Miss Mumbauer’s picture
The move from the cabin to the ‘Tall House’ happened last week. Just two people and two pets. Not a lot of food, not much in the fridge, not many books, not a lot of clothes or shoes. Just one car trip. Just a few trips from the cabin to the car, a few trips from the car to the house, a few loads into the dumb waiter, a few times up and down the stairs. I sit in the sunroom and look out over grass and trees. More walnut trees, no dead ashes. No pond. The street noise is outside our front window. A car every few minutes, maybe a few at this stop sign instead of the one by the cabin. Maybe a conversation as two people walk down the sidewalk.
The fact is, this is the house with the stuff. It is the house with our stuff. Merv’s Mom’s stuff. My folks’ stuff. My Dad’s folks’ stuff. His mother’s folks’ stuff. Her mother’s folks’ stuff. His cousin’s stuff. My mother’s sister’s stuff. Merv’s French teacher’s stuff. Merv’s French teacher’s stuff!
Merv’s French teacher was a small woman who lived in a brick suburban row house in Bethlehem. A neat street, a little front garden, a little garage, a little back yard with room for a clothes line, a walk way and a little garden. A solid house. A solid basement. Solid Pennsylvania German parents. No family. Just one child, Miss Mumbauer. She lived in their home for high school, for college, for graduate school, for her career as the French teacher. She lived in their sensible tea-totaling home with the rituals of proper life narrowed down to spring cleaning and fall cleaning.
Miss Mumbauer had her room for her own and enough money. She commissioned a cabinet maker to make her a Colonial Revival bedroom set. He made the bedroom set out of maple, with Chippendale sort of shape, colonial sort of pulls, 1930’s Depression era sort of dimensions. It was her bedroom set, and she loved it.
Miss Mumbauer taught French class during the day. She became the dreaded French teacher. She required hours of memorization for each day’s homework. Every conjugation, every declension, every vocabulary word, every rule of grammar, every fact of French society and history, drilled and tested, drilled and tested. The ones with great memories studied for two hours each day and got A’s. The ones with ordinary memories studied for two hours each day and broke down sobbing during tests. Miss Mumbauer never flinched, never eased up, never took pity. She could see out of the back of her head as she wrote the lessons on the board in her perfect penmanship. “Anita! Do not chew your pencil. Use your pen. Conjugate ‘devoir’ in the conditional.”
Miss Mumbauer came home at night to her Colonial Revival desk in her Bethlehem brick house. She marked her papers and then she read romances, mysteries, historical novels, tales where the heroine ‘come a cropper.’ Indeed, people often ‘Come a cropper’ around Miss Mumbauer.
In the fullness of time Miss Mumbauer’s parents died and she became the sole resident of the house. Bookshelves were commissioned for the living room, fitted at the base to round the baseboard heating. The bookshelves lined the walls to Miss Mumbauer’s shoulder height. The romances, mysteries and historical novels were moved to the living room to take pride of place. Sherry was moved into the house. Sherry was sipped, with biscuits, with Miss Mumbauer, at the dining room table, a long drop-leaf table with the leaves full out, and the top polished perfectly. Guests had paper napkins to keep under their sherry glasses.
Miss Mumbauer had her father’s car in the small garage. The car was a 1953 Packard, a semi-automatic, as I remember. An honored friend would come and carefully back it out of the garage. Miss Mumbauer would slide into the front passenger seat. The car would be shifted up and back and driven gently up the streets and back, and then the car would be put away.
It should have been obvious simply from the titles of her books, and their language, that Miss Mumbauer did not actually care for the French language. ‘Chacun à son goût,’ but her taste was never anything French at all. Students who had trembled at pouvoir, or savoir. neglected to notice, that in her retirement, she never used even one French word, even one French expression. Her now grown students never noticed. Their spouses never noticed.
We had an exchange student, from France. We brought Miss Mumbauer to a picnic and sat the student down with her. The student said something in French. Miss Mumbauer did not understand. The student tried again, and then again. Louder. Miss Mumbauer sat, uncomprehending. Miss Mumbauer, the dreaded Miss Mumbauer the French teacher of three generations’s nightmares, Miss Mumbauer did not actually speak French.
Miss Mumbauer discovered cruises. She discovered the Captain’s table. She discovered pillbox hats and gloves and matching suits. She discovered limited edition Corning glassware. She discovered large and expensive rings. She discovered renting a restaurant and hosting all her friends. She discovered that her pension and her modest inheritance did not stretch to such discoveries. A friend gave her investment advice. Miss Mumbauer took it. The money disappeared. Miss Mumbauer had to sell the house, the car, and move to one room in a retirement home nearby.
The leaves were dropped on the drop-leaf table. The romances, mysteries and historical novels were boxed up. The bookcases were moved to Miss Mumbauer’s new room in the retirement home. The books were carefully placed in the proper order. The Corning glass objects were hidden away in the Colonial Revival desk along with the rings and the hats and the gloves. One day she died. Merv discovered himself to be the executor of her will. He had memorized and visited. He had helped in the ritual spring and fall cleaning, and now he had her will to execute. The will was precise. This was left to that person, that was left to someone else. The Corning Glass objects had disappeared. The rings had left the drawers. Given to visitors? Left were pillbox hats and gloves, bookshelves and books, and Miss Mumbauer’s childhood photo.
When we moved back to the ‘Tall House’ from the cabin I discovered that Miss Mumbauer’s childhood photo had been taken down from the bedroom where it hangs, and carefully placed on the bed in a different room. A grandchild had used the room. Grandchildren, who never knew her, who never took French from her, told me that her eyes follow people around the room. When her picture hangs, they have nightmares. I carefully rehung it on the wall.
Hello, Miss Mumbauer, we are back with your stuff, a bit of it. The gloves are in a drawer, a pillbox hat is with my Grandmother’s hats. The drop-leaf table is in the music room and sherry will be served from it at Christmas. The grandchildren will take your picture down off the wall when they come. They don’t want to ‘come a cropper’ after all.