in which james has a birthday party
Nov. 26th, 2011 07:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smackenzieIn November, James turns eight, and just as she did for William, Mrs Godwin throws him a party. She invites all the boys and girls in his class at his new school, as well as Hollis Campbell and Alexei Fokine and Trenton Payne from his old school, and all his brothers and sisters, of course, except for Gabriel who is too far away and Nathaniel who has not convalesced enough to enjoy coming down to Manhattan more than twice a year. But he has sent a gift, Lucas says, so it is as if he were here.
James wanted a pony to give everyone rides, like Hollis had at his party, but Mrs Godwin says no, a pony would be too much trouble and the weather is too unpleasant and unpredictable to assume that the pony would enjoy walking around the courtyard, or that children would enjoy riding it. It is cold and looks like rain, she says, so we will have games in the ballroom and cake and refreshments in the larger dining room and besides, William did not have a pony at his birthday party.
"William did not want a pony," James says. "I do."
"I will ask for a pony at my party when I turn ten," Aimee offers, "and you can ride him."
Aimee's birthday is at the end of March, which James does not think is much improvement weather-wise, but perhaps it is not worth whining about.
What is worth whining about is the fact that James wants to invite Sean and Liam, because they are his friends and they are fun to be around, and Mrs Godwin has said no to that too. He does not understand – she would invite Trenton, who is only friends with James because their mothers threw them together, but she would not invite the O'Donnell brothers who are his friends because he actually likes them. He cannot even convince her to have the party on Saturday, so Mrs O'Donnell can bring her sons like usual and Mrs Godwin would not even have to send them an official invitation.
James asks Luisa to say something to Mrs O'Donnell, in the hopes that Mrs O'Donnell says something to his mother, but that is not successful either.
"It is not worth crying over," Luisa says, trying to soothe him. "You will see them on Saturday and you can have a little party just the three of you. If you ask nicely, Mrs Malcolm will bake you a cake for special."
"But I want them to come to my party and play games and eat cake and meet Hollis and Alexei," James protests. "It is not the same. It is not fair."
"No, sweetie, it isn't, I agree. Would you like me to talk to your mother?"
James does not think it will do any good, but he thanks her anyway. And on Saturday, Mrs Malcolm bakes a little cake just for him and Sean and Liam – although Con steals a piece anyway – and the boys build a fort in the parlor to play cowboys and Indians, and then General Custer at Little Bighorn. (It is Liam's idea to do that, so they can all die in melodramatic fashion. Julia calls them perverse, a word they do not know, but it is a lot of fun to practice overdramatic ways to be shot full of arrows.) They put all the furniture and sofa cushions back where they were before Mrs Godwin comes home, so that she does not know they did it.
Liam acts oddly sneaky, as if he has a secret, but James cannot get him to tell what it is.
"The grocer's cat is pregnant," Sean explains, "and he said we can have one of the kittens, But Liam does not want to tell Ma because he thinks it is a big secret." Sean rolls his eyes. James has lived with Julia and Con long enough to know when someone is perhaps not telling the truth, or not telling all of it, but he does not know why Sean would lie to him, especially about the grocer's cat and her future kittens.
"Ma says your birthday is on Tuesday," Sean continues. "We wanted to get you a present but no one thought you'd want a cat."
"I wanted to have a pony," James admits. "My friend Hollis had a pony at his birthday party, and it walked around the yard and everyone got to ride it. But Momma said the weather would be bad and it would make the pony unhappy to have to walk in circles in the courtyard if it rained."
"A pony of your own?" Liam asks, wide-eyed.
"No, just for the day. A pony for hire." He gestures to the window, which is shut and curtained against the wind and rain. "It is just as well I will not get one. It would just be wet and unhappy, and that would be mean of me to make it walk around the courtyard in the rain."
"It would be dry if it had a mackintosh," Sean says. "A bright yellow one. With boots. And a hat." Liam giggles, and after considering what a pony might look like wearing a yellow raincoat and matching rainhat, James giggles too.
The next day he discovers why Liam was acting so secretive – Julia and Con have conspired to invite the brothers to his birthday party without Mrs Godwin's knowledge or permission, and Con has gone so far as to take the subway down to their neighborhood to escort them up to the house. James is surprised, to say the least, when Luisa opens the door to find Sean and Liam on the steps in what must be their best clothes, Sean holding a box wrapped in newspaper and Con standing behind them looking very self-satisfied indeed.
