Inside the house, the radiators thumped and grumbled and hurrying footsteps brought crackling whispers from the rugs.
Grace lay sleeping in her room, body pulled up into a warm, pajamaed ball. Aunt Alice stood beside another bed, watching her sister writhe and moan in labor.
Erick’s father was in the city, drinking.
About four a.m. Erick was born. A little later his mother held him against her breast, her face shining and warm. She smiled tremblingly and touched her son’s tiny fingers as though she couldn’t believe it was all real.
And once, when she thought about her husband, her mouth tightened and she closed one pale hand over Erick’s head, whispering, almost in defiance,
“He’s my baby.”
* * * *
He was three and they sat on the sun-washed plain in the park. His mother, Grace and him.
Grace was combing out his hair. Erick felt the comb tines scratch his delicate scalp. He twitched irritably when Grace jerked the comb through knotted locks of his white-blonde hair. Then he started to cry and Grace became impatient.
His mother took the comb and soothed him with quiet words while her gentle fingers unsnarled the shiny strands. He leaned against her and the sun on his head made him drowsy. His eyes fell shut. And, without caring, he heard Grace saying with adolescent sophistication, “Oh, he’s such a baby!”
He slept and smiled and his mother carried him home, pressing her warm cheek to his.
* * * *
And he fell screaming to the bottom of the cellar steps. Something snapped in his shoulder. Hot shooting agony flared up in his skull. He lay crumpled on the cement floor, screaming and screaming, his piercing screams clawing up the steps and into the house.
There were rushing feet, a strangled cry. Then the yellow bulb light flooded over him and through mists of blinding pain, he saw his mother standing at the head of the high, rail-less steps, her hands pressed tightly to her cheeks in horror. She screamed, “Albert! Albert!”
His father came. Erick screamed at the top of his lungs as his father rushed him up stairs and out to the car.
Then the car was speeding through the streets and his mother was holding him in her lap. He whimpered and sobbed and clutched at her dress with dirty shaking fingers. She kept touching his face and kissing him and sobbing. She said to her husband,
“Can’t you go faster?”
And his father said, “Now Evelyn, I’m going as fast as it’s safe to go.”
And he heard his mother cry, “You don’t care!”
And he heard no answer from his father.
Then the pain swelled up like a black balloon making him scream in fear, then enveloping him and sucking his senses away.
* * * *
He stood by the window of the apartment. Grace was sprawled on a chair, reading. Erick was staring over the house tops toward the avenue. He was watching the sidewalks on both sides. Tears ran down his thin face. He squirmed. He scuffed the toes of his indian slippers on the rug.
“Stop that,” Grace said flatly and mechanically without locking up from her book, “Stop being such a baby.”
He wept without a sound, running one hand restlessly over the windowsill. He wanted to run down to the avenue in his pajamas and wrapper and stand in front of the trolley stop until mother got off and then run to her laughing and shouting—look it’s me, mother!
But he couldn’t. It would make Grace angry and he couldn’t go out in the cold in just pajamas and wrapper. He trembled. The desperate anguish of being separated from his mother ate at him. He couldn’t relax. Everytime Grace said wearily, “Go to bed,” he would say in thin-lipped belligerence — “No.” And he hated her for being so calm and for reading a book while he suffered.
An hour. Tears running down the window pane.
Then, sudden excitement! He leaned forward elatedly, pressing his button nose to the icy window.
She was coming! And with a paper bag in her hands!
With a gasp of wild emotion, he whirled and ran like fury to his room. He tore off his wrapper and hurled himself into bed. Snuggling under the blankets, breathless and quivering with excitement. Trying desperately not to giggle out loud as he heard her key in the door. Knowing, with explosive joy, that she would come in and turn the bedside lamp and sit there smiling while he ate the ice cream she brought on a dish. And stroke his hair.
And, from despair, he was filled with a wild, an excited happiness that made him tremble all over and made his body warm as toast.
* * * *
His father liked the cat.
It used to sleep on his father’s lap. And Erick would watch the strong fingers rub the cat behind the ears and hear it addressed as an intimate—squallamagook.
And one day when the cat was snoozing on the fire escape Erick moved silently to the window. He could feel himself shaking, his stomach sank like heavy lead. He couldn’t breathe.
He pushed the cat off the fire escape. He stood there, fiercely exultant for a moment as the cat flailed through the air, seeking its footing.
Then horror burst over him and he screamed for his mother. And, as he heard his mother running to answer his call, he watched the cat dragging its body into a shadowy part of the apartment house court.
Then he lost his breakfast and had to be put to bed and shivered all day thinking of what his father would say when he learned about it.
* * * *
Late at night he lay awake in the cabin, listening to the frail snores of his fellow campers. Hating the little Italian boy in the next bunk for picking on him all the time, hating the counselor for making him go down to the dock for swimming lessons and making him pick up papers.
But worst of all, hearing the lonely sound of crickets rasping away the night and the cold waters of the bay stroking at the grey-pebbled sands. And, although he tried not to, finding tears in his eyes and having to bury his face in the pillow to muffle the shaking sobs of homesickness.
