First Papers (19 page)

If she got angry, if she said he was making a mausoleum of the whole house, or worst of all, if she started to cry, he would get up in silence and walk out of the room, go up to his desk and stay there, or march straight to the front door and disappear for New York.

Then Mama really would cry, and who was to blame her? She began to look pale, and half-sick, and after a few days, you would think she had boiled her eyeballs in vinegar.

But he didn’t notice. Nothing would move him, nothing speed up whatever mysterious process it was that had set off his mood, that then held him in it, that finally would release its hold, like an illogical policeman suddenly unlocking handcuffs and saying, “That’s enough for now, beat it, twenty-three skiddoo.”

Mama once said it was more like his having a desperate sickness and then miraculously getting over it. There was no predicting when the disease would strike, and no understanding why it did. Sometimes real troubles would come and he would take them without blinking, serious troubles, like not having enough money for the mortgage, or a quarrel at the office or a lecture that fell flat.

But at some other time, anything might turn the trick and start him off. An editorial of his that nobody mentioned, a strike lost somewhere, some ordinary small thing wrong at home—and one, two, three he was in a mood.

While it lasted, Fran and she spoke in whispers; they tried to avoid him; they never asked him a question, they hated meals and, if Mama had let them, they would have skipped them all, and lived on Hershey Bars and milk.

But Mama would not let them stay away from the table. “It would insult him,” she said firmly. “He is your father and he is a good father. He can’t help these moods; you don’t think he feels happy either, do you? Then grant him a little patience! You know that all of a sudden it will end.”

“The ‘all-of-a-sudden’ is what keeps us living,” Fran said bitterly. “If he ever once said he was sorry when it was over.”

“Does a man ask his family to forgive him, if he recovers at last from a fearful illness?”

Never again did they bring up the idea of apologies, but now, as Fee started the last period of the day, she kept looking at the big clock over the blackboard and wondering if this would be one of his worst times. At three, Miss Roberts said in a teasing voice, “Well, run along, Fee, have a nice time at your rendezvous,” and Fee said, “I’m only going to Study Hall and do homework, Miss Roberts.” Miss Roberts was the nicest teacher she had ever had.

But Study Hall was no use; it was empty and spooky. At last she was so jumpy, she left for home ten minutes before Fran’s basketball practice would end.

But Fran was already there, out on the porch, waiting. “You’re a fine one,” Fran said. “Letting me be first home, to do the dirty work!”

“But you said—”

“Hiding out like an old scaredy-cat.”

“You
told
me—oh, Fran, don’t be sarcastic today. You said, on account of basketball practice—”

“Gee, I forgot.” Her face softened and Fee felt forgiven and grateful. “Miss Miller got the pip, so practice was off.”

Fee bent down to hug Shag, and then straightened up and balanced her strapped books on the porch railing. “Is Papa all right, Fran?”

“He’s horrible. I hate him.”

Fee said, “Oh, Franny.”

“Keep out of his sight, that’s all. He’s in the kitchen—Mama can’t even start supper.”

Fee said nothing. A gust of wind snapped at her books, but she caught them in time. After a while, Fran began to whistle “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’,” and it sounded mournful and lost.

“I’m going in, Fran,” she said at last.

“Stay away from the kitchen.”

But as if she were pulled on strings, Fee went straight there, and said, “Hello, Papa.” He didn’t look up; the only sound from him was his heel hitting the floor.

The screen door at the back porch was blowing open and shut, making little rusty squeaks; she thought of hooking it to stop the noise, but she stood motionless, as if ordered to in gym, arms at her side, head up, eyes front. From the sewing room, Mama’s foot on the treadle was tapping out another warning like Fran’s. Fee wished she had gone in there instead.

Squeak, went the screen door, squeak-squeak. Her father glanced over at it, and Fee moved forward, glad there was something she could do. As she stepped out on the porch, a gust of wind caught the door and flung it back, flattening it with a bang against the shingles of the house. She had to tug and fight it, as if it were a wrestler determined not to be thrown.

