Barnegat Bay - 24. Chapter 24

After my office was set up, and Mary and I had been working out of there for a couple of weeks, my father seemed to reconsider how he and Mom had arranged their mainly private floor.

“We put our bedroom at the back,” he told me, “because it’s quieter and overlooks the garden. And our sitting room’s next to that, not that we use it much. We’d rather spend time with you, Mary, and the baby on the main floor.”

“And Spence.”

“And Spence,” Dad agreed, smiling. “My new half-son-in-law.”

Evidently, Mom had spoken with him.

Dad went on, explaining the third floor. “And the bathroom’s just next to our sitting room, and then there’s the front room, overlooking the street. That’s not really noisy, because our street doesn’t get a lot of traffic. And we’ve been keeping that as a guest room, along with the one on your floor, for times that Lily, Mac, and Ben are all visiting.”

“Plus, there’s the top floor.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“And Mary and I aren’t using our sitting room, either – because we also like being with you and Mom. Besides, the main floor has the kitchen, and its closer to our office, and Mary likes the fact that everything’s so close.”

“Though during the day,” Dad went on, “at least during the week, she and Ann are mainly alone. You have an occasional patient here, but you’re usually on house calls, and your mother and I are at work.”

“The guys are still finishing up.”

“But they’ve been busy with other jobs.”

“Which they’re happy to be offered – thanks to you.”

“So they fit our work in on weekends – when they’d be here anyway, for your get-togethers.”

“At least, they don’t charge you for it.”

“I give them money anyway – and you know it.”

“You’re such a nice guy,” I joked.

“Anyway, I’ve been thinking about how empty the house is. And how quietly my office runs – it’s just Irv, Vince, Evelyn, and me. There’s the whirr and clicking of our adding machines and of Evelyn’s typewriter, and the telephone rings every so often. And we have private conversations with clients, but we do that in my office – which isn’t much bigger than your old store room. So the four of us don’t take up more space than what’s in your mom’s and my front room.”

“I see where you’re going.”

“And I could put my desk in our sitting room and meet with clients there. And Irv or Vince could use that room when they have private clients – that’s what they do now with my office. And I really don’t think we’d be much of an intrusion.”

“How’s Mom feel about it?”

“Pretty much as I do – that it would save a little money and help start building our savings again sooner.”

“She really worries about that.”

“Well, she watched one of her cousins nearly lose his house, and she doesn’t want the family having to help us out, too.”

“I don’t see that happening.”

“Either do I. But everyone’s cautious now.”

“Do you want me ask Mary, or will you?”

“Why don’t we both ask, together, at dinner?”

Mary thought it not only made sense, but it would also make her feel safer.

“I’m not really concerned. But there are times I don’t see anyone but Ann for hours. And I have the phone right there, but if I couldn’t get to that, these walls are so thick, that if I yelled, no one might hear. And people would have trouble seeing in our front windows, anyway. They’d have to go down two steps and crouch.”

“You can mostly tell if it’s day or night out those windows,” Mom said. “That’s why we didn’t put up curtains.”

“So having more people in the house would be fine,” Mary finished.

Spence was also at the dinner, and Dad turned to him.

“I don’t really deserve an opinion,” Spence protested. “I just pay rent.”

“But you’ll be seeing strange people on the stairs,” Dad pointed out. “Almost every day.”

“I see strange people now. And they’re my best friends.”

We laughed at that, and while we finished eating, Dad and Spence made plans to talk with the guys.

They moved Dad’s office the following weekend, and he was out before November’s rent was due.

“I’ll pay it anyway. I didn’t give them much notice, and I’ve been there for years. And they already have empty offices in the building.”

“It’s good to know you can always go back,” Mom said.

“Not on our backs,” Larry joked. “Your files are heavy. And you’ve got a lot more than Doc.”

“I’d hope so – after thirty years.”

The guys were having Sunday dinner with us. Claire had stayed, too.

“And all that dead storage from the basement,” Mike griped. “That nearly killed us.”

“At least, we didn’t have to carry it upstairs,” Al put in.

“Nope. Straight to the dungeon.”

That’s what we’d been calling our low-ceilinged basement.

“It’s cleaner than it was before you whitewashed it,” Mom said.

“But I was hoping never to have to go down there again,” Larry admitted. “And I’m not afraid of ghosts.”

“Boo!” Mike popped, jolting Larry.

“You bugger!”

“Hey! There’s a baby present. And mothers.”

“I’ll mother you.”

Larry hated being surprised.

After Larry apologized – unnecessarily, he was assured – Mom said something none of us had thought of. “You know, we really should celebrate.”

“We should,” Claire quickly agreed. “A new home. New offices. A bigger family and friends.”

“And a wedding we never had a party for,” Dad added.

