At least, Maury thought, feeling such pity for them, for me this is temporary. These times can’t go on much longer. For me at least, there’s something else. But for these two who are, after all, not really any different from me except that I’ve read some books that they haven’t read, is this all there is? Bending over feet and tying string on a shoe box until the end?
Too much time to think. Melancholy. Must stop. Be thankful I have Aggie at home, not their nagging, miserable women. And we are getting along. Two weeks’ wages go for rent. That leaves forty dollars or thereabouts for the rest of the month. Eight a week for food, that’s thirty-two, with eight over for carfare, gas and electric. Can manage, as long as the clothes hold out and we have no medical bills. Anyway, George Andreapoulis said something about needing some typing done. He can’t afford a secretary in that two-bit office. Aggie could do it for him; she knows how to type pretty well. Only, George would have to provide the typewriter because I gave mine to Iris and Aggie left hers at home, which means it’s lost to us. Unless—his head whirled and it occurred to him that he’d never spent so much energy on so many details—unless Iris could prevail upon their parents to buy another for her and return his to him? …
He had come home one afternoon a month or so ago and found his sister sitting at the table with Aggie. She’d come directly from school, wearing a plaid skirt and sweater and the string of pearls, probably the good ones that she’d had since she was a baby, and the saddle shoes that all the girls wore. She had her books in a heap on the floor next to her chair. She’d risen to kiss him.
“I’ve surprised you, Maury?”
“And how! Gee, I’m glad! You girls introduced yourselves to each other?”
“I just got here a few minutes ago,” Iris had said. “I got lost. I’ve never been in Queens before.”
“How’d you know where to find us?”
“From the post office. I figured you must have arranged to have your mail forwarded.”
“I ought to have remembered how smart you are.”
She had flushed; the pink had made her austere face look tender.
“Did you—did you tell anyone you were coming?”
“I told Ma, and she cried a little. She didn’t say anything but I knew she was glad.”
“But that’s all you told.” He couldn’t, wouldn’t say the words: Pa, father.
“Well, I didn’t want to be sneaky, so I said this morning that I’d be late because I was coming here. I said it loud enough so Pa could hear it from the hall. I wouldn’t do anything sneaky,” she had repeated with pride.
Something had welled up in Maury. She was a person. Either she had changed or he had. He’d never really looked at her before, just known she was there like a sofa or chair that has been standing in a room as long as you can recall, and that sometimes gets in the way when you stumble over it in the dark. But she was a person.
“I love you, Iris,” he said then, simply.
Aggie, with the tact that was part of her charm, had made a bustle with the tea, saying cheerfully, “Iris is right where we were five years ago. Puzzling over college catalogues.”
“Not really,” Iris had said, “there’s no choice for me. I’m going to Hunter. Not that I mind. I’m looking forward to it.”
“What’s Hunter?” Aggie had wanted to know.
Maury had explained, feeling a wave of guilt, though it wasn’t his fault that they’d kept him in private school and sent him to Yale, “Hunter’s a free college of the city of New York. You have to be very bright to go there, have to have top grades.”
“Oh. And after that, Iris? Have you thought what you wanted to do? I hope you have, then you won’t be in the position I’m in.”
“I’m going to teach,” Iris had said. “That is, I will if I can find work. At least I’ll be prepared.”
She’d stirred the tea. There’d been something quite calm and collected in the way she sat. She’s come out of childhood, Maury had thought, and as he was looking at the top of her dark, bent head, suddenly she had raised it and asked, “Don’t you want to know how things are at home? Is it that you just don’t want to ask me?”
He had been astonished at her perception. “Well, then, tell me,” he’d said.
So he learned that Pa and Malone were building up more management work. They were making ends meet, although just barely. Ma was busy in the same ways. Ruth and two of the girls had been staying with them for a few weeks in between moves. June was married and the others had part-time jobs working for June’s father-in-law.
“But most of their support comes from Pa,” she had finished, and Maury could supply what she had left unsaid: Try to remember how good Pa is, try to understand him, don’t hate him too much.
But Iris was always the one who loved Pa the most.
And then Maury had walked with her to the subway entrance because it was growing dark and had seen her descend the stairs and, turning, call back to him: “I’ll come again,” and take a few steps and then, turning once more, call, “I like your wife, Maury. I like her very much,” and hurry down the steps, her books piled in one elbow. He had stood there until she was out of sight with a hurt in his throat, such a softness of pity or loss or goodness knew what. A whole mush of feeling, he’d thought angrily, blinking his eyes, and turned back home.
Well, that’s how it is, and while you can’t expect life to be entirely clear and uncomplicated, surely for some people, somewhere in the world, it must be so sometimes. But not for us in this damned place, this damned time. I want so much for Agatha, he thought; she ought to be surrounded by flowers. He counted the buses at the corner; that made two within the last five minutes and sometimes you had to wait half an hour for the next one. Ridiculous, he thought, and was thinking that when the door opened and three skirmishing boys came in with a weary mother.
