Homer & Langley: A Novel - By E. L. Doctorow Page 0,29
was windowless and situated on the colder north side of the house. Apparently Langley had similar feelings because the dining room was where he elected to install the Model T Ford automobile.
HAVING TAKEN TO MY bed with the grippe, I had no idea what he was up to. I heard these strange noises downstairs—clanking sounds, shouts, metallic shivers, clatterings, and one or two tympanic crashes that shook the walls. He had brought the car in disassembled, the parts hauled up from the backyard by winch and rope, carried through the kitchen, and now being put together in the dining room as if in a garage, into which indeed the dining room was eventually transformed, complete with the smell of motor oil.
I made no attempt to investigate, preferring to compose an image from the sounds I heard as I lay in my bed. I thought it might be some bronzed sculpture, so huge that it came in parts that had to be assembled. An equestrian figuration, for example, such as the statue of General Sherman at the foot of Central Park at Fifty-ninth and Fifth. There were at least two other men’s voices, lots of grunting and hammering, and above all my brother’s rasp raised to a degree of uncharacteristic excitement verging on joy, so that I knew that here was his new major enterprise.
After a day or two of this Grandmamma Robileaux knocked on my door and before I could say, Come in, she was standing by my bed with a soup of her own prescription. I can smell it now almost as if I was inhaling its spices—a brew thick with okra, turnips, collard greens, rice, and marrowbones, among other ingredients of her arcane knowledge. I sat up in bed and the tray was put across my lap. Thank you, Grandmamma, I said.
I couldn’t tuck in because she stood waiting to say something.
Don’t tell me, I said.
I knew when he came home from that war your brother’s mind weren’t right.
That was the last thing I wanted to hear. It’s okay, I said. You needn’t worry.
No sir, I must dispute that. She sat herself down at the foot of my bed, thus sending the tray into a steep list. I grabbed it and waited for her to continue but I heard only a sigh of resignation as if she was sitting with her head bowed and her hands folded in prayer. Grandmamma had taken to me in a proprietary or even maternal way ever since Harold Robileaux had gone back to New Orleans. Perhaps it was because he and I had played music together, or perhaps for her own sake as the only remaining member of the staff since the death of Siobhan, she needed to find communion with someone in this house. I could understand why Langley was not a candidate.
And now she unburdened herself. Her floor all tracked up with their boots, the back door off its hinges, black mechanical things, automobile things, swinging through the window like clothes on a line. And not just that, she said, that is just the worst. This whole house is dirty and beginning to smell, nobody around to keep it up.
I said: Automobile things?
Maybe you can tell me why that isn’t a man out of his mind would bring a street automobile into his house, she said. If it is an automobile.
Well is it or isn’t it? I said.
More likely a chariot from Hell. I thank the Lord the Doctor and Miz Collyer are safely in their graves, for this would kill them worse than what did.
She sat there. I could not let her see my astonishment. Don’t let it depress you, Grandmamma, I said. My brother is a brilliant man. There is some intelligent purpose behind this, I can assure you.
At that moment of course I hadn’t the remotest idea of what it might be.
At this time, the end of the thirties, early forties, cars were streamlined. That was the word for the latest up-to-date thing in auto design. Streamlining cars meant warping them, not showing a right angle anywhere. I had made a point of running my hands over cars parked at the curb. The same cars that made purring sounds on the road had long low hoods and sweeping curved fenders, wheel covers and built-in humpbacked trunks. So when I was well enough to come downstairs I said to Langley, If you were going to bring a car into the house, why not a modern up-to-date model?
This was