Eight subway stations from Harlem and up four flights of stairs, Dot
found her ideal apartment. Not right away, of course. First there had
been a week of terrible discouragement and unbelievable weariness. But
that was forgotten now. She and Eddie were firmly ensconced in their
home.
Dot had liked the house at first sight. She had admired the big orange
lights which hung outside and the way the building was divided into two
parts. There was space for fifty families in the building, twenty-five
on each side. The janitress was a terrible woman and easily nettled,
but one couldn’t have everything--and the apartment was so adorable.
There were five apartments on each floor. The Collinses had the middle
one, and it lay behind a lovely reddish-brown door. Of course it was
on the top floor, but then neither Dot nor Eddie minded the stairs.
Dyckman Street was just around the corner and Two Hundred and Seventh
Street a few blocks away.
What Dot liked best about the apartment was that it had no hall. She
hated apartments with halls. Nobody would be mean enough to count the
place which could be crossed with one large step a hall.
And the living-room was right there, in front of the one large step.
Dot thought it a very large living-room, considering that her apartment
was only three rooms. The room was thirteen feet by eleven and had one
nice, large window which looked on the street. It annoyed her a little
that she couldn’t see much of the street because the gray wings of the
house jutted out on either side, but she consoled herself with the
thought that she could see who was passing her door.
Dot had “done” her living-room in delft blue. There were blue voile
curtains at the window. Delft-blue voile. Dot had made them herself,
and she was well pleased with the window.
It irritated her that the rug wasn’t delft blue, but still it was
awfully nice in its reddish-greenish-tannish way. Dot had never before
seen such plump roses, and they were tan roses, too, but the rug had
been Edna’s, thus erasing all doubt of their authenticity.
Dot was doubtful about the golden-oak table. Ought it be square? Oh,
well, it was square, and she didn’t know anything that could be done
about it except to keep an ecru cover on it and in the center a little
fern that almost looked real.
One of the chairs was golden oak, too, and it beamed with a sickly
yellowish smile upon its partner who was only mission wood.
There was a Morris chair. The cushions on it were not delft blue. They
were bottle green and a little worn, but Dot didn’t mind that. She
thought Eddie wouldn’t be nearly so comfortable in a stiff new chair.
Catty-cornered in the southwest corner was a table. Edna’s
mother-in-law had got it from her mother-in-law as a wedding present.
Dot liked it least of all the things in the room. It was so terribly
heavy and old-fashioned. She had Eddie’s radio set on it, so people
wouldn’t notice that the table was a hundred and fifty years old.
Of course there was a sofa. It was cherry-wood and not upholstered in
delft blue. It had a pale gray background and was brocaded with tiny
pink buttercups. It was a very comfortable sofa. The first day in the
new apartment, Dot had made Eddie lie on it and had asked if he could
honestly say that he had ever encountered a more comfortable one.
There was a bridge lamp beside the sofa. It had a black iron base
and a charming shade upon which was the silhouette of a geisha being
obligingly carted about town in the silhouette of a jinrickshaw.
Against the opposite wall was a chest of drawers where Dot kept the
dining-room and kitchen linen. It was chestnut and had knobs which,
as though they themselves were not adequate for their jobs, provided
little metal pulls on their neat rounded ends.
The wall paper was unfortunately not delft blue. The landlord had of
course given Dot her choice of several samples, but inasmuch as there
was not a delft blue in the collection, she had chosen sand color.
Edna said that sand color was a good background for pictures; so Dot
had to have pictures. She dumped a photograph of her brother Jim out
of a gilt oval frame and replaced it with a shiny green likeness of
Pola Negri cut from a movie magazine. Then there was the picture that
Edna had had taken of herself and Floyd while Floyd was still young
enough to be manageable. Whistler’s “Magnolia Tree” was Sue Cudahy’s
contribution to the living-room. A plaster-of-paris plaque of a Gibson
girl in linen duster, veil, and goggles gave a hint of the esthetic
pursuits of Edna’s youth.
Dot’s heart had been set on candlesticks. There’s something dressy
about mahogany-stained candlesticks with tall, imposing candles. On the
day that she made these purchases, the Woolworth had been out of delft
blue candles; so she had taken pale green ones.
The pictures and the candles were indeed big factors in the success
of the living-room, but Dot felt that not enough credit was given the
chandelier. It belonged to the house, of course, and Dot tried not to
think that she might some day move away from it. It was a white bowl
supported by a thick brass chain and nicely finished off with a row of
white glass lace. It hung a little low, Dot thought; two links shorter,
and Eddie might have saved himself that nasty crack on the forehead.
All in all, the living-room was very satisfactory, in fact, quite
lovely. Thinking it over from an unprejudiced angle, Dot decided that
she hadn’t made a mistake in “doing” it in delft blue.
The kitchen was of course much smaller than the living-room. Dot
liked a small kitchen. It saves a great many steps, and this one had
the advantage of opening right out from the living-room. There was a
swinging door between. Dot hoped Eddie hadn’t seen her swinging the
door back and forth and back and forth again for the sole purpose of
watching it work.