"Sometimes your brother is a good person," Julia whispers to James, after she has explained how this has happened, that it was her and Con's idea together, and that she thought it would be too suspicious if she went along with him to bring Liam and Sean back. "Remember that in the future, when he has turned back into a horse's ass."
"You are a good person," he tells her, throwing his arms around her neck and kissing her on the cheek. "Thank you." He untangles himself from Julia, grabs Liam and Sean by a hand each, and drags them up to the ballroom, where most of the guests are already milling around and being organized into teams for the first game. Julia and Con and Luisa follow, Luisa to assist and Julia and Con to watch. Lucas and Matthew even stick their heads into the ballroom a couple of times.
There are racing games and Blind Man's Bluff and Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey and Mrs Godwin has bought something called a piñata, which is a hollow papier-mache horse decorated with colored crepe paper and hanging from a long pole. Matthew volunteers to hold the pole while Luisa blindfolds all the children one by one, before spinning them around and letting them flail at the piñata with a stick.
The piñata is full of candy, as everyone discovers when one of the girls in James' class, a chatty blonde thing named Penelope Carder, whacks it hard enough to break a hole in it. She whacks it again, encouraged by everyone's cheers, and keeps going until the piñata spills its candy everywhere, at which point there is utter chaos as all the children fall on the floor and scramble for it. Matthew jumps back out of the way, still holding the pole with the decimated piñata hanging from it, and Mrs Godwin's and all the nannies' cries of "No pushing, no shoving, there is enough for everyone" go unheeded.
James emerges with a double handful of candy, and it takes the nannies several minutes to untangle everyone and set their charges' clothes to rights.
After that, as a way to calm everyone down, all the children are herded into the larger dining room to partake of cake and punch and little sandwiches and oranges. There are not enough places to sit for twenty-eight small children, their nannies, both of James' sisters, and four of his brothers, so there is considerable jostling for seats. (William has consented to be part of the party, because he had such fun at his and he does not mind that all of James' friends and classmates are four or five years younger than he is, but Marcus sent his regrets that he would be unable to attend.) James gets to sit at the head of the table, and when Mrs Malcolm brings out the cake – which is understandably much bigger than the one she baked for him yesterday – and he closes his eyes to make a wish and blow out the candles, he wishes that every birthday could be like this, except next year he would like to have a pony.
Half of his guests want him to open his presents now, half of them do not, and James himself has no opinion. He does not need to show off in front of other people if he gets something good. Lucas suggests they take a vote, and "Open your gifts now" wins by four, so Lucas and Matthew and Luisa bring in all the presents and arrange them on the dining table so James can unwrap them and thank everyone in person.
He gets games and toys and a few stuffed animals and a book with full-color illustrations of boys having adventures, and from Sean and Liam, a pair of wooden six-shooters. Mrs Godwin whispers that she is saving all the gifts from herself and his father and his brothers and sisters until Tuesday, so he will have gifts to open on his actual birthday. He is pleased with his presents, or at least most of them, and politely thanks everyone for their gifts and for coming to his party.
All the boys and girls – including James' siblings – receive little gift bags on the way out, with an assortment of penny candy, a little cake in a cardboard box, and a tiny wooden train car for the boys or a little painted pewter horse for the girls.
Liam does not look thrilled with his little train car, so Julia trades him her pewter horse.
"Can I have your cake, too?" he asks in an undertone, and she laughs and calls him a greedy little boy even as she hands him the cardboard box of cake from her gift bag.
"Share it with your brother," she tells him.
Luisa does not usually work on Sundays, but today was a special day, but she is allowed to go home when the party is over – Mrs Malcolm will clean up – so she volunteers to take Sean and Liam home so they do not have to ride the subway by themselves. James wants to go with them, with Julia so he will not have to ride home alone, but Mrs Godwin says no, she wishes to have a chat with Julia about the O'Donnell brothers.
"Did you invite them?" she asks sternly, after everyone has left and Aimee and William have been shooed upstairs to the nursery. William went without comment, but Aimee, for whatever her reasons, has snuck back downstairs to sit on the stairway and listen. James has been kicked out of the parlor so Mrs Godwin can give Con and Julia the talking-to they were no doubt expecting, and now he is sitting right outside the door so he can hear them. Aimee stands up from where she is sitting on the bottom step and comes over to join him. "Whose idea was it?"