Suddenly in the open doorway she saw her father, his hand high and flat on the inside door, the real kitchen door. He slammed it with such violence that the screen door itself jumped in her hands. She thought, It’s a wonder he didn’t tear it right out of its socket, and the kitchen door too.

There was a strange prickling all over her as if her father had slammed the other door into a thousand splinters, with all their points touching her skin in a thousand places. I hate him too, she thought, he
is
horrible.

She went down into the back yard and then around the house to the small side entrance. Inside the door there, she could look into the kitchen at a slight angle and still see him. He was back at his reading, as if nothing had happened. He turned a page of the paper and folded it with sharp nervous movements of his hands and sharp creasing pressure of his fingers. The page came loose and stuck out from the others. He tried to straighten it, to align its edges with the edges of the other sheets. But the sliding page stuck out further, refusing to fit back into place as he wanted it to do.

He forced it back, shoving it, pulling it, talking in Russian under his breath at it. It still would not obey and at last he jabbed at it with such force that his fist punched through half the paper. He threw the whole thing down; it slipped off the table, scattering all over the floor at his feet.

Watching from the hall, Fee wanted to rush in and shove him and pull him and jab him the way he was shoving and pulling and jabbing the paper, shooting his hand through it, killing it and letting its insides rip and tear and come out and spill all over the floor.

The familiar sliding howling sound woke her, but she lay rigid and unwilling. This time somebody else would have to go in there; this time she could not be the one. Let him have his nightmare, let the prison guards go on shouting and beating him until he died.

Day after day had gone by since he had started having this mood but nothing had changed. One night Mama was so nervous, she telephoned a candy store on Rivington Street, where they would give a message to her new pupil, Mrs. Godleberg, to tell her not to come out tonight for her lesson. In all those days he only once sounded as if he were in a good mood again, but that was over the telephone to some stranger who had called him about giving some extra lectures in Massachusetts, where everybody was afraid a terrible strike would soon start in the woolen mills.

Fee thought angrily, Strangers never dream how he is with his own family. At the paper, or the people at lecture halls, laughing at his way of putting things, growing serious when he got serious, looking up, adoring Stefan Ivarin …

Down the dark hall the sounds swelled and rolled, full-throated and deep and animal. Only in Russian prisons did they flog people with the knout. A knout was a huge rope with thick brutal knots in it.

She jumped up and ran to his room. “Papa, wake up, wake up.” As always she had to reach out to touch his shoulder, had to feel his body leap with his last terrible cry.

“All right, all right,” he said then. “I had a bad dream.”

She wanted to turn and go at once, without having to look at him, but he said, “What time is it?” and she knew that next he would tell her to turn on the light so he could look at his watch on the chair at his side.

But he did not. Instead he said dully, “It’s very bad,” speaking to himself as if he did not know she was there. “It’s very bad,” he said again, and his voice was the saddest voice she had ever heard.

The words sounded vaguely familiar but she couldn’t place them. She tried to ask what was very bad, but she did not.
He is your father and he is a good father
.…
you don’t think he feels happy either, do you?

Suddenly her heart filled and she forgave him.

L
ETTY LOOKED DOWN AND
away. “I can’t see what good it would do,” she said, “and I’d be so embarrassed.”

“Seeing Dr. Haslitt about it?” Garry said unbelievingly.

“Not just ‘seeing’ him—but talking it all out with him.”

“He’s talked it all out lots of times, you can be sure of that.”

“I suppose he has. But I never have.”

Despite himself Garry laughed. He had remained mystified at her repeated delays in going to see the doctor about not getting pregnant; she had never told him the real reason before.

“You don’t ever have to go if you don’t want to, Letty.” She looked very young with her averted eyes, and when she thanked him for saying she needn’t ever go, he was stirred. She was lovely and appealing, and he should have found fullness in their marriage and everything a man could wish.

And yet so little was of equal importance to each of them. Tonight, coming home from work through the ringing cold of the worst February in years, he had been sure that at the right moment he would talk out his special problem of Aldrich Chemical Co. and what was happening there, but, again he had delayed, and now at the end of dinner he half-hoped the right moment would not come at all.

