I realized that Hamlet was faced with an entirely different problem, but his agony could have been no greater.
The most that was accomplished was adding Mrs. Beige's tray to the dish pile, and by means of repeated threats, on an ascending scale, seeing that the girls dressed themselves, after a fashion.

I was saved from making the decision as the phone rang, and the girls were upon me instantly.
Here's a household hint: if you can't find your children, and get tired of calling them, pick up the phone.
No matter if your children are at the movies, in school, visiting their grandmother, or on a field trip in some distant city, they will be upon you magically within seconds after you pick up the phone.

Jennie and Miranda twined themselves around me, murmuring endearments.
Louise climbed onto a stool and clutched the hand with which I was trying to hold the phone, claiming my immediate attention on grounds of extreme emergency.
Somehow managing to get out a cool, poised, "Won't you hold on a second, please", I covered up the mouthpiece, and with more warmth and less poise, gave a quick lecture on crime and punishment, mostly the latter, including Devil's Island and the remoter reaches of Siberia.
I promised to illustrate the lecture, if they so much as breathed till after the call was completed.

Speaking into the phone again and recognizing the caller, I resumed my everyday voice.
Soon we were deep in a conversation that was interrupted many times by little things like Jennie's holding her breath and pretending to black out, Miranda's dumping the contents of the sugar bowl on the table, and various screeches, thuds, and giggles.
Under the circumstances, I had difficulty keeping up with the conversation on the phone, but when I hung up I was reasonably certain that Francesca had wanted to remind me of our town meeting the next evening, and how important it was that Hank and I be there.

I discovered that the girls had shrewdly vacated the kitchen, and were playing quietly in the living room.
It seemed that I would be the gainer if I accepted the peace and quiet, instead of carrying out my threats.

Resolving to get something done, I started in on the dishes.
No.
I'm not saying it right.
What I meant to say was that I started to start in on the dishes by gathering them all together in the kitchen sink.
They looked so formidable, however, so demanding, that I found myself staring at them in dismay and starting to woolgather again, this time about Francesca and her husband.
How about them, I thought.

Francesca and Herbert were among the few people we knew in Catatonia.
We didn't even know them till about a month after we moved -- at that time, they had called on us, after I met Fran at a PTA meeting, and had taken us in hand socially.
They had been kind to us and we were indebted to them for one or two pleasant dinners, and for information as to where to shop, which dentist, doctor, plumber, and sitter to call (not that there was much of a choice, since Catatonia was just a village;
the yellow pages of the telephone book were amazingly thin).

They were "personalities".
Herb, an expert on narrow ties, thin lapels, and swatches, was men's fashion editor of Parvenu, the weekly magazine with the tremendous circulation.
Fran and he had met about two years after she had arrived in Manhattan from Nebraska, or was it Wyoming?
She was the daughter and sole heiress of either a cattle baron or an oil millionaire and, having arrived in New York with a big bank roll, became a dabbler in various fields.
She patronized Greenwich Village artists for awhile, then put some money into a Broadway show which was successful (terrible, but successful).
It was during her "writing" period that she and Herb met and decided that they were in love.
They were married at a lavish ceremony which was duly recorded in Parvenu and all other magazines and newspapers, and then they honeymooned in Bermuda.
No, not Bermuda.
Bermuda was not in style that year.
They had honeymooned in Rome;
everyone was very high on Rome that year.

They had bought their house in Catatonia after investigating all the regions of suburbia surrounding New York;
they had chosen Catatonia because of its reputation for excellent schools, beaches, and abundance of names.

"You are bound to get involved with people when you have children", Fran had told me at our first meeting, "so it is good to know that those with whom you get involved are not just dreary little housewives and dull husbands, but People Who Do Things".

I admired their easy way of doing things but I couldn't escape an uneasiness at their way of always doing the right things.
Their house was a centuries-old Colonial which they had had restored (guided by an eminent architect) and updated, and added on to.
It had a gourmet's corner (instead of a kitchen), a breakfast room, a luncheon room, a dining room, a sitting room, a room for standing up, a party room, dressing rooms for everybody, even a room for mud.
It was all set up so there would be no dust anywhere and so that their children would color in the coloring room, paint in the painting room, play with blocks in the block house, and do all the other things in the proper rooms at exactly the right time.
Their two boys were "well adjusted" and, like their parents, always did the right thing at the right time and damn the consequences.

Francesca and Herbert considered themselves violently nonconformist and showed the world they were by filling their Colonial house with contemporary furniture and paintings and other art objects (expensive, but not necessarily valuable, contemporary things).
Fran flaunted her independence by rebelling against the Catatonia uniform of Bermuda shorts and knee-length socks by wearing Bermuda shorts and knee-length socks in colors;
bright pinks and plaids and vivid stripes.
Sometimes she even wore the uniform in solid, unrelieved black, and with her blonde hair cut so closely, wearing this uniform, she strongly resembled a member of the SS.

