Belles on their Toes

the course.

21
ALL ALONE

    The raising of eleven children had taken a far heavier toll on our house than it had on Mother. Mother still was slim, quick, and erect, but the house was tired and sagging.
    The stairs were grooved, and spokes were missing from the banisters. The furnace, never too efficient, now could be coaxed to breathe heat only into the central rooms. The floors had been scuffed beyond repair, and initials had been carved in some of the woodwork. One of the columns of the porte-cochere had begun to rot, causing the roof to angle downward like the tilt of an old rake's hat.
    The year Jane was to go to college, Mother agreed with us that it was time for her to move out of the house. We thought she'd try to sell it, but she didn't like the idea of other people living in it, and she knew it wouldn't bring much money anyway. Besides needing repairs, it was built primarily for a family with ten or twelve children. People who could afford to run such a large house didn't have families that size any more.
    Mother called for bids and had the house torn down. She supervised the demolition herself. If she felt any pangs as the workmen stripped off the walls and laid open the interior, she kept them to herself.
    The motion study equipment, the files, the double desk she and Dad had used to perfect their original time-saving experiments went to the laboratory at Purdue. The mahogany furniture she had had since her wedding was sent to a cabinetmaker to remove the scars and stains of a generation of children and several generations of dogs and miscellaneous livestock.
    Mother's finances had improved immeasurably as more consulting jobs were offered her. And now she also came into an inheritance from her family's estate. With Bob partly through college and only Jane to go, Mother could retire, if she wanted to, and relax for the rest of her life.
    After years of working and scrimping, she could have fur coats, a maid to bring her breakfast in bed, even a limousine and a chauffeur, if she wanted them.
    Mother didn't want them, and she had no idea of stopping work. She and Jane moved into a middle-priced apartment in Montclair. The old furniture gave a familiar appearance to Mother's new living and dining room—except that everything was tidy, polished and re-upholstered. She started using her best silver and china, that she had packed away years before, when Anne was starting to walk and pulling things off of tables.
    A cleaning woman came over twice a week, but Mother and Jane did their own cooking. With unrestricted use of her own kitchen, Mother soon became a good cook. If Jane had let Mother have her way, Jane would have been the one who had breakfast in bed. As it was, no matter how early Jane got up, her eggs and toast appeared on the table about the time she walked into the dining room.
    Then Jane left for college, and Mother was alone. None of us liked the idea of that. We thought that anyone who had raised eleven youngsters always needed children in the house. Besides, it seemed only right that, after all the years she had looked out for us, we should start looking out for her.
    We hadn't had a meeting of our Family Council for years, but when Anne next came to Montclair from Cleveland for a visit, we called a meeting of the Council to discuss Mother.
    The Council had been one of Dad's ideas, and he had patterned it after employer-employee boards in industry. The Council had decided matters of policy, such as the size of allowances and the apportionment of house and yard work. Dad, as self-appointed chairman, had his own set of parliamentary rules, and wasn't above launching a one-man filibuster or bottling up appropriations bills in committees. But for the most part, the majority ruled.
    We didn't want Mother to know about the meeting to discuss her, so we held it at Ernestine's house. It wasn't a formal session—no one presided with gavel in hand and a pitcher of ice water at his elbow, as Dad used to. But we did sit in our old positions, around Ern's dining-room table. We still looked on Anne, now a matron in her late thirties, as automatically in charge when she was home. She sat at the head of the table.
    We agreed, first of all, that either Mother would move in with one of our families, or one of our families would move in with her. We felt that what had kept Mother going through the years was the goal of sending all of us through college. When that goal was achieved, there might not be any incentive