It remained only for Mr. Clements to jump off the cliff the next afternoon. Mrs. Clements found him blowing bubbles on Miss Kit Random’s back garden wall, discussing the formation, clarity, and coloration of same with her. Her phonograph was warbling an old tune from World War I sung by the Knickerbocker Quartet titled “The Worst Is Yet to Come.” Mrs. Clements acted out the song’s words by grabbing Mr. Clements by the ear and lugging him off.
“That woman’s yard,” said Mrs. Coles, Mrs. Clements, and Mrs. Tiece, “is, as of this hour, day, and minute, forbidden territory.”
“Yes, dear,” said Mr. Coles, Mr. Clements, and Mr. Tiece,
“You are not to say good morning or good night, Nurse, to her,” said Mrs. Coles, Mrs. Clements, and Mrs. Tiece.
“Of course not, dear,” said the husbands behind their newspapers.
“Youhearme?”
“Yes, sweetheart,” came the chorus. From then on Mr. Coles, Mr. Clements, and Mr. Tiece could be seen mowing lawns, fixing lights, trimming hedges, painting doors, cleaning windows, washing dishes, digging bulbs, watering trees, fertilizing flowers, rushing to work, rushing back, bending, flexing, running, pausing, reaching, busy at a thousand and one tasks with a thousand and one perspirations.
Whereas in Kit Random’s clocks had stopped, flowers died or went insane with abundance. Doorknobs fell off if you tapped them, trees shed their leaves in mid-summer for lack of water; paint flaked from doors, and the electric light-system, burnt out, was replaced with candles rammed in wine jugs: a paradise of neglect, a beautiful chaos.
Somewhere along the line Mrs. Coles, Mrs. Clements and Mrs. Tiece were stunned at the pure unadulterated nerve of Kit Random shoving notes in their mailboxes during the night, inviting them to come by at four next day for poisoned tea.
They absolutely refused.
Andwent.
Kit Random poured them all the orange pekoe which was her favorite and then sat back, smiling.
“It was nice of you ladies to come,” she said.
The ladies nodded grimly.
“There’s a lot for us to talk about,” she added.
The ladies waited stone-cold, leaning toward the door.
“I feel you don’t understand me at all,” said Kit Random. “I feel I must explain everything.”
They waited.
“I’m a maiden lady with a private income.”
“Lookssuspiciouslyprivate to me,” observed Mrs. Tiece.
“Suspiciously,” echoed Mrs. Cole.
Mrs. Clements was about to toss her teabag in the cup when Kit Random uncorked a laugh.
“I can see no matter what I say you’ll add sugar lumps and stir your spoons so loud I can’t be heard.”
“Try us,” said Mrs. Tiece.
Kit Random reached over to pick up a shiny brass tube and twist it.
“What’sthat?” asked all three at once and then covered their mouths as if embarrassed not one of them had said anything original.
“One of them toy kaleidoscopes.” Kit Random shut one eye to squint through the odd-colored shards. “Right now I’m examining your gizzards. Know whatI find?”
“How could we possibly care?” cried Mrs. Clements. The others nodded at her snappy retort.
“I see a solid potato.” Kit Random fixed the device to X-ray Mrs. Tiece, then moved to the others. “A rutabaga and a nice round turnip. No innards, stomach, spleen, or heart. I’ve listened. No pulse, just solid flesh, fit to burst your corsets. And your tongues? Not connected to your cerebral cortex … “
“Our cerebralwhat?” cried Mrs. Tiece, offended.
“Cortex.Not as off-color as it sounds. And I’ve made a brave decision. Don’t get up.”
The three women squirmed in their chairs and Kit Random said:
“I’m going to take your husbands, one by one. I’m going to, in the words of the old song, steal their hearts away. Or what’s there if you left any on the plate. I’ve decided that flimsy-whimsy as I am, I’ll be a darn sight better midnight or high-noon companion than all of you in a bunch. Don’t speak, don’t leave. I’m almost done. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. Oh, yes, one thing. Love these fine men.
But I don’t think it crossed your minds, it’s so long ago. Look at their faces. See how they crush their straw hats down hard over their ears and grind their teeth in their sleep. Heck, I can hear it way overhere! And make fists when they walk, with no one to hit. So stand back, don’t even try to interfere.
And how will I do it? With cribbage and dead man’s poker, and miniature golf in my garden, I’ll pull flowers to sink par-three holes. Then there’s blackjack, dominoes, checkers, chess, beer and ice cream, hot dogs noons, hamburgers midnights, phonograph moonlight dancing, fresh beds, clean linens, singing in the shower allowed, litter all week, clean up on Sundays, grow a mustache or beard, go barefoot at croquet. When the beer stops, gin stays.