"Both of ours," Julia says, and from where he is sitting James can just see Con through the doorway. Con looks as if he is daring Mrs Godwin to tell him off. "James wanted them to come so badly, we thought it would be a nice surprise. Luisa talked to Mrs O'Donnell about it, and she agreed."
"There is a reason the O'Donnells were not invited. I do not expect James to understand, but I would have thought that you would, both of you, as you are older and more aware of the unspoken rules of polite society."
"They were very well-behaved," Con says.
"That is not what I meant by 'polite society' and you know it," Mrs Godwin snaps. "I will not be defied like that in my own house, by my own children."
"We are not your children."
"Con," Julia hisses.
"You are my children," Mrs Godwin continues, "because you are your father's children and he is married to me. I have had just about enough of you, Baltimore. And you, Julia, this is not the first time you have gone behind my back on your own agenda." James cannot see Julia from his vantage point, but he imagines that she must look contrite. She is always genuinely apologetic when she is caught, athough it does not stop her from planning further adventures.
"Momma must be very angry," Aimee whispers to James. "No one ever calls Con Baltimore."
"I hope he and Julia are not in too much trouble," James whispers back. "They just wanted me to have Sean and Liam at my party. They did not lie to anyone about anything."
It is not the same as sneaking off to see a movie, or to go to Coney Island, or any of the tiny little lies and half-truths that Julia has told to enable her and James to do something fun. Bringing Sean and Liam to his birthday party was a gift just like the wooden six-shooters, or the rollerskates Alexei gave him, and James does not think it is fair for Julia and Con to be punished for giving him a present.
"There is still the matter of your punishment," Mrs Godwin says, "which I will bring up with your father. This conversation is over for now, but do not think for one second that I will forget how you have ignored my wishes and shown me little respect."
James jumps up, because now that the discussion is finished he does not want his mother to know he was spying on her. He does not know how she will punish him for that, but he is sure she will. He hustles himself towards the kitchen, Aimee right behind him, but evidently they are not fast enough because Mrs Godwin calls out "James and Aimee, I do not want you listening at doorways any more, do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am," they chorus.
Mrs Malcolm appears in the doorway of the smaller dining room and tells Mrs Godwin that she has packed up the leftover cake and sandwiches, and all the oranges have been eaten, and as soon as she has finished the dishes she will be off.
"Thank you, Mrs Malcolm," Mrs Godwin says. "Lunch was delicious."
Mrs Malcolm nods her head in acknowledgement, and Aimee and James make their escape.
"Are you in very much trouble?" he asks Julia later.
"I do not know," she tells him. "No doubt we are. But it was worth it, I think. Sean and Liam had a lovely time, they got along with your other friends, and I know how badly you wanted them to be invited."
"I would do it again," Con says, from where he is lying on his back on the nursery floor. Aimee is setting up her dolls all along his left side. "They are good boys. Sean reminds me a bit of me. And Liam has a crush on you." He lifts his head and grins at Julia. "Besides, if Natalie will let them come over every Saturday and play with you" – he gestures to James with his right arm, because there is now a teddy bear sitting on his left – "I do not know why it would be so terrible for them to come to your birthday party. They get to be with the quality."
"What does that mean?" Aimee asks. James had not thought she was paying attention.
"It means us. We are the quality."
"But you just said Sean and Liam were good boys," James says.
"I did, and they are. But their mother is staff. Your mother is the employer. To Natalie's way of thinking, it is a difference of class and economic standing. I think it is a load of horseshit, myself. You do not need money to be a quality person, and you could have Mr Astor's millions and still be the worst person in the world."
James expects Julia to reprimand him for the swear word, but she only shakes her head. He does not understand. Why was he allowed to visit Sean and Liam's neighborhood over the summer, and meet Mrs Meara and Mary Margaret and the grocer and the Granary Boys, and eat sandwiches on their fire escape and play baseball in an empty lot, if he is "quality" and they are not? Why is it acceptable for him to play with them all day on Saturday, and for them to sit in the smaller dining room with him and eat the lunch that Mrs Malcolm has prepared, if they are not "quality"?