“And an anniversary you let slip by,” Mom reminded us.

Mary and I had done that purposely – because we really didn’t know which of several days to choose. Our actual marriage date? The date we admitted we were in love? Or even when I’d proposed?

“And we could have a bigger party than we did for Ann’s baptism,” Mary admitted.

“And christening,” Mike put in. “We weren’t even invited.”

“It was in Toms River and just for my family. And I’ve already apologized.”

“She has,” I vouched.

“We could celebrate graduation,” Al suggested.

“We’ve done that.”

“But it was four years coming. We can celebrate again.”

“And our new business,” Larry added.

“We hope our new business,” Mike amended. “It’s still younger than the baby.”

“But Mr. Roosevelt’s doing good work,” my mother said. “He’s making jobs.”

“God bless Mr. Roosevelt,” Mike added, making a small sign of the cross. “May his jobs build buildings that need our paint.”

“There’s Rockefeller Center,” Spence said. “Room after room...”

“Office after office...”

“And we have the littlest piece of that.”

“And they’ve only started. They’re planning to go on for another six years.”

“God bless Mr. Rockefeller,” Mike nearly repeated.

“I think he plays cards with God,” Al cracked. “So John D doesn’t need blessings.”

When we finally had the party, just after Thanksgiving. it was a terrific. It started with Mary and Mom decorating on Friday afternoon and didn’t end till late Sunday night, when the last people reluctantly went home. By that time, Ann and I were asleep.

Lily and Mac had brought enough food to start us off, but everyone was asked to bring something, instead of presents. We didn’t need any, and some people couldn’t afford them anyway. Still, guests came from as far as New Jersey and Vermont, and they slept all over the place on Friday and Saturday nights. Prohibition has ended the December before, so people now drank openly though a bit too much. And there were patients, and clients, and teachers, and family, and neighbors, and friends. And there were probably a couple of folks who wandered in off the street, just like at the summer parties on Barnegat.

“This shouldn’t end,” Mary commented to my sister. “I understand why Mac likes to run a restaurant.”

“A diner,” my brother-in-law corrected. “I don’t have the class to run a restaurant.”

“We do fine,” my brother insisted. “Look how many people we make happy.”

“Good and simple food,” Mac chanted. “Fresh and cheap.” It was the diner’s motto. “And better than the Automat.”

“Well, not as much fun,” Ben allowed. “There’s no way we could compete.”

“It’s good they’ve stayed off the Island,” Lily pointed out.

“Give them time,” her husband warned. “Just give them time.”

Time seemed the one thing we all had plenty of. And we were using it happily. New Year’s Eve took us back to Barnegat. We didn’t have to be at Jenkinson’s – we’d seen enough of it during the summer – but it was still our favorite place to gather, and we went for sentimental reasons.

“May I have this dance?” a particularly well-dressed Al asked Gina, the woman he’d been seeing for over a year. Her friend Barbara was the girl Larry had met at the museum and had been dating all summer.

“If I’d been there,” Mike told Barbara, “I might be asking you to dance.”

“But you weren’t,” Larry reminded him. “I don’t know what you had to do, but it was more important.”

“I was studying with Spence.”

“Were you? Really?” Spence asked.

“Hell, I can’t remember,” Mike confessed. “But it sounds better than what I was probably up to.”

At that party, Claire asked Spence a very important question. She’d been slowly thinking about offering him a full-time job in Toms River and had talked it over with Mary and me. Like Mary two years earlier, Claire didn’t want to put Spence under pressure. Living at the top of the brownstone and eating dinner with us every evening, Spence got to see Ann and feel like her father.

“This summer was strange,” he told me at one point, when we were out on the boat. “Ann was seeing me far more often than you.”

“I’m sure, as much as she can figure it out, she realizes there are five important people in her life.”

“I guess that’s not different from having grandparents around. But what are we gonna do when she starts to talk?”

“I don’t know.”

He didn’t, either. And not that they were wiser, but we asked Mary and my parents.

“How about calling one of you ‘Daddy’ and the other one ‘Pop?’” my mother suggested. “Or ‘Poppa?’”

“Won’t that confuse her when she starts having friends?”

“And won’t that give us too much to explain to other people?”

“For official things – like school – you can be her father, Doc. And the rest of the time your friends will understand.”

We tested it on the gang. Spence being Ann’s father didn’t really surprise any of them, though Mike still felt obligated to shout, “Whoa! Whoa! Let me try to understand this!”

“It’s really pretty simple,” Larry explained. “And you’re pretty simple. So it should fit right in.”

Of course, Mike tried to defend himself, but his biggest problem – soon enough – was remembering who was “Daddy” and who was “Pop.”