* * * *
They walked together at the World’s Fair, his mother and himself. Hand in hand between the giant innovated structures, beneath the towering trylon and perisphere, over the bridges and through the underslung passages.
Let’s go there! He would shout, dragging her on. They went from building to building, him dashing past each exhibit, only slowing down for the samples, for the movie cartoons, getting cranky whenever she wanted to sit on a bench and rest for a while. Never once noticing the pain which flitted over her face every once in a while, the lines etched briefly around her mouth and her eyes. How she bit her lips.
He ran endlessly between her and concession stands, pouring down soda and loading in popcorn and ice cream and frankfurters and hamburgers.
Begging to go just here, just there. And his mother moving along behind his hurrying steps, following like a silent, smiling protector.
Then at night, they sat on a bench near the Lagoon of Nations. He was sick to his stomach and she was very sympathetic. Then, as he watched drowsily the colored waters bursting and shimmering in the darkness and felt her warm arm around him, he fell asleep. And never heard her cry softly and clench her teeth when the pain struck her.
And, later, when she woke him up and they rode home on the subway he slept soundly and didn’t see how white her face was, how her fingers twitched.
He dreamed.
* * * *
“You got a girl?” the boy asked him.
“My mom is my girl,” he said.
“Huh!” said the boy and Erick hated him.
* * * *
When he came home she was waiting up for him, pale, the old woolen wrapper pulled around her thickening body. She woke up from a thin slumber as he came in the first thing she did was look at her alarm clock which stood clucking on the glass-topped coffee table. It was one o’clock.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said before she could transform her hard look into words, “It was such a good picture I saw it twice. It was about a …”
&nbs
p; “Never mind now,” she said, “Go to bed. It’s too late for that. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Lying in bed, Erick thought about the two girls he and his friend had met in the park and spent the night with. He kept trying to visualize the face of the girl he was with, the dress she was wearing. But all he could remember was the strange tingling he felt when she held his hand as they walked around the dark lake and when she called him, “honey.”
Then suddenly he worried that his mother would ask in the morning about the movie. Fear of being trapped in a lie made him shiver. He listened to his mother moving about in the kitchen making herself coffee. She’s right there, he thought, and I’ve done something she doesn’t know about.
* * * *
He was terribly sunburned, lying red and itching on the bed.
It was early in the morning. He kept scratching his legs and the pain made him wince. Then, a second after he stopped scratching, the horrible endless itching would begin again and get worse and worse until he began to scratch frenziedly again, sobbing, raking his nails furiously over the hot, prickly flesh.
The itching grew so fierce that he began to cry and become afraid. He got up and padded to his mother’s room. And stood over her bed wondering whether he should wake her.
“Mom?” he said quietly.
Again. “Mom?”
She stirred. Then she said, “Uh?” and raised up on one elbow.
“I can’t sleep,” he said, “I itch.”
He padded back to his room feeling comfort in the sound of her slippered feet following him, knowing that in a little while the itching would diminish and, soothed by her soft voice, he would fall asleep.
* * * *
“I don’t think you should go,” she said, “You’re too young to go with girls.”
“Young!” he was incredulous. “I’m sixteen!” he shouted at her, “What do I have to be, ninety-seven!”
“You don’t have to shout.” She said.
“Aw … rats!”
He stamped into the livingroom and threw himself into an armchair. He sat there glumly, hitting the cushion with a bunched fist. And when she passed through the room, he hurled at her, “George can go out with girls!” He trembled. “He’s not even sixteen!”
“What George’s mother allows him to do is her own business,” she said.
He yelled at her. “You don’t want me to go out. You just want me to spend the rest of my life with you. Well, I won’t!”
She kept walking. He didn’t see the glistening in her eyes. But when she was quiet and distant the rest of the day he couldn’t bear it. And after a half dozen more angry outbursts were greeted with stoney silences, he finally said, sullenly,
“I’m sorry.”
She smiled tenderly. She stroked his hair.
“That’s my baby,” she said and he felt himself losing his temper again.
“What’s playing around?” she said.
He went down the corner candy store and walked back slowly looking angrily, then interestedly at the movie page. That night he managed to talk her into letting him see a gangster picture and felt it was a triumph because she would never let him see a gangster picture before.
* * * *
His mother and a heavily pregnant Grace saw him graduate.
Tall and clean, dressed in his new suit, he filed up to the high school stage and got his diploma and his handshake.
Then, after, in the gym, the faculty gave the graduates a cheer and there was much nostalgic shaking of hands and pummeling of shoulders. And, in envy, he watched his friends, with their girls, going to parties. And he went home with his mother. Grace had to get back to her husband.
In the silence of the apartment, he got on his pajamas and they sat in the dining alcove eating cake and ice cream that was half melted. He was morose and sullen.
“Why aren’t you opening up your presents?” his mother said.
He didn’t say anything. But in his mind he kept hearing a voice say—I’m getting out of here!