The fire leaping in the old marble fireplace, the warm reds of the draperies Letty had made, swinging slightly with the swoop of the gale through Eleventh Street, even the tree scratching frozenly at their bedroom window in the back of the house, all surrounded him with peace, and he was reluctant to risk it.

When she began to talk about Dr. Haslitt, it was like an unexpected release, and he looked ready to discuss Dr. Haslitt all night. She rarely talked about having a baby any more, and she had stopped reporting to him each month. But tonight when she talked of the doctor, what she said was, “see him about not having a baby.”

She was unaware of her phrase, but Garry heard it and his heart contracted that she should use it, instead of saying as she always had, “see him about having a baby.”

“Or if you decide to see Haslitt,” he said, “I’ll go with you. I want to.”

She looked forlorn at his ready offer. “Have you been thinking about Dr. Haslitt all along?” she asked, and before he could answer she said, “Oh, Garry, you
are
disappointed about it, only you don’t want to make me feel worse, so you never let on or say a word.”

“Disappointed in the way you are, nothing else.” He waited until she nodded, accepting what he said. “Haslitt might know a specialist to send us to.”

“He
is
a specialist.”

“Once you’re pregnant, yes. But there’s a whole new field, a new kind of medical research about why some people don’t have children. I mean one of those specialists.”

She gazed at him in dismay. “You’ve been looking into the whole subject,” she said. “You’ve been miserable about it for a long time, and you’ve been looking into it without telling me.”

“I’ve not been ‘looking into’ it,” he said matter-of-factly. “Just talking it over a bit with Otto; I talk about everything else with Otto, don’t I?”

“Otto and Luise have four children,” she said, disqualifying Otto by her tone.

Again Garry laughed. She knew what he thought of Otto Ohrmann, and of his envy of Otto’s learning in a dozen areas besides chemistry. “I’d have to visit the specialist too, you know, not just you.”

“Have to?”

“After Dr. Haslitt saw you, he’d send for me, and then he might know what specialist you should see, and what one I might see.”

A look of distaste and panic came to her face. Her unwillingness to have Garry go to any doctor at all became insupportably worse—the notion of what his examination might entail repelled her.

“Let’s not think about it any more,” she said in sudden entreaty. “It’s all mixed up with—with—oh, Garry, I’m starting to feel sort of sick.”

She looked away again. Here was the Puritan in Letty, he thought, the New England world of her childhood, dwelling within the modern New York girl she had become.

“I hadn’t even dreamed,” she said, “of specialists and examinations and all that scientific rigmarole. I’m not old-fashioned, but it’s too soon to go to such extremes, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t mean tomorrow morning. But if we just drift along—”

“Some people get married and have a baby the first year and others wait a while—perhaps they’re the luckiest in the long run, not to be raising a family from the first minute.”

“They might be,” he said easily, though he was vexed. “Any marriage has plenty of problems to iron out first, at that.” He thought, This is the right moment after all to tell her about the lab. But the syllables, “the lab,” thudded in wooden doubt, and his vexation grew. There were problems you couldn’t iron out, it seemed; in any marriage, you also had to keep a lot to yourself, and it could be wearing and abrasive.

“You clam up whenever it suits you,” Letty sometimes said; it was an accusation he had heard all his life, from his roommate at college, from his parents, and now from her. He did fall silent, not because it “suited” him, but because he could not help it. When he was annoyed or angry, something snapped shut within him and he had no key that would open the closed place. It was like a time-lock arrangement, with nothing to do but wait. Then whatever had snapped shut finally came open once more.

The telephone rang just then, and Letty reached it first. At her “Hello, Dad,” Garry put his hand out for it. He knew it was not her father in Maine; she always called Mr. Brooks “Father,” though there was nothing forbidding or formal about him or the way the Brooks children felt toward him.

But Letty ignored his outstretched hand. Instead of her usual, “He’s right here,” she kept on talking as if the call were meant for her, and as if it were delightful.