It upsets him that his mother does not think that the boys he considers his best friends are quality people, and he does not understand why they are allowed to play together and be friends if they are from such different classes.
"James," Julia says gently, "come here." He goes over to her and sits on the floor next to her, and she puts her arm around his shoulders. He leans against her. If anyone can make this day make sense, she can. "You have to remember two things. One is that Momma loves you, and she would never do anything deliberately to hurt you. The other is that sometimes life sucks."
"Did you just say a bad word, Julia Godwin?" Con asks, teasing.
"At least I did not say 'horseshit', Baltimore." James looks up at her, and she is grinning. "You are my favorite brother, James Christopher Shaw," she tells him, "and I will always be in your corner." She kisses the top of his head. "And I would go behind Momma's back again in a heartbeat to make you happy, because Con is right and her rules are horseshit."
Aimee giggles. James giggles despite himself.
"I do not want you to get in trouble," he tells Julia.
"Too late," Con calls.
"What can she do to you?"
"Military school."
"She would not," Julia says. "I do not think Father would let her. But you have to be more circumspect, Con. You have to watch what you say, and how you say it."
"In a year and a half I will be off to college, and none of this will matter." Con sits up, dislodging Aimee's dolls and stuffed animals. She makes a noise of protest. "Sorry about that," he tells her, sitting some of the dolls upright again. "I am going to Chicago to work with Gabriel and have my own life."
"Can we come visit?" James asks, although he is disappointed that Con does not want to stay in Manhattan, or even New Jersey. Matthew and Marcus both went to college in New Jersey.
"You can come stay if you want."
"This conversation has taken quite a serious turn," Julia says, "so I will change the subject if it all right with Con." He shrugs, which she takes as assent. "What do you think everyone got you for your birthday? Did you ask Mrs Malcolm to make you another cake, besides the one we had today?"
So for the next half hour James makes guesses as to what kinds of birthday presents his family has gotten him, and Aimee announces what she would like when it is her birthday in March, but maybe she would like those things for Christmas too, because Christmas is sooner, and they talk about cake and the piñata and how Penelope Carder did not look like the kind of girl who could swing the stick hard enough to whack a hole in it, and James feels a bit better about Julia and Con being in trouble on his behalf, although he still does not understand his mother's ideas about quality people and why Sean and Liam only seem to count part of the time.
words: 3425
total words: 44,101
quickie research: custer's last stand, piñatas
James wanted a pony to give everyone rides, like Hollis had at his party, but Mrs Godwin says no, a pony would be too much trouble and the weather is too unpleasant and unpredictable to assume that the pony would enjoy walking around the courtyard, or that children would enjoy riding it. It is cold and looks like rain, she says, so we will have games in the ballroom and cake and refreshments in the larger dining room and besides, William did not have a pony at his birthday party.
"William did not want a pony," James says. "I do."
"I will ask for a pony at my party when I turn ten," Aimee offers, "and you can ride him."
Aimee's birthday is at the end of March, which James does not think is much improvement weather-wise, but perhaps it is not worth whining about.
What is worth whining about is the fact that James wants to invite Sean and Liam, because they are his friends and they are fun to be around, and Mrs Godwin has said no to that too. He does not understand – she would invite Trenton, who is only friends with James because their mothers threw them together, but she would not invite the O'Donnell brothers who are his friends because he actually likes them. He cannot even convince her to have the party on Saturday, so Mrs O'Donnell can bring her sons like usual and Mrs Godwin would not even have to send them an official invitation.
James asks Luisa to say something to Mrs O'Donnell, in the hopes that Mrs O'Donnell says something to his mother, but that is not successful either.
"It is not worth crying over," Luisa says, trying to soothe him. "You will see them on Saturday and you can have a little party just the three of you. If you ask nicely, Mrs Malcolm will bake you a cake for special."
"But I want them to come to my party and play games and eat cake and meet Hollis and Alexei," James protests. "It is not the same. It is not fair."
"No, sweetie, it isn't, I agree. Would you like me to talk to your mother?"