* * * *
He was lying in bed when she brought in the white official envelope. She stood over him, tight jawed, as he tore it open eagerly and read his traveling orders. Her grey eyes were lost and bewildered. One hand started to move to touch his hair, then twitched back to her side without him noticing.
“When … are you leaving?” she asked.
“Two weeks.”
“So soon.”
She turned away quickly and went into the kitchen. He felt guilty for having enlisted, then rechanneled the feeling into one of anger at her. And, at breakfast, flared up suddenly when she said, “I hope you’re happy now.”
“I bet you were hoping I’d be refused!” he cried, “I bet you …”
She was up gone from the kitchen. He sank back in a fury, kept eating though he felt the food like lead in his stomach.
A little later he went out and prowled the streets until the local movies opened. Then he went to one of them and when he came out, he walked up the block and went to another one.
3
Here was the room, silent and stale in the afternoon sunlight.
Underneath the window, on the dirty, dust-laden floor, were the papers that had been wrapped around the candy bar, the cardboard bit that had been its base. Around them and on them was a spattering of coins and broken pieces of mirror.
Then came the table, standing in stocky rigidity, its top dusty and stained and sticky. The top was empty except for the towel lying in a bunched heap like a discarded bandage.
On the floor was a brown rug. By the table leg rested a magazine. The magazine was covered by a wrinkled white pillow. Resting in a snowy depression of the bulky pillow was a wallet and a photostat snuggling beneath its black leather. Next to the pillow were scattered cards, photographs.
Nearby was a key chain crumpled on the brown rug. One of the keys pointed at the dresser.
Which stood by the radiator against the door that led to the drunk’s room. It sagged. On its top below the hovering, lopsided mirror were a box of crackers and peanut butter jar. There was a toothbrush and paste and a dirty white towel under it. The dirty white towel was supposed to be a dresser cloth.
On the floor, farther in the room was a crumpled brown overcoat with three things on it. One, a crumpled up dollar bill standing motionless at the hem of the coat. Two, a brown-edged floppy rose lying head down on the brown silk lining. Three, a broken piece of mirror.
Beyond the coat were piles and swirls of bills, fives and tens and twenties and one fifty-dollar bill.
And, against the wall, beside the dresser, was a waste basket with a few sundries inside and a chair with a brown hat leaning against the back.
Against the far wall was another table. It had a typewriter on it and a rumpled yellow sweater over it.
By the door was another chair. And, leaning against one of its legs was the hard, jagged-edged bottom part of a glass.
Against the other wall was a wardrobe closet with a flimsy suitcase on top and a few pair of trousers and a suit hanging inside.
There was a bed. Underneath its springs were heavy clumps of grey dust and pieces of broken glass, splinters of a mirror and fragments of a drinking glass.
On the bed were three things.
A small piece of mirror.
A handkerchief.
A man, almost dead.
4
He dreamed that he was walking. He dreamed that there was a lake just over the hill. And he ran to the top of the hill. And there was a valley and another hill. And he said to himself, well it’s over that hill. And he ran down and up and over and saw that there was another hill. And he kept walking and walking, he kept searching patiently for the lake.
5
He stepped into the pouring sunlight and walked among the frying fish. His feet carried him away from the black subway depths. The distant roar of underground machinery left his ears to be replaced by myriad whispers of the city.
Now I
am walking up Broadway, he thought. People walk past me coming and going. I am in no hurry. I am breaking away.
Incredible rabbit fecundity of the world. That it should start out with a cell, progress to a few slithering mollusks, work up to this; an ever multiplying horde of scurrying animals all hurrying to their instinctive ends. Rushing under the glass-eyed city, between the steel ribs of the body called Manhattan.
Veiled bodies hurrying to the end of their times. Blending their hurrying dust with the still restless dust of their hurrying ancestors. Transient flesh. Brief moments of passion, locked bodies dying soon to sullen reciprocity, the end of youth and accomplishment beyond more from the mold to dawdle away another few generations. Crying for peace and stumbling into war. Asking freedom and, each day, buying slavery. The same, the ineffable, unalterable same.
On down the proud gash of the city.
A striker. Empty Promises scribed on a cardboard coat of arms. You, my child, are another. Give you your twenty cents more an hour and the sun shines again. And, behind, whirs the silent machinery until you must carry another sign and effect another glare and, like an economic Oliver Twist ask resentfully for more. Then, soon, it crashes about you and you rise painfully from the economic rubble muttering, wondrous-eyed—How the hell did that happen?
How utterly fascinating in this bugheap on the continent; the logical ants running about with their new clothes and old minds.
How tragically delightful to stand still and watch while others heave about their impermanent little orbits, their dizzy little passionate rounds.
I am free as may be, he thought. Thus it is when things come to a closing. And why must it be that named age to bring things to a close?
He passed magazines grey suits, sweaters and beards, no-parking signs, taxicabs and people, people.
Sex shining from the newstands. How cruel and unfair to our crowning weakness. To thrust excitement through every sense into our bodies. To maliciously set fire to the loins and then punish unless we live by narrow mandates from the same fountainhead. Ah, life! Giddy world. Children dancing around a maypole draped in black.