“Mister! We need three pair of sneakers.”
One day a few months later they received an invitation to the wedding of a girl who had been at college with Aggie. Maury saw it lying open on her bureau: Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, reception immediately following at the River Club.
“Hey,” he said, “this ought to be fun! You’ll see all your friends.”
She was slicing bread, and didn’t look up. “Is anything the matter?”
“No. But were not going to the wedding.”
He thought instantly: She has no dress. That’s why. “Aggie, well get a dress,” he said gently.
“We can’t afford one.”
“You could get a nice dress for fifteen dollars, maybe even twelve.”
“No, I said.”
Lately he had noticed a sharp protest in her voice. Nerves, and why not? he thought, and said no more.
The next day he said gaily, “I saw a dress in Siegel’s window that looks like you. It’s white with blue flowers and sort of a cape thing. Go on down tomorrow and look at it.”
“I don’t want to go to the wedding,” she said. “But why don’t you want to?”
“I don’t know.” She was knitting. The needles twisted in and out and she did not raise her eyes.
He felt rejection and anger. “Don’t shut me out! What’s this mystery? Are you ashamed of me?”
She raised her eyes. “What a disgusting thing to say! You owe me an apology for that!”
“All right, I apologize. But talk to me, give me the reason.”
“You won’t understand. It’s just that it would be so artificial. One afternoon and all over. Well never get together, were in different worlds. Why start something you can’t continue?”
“So I have taken you away from everything, after all.”
“Oh,” she cried. She jumped up and put her arms around him. “Maury, I didn’t mean it that way. Do you think I really care about Louise and Foster? It’s just all so complicated. Sometime when were settled in a permanent place I’ll be more in the mood and we’ll have lots of friends.”
Holding her there in the center of the little roo
m, he was for the first time not close to her at all.
On the day of the wedding he came home feeling especially tender; he thought she must be thinking of her friend, coming down the aisle in the lace and flowers that Aggie hadn’t had. He opened the door—and saw at once, to his utter disbelief, that she was drunk.
“I’m celebrating Louise’s wedding,” she announced, “all by myself.”
He was completely bewildered, angry and scared. He had had very little experience with this sort of thing but, remembering black coffee, went into the kitchen to prepare some for her and made her drink it.
He saw, through her attempts to make a joke of it, that she was ashamed. “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I took a bit too much on an empty stomach, I should have known better.”
He said carefully, “What puzzles me is why you took any at all, sitting here by yourself.”
“But that’s just it,” she said. “That’s why I did. It’s so depressing here. The stillness rings in my ears. Stuck all day in this dreary hole—”
“Can’t you read, go for a walk, find something else to do?”
“Maury, be reasonable, I can’t read till I go blind, can I? Do you ever stop to think what my life is like? I do a little typing for George, run the dust cloth over these few sticks and that’s my day.”
“I’m sorry, Aggie, I didn’t realize it was that bad.”
“Well, think about it! I take a walk, I don’t know a soul, they’re all pushing baby carriages and we’ve nothing in common, anyway. Oh, I forgot, I do know one soul, Elena. I can always take her to the market for her English lesson. This is a radish, say rad-ish, cucumber—”
“How is it that Elena gets along? She’s thousands of miles away from home and can’t even speak the language.”
“Come on, Maury! Elena’s got a whole loving family here, real family plus dozens of friends in the Greek church. Her parents adore George. She’s as loved and sheltered as anyone can be.… ”
He understood what she meant and was silent. Somehow they would have to find a fuller life than this. But he didn’t have any idea how. Tense and restless in bed he twisted from side to side, until suddenly he felt her turning to him, felt her arms and her mouth, and everything, all tension, fear and worry ebbed and drowned.
He was drifting into the softest sleep when suddenly he heard her whisper: “Maury, Maury, I forgot to put the thing in. Do you suppose—”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said, awakened and alarmed. “Oh, for God’s sake, that’s all we need.”
“I’m sorry, it was stupid of me. I won’t let it happen again.”
But he was cautious now. On the next night he suddenly drew back. “Have you got the thing in?”
She sat up. “What kind of a way is that to talk? My, you’re romantic, what I would call an ardent lover!”
“What the devil do you mean? Haven’t I got a right to ask?”
She began to cry. He switched on the light.
“Turn the light off! Why do you always have to have that glare on?”
“Don’t I do anything right? I’m not a lover, I turn the light on—I ought to just shoot myself and be done with it. Hell, I’m going into the kitchen and read the paper.”
“Maury, don’t! Come back to bed. I’m sorry, I’m awfully touchy, I know.”
He was instantly softened. She was a child sitting there in bed, with her wavy cap of hair, the ruffled white cotton nightdress, the wet eyes.
“Oh, Aggie, I’m touchy too. It’s not your fault, I only meant we can’t afford to have a baby. And I’m scared. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you that. A woman ought to be able to lean on her husband.”
