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[[advertisement]] Elizabeth [[image]] Easy...effective...safe...of course, AND A THOUSAND TIMES MORE GLAMOROUS! [[image]] Blue Grass Deodorant The cream deodorant plus. Plus what? The magic of Blue Grass, most cherished fragrance. Keeps you immaculate the exquisite way. Marvelously effective - and like all Miss Arden's preparations, you need less to do more. 1.25 plus taxes Arden [[/advertisement]] THE SHUSH RUSH WHEN we were eight years old, Ira Glackens and I organized and performed the major roles in a colorful outdoor ceremony, the purpose of which was to unite us in the bond of brother and sister. The ritual combined the best features of both the baptismal and the marriage services and took place at a drinking fountain in the northeast corner of Washington Square. At least, that was where it first took place. I wore a veil, unusually long, since it was made of a let-out ballet skirt, and we exchanged rings, which were circles of wire strung with big blue, white, and yellow beads that felt like lumps of crockery on the hand. The event was well attended by persons under four feet tall - some on roller skates, some leaning casually on hoops or scooter handles, one or two on tricycles - and it was so successful that it has to be repeated at every drinking fountain in the square. The first time Ira and I were united, I took my place beside him glancing nervously over my shoulder at the sweeping, soiled expanse of train behind me; in front of us stood the minister, a member of the audience, or congregation, who had been pressed into service and vigorously briefed beforehand. "Shut up, everybody, we're going to begin," Ira ordered. Then, to the minister, "Go on, start." "All right. Well, do you, Elizabeth, take this boy, Ira, to be your lawful brother?" asked the minister, snickering. "Yes, I do," I said, snickering too. "And do you, Ira, take this girl, Elizabeth, to be your lawful sister?" "I do," Ira conceded, scowling at the boy who played minister. "Quit giggling or we'll get somebody else." "Which comes next - I forget - the water or the rings?" the minister wanted to know. "The water, the water!" clamored the congregation. "Silly, the rings come next," Ira said. "The water's last. It seals it." So we exchanged our rings, which were too big but could, by twisting the wire, be made smaller, and then, after more questions and responses, which I have now forgotten, the minister handed his Bible - a volume of the Little Colonel series - to a bystander, dipped his hands in the drinking fountain, and drew cold, dripping crosses on our foreheads. "There," Ira said over his shoulder as he strolled away. "Now we're brother and sister. We'll have the next service pretty soon, down by Garibaldi." I tore off my veil, put my ring in my pocket, and joined in a game of squat tag with the Ryan girls. IT is no wonder that Ira was the brother of my choice. When, thin and spectacled, he entered the park, drama came with him. He was never one of the crude organizers of battles on skates, nor was he content to whang at pebbles with a hockey stick or spend his ingenuity on marbles. Instead, he could tell a ghost story that would turn your bones to jelly. He could impersonate characters of extreme malevolence, paint witch masks, and compose insulting poetry. At home, he had a toy theatre with real lights, a handsome collection of Niagara coal, and many disguises with beards. He knew the names of all the Egyptian deities and left offerings of Nabisco wafers at Per-neb's tomb whenever he went to the Metropolitan Museum. He was the founder of one secret society after another, all short-lived; inception, not continuity, interested him. For a few days, dazzled as mullet by a light, the initiates followed his strict ritual, never forgetting the eccentric handclasp, the secret word, the long, level glance between members. As soon as he lost interest in the sinister etiquette, it was abandoned. We couldn't keep it up without him. But no one mourned; we knew that soon there would be something to take its place. Ira and many of the rest of us were the children of artists. We were used to the sight of fond faces streaked with cobalt or rose madder. The air of home was spiced with turpentine or the flat, dense smell of Higgins' ink, and we were accustomed to tiptoe past the particular closed door behind which could be heard the mild scraping of a palette knife or the ting-a-ling of the water-color brush as it dipped into the glass. When we were at our play outdoors, we knew that we had