Hold on! Sit!” Kit Random lectured on:
“I can see what you think, you got faces like sieves. No, I’m not the Hoor of Babylon, nor the Tart from Le Petit Trianon, which, incidentally, isnota movie-house. I am a traveling Jungle Gym, first cousin to a sideshow, never a beauty, almost a freak. But one day years back, I decided not to makeoneman sad but ahandfulhappy!
I found I was trying to win all the time, which is an error beyond most women’s imagination. If you make a man lose all the time, hell, he’ll go play golf or handball and loseright.At least he can add itup!
So I started out, two years in Placerville, three in Tallahassee and Kankakee until I ran out of steam or my rolling stock rusted. What was my great secret? Not playing Par-cheesi, or Uncle Wiggily says jump back three hops to the henhouse, no. It waslosing.Don’t yousee?
I learned how to cheat and lose. Menlikethat. They know what you’re up to, sure, but pretend not to notice and the more you lose the more they love. Next thing you know you got ’em bound head and foot with just plain old self-destruction pinochle or I’m-dead-send-flowers hopscotch. You can get a man to jump rope if you convince him he’s the greatest jumper since the Indian rope trick. So you go on losing and find you’ve won all along as the men tip their hat to you at breakfast, put down the stock-market quotes andtalk!
“Stop fidgeting! I’m almost out of gas. Will you get your halfway loved ones back? Mebbe. Mebbe not. A year from now I’ll check to see if you’ve watched and learned from my show-and-tell. I’ll give you the loan of those lost but now found souls and once a year after that bus back through to see if you’re losing proper in order to learn to laugh.
Meanwhile, there’s nothing you can do, starting this very second. Now, consider I’ve just fired off a gun. Go home. Bake pies. Make meatballs. But it won’t work. The pies will fall flat and the meatballs? Dead on arrival. Because you arm-wrestle them to the table and spoil men’s appetites. And don’t lock your doors. Let the poor beasts run. Like you’ve excused.”
“We’ve just begun to fight!” cried all three and then, confused at their echoes, almost fell down the porch stairs.
Well, that was the true end. There was no war, not even a battle or half a skirmish. Every time the ladies glanced around they found empty rooms and quietly shut on tiptoes front doors.
But what really scalded the cat and killed the dog was when three strange men showed up half-seen in the twilight one late afternoon and caused the wives to pull back, double-lock their doors, and peer through their lace curtains.
“Okay, open up!” the three men cried.
And hearing voices from today’s breakfast, the wives unlocked the doors to squint out.
“Henry Tiece?”
“Robert Joe Clements, what—?”
“William Ralph Cole, is thatyou?”
“Who the hell do youthinkit is!”
Their wives stood back to watch the almost hairless wonders pass.
“My God,” said Mrs. Tiece.
“What?” said Mrs. Clements.
“What have you done to your hair?”
“Nothing,” said all three husbands. “Shedid.”
The wives circled their relatives by marriage.
“I didn’t recognize you,” gasped Mrs. Tiece.
“You weren’tsupposedto!”
And so said all the rest.
Adding, “How youlikeit?”
“It’s not the man I married,” they said.
“Damn tootin’!”
And at last, almost in chorus, though in separate houses:
“You going to change yournameto fit thehaircut?”
The last night of the month, Mr. Tiece was found in his upper-stairs bedroom packing a grip. Mrs. Tiece clutched a doorknob and held on. “Where you going?”
“Business.”
“Where?”
“A ways.”
“Going to be gone long?”
“Hard to say,” he said, packing a shirt.
“Two days?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“Three days?”
“Where’s my blue necktie? The one with the white mice on it.”
“I never did like that necktie.”
“Would you mind finding the blue necktie with the white mice on it for me?”
She found it.
“Thank you.” He knotted it, watching himself in the mirror. He brushed his hair and grimaced to see if he had brushed his teeth.
“Fourdays?” she asked.
“In all probability,” he said.
“Aweekthen?” She smiled wildly.
“You can almost bet on it,” he said, examining his fingernails.
“Eat good meals now, not just quick sandwiches.”
“I promise.”
“Get plenty of sleep!”
“I’ll get plenty of sleep.”
“And be sure to phone every night. Have you got your stomach pills with you?”
“Won’t need the stomach pills.”
“You’vealwaysneeded the stomach pills.” She ran to fetch them. “Now, you just take these stomach pills.”
He took and put them in his pocket. He picked up his two suitcases.
“And be sure and call me every night,” she said.
He went downstairs with her after.
“And don’t sit in any draughts.”
He kissed her on the brow, opened the front door, went out, shut the door.
At almost the same instant, so it couldn’t have been coincidence, Mr. Cole and Mr. Clements plunged, blind with life, off their front porches, risking broken legs or ankles to be free, and raced out to mid-street where they all
