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instant return to the Navy Yard. Soon Father was back in his uni–
form. In taking leave of my mother and grandparents he was, as was
usual with him under pressure, a little evasive and magniloquent.
"A woman works from sun to sun," he said, "but a sailor's watch
is never done." He compared a naval officer's hours with a doctor's,
hinted at surprise maneuvers, and explained away the uncommunica–
tive arrogance of Admiral De Stahl: "The Old Man had to be hush–
hush." Later that night, I lay in bed and tried to imagine that my
father was leading his engineering force on a surprise maneuver
through arctic wastes. A forlorn hope! "Hush-hush, hush-hush,"
whispered the snowflakes as big as street lamps as they broke on
Father-broke and buried. Outside, I heard real people singing
carols, shuffling snow off their shoes, opening and shutting doors.
I worried at the meaning of a sentence I had heard quoted from
the
Boston Evening Transcript:
"On this Christmas Eve, as usual,
the whole of Beacon Hill can be expected to become a single old–
fashioned open house-the names of mine host the Hill, and her
guests will read like the contents of the Social Register." I imagined
Beacon Hill changed to the snow queen's palace, as vast as the north
pole. My father pressed a cold finger to his lip: "hush-hush," and led
his surprise squad of sailors around an altar, but the altar was a
tremendous cash register, whose roughened nickel surface was cheaply
decorated with trowels, pyramids, and Arabic swirls. A great drawer
helplessly chopped back and forth, unable to shut because choked
with greenbacks. "Hush-hush!" My father's engineers wound about
me with their eye-patches, orange sashes, and curtain-ring earrings,
like the Gilbert and SulJivan pirates' chorus. . . . Outside on the
streets of Beacon Hill, it was night, it was dismal, it was raining.
Something disturbing had befalIen the familiar and honorable Sal–
vation Army band
j
its big drum and accordion were now accom–
panied by drunken voices howling:
The Old Gray Mare, she ain't
what she used to be, when Mary went to milk the cow.
A sound
of a bosun's whistle. Women laughing. Someone repeatedly rang our
doorbell. I heard my mother talking on the telephone. "Your ine–
briated sailors have littered my doorstep with the dregs of Scollay
Square." There was a gloating panic in her voice that showed she
enjoyed the drama of talking to Admiral De Stahl. "Sir," she
shrilled, "you have compelled my husband to leave me alone and
