smackenzie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smackenzie) wrote2011-11-04 09:11 pm
smackenzie) wrote2011-11-04 09:11 pm
Entry tags:
(did i mention it was early may, 1919? it is)
James actually likes school. He isn't learning anything particularly complicated, at least not compared to Con and Julia and even William, but there is enough to fill six hours of his day and give him something to do and new things to think about. His teacher, Mr Van der Waal, is stern but not too strict, and because James learned to read early and is good at math, he is a bit of a favorite.
Afer school, Luisa always comes to get James (and William and sometime Con, by default) and walk him home, and sometimes when she asks what he learned, if he learned anything new and interesting, he actually gets a chance to tell her. On days when Con doesn't have to stay late for sports practice or because the headmaster feels the need to keep him after class for misbehaving, he monopolizes the conversation and turns all his attention to Luisa. She answers his questions easily, but even James can tell that Con is acting as if he's sweet on her - "He's such a flirt", Julia says - and she is putting him off. Luisa is older, for one thing, and Italian, for another, and an immigrant, and most important, she is their father's employee. As much as James might like her - and he does like her - and as interested as Con may be in her, she will always be working class and they will always be society.
Not that it seems to bother her that Con flirts with her, because sometimes she will turn that same kind of interest on James or William. But James knows she's only playing with him and being nice to him, because he is only seven and he knows that Luisa has set her cap for someone else.
"His name is Antonio," she confided in him one afternoon, while William was having a piano lesson and Aimee sat patiently and waited for it to be over so she could have her lesson in turn. "He lives in Boston where he works for his uncle. He is the youngest, like you, and there is not so much work for him in New York. He's been writing to me for a month." She pulled a letter out of her pocket, unfolded it, and smoothed it out over her skirt so James could see. "Can you read his handwriting?"
James took the letter, turned it sideways and upside-down, and decided that no, he couldn't read it. He was used to Mr Van der Waal's neat, legible script, or Julia's loopy, sprawling letters. This looked like someone had just shaken their pen all over the page, and then let a parakeet walk on it.
Luisa laughed at his expression. "I make that face too. Sometimes he dictates to his cousin, who went to school for more years and has more practice with a pen. He's very sweet, Antonio. Sometimes I wish he lived here so he could court me properly."
"Why is he courting you from Boston?" James asked. His brother Matthew was at the time trying to woo Alianor who was still living in Philadelphia, which James thought was silly. Wooing in general seemed silly to him. It was like a game he didn't understand. But Julia thought it was romantic, and she would sigh dramatically and look wistful when Matthew recounted his progress - or lack thereof - on Sundays when he came to the house for lunch.
"He needs to be making money," Luisa explained, "and his prospects are better there. And I cannot go to him - my family is here, and you." She kissed the top of his head and ruffled his hair. "So he writes me letters and tells me how he is doing and it's all very proper." She looked pleased. "He even sent me a photograph of him and his cousin in their Sunday suits. If you want to see it I can bring it tomorrow."
"I want to see it. Is he handsome?"
"He is." Now Luisa made the same kind of face that Julia did whenever Matthew started talking about the object of his affection. "I'm very proud of him. He works very hard."
"Can I come to the wedding when you get married?"
"We shall see. He hasn't asked me yet."
"Of course he wants to marry you," James said with certainty. "You're pretty."
"And you're very kind." She kissed the top of his head again. "Shall we go see how William's lesson is going?"
Luisa doesn't talk about Antonio in Boston very often, and she has never brought another letter to the house, but James knows he is still writing to her and she is writing back. He still doesn't quite understand this long-distance courting, but it keeps her happy, and sometimes Julia will use Luisa and Antonio as starting points in a wild array of made-up stories.
"Maybe he's really a prince in disguise," she'll whisper, "or he's hiding from the people who stole his family's fortune. Or he's an inventor, and late at night, after he gets home, he sits at the kitchen table and sketches his ideas on butcher paper, all the while thinking how he will eventually invent something as useful as the lightbulb or as important as the train engine, and he'll make a million dollars and marry Luisa in the most lavish ceremony ever."
James' favorite hidden identity for Antonio is "pirate". James has never been on a boat, except for when one of Mr Godwin's friends had everyone to his country house on Long Island and they went out on a yacht, but he just knows that if he ever got a chance to sail the ocean, he would be a pirate. But he would only steal treasure from bad men, who had stolen it first from good people. He would be the Robin Hood of the high seas.
So far he is confined to being the Robin Hood of the parlor, where he and Julia are trying to convince Con to give up a piece of cake he has snuck from the kitchen.