There was a big white sink, and Eddie had bought a fixture which,
when attached to the faucets, made it possible to warm the cold
water or cool the hot water. It was just an ordinary black gas stove
the Collinses had, but it roasted beautifully. The ice box had been
relined when they moved in. It would have cost ten dollars to cover the
floor with linoleum; so Dot had decided on oil cloth. They had saved
four and a half dollars that way, and Eddie had varnished the entire
surface, which was bound to make it last even longer than linoleum.
It was a pretty pattern, blue and white squares. The kitchen window
looked out on the rear. It had a little white curtain with a checkered
gingham edge. There was a shelf above the tub, and four dazzling white
canisters sat thereon. The largest was labeled “Flour” and the smallest
“Tea.” The two between were the sugar canister, which could accommodate
four pounds without discomfort, and the coffee canister, which could
accommodate two pounds with terrible discomfort. There was the salt box
there, too, the pepper box, and many other boxes, jars, and cans.
Behind the cupboard doors Dot kept her set of dishes, of course.
There was a bowl of fruit on the little white table that stood so
self-consciously between its two white chairs. It knew it shouldn’t
be there with its chairs telling the wicked secret that Dot and Eddie
frequently took their meals in the kitchen. Dot often gave the table an
admiring glance so that it shouldn’t feel too bad. The bread box on the
built-in sideboard matched the canisters. Oh, triumph of domestic art!
It was white, and upon it in blue letters ran the legend “Bread and
Cake.” Woe be unto the infidel who tried to push past the smart sliding
door an unwanted pie.
Beneath the bread box were two drawers. In one lay the good cutlery
in pomp and splendor upon a yard of green velveteen. In the other
were the kitchen knives and forks, the coffee-strainer, egg-beater,
pancake-turner, potato knife, wooden spoon, and mixed in with these
little industrious utensils, bewildered and dazed, were a mess of grid
leaks, discarded dials, odds and ends of wire, a burnt-out “C” battery,
an insulator, and a tube that had once been a darn good detector.
Underneath, in the closet where the shining aluminum pots, pans,
percolator, and electric iron made their home, Eddie had hidden all the
parts of dismantled radio sets that were too big to fit in the drawer.
To feast her eyes on her bedroom Dot had to return through the
living-room. She had to walk out into that little place that could
hardly be called a hall and then walk right past the door that led to
the outside and turn quickly around a little angle, and there she was
in the bedroom. It had two windows. These looked right smack across
twenty-five feet into somebody else’s bedroom, but Dot didn’t look,
except straight down with her head to the left side, and then she could
see the street again just as she did from the living-room.
There were pink voile curtains at these windows, but Dot hadn’t made
them. Bedroom curtains are nicer when they’re all frilly and ruffly.
It was the ruffliness that had scared Dot out of making them. She had
bought them from the department store at Two Hundred and Seventh and
Broadway. Two and a quarter a pair.
Coming at one from the center of the north wall was the bed. A
full-size, bird’s-eye maple bed with carved scroll-work in two places.
It had three pillows; Dot liked two and Eddie liked one. The spread was
just plain white. To Dot there was something touching about that white
spread. It seemed so wistfully envious of the beautiful pink curtains,
so sure that no one could ever admire it while the breezes insisted
upon making lovely, delicate sails out of the pink voile curtains. Dot
always patted the spread lovingly.
The rug was leaf green with, Dot thought, pineapples in it. She decided
to refer to them as “figures.” If she called them pineapples Edna might
think she didn’t like them. When Dot sat down on a maple-wood chair
she was able to see under the bed where there was a worn spot in the
rug, but--comforting thought--few people sat on the maple-wood chair.
Another chair was upholstered in yellow brocade and absolutely smirked
with self-satisfaction.
Dot admired Eddie’s chiffonier terribly. It was chestnut, because
chestnut was the only wood that Martin Driggs knew by name and he had
been badgered into choosing his own chiffonier. A matting-covered chest
stood in one corner of the room. It held some of the bedroom linens and
towels. The overflow was accommodated in Eddie’s chiffonier. Eddie,
statistics proved, could do nicely with two drawers and a laundry bag.
Dot frequently opened the door of her closet. It had a large wooden
arm, stretched between its walls, which held her dresses in neat
array. Her hats and shoes stood on the shelf above. There was no sign
of Eddie there except a pair of discarded shoes which he hadn’t yet
accustomed himself to the idea of throwing out. A cretonne-covered box
on the floor was where Dot kept her more intimate garments. She had
no bureau, chiffonier, or chest of drawers. Instead she had what Mrs.
Williams had suggested Eddie should give her in honor of their first
home, a vanity table, a frail, mahogany-stained, tri-mirrored vanity
table with two shallow little drawers and knots of forget-me-nots
painted helter-skelter with fine disregard of balance. It was Dot’s
pride and joy.
Sometimes when her work was all done, she’d go whisking about the
apartment, patting the white spread, smiling at the kitchen table, and
admiring her blue voile curtains. Even the bathroom with its sparkling
white tub and perfectly workmanlike shower bath came in for its share
of praise.
Dot would stand on the little blue bath mat and study the gleaming
white tiles surrounding it. And sometimes she would suddenly burst into
song, and other times she felt as though she’d just like to cry.