Kicked Upstairs

The Bee is a baptist. The one thing Glory surely says “yes” to when Miss Lord calls is “Bath time!” Not a morning or a night goes by when she does not buzz with dipsy mania in the tub room between the Parlor of Roses and Penny’s Anteroom. The tub there is a splendid old rose-tinted porcelain one, deep and long and wide, with brass accessories, eagle wing faucet handles, hot and cold, and a lion’s head tap. The room has cozy, hairline-cracked tile and, on the west wall, stained-glass windows that mute the light, making it more cheery. Rub-a-dub dub, soap-a-dope dope, cleanliness is next to goddessliness. And where a juvenile might splash around with a toy boat or a rubber duck, Gloria, mature and self-confident for her age, relaxes by wrestling with books. Her Daddy-o gives her titles like The Well-Tempered Toy Bear, and others, all recommended for children ten years of age or older.

If Gloria were the dissatisfied type she would covet her mother’s bigger, deeper bathtub. Yes, the bath across the hall would be heaven to dip into, but she doesn’t think about it. Nor does she think about the hall of mirrors, that silver glass wonderland that multiplies self-portraits to an infinite regress. It is just the sort of place vain Glory should have her eyes on, but she keeps them off it by sounding out words such as “convalescence”, “oyster”, and “procrastinate.” And she dare not even dream of sleeping in the Homer-built bed, a deluxe tent, with its carved posts, silk curtains, and plump pillows. She is sensitive enough to know that all the adults regard the big bed with some respect. Whether it be a sack for pleasure, a source of haunting or mysterious power, she clearly understands that it is something not for her yet. The Bee Goddess instinctively minds her own business in hopes that others will mind theirs.

As the months go by, fall, winter, spring, the number of visits her stepfather makes to her mother’s bedroom is ever on the rise. Sarah invites him down from the workshop more often, but still stops short of sharing the bed with him afterwards. She doesn’t care whether he comes and goes by the front way or the back. Crawling in and out of the trick armoire is fun for the athletic playboy. Forty-five-year-old though he be, he can make his way in and out of his wife’s bedroom surreptitiously, and enjoy the thrill of a clandestine meeting. But there are times, when their lovemaking is so heavenly, that his exit of choice is on two legs, or none at all, rather than the four on the floor, and he must go back the way he came. He could leave through one of the ordinary exits, but because of the presence of Miss Lord and Gloria in the Suite of Roses, Harry is detoured, not always conveniently for Sarah, through her bath and the hall of mirrors. Queen Sarah loves her privacy and resents her husband’s intrusion in her feminine vanity zone.

Laudette is fully behind making a move. She thinks sleeping in the Parlor of Roses spoils Gloria. “Sugar, it’s too fancy for a girl her age. It’s part of your sitting room and besides how do you think a big cow like me feels having to pussyfoot my way around all those darn delicate antiques?”

To clear the other road for her husband and to give Laudette the boost she deserves Sarah decides to shoo the Bee out of her boudoir, baby-sitter and all, upstairs to the third level, east, the children’s wing.

“Gloria Beatrice,” says Sarah, “you’re going to be starting school soon. Mummy’s afraid you’re getting too old to sleep under the drapes outside her bedroom.”

“Now, Baby,” Laudette backs her up, “you knew it was only temporary that you got to sleep in these fancypants parlors. Just because upstairs used to be so cold and spooky …”

Gloria knows what’s coming. The past months she has been watching the reconstruction on the third story. She knows Laudette is looking forward to better nights’ sleep in those more modest rooms. There is no one to appeal to as this time Harry, more than anyone, applauds the shake-up. The several parlors on the second story have such a courtly air, and he can so easily imagine himself a sensual Gourmet; he looks forward to pussyfooting around outside his wife’s bedroom, and envisions extending their passion play out into the fanciful suite, where, he dreams, sex will glow like a red hot bed of roses. Three against one, Glory, the warrior, knows when she must bow to avoid defeat.

On a dog-day afternoon in July, nineteen thirty-five, Gloria is kicked upstairs. Pearly, Mona, and Laudette install her, frock, block, and toy barrel, in two rooms on the third story in the northeast corner of the house, and Laudette moves opposite her into an identical pair of rooms on the south side, both of them sharing a bath between them.

