Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson by Shirley Jackson

to laugh. Hugh Talley wiped the lemon pie off his face and glared at me. Then he stood up, brushing meringue From his sleeves and shaking crust off his hair, and he tried to catch his breath, and then, with his face red and his eyes glaring, he tried to think of something to say, something cutting enough, I suppose, to sound furious through a faceful of lemon pie.
    “You—you—woman cook!” he shouted finally.
    I heard the door slam behind him and I thought: small credit to me; I only threw the pie—Mallie baked it. And it seemed to me that perhaps Mallie had baked that pie for only one purpose, and that purpose had just been served.
    I figured right then that there was one thing I really owed to Mallie and I’d better get started on it right away, and deal with the mess on the floor later. Anybody could clean up a mess, but Dimity Baxter was going to set herself out to learn to cook, and with no more nonsense about it, either.
    I went into the kitchen and got the cookbook Mallie had left for me and came back and sat down in the comfortable chair Hugh Talley had so recently vacated. The cookbook was patterned in blue and white checks, and had “Dimity Baxter” written across the front in gold letters. Inside, on the flyleaf, it said “To Dimity from Mallie.” And it had positively the strangest table of contents I had ever seen. It started with “Dinner for Mr. Arthur Clyde Brookson,” a name I had never heard before, although, reading it, I said it over once or twice and liked the sound of it, oddly. Instructions for the dinner, which began on page one, started off: “Now, don’t you get all flustered, Dimity. No need to worry about this dinner—he’s going to like it, whatever you cook. Probably won’t eat anything, anyway, either of you.”
    I turned back to the table of contents. Another item caught my eye. It read: “Luncheon for mother-in-law and two friends.” I blinked, and giggled.
    Another listing was “Dinner to be served to daughter’s young man,” and still another was “Family dinner, to serve fifteen.” Also, “Dinner for husband’s employer, and wife.” That one made me laugh out loud.
    Then one listing caught my eye, and, unable to resist, I turned to it. It was called: “First dinner of married life,” and the instructions began: “Dimity, you take off that yellow organdy apron and put on the good practical one your mother sent you. Save the yellow one to serve dinner in. And don’t let him get the idea he doesn’t have to help do dishes.”
    There was only one thing I could think of to do, and, after a minute, I knew how to do it. I went out into the kitchen and said softly, “Thanks, Mallie.”

P ARTY OF B OYS

    M Y OLDER SON , L AURIE , has a birthday early in October, so on good years he goes with his father to New York for the World Series; years when Brooklyn loses the pennant Laurie just has a birthday party at home. Toward the end of last summer, when it began to seem depressingly clear that Laurie would celebrate his twelfth birthday far away from Ebbets Field, he began a loving and detailed plan for the properest and gayest manner of celebrating a boy’s only twelfth birthday. He began by proposing, as the only reasonable foundation upon which a happy birthday might be built, that both his younger sisters spend that weekend with their grandmother in California. I said that the distance between Vermont, where we live, and California, made this idea untenable, but that I would guarantee that both girls would spend the entire day visiting friends locally. Laurie then suggested that he invite eighteen friends and they play baseball on the side lawn. I said the side lawn was not an athletic field, and anyway I would not feed eighteen of his friends unless they ate in the barn. Laurie sighed, and offered to compromise on twelve, and volleyball. I said that the side lawn was not an athletic field, and besides I was fairly sure it was going to rain. Laurie thought for a