James does not think it will do any good, but he thanks her anyway. And on Saturday, Mrs Malcolm bakes a little cake just for him and Sean and Liam – although Con steals a piece anyway – and the boys build a fort in the parlor to play cowboys and Indians, and then General Custer at Little Bighorn. (It is Liam's idea to do that, so they can all die in melodramatic fashion. Julia calls them perverse, a word they do not know, but it is a lot of fun to practice overdramatic ways to be shot full of arrows.) They put all the furniture and sofa cushions back where they were before Mrs Godwin comes home, so that she does not know they did it.
Liam acts oddly sneaky, as if he has a secret, but James cannot get him to tell what it is.
"The grocer's cat is pregnant," Sean explains, "and he said we can have one of the kittens, But Liam does not want to tell Ma because he thinks it is a big secret." Sean rolls his eyes. James has lived with Julia and Con long enough to know when someone is perhaps not telling the truth, or not telling all of it, but he does not know why Sean would lie to him, especially about the grocer's cat and her future kittens.
"Ma says your birthday is on Tuesday," Sean continues. "We wanted to get you a present but no one thought you'd want a cat."
"I wanted to have a pony," James admits. "My friend Hollis had a pony at his birthday party, and it walked around the yard and everyone got to ride it. But Momma said the weather would be bad and it would make the pony unhappy to have to walk in circles in the courtyard if it rained."
"A pony of your own?" Liam asks, wide-eyed.
"No, just for the day. A pony for hire." He gestures to the window, which is shut and curtained against the wind and rain. "It is just as well I will not get one. It would just be wet and unhappy, and that would be mean of me to make it walk around the courtyard in the rain."
"It would be dry if it had a mackintosh," Sean says. "A bright yellow one. With boots. And a hat." Liam giggles, and after considering what a pony might look like wearing a yellow raincoat and matching rainhat, James giggles too.
The next day he discovers why Liam was acting so secretive – Julia and Con have conspired to invite the brothers to his birthday party without Mrs Godwin's knowledge or permission, and Con has gone so far as to take the subway down to their neighborhood to escort them up to the house. James is surprised, to say the least, when Luisa opens the door to find Sean and Liam on the steps in what must be their best clothes, Sean holding a box wrapped in newspaper and Con standing behind them looking very self-satisfied indeed.
"Sometimes your brother is a good person," Julia whispers to James, after she has explained how this has happened, that it was her and Con's idea together, and that she thought it would be too suspicious if she went along with him to bring Liam and Sean back. "Remember that in the future, when he has turned back into a horse's ass."
"You are a good person," he tells her, throwing his arms around her neck and kissing her on the cheek. "Thank you." He untangles himself from Julia, grabs Liam and Sean by a hand each, and drags them up to the ballroom, where most of the guests are already milling around and being organized into teams for the first game. Julia and Con and Luisa follow, Luisa to assist and Julia and Con to watch. Lucas and Matthew even stick their heads into the ballroom a couple of times.
There are racing games and Blind Man's Bluff and Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey and Mrs Godwin has bought something called a piñata, which is a hollow papier-mache horse decorated with colored crepe paper and hanging from a long pole. Matthew volunteers to hold the pole while Luisa blindfolds all the children one by one, before spinning them around and letting them flail at the piñata with a stick.
The piñata is full of candy, as everyone discovers when one of the girls in James' class, a chatty blonde thing named Penelope Carder, whacks it hard enough to break a hole in it. She whacks it again, encouraged by everyone's cheers, and keeps going until the piñata spills its candy everywhere, at which point there is utter chaos as all the children fall on the floor and scramble for it. Matthew jumps back out of the way, still holding the pole with the decimated piñata hanging from it, and Mrs Godwin's and all the nannies' cries of "No pushing, no shoving, there is enough for everyone" go unheeded.
James emerges with a double handful of candy, and it takes the nannies several minutes to untangle everyone and set their charges' clothes to rights.
After that, as a way to calm everyone down, all the children are herded into the larger dining room to partake of cake and punch and little sandwiches and oranges. There are not enough places to sit for twenty-eight small children, their nannies, both of James' sisters, and four of his brothers, so there is considerable jostling for seats. (William has consented to be part of the party, because he had such fun at his and he does not mind that all of James' friends and classmates are four or five years younger than he is, but Marcus sent his regrets that he would be unable to attend.) James gets to sit at the head of the table, and when Mrs Malcolm brings out the cake – which is understandably much bigger than the one she baked for him yesterday – and he closes his eyes to make a wish and blow out the candles, he wishes that every birthday could be like this, except next year he would like to have a pony.