"Stand and deliver!" Julia demands, brandishing her furled umbrella as if it were a sword. Con raises an eyebrow.
"We have come to rob from the rich and give to the poor," James adds.
"I don't see any poor," Con says.
"Luisa." James points towards the music room, where Luisa is helping Mrs O'Donnell dust and tidy. "She's poor."
"Then I will give her my cake. Not you." Con stands up and goes into the other room. James and Julia look at each other and shrug.
"Do you think Mrs Malcolm would let us have cake too?" James asks her. There's no point in being Robin Hood if there's no one to rob, and seeing Con's slice of cake made him want some of his own.
"You, she might. She likes you." Julia winks. She takes James' hand. "Come on. You distract her, I'll steal some cake."
Mrs Malcolm is having none of it, though, and shoos them both out of the kitchen empty-handed. They discover that Luisa gently but firmly refused Con's offer of cake, so he had to eat it himself. He does not seem too upset by this, though.
"Of course not," Julia mutters, "he got cake."
"Cake before supper will ruin your appetites," Mrs O'Donnell says, overhearing her.
"I bet Robin Hood got cake before supper if he wanted it," James says.
"When you're an adult, you can have cake for supper too. Now go play somewhere else." Just as Mrs Malcolm did, Mrs O'Donnell shoos them out of the parlor, where she is now sweeping the rug, and they go outside into the courtyard to contemplate the fluffy pink cherry tree they can just see in the neighbor's back yard over the wall. They have heard about the Japanese cherry trees in Washington, DC, and how they explode with pink every spring. Aimee wants to see them in person. Julia wants to go to Japan.
Luisa comes looking for them and Julia convinces her to be the Sheriff of Nottingham, so Robin Hood (James) and Little John (Julia) have someone to steal from. Aimee's piano lesson is now over, and she consents to being a poor over-taxed farmer, so Robin and John have someone to give their ill-gotten gains to. William has made himself scarce, and Con has likely gone up to his room to study, so the girls and James switch roles after a while to keep things interesting. James suggests they pretend Robin's Merry Men could get hold of a boat and become pirates on the Thames, but this idea is voted down.
Their game continues until Mr Godwin returns from his office, at which point Luisa herds the little Godwins upstairs so he can have some peace and quiet and they can wash up for dinner. Mrs Godwin comes into the nursery and sits carefully on one of the child-sized chairs, which have been there since Matthew and Gabriel were small, when the first Mrs Godwin furnished the nursery to accommodate several little boys at once.
"Tell me about your day," she says, opening her arms to Aimee and James - Luisa having taken William to his room to change his shirt - and beckoning to them. They stand on either side of her, as the chair is too short and she is perched too precariously for either of them to sit on her lap, and Aimee talks about her piano lesson and James tells her about being Robin Hood and how no one else thought the Merry Men could have been pirates. Mrs Godwin laughs and kisses him on the forehead and tells him that he can be a pirate if he wants, but wouldn't he miss his mother?
"You know, pirates have mothers too," she says. "Even Blackbeard had a mother."
"Arrr, Mommy," James says, in his best pirate voice, and Mrs Godwin laughs again.
"Did you know there were lady pirates?"
"Ladies can't be pirates," Aimee says.
"But two of them were. There are only two famous ones. They were called Anne Bonny and Mary Read. They dressed at men sometimes. It is very hard, being a woman on a pirate ship, and sometimes they felt they had to go in disguise."
"I don't think I'd like it." Aimee scrunches her nose in distaste. James thinks to himself that no pirate ship would want her anyway, so it is a good thing she isn't interested.
"No, I imagine you wouldn't. There are other options for you." She kisses Aimee on the cheek and hugs them both one-armed. "Now let me up, my little scurvy dogs, so we can go eat."
"Avast!" James cries, as they follow her out of the nursery and downstairs to the smaller dining room. He has no idea what "avast" means, but Julia says that pirates shout it before giving orders or boarding other ships, and it sounds good.