No one could dislike them, I thought.
Sometimes, though, they did not seem quite human.
It seemed, indeed, that their house was not so much a home, but rather a perfect stage set, and that they were actors who had been handed fat roles in a successful play, and had talent enough to fill the roles competently, with nice understatement.
Practically the only enthusiasm they showed was when they were discussing "names";
even brand names.
You should hear the reverence in Fran's voice when she said "Baccarat" or "Steuben" or "Madame Alexander".
She always let it be known that there was wine in the pot roast or that the chicken had been marinated in brandy, and that Koussevitzky's second cousin was an intimate of theirs.

I wouldn't have wasted time puzzling over this couple were it not for my fear that all the other inhabitants of Catatonia were equally unreal.
I couldn't feel at home among them.
Besides Francesca, there was Blanche.
Francesca was pleasant and charming, but Blanche was sweet.
Yes, Blanche was very, very sweet -- being in her company was like being drowned in warm, melted marshmallows.
I had once been a witness when Blanche had smiled and said with only minimum ruefulness, "Oh, my souffle has collapsed".
Anyone knows how a real, red-blooded woman would react to such a catastrophe!
If Blanche had been honest, she would have yelled, slammed at least a couple of doors, and thrown a few little, valueless things.
But dear me, no;
not Blanche.

After five minutes with Blanche, one might welcome the astringency of Grazie, who was a sort of Gwen Cafritz to Francesca's Perle Mesta.
Francesca and Grazie were habitual committee chairmen and they usually managed to be elected co-chairmen, equal bosses, of whatever PTA or civic project was being launched.
They were inseparable, not because they were fond of each other, but because they wanted to keep an eye on each other, as they were keen rivals for social leadership.
Grazie was mean: quietly mean, and bitterly, unfunnily sarcastic.
She it was who had looked to see if I was wearing shoes upon learning that I couldn't drive.
Grazie had a small, slick head and her hair and skin were the color of golden toast.
She lived in an ultra-modern house whose decoration, appointments, paint, and even pets were chosen to complement her coloring;
the pets were a couple of Siamese cats.
Her uniform was of rich, raw silk, in a shade which matched her hair, skin, housepaint, and cats, and since she was so thin as to be almost shapeless, she rather resembled a frozen fish stick.

The husbands of these women and others I had met in Catatonia were distinguished only in that they were, to me at least, indistinguishable.
I couldn't tell one from the other.
Like Herbert, they were all in communications: radio, television, magazines, and advertising.
One or two were writers of books;
all were fellows of finite charm.
Each had developed a hair-trigger chuckle and the habit of saying "zounds"!
In deference to country-squirehood.
I never thought I'd live to hear people chuckle and say "zounds"!
In real life.
I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
They were "sincere" -- men of the too-hearty handclasp and the urgent smile.
These boys acknowledged an introduction to anybody by gently pressing one of his hands in both of theirs, while they gazed, misty-eyed with care, into the eyes of the person they were meeting.
Could such unadulterated love, for a total stranger, be credited?
They were always leaping to light cigarettes, open car doors, fill plates or glasses, and I mistrusted the whole lot of them to the same degree that I mistrusted bake shops that called themselves "Sanitary Bake Shops".

"O!
Pioneers!"
I thought, and wondered what kind of homesteads such odd pioneers would establish in this suburban frontier;
pioneers who looked like off-duty gardeners even at parent-teacher conferences and who never called the school principal "Mister".
I sighed, thinking that among other things, people here seemed to be those who would have to cut down if they earned less than $85,000 yearly;
people who would give their teeth for a chance to get on "Person to Person";
people who thought it was nice to be important, but not important to be nice;
who were more ingratiating than gracious, more personalities than persons.
In my estimation, they were people who read Daphne du Maurier, and discussed Kafka;
well, not discussed him exactly, but said, "Kafka"!
Reverently and raised their eyes, as if they were at a loss to describe how they felt about Kafka, which they were, because they had no opinions about Kafka, not having read Kafka.
They were, I felt, people invariably trying to prove not who, but what they were, and trying to determine what, not who, others were.

Becoming aware that it was nearly lunchtime, I brought myself back to the tasks at hand.
I made plans for the afternoon -- doing the breakfast and luncheon dishes all at once, making the beds, and then maybe painting the kitchen.
Then, I remembered that the girls had had a banana for dessert every day for the last week.
"Bananas"!
Jennie had shouted each time.
"They're not dessert!
They're not even food.
They're just something you're supposed to put on cereal for breakfast".
I dug around and found a mix, and was able to surprise them with a devil's-food cake with chocolate icing.
(Sometimes I think you need only one rule for cooking: if you can't put garlic in it, put chocolate in it.
)

The cake was received in a stunned silence that was evidence in itself of the dearth of taste thrills Mama had been providing.
Then Jennie closed her eyes, stretched forth her arms, and said: "Take my hand, Louise;
I'm a stranger in paradise".