“Just call them ‘Doc’ and ‘Spence’ to her,” Mary advised. “She’ll figure it out.”

“She’s very bright,” my father added.

“All parents and grandparents think that,” I joked.

“I don’t know. We did a lot of apologizing for you.”

There were dangers to exposing Dad to Larry and Mike.

In Jenkinson’s, Claire finally asked Spence if he’d consider moving out of New York and working for her family lumber yards. We were all sitting around a table.

“That’s a heck of a New Year’s present,” Spence began, seeming a little stunned.

“It’s not a present, Spence. Our business need s you. You know how much building’s going on, and we need someone who can help us be one of the suppliers.”

“Why me?”

“Because my brothers aren’t interested – as we always thought would happen. And why start interviewing strangers when I know your work?”

“You don’t, really,” he protested.

“I do. I watch very well.”

Spence seemed to hesitate while considering that. Or else he was absorbing Claire’s compliments.

“I’d like to start using my brain again,” he admitted

“You could do that by going to law school with me,” Al suggested. “It puts you right back in the classroom.”

“And you use your brain heading a crew,” Larry reminded him.

“My ‘crew’ is two other guys and me. And they know how to do the work as well as I do.”

“We’d miss you,” Mike promised. “And you’ll always have a job...”

Spence answered Al first. “I’m not sure I’d have time for school, and work, and family – for as little as I do for Ann...”

“You do plenty,” Mary assured him.

“And you could still go back to the city every Friday night ,” Claire pointed out. “You may even find us some contracts there. It would be part of your territory.”

“What wouldn’t be part?” Spence asked, laughing. “Right now, you and your father handle all the sales – while also doing almost everything else.”

“That’s why we need you,” Claire repeated. “And you wouldn’t have to be back at work till Monday morning. I don’t know the earliest train, but we can figure something out.”

“Sales doesn’t really follow business hours anyway,” Larry said. “I do half my work socializing.”

“Which means hanging around the track and in bars.” Mike poked.

“I honestly wouldn’t know which end of a horse to bet on.”

“You’re leaving yourself open,” Mike warned.

Larry simply went on. “Anyway, your work doesn’t have to follow a set schedule.”

“But the lumber yards mostly make local sales,” Spence explained, I guess knowing that from his conversations with Claire. “And both of them open by seven – so carpenters and painters can get supplies.”

“But Claire wants you to expand that. And businessmen get up later.”

“You haven’t even asked how much you’d make,” Mike said. “It can’t be less than we’re paying.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not much more,” Claire admitted. “You know this is a new job, but you don’t know how hard I had to persuade my father to let me have it. Up to now, he’s followed what Larry’s family used to do – depended on his reputation for selling good lumber and offering good prices to his long-time customers and friends. But I think we can do better than that – especially considering Mr. Roosevelt.”

“He’s creating work everywhere he can,” Al said.

“Still,” Spence countered, as he seemed to be figuring something out on a napkin, “it would cost me more to take this job, considering all the trains and paying for a place to live. And I’m not sure how long your parents’ll let me live upstairs for practically nothing.”

“You’re part of our family,” I reminded him, which somehow made Spence blush – maybe the first time I’d ever seen that. “So you don’t have to pay rent. And you’ll always be fed.”

“Thanks,” Spence told me quietly.

“Also, there’s a room over our garage,” Claire went on. “It hasn’t been used in years, except for storage. But the garage used to be the carriage house, and the room upstairs was for the driver and groomsman. It even has plumbing.”.

“Electricity?” Spence asked.

“Kind of.”

“Heat?”

“An old Franklin stove.”

“And the rent?”

“It comes free as part of the job. And if you can charm Doc’s parents, I’m sure mine will start feeding you.”

Spence just shook his head. “Too many choices,” he said, grinning. “All good. And after a year of having almost none at all.”

“And you don’t have to decide now, either. My father’s not eager to put out more money.”

“Will he possibly change his mind?”

Claire could only shrug. “I can’t promise anything. But as soon as you bring in business, he’ll have less to worry about.”

“And you can always come back to us,” Mike said again.

“And paint during the day and start law school with me.”

Spence’s grin just got wider. “As I said – too many opportunities.”

“But one of the things we learned in class,” Larry reminded him, “was learning to choose the best.”

Spence considered, then laughed and announced, “Right now, I think we mainly need to celebrate the new year.”

“He’s right!” Mike shouted, standing. “Here’s to 1935! And to all we can– still legally – drink!”

In the end, Spence decided to risk taking Claire’s job. “I’ll be back on weekends,” he promised Mary and me. “I’m not running out.”

“We’re not worried,” Mary told him. “And if you miss a weekend now and then, no one’s going to notice. As Doc said, ‘You’re family.’”

“And I couldn’t be more lucky.”