Mrs O'Donnell always goes home before the Godwins sit down to supper, but Luisa is still there, and of course Mrs Malcolm, and sometimes Mr Sewell, the driver, will help them serve. (James does not know what Mr Sewell does when he isn't driving Mr Godwin to and from his office, or Julia and Aimee to and from school, or Mrs Godwin to and from her many social engagements and errands. Sometimes James will see him working on the car's engine, or washing it if the weather is fine, but aside from driving and serving at supper, James can't guess what Mr Sewell does.) (Well, he can guess. But in his heart he doesn't think any of his guesses are true. Mr Sewell is in all probability not spying for the King of Mexico, or corresponding with Indian chiefs, or even teaching exiled Russians how to drive.)
words: 1908
total words: 4647
today's quickie research: the cherry blossom festival in dc
Afer school, Luisa always comes to get James (and William and sometime Con, by default) and walk him home, and sometimes when she asks what he learned, if he learned anything new and interesting, he actually gets a chance to tell her. On days when Con doesn't have to stay late for sports practice or because the headmaster feels the need to keep him after class for misbehaving, he monopolizes the conversation and turns all his attention to Luisa. She answers his questions easily, but even James can tell that Con is acting as if he's sweet on her - "He's such a flirt", Julia says - and she is putting him off. Luisa is older, for one thing, and Italian, for another, and an immigrant, and most important, she is their father's employee. As much as James might like her - and he does like her - and as interested as Con may be in her, she will always be working class and they will always be society.
Not that it seems to bother her that Con flirts with her, because sometimes she will turn that same kind of interest on James or William. But James knows she's only playing with him and being nice to him, because he is only seven and he knows that Luisa has set her cap for someone else.
"His name is Antonio," she confided in him one afternoon, while William was having a piano lesson and Aimee sat patiently and waited for it to be over so she could have her lesson in turn. "He lives in Boston where he works for his uncle. He is the youngest, like you, and there is not so much work for him in New York. He's been writing to me for a month." She pulled a letter out of her pocket, unfolded it, and smoothed it out over her skirt so James could see. "Can you read his handwriting?"
James took the letter, turned it sideways and upside-down, and decided that no, he couldn't read it. He was used to Mr Van der Waal's neat, legible script, or Julia's loopy, sprawling letters. This looked like someone had just shaken their pen all over the page, and then let a parakeet walk on it.
Luisa laughed at his expression. "I make that face too. Sometimes he dictates to his cousin, who went to school for more years and has more practice with a pen. He's very sweet, Antonio. Sometimes I wish he lived here so he could court me properly."
"Why is he courting you from Boston?" James asked. His brother Matthew was at the time trying to woo Alianor who was still living in Philadelphia, which James thought was silly. Wooing in general seemed silly to him. It was like a game he didn't understand. But Julia thought it was romantic, and she would sigh dramatically and look wistful when Matthew recounted his progress - or lack thereof - on Sundays when he came to the house for lunch.
"He needs to be making money," Luisa explained, "and his prospects are better there. And I cannot go to him - my family is here, and you." She kissed the top of his head and ruffled his hair. "So he writes me letters and tells me how he is doing and it's all very proper." She looked pleased. "He even sent me a photograph of him and his cousin in their Sunday suits. If you want to see it I can bring it tomorrow."
"I want to see it. Is he handsome?"
"He is." Now Luisa made the same kind of face that Julia did whenever Matthew started talking about the object of his affection. "I'm very proud of him. He works very hard."
"Can I come to the wedding when you get married?"
"We shall see. He hasn't asked me yet."
"Of course he wants to marry you," James said with certainty. "You're pretty."
"And you're very kind." She kissed the top of his head again. "Shall we go see how William's lesson is going?"
Luisa doesn't talk about Antonio in Boston very often, and she has never brought another letter to the house, but James knows he is still writing to her and she is writing back. He still doesn't quite understand this long-distance courting, but it keeps her happy, and sometimes Julia will use Luisa and Antonio as starting points in a wild array of made-up stories.
"Maybe he's really a prince in disguise," she'll whisper, "or he's hiding from the people who stole his family's fortune. Or he's an inventor, and late at night, after he gets home, he sits at the kitchen table and sketches his ideas on butcher paper, all the while thinking how he will eventually invent something as useful as the lightbulb or as important as the train engine, and he'll make a million dollars and marry Luisa in the most lavish ceremony ever."
James' favorite hidden identity for Antonio is "pirate". James has never been on a boat, except for when one of Mr Godwin's friends had everyone to his country house on Long Island and they went out on a yacht, but he just knows that if he ever got a chance to sail the ocean, he would be a pirate. But he would only steal treasure from bad men, who had stolen it first from good people. He would be the Robin Hood of the high seas.
So far he is confined to being the Robin Hood of the parlor, where he and Julia are trying to convince Con to give up a piece of cake he has snuck from the kitchen.
"Stand and deliver!" Julia demands, brandishing her furled umbrella as if it were a sword. Con raises an eyebrow.
"We have come to rob from the rich and give to the poor," James adds.
"I don't see any poor," Con says.