Only Gloria says “Boo hoo!” She misses her cushion bed under the red rose drapes, her gilt-edged furniture, funny closets, decorated screens, and murals. The rooms up here are like a boring hotel—plain twin beds, night tables, desks, and lamps. All eastern walls are windowless, as Homer designed them, and the electric light reflecting off Laudette’s color scheme of egg yolk yellow paint and pink pinstripe wall paper seems horribly artificial, so dismal, so unlike downstairs where the leaded casements let sunlight, moonlight, lamplight, and cars’ headlights play on the rosy murals. In many places the museum is no model of ventilation and these rooms, equipped with nothing but overhead fans and door stops, are like sweat boxes. Gloria seeks refuge in a cool bath, but the tub here, brand new, is not nearly as alluring as the old rose-tinted one with its fine crackle, shell shape, and claw feet.

Her cries of homesickness reach Laudette. “Goddamn it, Lawdy,” she cracks, “why didn’t you at least put goddamn windows in these goddamn rooms?”

“Baby, I’ll wash your mouth out with soap! Where did you learn that word?”

“I heard Daddy-o say it when he was listening to the ball game on the radio.”

“Well you don’t have to repeat everything you hear. And you don’t have to undo everything that’s been done. This is the way Mister Homer made it, so a person has cause to develop quality by contemplating inner beauty rather than gaping at the river all day, and this is the way it’s going to stay. Who am I to change the work of a great architectural genius just so a little nobody like you can have a window?”

“Little nobody, huh? I’ll get you for that, Lawdy, goddamn, I will. What did I do to deserve this? I wasn’t bothering anyone where I was. I want my old tub back and my tent bed, and I miss all the pretty pictures on the walls.”

“Now you just be happy with what you got, Baby, and stop making a commotion. You know your mother goes through hell, her nerves being what they are. She and your stepdaddy have a right to their privacy and don’t need to be tripping over us at every turn.” It’s Laudette’s policy not to spoil Gloria by indulging her. As sitter, decorator, and general contractor, she stands firm. “Now off you go to sleep.”

Although she sleeps in a plain ordinary bed she does not feel like a plain ordinary person. At breakfast Gloria complains to her Daddy-o.

“Miss Lord,” he says, “I think Gloria should have all the comforts and privacy money can buy. If she wants a window, she should have one. From across the river this place looks like a big brick shithouse anyway. And if she’s not happy with the tub or the bed she has, please see that she gets ones she likes.”

“Yeah, Daddy-o!”

“Sir, if I may be so bold,” says Laudette, “you go and give her too much and, take it from me, you’re going to have one spoiled brat on your hands. And, Sugar, I really think someone should say something about the language Sir Harry uses in front of the child. You know last night she was taking the Lord’s name in vain left and right.”

“Miss Lord,” says Harry, rising with Gloria, ignoring the look of disapproval in the sitter’s eyes, “if a Thorco heiress can’t be a spoiled brat who can? And if I want to say ‘fuck you’ in this house, goddamn it, I’ll do it.”

“Sir Harry!”

He takes Gloria by the hand and they go shopping at Baumgarten’s department store. He lets her give vent to her childish extravagance and is on hand the day of the delivery to help her assemble her room within a room on the third story. Four double mattresses with extra padding go on the floor with eight satin down comforters and ninety-nine fine pillows. Four tall, extra-wide wardrobes make perfect corner pieces, and give Glory plenty of closet space, with drawers and shelves to hold her ribbons and bows, rags and riches, books, dolls, stuffed animals, water colors, midnight lamps and flashlights.

From his days as sheik of the City by the Bay, the playboy understands the game of tent-making: you need everything in easy reach for a camp to be inviolate.

The last ingredient is curtains, almost one hundred yards of red, gold, black, and purple silk and velvet, fabrics which have a few decades to go before they are as cosy as the moth-eaten rose velvet portieres she used to cover her nest downstairs. Still, when they are finished, it’s a splendid tent, a colorful festooned pavilion with flaps that flutter like butterfly wings.

Gloria applauds politely. “Thank you, thank you, Daddy-o.”

Fine, she thinks, certainly it makes being up on the third floor more bearable. The tent is most excellent, yet it is but an imitation of her Mummy’s tomb. And the rooms here cannot rival the extended suite her mother now has all to herself. Those luxuries downstairs, everything her mother has, including her husband, seem more desirable than ever. Where there is a will there is a way. But willful Glory’s way is to enjoy what she has, as best she can, and have faith that better accommodations will be forthcoming if she has the patience to let destiny do the trick.