🎧 243: The house . . .

THE HOUSE where Lorna was born is tall and narrow, perched on the steep northern slope of the Whatsit Valley. A narrow, highly crowned road runs along the uphill side of the house, turns sharply in front of it, and drops steeply, running past the downhill side of the house and on downward, past more houses, set in tiers on the hillside, winding down toward the river below. From the front porch of the Huber house, one can see the river here and there through the trees and, strung out along both banks, the mills and, alongside the mills, back from the river, climbing the hills on either side, the other houses of Chacallit.
     In that narrow house, on Lorna’s christening day, after the christening itself, my great-grandparents, Richard and Lena Huber, invited their friends and neighbors to meet their third daughter more informally, in the parlor of their home. Richard Huber was a “production anticipator” for the American Garter Company. It was his job to monitor the sales of the company’s products, record them, chart them, note seasonal and regional trends, and predict future production levels and the materials that would be needed to meet them. His was the sort of job that would today be done by a computer. Lena was the daughter of a production anticipator for Gryphon Grip-Tight Patented Fasteners. Their marriage represented a precisely horizontal alliance in the Chacallit social scheme.
     Richard served his guests beer, wine, and root beer in the parlor and urged them into the dining room, where the table was covered with food: hams, sausages of six kinds, breads and rolls, honey and preserves, smoked mackerel and eels, sprats, cheeses, a smoked goose and a smoked turkey, and, at either end of the table, two enormous bowls of potato salad. However, the guests showed no strong inclination to eat. They remained in the living room, content to drink and look at Lorna and remark on the odd beauty they saw in her.
     In the dining room, Lorna’s sister Bertha stood in front of one of the bowls of potato salad, mechanically and purposefully filling a plate with it, piling the potatoes in a mound, as if she were daring gravity to make the uppermost chunks fall. One did, and Bertha stooped to pick it up from the floor, mashing it a bit as she did, perhaps from clumsiness alone. Another fell. She was making a fine mess.
     Clara, now the middle of the three Huber daughters, moved to her sister’s side and whispered to her without looking at her.
     “Bertha,” she said, “you’re taking too much. You’ll get a smack if you get caught.”
     Bertha didn’t even pause when Clara spoke. She pressed another spoonful of potato salad onto the mound, and under her breath she said to Clara, “Nobody’s looking at me. They’re all looking at her. You just be quiet, and no one will even notice.”
     Clara half turned toward the adults, who were clustered around the wicker cradle where Lorna was displayed. Clara could see only backs, for all the adults were turned toward Lorna, and they were so tightly crowded together that she couldn’t see either her mother or the little cynosure. She saw her father standing outside the crowd, with his hands behind his back, rocking on his heels. Clara didn’t have to see his face to know that he was beaming, that he was proud of his new daughter. Uncle Luther stood beside him, his right arm flung across his brother’s shoulders. Clara saw that what Bertha said was true; no one in the living room would notice what they did in the dining room. She turned toward the table, took a plate, and began piling slices of turkey as purposefully and mechanically as Bertha had filled her plate with potato salad.
     When Bertha’s plate was as full as she could make it, she began making her way toward the door to the porch, scuttling sideways, so that her illicit heap of potato salad was hidden. She pushed the door open with her hip and slipped outside, onto the porch. When she was safely outside, she let the door slide off her hip, and it swung against Clara’s elbow, jostling her so that a slice of turkey fell onto the floor.
     Bertha sat on the porch railing, and, just as methodically as she had filled her plate, she ate all the potato salad she had taken. Clara watched, amazed and terrified. She tried to emulate Bertha’s methodical determination, but she couldn’t come near to finishing all the turkey she had taken. Quietly, she slipped back into the dining room and replaced most of it. When she came back outside, Bertha was under the porch, vomiting.

In Topical Guide 243, Mark Dorset considers Books, Real and Fictional; Cover Illustrations; and Food: as Significant Element of a Remembered Incident and Its Literary Reproduction from this episode.

Have you missed an episode or two or several?

• You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.

• You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.

• You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)

• At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” “The Fox and the Clam,” “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” “Take the Long Way Home,” “Call Me Larry,” and “The Young Tars,” the nine novellas in Little Follies, and Little Follies itself, which will give you all the novellas in one handy package.

• You’ll find an overview of the entire work in  An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.