"Luisa." James points towards the music room, where Luisa is helping Mrs O'Donnell dust and tidy. "She's poor."
"Then I will give her my cake. Not you." Con stands up and goes into the other room. James and Julia look at each other and shrug.
"Do you think Mrs Malcolm would let us have cake too?" James asks her. There's no point in being Robin Hood if there's no one to rob, and seeing Con's slice of cake made him want some of his own.
"You, she might. She likes you." Julia winks. She takes James' hand. "Come on. You distract her, I'll steal some cake."
Mrs Malcolm is having none of it, though, and shoos them both out of the kitchen empty-handed. They discover that Luisa gently but firmly refused Con's offer of cake, so he had to eat it himself. He does not seem too upset by this, though.
"Of course not," Julia mutters, "he got cake."
"Cake before supper will ruin your appetites," Mrs O'Donnell says, overhearing her.
"I bet Robin Hood got cake before supper if he wanted it," James says.
"When you're an adult, you can have cake for supper too. Now go play somewhere else." Just as Mrs Malcolm did, Mrs O'Donnell shoos them out of the parlor, where she is now sweeping the rug, and they go outside into the courtyard to contemplate the fluffy pink cherry tree they can just see in the neighbor's back yard over the wall. They have heard about the Japanese cherry trees in Washington, DC, and how they explode with pink every spring. Aimee wants to see them in person. Julia wants to go to Japan.
Luisa comes looking for them and Julia convinces her to be the Sheriff of Nottingham, so Robin Hood (James) and Little John (Julia) have someone to steal from. Aimee's piano lesson is now over, and she consents to being a poor over-taxed farmer, so Robin and John have someone to give their ill-gotten gains to. William has made himself scarce, and Con has likely gone up to his room to study, so the girls and James switch roles after a while to keep things interesting. James suggests they pretend Robin's Merry Men could get hold of a boat and become pirates on the Thames, but this idea is voted down.
Their game continues until Mr Godwin returns from his office, at which point Luisa herds the little Godwins upstairs so he can have some peace and quiet and they can wash up for dinner. Mrs Godwin comes into the nursery and sits carefully on one of the child-sized chairs, which have been there since Matthew and Gabriel were small, when the first Mrs Godwin furnished the nursery to accommodate several little boys at once.
"Tell me about your day," she says, opening her arms to Aimee and James - Luisa having taken William to his room to change his shirt - and beckoning to them. They stand on either side of her, as the chair is too short and she is perched too precariously for either of them to sit on her lap, and Aimee talks about her piano lesson and James tells her about being Robin Hood and how no one else thought the Merry Men could have been pirates. Mrs Godwin laughs and kisses him on the forehead and tells him that he can be a pirate if he wants, but wouldn't he miss his mother?
"You know, pirates have mothers too," she says. "Even Blackbeard had a mother."
"Arrr, Mommy," James says, in his best pirate voice, and Mrs Godwin laughs again.
"Did you know there were lady pirates?"
"Ladies can't be pirates," Aimee says.
"But two of them were. There are only two famous ones. They were called Anne Bonny and Mary Read. They dressed at men sometimes. It is very hard, being a woman on a pirate ship, and sometimes they felt they had to go in disguise."
"I don't think I'd like it." Aimee scrunches her nose in distaste. James thinks to himself that no pirate ship would want her anyway, so it is a good thing she isn't interested.
"No, I imagine you wouldn't. There are other options for you." She kisses Aimee on the cheek and hugs them both one-armed. "Now let me up, my little scurvy dogs, so we can go eat."
"Avast!" James cries, as they follow her out of the nursery and downstairs to the smaller dining room. He has no idea what "avast" means, but Julia says that pirates shout it before giving orders or boarding other ships, and it sounds good.
Mrs O'Donnell always goes home before the Godwins sit down to supper, but Luisa is still there, and of course Mrs Malcolm, and sometimes Mr Sewell, the driver, will help them serve. (James does not know what Mr Sewell does when he isn't driving Mr Godwin to and from his office, or Julia and Aimee to and from school, or Mrs Godwin to and from her many social engagements and errands. Sometimes James will see him working on the car's engine, or washing it if the weather is fine, but aside from driving and serving at supper, James can't guess what Mr Sewell does.) (Well, he can guess. But in his heart he doesn't think any of his guesses are true. Mr Sewell is in all probability not spying for the King of Mexico, or corresponding with Indian chiefs, or even teaching exiled Russians how to drive.)
words: 1908
total words: 4647
today's quickie research: the cherry blossom festival in dc
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