed with passion. “oh, no!”
“very well then, let’s see what we can do about it,” she said, more than reassured; and suddenly she suspected in something like its full magnitude the long, careless denial, and the importance of the cap to the child. she wondered whether he would speak of it—would try, in any cowardly or goody-goody way, to be “truthful” about his mother’s distaste for the idea (though she supposed he ought to be—truthful, that is); or, better, whether he could imagine, and try to warn her that in buying it for him, she risked displeasing his mother; and realized, then, that she must take care not to set him against his mother. she waited with some curiosity for what he might say, and when he found no words, said, “don’t worry about mar—about your mother. i’m sure if she knew you really wanted it, you would have had it long ago.”
he just made a polite, embarrassed little noise and she realized, with regret, that she did not know how to manage it properly. but she was certainly not going, on that account, to deny what she had offered; she compressed her lips and, by unaccountable brilliance of intuition went straight past miller’s, a profoundly matronly store in which rufus’ mother always bought the best clothes which were always, at best, his own second choice, and steered round to market street and into harbison’s, which sold clothing exclusively for men and boys, and was regarded by his mother, rufus had overheard, as “tough” and “sporty” and “vulgar.” and it was indeed a world most alien to women; not very pleasant men turned to stare at this spinster with the radiant, appalled little boy in tow; but she was too blind to understand their glances and, sailing up to the nearest man who seemed to be a clerk (he wore no hat) asked briskly, without embarrassment, “where do i go, please, to find a cap for my nephew?” and the man, abashed into courtesy, found a clerk for her, and the clerk conducted them to the dark rear of the store. “well, just see what you like,” said aunt hannah; and still again, the child was astonished. he submitted so painfully conservative a choice, the first time, that she smelled the fear and hypocrisy behind it, and said carefully, “that is very nice, but suppose we look at some more, first.” she saw the genteel dark serge, with the all but invisible visor, which she was sure would please mary most, but she doubted whether she would speak of it; and once rufus felt that she really meant not to interfere, his tastes surprised her. he tried still to be careful, more out of courtesy, she felt, than meeching, but it was clear to her that his heart was set on a thunderous fleecy check in jade green, canary yellow, black and white, which stuck out inches to either side above his ears and had a great scoop of visor beneath which his face was all but lost. it was a cap, she reflected; which even a colored sport might think a little loud, and she was painfully tempted to interfere. mary would have conniption fits; jay wouldn’t mind, but she was afraid for rufus’ sake that he would laugh; even the boys in the block, she was afraid, might easily sneer at it rather than admire it—all the more, she realized sourly, if they did admire it. it was going to cause no end of trouble, and the poor child might soon be sorry about it himself. but she was switched if she was going to boss him! “that’s very nice,” she said as little drily as she could manage. “but think about it, rufus. you’ll be wearing it a long time, you know, with all sorts of clothes.” but it was impossible for him to think about anything except the cap; he could even imagine how tough it was going to look after it had been kicked around a little. “you’re very sure you like it,” aunt hannah said.
“oh, yes,” said rufus.
“better than this one?” hannah indicated the discreet serge.
“oh, yes,” said rufus, scarcely hearing her.
“or this one?” she said, holding up a sharp little checkerboard.
“i think i like it best of all,” rufus said.
“very well, you shall have it,” said aunt hannah, turning to the cool clerk.
