370
PARTISAN REVIEW
one has ever borne such sadnesses as his with so fine a spirit"), but,
Father explained, Jake had had a motherless daughter to raise and
to nurse through a fatal illness at the age of nineteen, and that had
kept him old fashioned. Even
if
this motherless daughter of his had not
been a prig and a fanatic-His daughter had died at nineteen from
a skin disease she had caught in her social work. Her name had been
Margaret, but he had always called her "Presh" for "precious"-even
if she had not beer.. such a one, Uncle Jake would have remained old
fashioned, Father explained, because just raising a child did that
for one.
Aunt Grace stayed with us for six weeks after she had gotten her
divorce. The morning that she left for her job in Birmingham I came
and sat beside her on the porch swing. She pulled me up close to her
and beckoned to Brother to come and sit at her other side. "I've stayed
here on you forever," she said to Mother and Father who were seated
about the porch with Virginia Ann and Uncle Jake, "and these
two rascals are not the least of my reasons for it." Simultaneously
she pressed Brother and myself so tightly to her that we found our–
selves face to face, each with a cheek lying against the blue linen
cloth of the travelling suit she and Virginia Ann had been sewing on
for a week. Brother had just reached the age to join Uncle Jake's
Boy Scout Troop, and it occurred to me that
if
Aunt Grace was so
very young Brother would soon be old enough to marry her himself.
I looked into his eyes to see if he were going to cry about her going
away. But he was looking back at me with a
grin
on his face. Present–
ly he stuck out his tongue, curled it up on each side till it looked like
a tulip, and before I could pull away from Aunt Grace's clasp he
had blown a spit bubble in my face.
A fight ensued right across Aunt Grace's lap. It was a furious,
noisy scuffie and it lifted the new linen skirt in a hundred creases and
wrinkles. Yet Aunt Grace's good humor remained unruffled. And as
Uncle Jake's large and gentle hands pulled us apart I caught a quick
glimpse of my aunt's face. Her head was thrown back, as to avoid the
blows. Her soft crea...'TI.like complexion seemed to have just a little more
color than usual. Her big blue eyes, matching her blue hat and her
blue travelling suit, were squinted as they always were when she
laughed. Between her bursts of laughter she was saying, "Look!
Loo~
at the little demons. See them! I wish you could see their eyes flashing."
It was Brother and myself that Aunt Grace took with her in the
taxi. All of the grown-ups had, of course, wanted to go with her to
the station. Uncle Jake had even brought
his
car from the garage,
and Father's car always stayed in front of the house. But she would