“Tell me, tell me, darling.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to lose the job. Santorello said today he heard they may close this store. There’s not enough business.”
“Maybe Eddy’s father will give you a job in another store.”
“No, I wouldn’t even ask. He’s got men who’ve been with him ten years and more. He couldn’t fire one of them and take me.”
Toward dawn he woke with the sensation of being alone in the bed, and he got up. There was a light in the kitchen. Agatha was sitting there, just sitting at the kitchen table looking at nothing, her face sunk in sadness. There were a bottle of wine and a glass on the table.
“Aggie, it’s five o’clock in the morning! What the hell are you doing?”
“I couldn’t sleep, I was afraid my twisting and turning would wake you, so I got up.”
“I’m talking about the wine.”
“I’ve told you, it relaxes me. I thought it would make me sleep. Don’t act as though I were drunk or something.”
“It’s a bad habit, Aggie. I don’t like it. You shouldn’t depend on it to solve your problems. Anyway, it’s expensive.”
“I used the fifteen dollars that you wanted me to spend on a dress and I bought a couple of bottles. Don’t be angry, Maury.”
The job lasted another month. On the Friday when he got his final pay he dragged home. He went quietly up the stairs hoping that George Andreapoulis wouldn’t hear him and come out with an evening greeting. On this night he was in no mood for old-world courtesy.
He opened the door. Tell her now, get it over with and then sit down and puzzle out what we can do. Pray heaven that Andreapoulis has a lot of typing these next few weeks.
Agatha was sitting on the sofa, with her hands clasped in her lap. She looked like a little girl in dancing class, waiting to be asked to dance. “Maury, I’m pregnant,” she said.
Everything happened to them against a background of heat. When I am old, Maury thought, and I remember New York and all our troubles, I’ll remember the subway grinding and the sour smell of hot metal. I’ll remember the signs that read No Jobs and damp sheets and Agatha lying on top of them with her belly swelling. And the public library where I spent the days after noon rather than go home: if you didn’t find a job early in the day there was no use looking any further that day; you might as well go to the library.
“Summer is the worst time to be looking for a job,” said George Andreapoulis sympathetically.
“The winter will be worse. I’ll need an overcoat this year and new galoshes. My luck, the snow will be knee-high this year.”
“Maybe,” George said doubtfully, “one of my clients will have a job … I’ll keep an eye open. I drew up a will for the man who has the delicatessen over on the avenue. He’s doing pretty well and maybe he’ll take on a man in the fall.”
One morning in September, Agatha said, hesitating, “I don’t know how you would feel about this; promise you won’t be angry?”
“I won’t be angry.”
“Well, then, I was thinking; you know my father has a cousin, I’ve mentioned him, I always called him Uncle Jed. He’s really just the husband of my father’s cousin, and she’s dead now, but I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten me. He never had children and he was so fond of me. I remember he always sent the most beautiful dolls for Christmas and when I was sixteen he gave me my first pearls.”
“Yes, yes.” He stifled his impatience with her prattling. They ought to be so happy now. No worries. Damn world to spoil what should be so beautiful. His child and Agatha’s child, his child growing in her, its little fingernails and eyelashes. So beautiful.
“… vice-president in charge of trusts at the Barlow-Manhattan Bank. I didn’t want to involve him because I didn’t want Daddy to hear about it, but that’s false pride and now I don’t care. Would you go to see him?”
He was silent. Crawl before those people? Beg?
“I’d call him first, of course. Maury?”
For her. For the baby, the soft thing growing in her. When it comes out it will be pink, naked and soft; I’ll have to warm it, feed it, fight for it.
“Call him in the morning. I’ll go,” he said. “Did you get polish for my black shoes?”
The door swung inward from Madison Avenue to a lobby with murals of Peter Stuyvesant, of I
ndians on the trail, the Treasury, George Washington taking the oath of office, hansom cabs on Fifth Avenue, children rolling hoops in Central Park. No pushcarts, no tenements.
He walked tall and easily across the moss-green carpet. A Yale graduate, as well educated, as presentable and worthy as anyone; what was he afraid of?
Jedediah Spencer, it said on the door. Funny! That old Hebrew name had dignity when you saw it in brass on a mahogany door. Nobody he knew would ever think of giving a child a name like that nowadays.
Everything was dark brown, the wood, the leather and Mr. Spencer’s suit.
“So you are Agatha’s husband.… How do you do?”
“How do you do, sir?”
“Agatha telephoned to say that you were on your way. I’m sorry she didn’t call sooner. She could have saved you the trip.”
“Sir?”
“We have no openings in the bank.”
“Sir, we weren’t thinking of that. We thought—Agatha thought—that in your position, knowing so many people in so many businesses, perhaps you could recommend me somewhere.”
“I make it a policy never to ask personal favors of our clients.”
Mr. Spencer opened a drawer and took out a pen. His hand was hidden by a large photograph in a silver frame, and Maury did not see what he was writing until a paper was handed to him. It was a check for a thousand dollars.