Half of his guests want him to open his presents now, half of them do not, and James himself has no opinion. He does not need to show off in front of other people if he gets something good. Lucas suggests they take a vote, and "Open your gifts now" wins by four, so Lucas and Matthew and Luisa bring in all the presents and arrange them on the dining table so James can unwrap them and thank everyone in person.
He gets games and toys and a few stuffed animals and a book with full-color illustrations of boys having adventures, and from Sean and Liam, a pair of wooden six-shooters. Mrs Godwin whispers that she is saving all the gifts from herself and his father and his brothers and sisters until Tuesday, so he will have gifts to open on his actual birthday. He is pleased with his presents, or at least most of them, and politely thanks everyone for their gifts and for coming to his party.
All the boys and girls – including James' siblings – receive little gift bags on the way out, with an assortment of penny candy, a little cake in a cardboard box, and a tiny wooden train car for the boys or a little painted pewter horse for the girls.
Liam does not look thrilled with his little train car, so Julia trades him her pewter horse.
"Can I have your cake, too?" he asks in an undertone, and she laughs and calls him a greedy little boy even as she hands him the cardboard box of cake from her gift bag.
"Share it with your brother," she tells him.
Luisa does not usually work on Sundays, but today was a special day, but she is allowed to go home when the party is over – Mrs Malcolm will clean up – so she volunteers to take Sean and Liam home so they do not have to ride the subway by themselves. James wants to go with them, with Julia so he will not have to ride home alone, but Mrs Godwin says no, she wishes to have a chat with Julia about the O'Donnell brothers.
"Did you invite them?" she asks sternly, after everyone has left and Aimee and William have been shooed upstairs to the nursery. William went without comment, but Aimee, for whatever her reasons, has snuck back downstairs to sit on the stairway and listen. James has been kicked out of the parlor so Mrs Godwin can give Con and Julia the talking-to they were no doubt expecting, and now he is sitting right outside the door so he can hear them. Aimee stands up from where she is sitting on the bottom step and comes over to join him. "Whose idea was it?"
"Both of ours," Julia says, and from where he is sitting James can just see Con through the doorway. Con looks as if he is daring Mrs Godwin to tell him off. "James wanted them to come so badly, we thought it would be a nice surprise. Luisa talked to Mrs O'Donnell about it, and she agreed."
"There is a reason the O'Donnells were not invited. I do not expect James to understand, but I would have thought that you would, both of you, as you are older and more aware of the unspoken rules of polite society."
"They were very well-behaved," Con says.
"That is not what I meant by 'polite society' and you know it," Mrs Godwin snaps. "I will not be defied like that in my own house, by my own children."
"We are not your children."
"Con," Julia hisses.
"You are my children," Mrs Godwin continues, "because you are your father's children and he is married to me. I have had just about enough of you, Baltimore. And you, Julia, this is not the first time you have gone behind my back on your own agenda." James cannot see Julia from his vantage point, but he imagines that she must look contrite. She is always genuinely apologetic when she is caught, athough it does not stop her from planning further adventures.
"Momma must be very angry," Aimee whispers to James. "No one ever calls Con Baltimore."
"I hope he and Julia are not in too much trouble," James whispers back. "They just wanted me to have Sean and Liam at my party. They did not lie to anyone about anything."
It is not the same as sneaking off to see a movie, or to go to Coney Island, or any of the tiny little lies and half-truths that Julia has told to enable her and James to do something fun. Bringing Sean and Liam to his birthday party was a gift just like the wooden six-shooters, or the rollerskates Alexei gave him, and James does not think it is fair for Julia and Con to be punished for giving him a present.
"There is still the matter of your punishment," Mrs Godwin says, "which I will bring up with your father. This conversation is over for now, but do not think for one second that I will forget how you have ignored my wishes and shown me little respect."
James jumps up, because now that the discussion is finished he does not want his mother to know he was spying on her. He does not know how she will punish him for that, but he is sure she will. He hustles himself towards the kitchen, Aimee right behind him, but evidently they are not fast enough because Mrs Godwin calls out "James and Aimee, I do not want you listening at doorways any more, do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am," they chorus.
Mrs Malcolm appears in the doorway of the smaller dining room and tells Mrs Godwin that she has packed up the leftover cake and sandwiches, and all the oranges have been eaten, and as soon as she has finished the dishes she will be off.
"Thank you, Mrs Malcolm," Mrs Godwin says. "Lunch was delicious."
Mrs Malcolm nods her head in acknowledgement, and Aimee and James make their escape.
"Are you in very much trouble?" he asks Julia later.
"I do not know," she tells him. "No doubt we are. But it was worth it, I think. Sean and Liam had a lovely time, they got along with your other friends, and I know how badly you wanted them to be invited."
"I would do it again," Con says, from where he is lying on his back on the nursery floor. Aimee is setting up her dolls all along his left side. "They are good boys. Sean reminds me a bit of me. And Liam has a crush on you." He lifts his head and grins at Julia. "Besides, if Natalie will let them come over every Saturday and play with you" – he gestures to James with his right arm, because there is now a teddy bear sitting on his left – "I do not know why it would be so terrible for them to come to your birthday party. They get to be with the quality."
"What does that mean?" Aimee asks. James had not thought she was paying attention.
"It means us. We are the quality."
"But you just said Sean and Liam were good boys," James says.
"I did, and they are. But their mother is staff. Your mother is the employer. To Natalie's way of thinking, it is a difference of class and economic standing. I think it is a load of horseshit, myself. You do not need money to be a quality person, and you could have Mr Astor's millions and still be the worst person in the world."
James expects Julia to reprimand him for the swear word, but she only shakes her head. He does not understand. Why was he allowed to visit Sean and Liam's neighborhood over the summer, and meet Mrs Meara and Mary Margaret and the grocer and the Granary Boys, and eat sandwiches on their fire escape and play baseball in an empty lot, if he is "quality" and they are not? Why is it acceptable for him to play with them all day on Saturday, and for them to sit in the smaller dining room with him and eat the lunch that Mrs Malcolm has prepared, if they are not "quality"?
It upsets him that his mother does not think that the boys he considers his best friends are quality people, and he does not understand why they are allowed to play together and be friends if they are from such different classes.
"James," Julia says gently, "come here." He goes over to her and sits on the floor next to her, and she puts her arm around his shoulders. He leans against her. If anyone can make this day make sense, she can. "You have to remember two things. One is that Momma loves you, and she would never do anything deliberately to hurt you. The other is that sometimes life sucks."
"Did you just say a bad word, Julia Godwin?" Con asks, teasing.
"At least I did not say 'horseshit', Baltimore." James looks up at her, and she is grinning. "You are my favorite brother, James Christopher Shaw," she tells him, "and I will always be in your corner." She kisses the top of his head. "And I would go behind Momma's back again in a heartbeat to make you happy, because Con is right and her rules are horseshit."
Aimee giggles. James giggles despite himself.
"I do not want you to get in trouble," he tells Julia.
"Too late," Con calls.
"What can she do to you?"
"Military school."
"She would not," Julia says. "I do not think Father would let her. But you have to be more circumspect, Con. You have to watch what you say, and how you say it."
"In a year and a half I will be off to college, and none of this will matter." Con sits up, dislodging Aimee's dolls and stuffed animals. She makes a noise of protest. "Sorry about that," he tells her, sitting some of the dolls upright again. "I am going to Chicago to work with Gabriel and have my own life."
"Can we come visit?" James asks, although he is disappointed that Con does not want to stay in Manhattan, or even New Jersey. Matthew and Marcus both went to college in New Jersey.
"You can come stay if you want."
"This conversation has taken quite a serious turn," Julia says, "so I will change the subject if it all right with Con." He shrugs, which she takes as assent. "What do you think everyone got you for your birthday? Did you ask Mrs Malcolm to make you another cake, besides the one we had today?"
So for the next half hour James makes guesses as to what kinds of birthday presents his family has gotten him, and Aimee announces what she would like when it is her birthday in March, but maybe she would like those things for Christmas too, because Christmas is sooner, and they talk about cake and the piñata and how Penelope Carder did not look like the kind of girl who could swing the stick hard enough to whack a hole in it, and James feels a bit better about Julia and Con being in trouble on his behalf, although he still does not understand his mother's ideas about quality people and why Sean and Liam only seem to count part of the time.
words: 3425
total words: 44,101
quickie research: custer's last stand, piñatas
