She took the child by the shoulders and steered her into the kitchen. He saw the woman pick up a spoon, open a bottle of something after scanning the label, and pour out two doses.
“Now, you say good night to Mr. Breit, sweetness, and go to your room.”
He nodded to the child and then followed the woman to the kitchen. He did not take the chair she indicated, but instead one that let him face the balcony, the hallway, and the small living room. "Do you mind if I smoke a cigar?” he asked.
“I don’t mind,” she said. ‘‘I don’t think it will bother me, Arnold. Please do.”
He decided against it. He put his hands on his knees and gave his face a serious expression.
“This is still very much of a mystery to me,” he said. “It’s quite out of the ordinary, I assure you.”
“I understand, Arnold,” she said. “You’d probably like to hear the story of how I got your number?”
“I would indeed,” he said.
They sat across from each other waiting for the water to boil. He could hear the television. He looked around the kitchen and then out toward the balcony again. The water began to bubble.
“You were going to tell me about the number,” he said.
“What, Arnold? I’m sorry,” she said.
He cleared his throat. “Tell me how you acquired my number,” he said.
“I checked with Annette. The sitter—but of course you know that. Anyway, she told me the phone rang while she was here and it was somebody wanting me. They left a number to call, and it was your number she took down. That’s all I know.” She moved a cup around in front of her. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you any more.”
“Your water is boiling,” he said.
She put out spoons, milk, sugar and poured the steaming water over the tea bags.
He added sugar and stirred his tea. “You said it was urgent that I come."
“Oh, that, Arnold,” she said, turning away. “I don’t know what made me say that. I can’t imagine what I was thinking.”
“Then there’s nothing?” he said.
“No. I mean yes.” She shook her head. “What you said, I mean. Nothing.”
“I see,” he said. He went on stirring his tea. “It’s unusual,” he said after a time, almost to himself. “Quite unusual.” He smiled weakly, then moved the cup to one side and touched his lips with the napkin.
“You aren’t leaving?” she said.
“I must,” he said. “I’m expecting a call at home.”
“Not yet, Arnold.”
She scraped her chair back and stood up. Her eyes were a pale green, set deep in her pale face and surrounded by what he had at first thought was dark makeup. Appalled at himself, knowing he would despise himself for it, he stood and put his arms clumsily around her waist. She let herself be kissed, fluttering and closing her eyelids briefly.
“It’s late,” he said, letting go, turning away unsteadily. “You’ve been very gracious. But I must be leaving, Mrs. Holt. Thank you for the tea.”
“You will come again, won’t you, Arnold?” she said.
He shook his head.
She followed him to the door, where he held out his hand. He could hear the television. He was sure the volume had been turned up. He remembered the other child then—the boy. Where was he?
She took his hand, raised it quickly to her lips.
“You mustn’t forget me, Arnold.”
“I won’t,” he said. “Clara. Clara Holt.” he said.
“We had a good talk,” she said. She picked at something, a hair, a thread, on his suit collar. “I’m very glad you came, and I feel certain you’ll come again.” He looked at her carefully, but she was staring past him now as if she were trying to remember something. “Now— good night, Arnold,” she said, and with that she shut the door, almost catching his overcoat.
“Strange,” he said as he started down the stairs. He took a long breath when he reached the sidewalk and paused a moment to look back at the building. But he was unable to determine which balcony was hers. The large man in the sweatshirt moved slightly against the railing and continued looking down at him.
He began walking, hands deep in his coat pockets. When he reached home, the telephone was ringing. He stood very quietly in the middle of the room, holding the key between his fingers until the ringing stopped. Then, tenderly, he put a hand against his chest and felt, through the layers of clothes, his beating heart. After a time he made his way into the bedroom.
Almost immediately the telephone came alive again, and this time he answered it. “Arnold. Arnold Breit speaking,” he said.
“Arnold? My, aren’t we formal tonight!” his wife said, her voice strong, teasing. “I’ve been calling since nine. Out living it up, Arnold?”
He remained silent and considered her voice.
“Are you there, Arnold?” she said. “You don’t sound like yourself.”
THE FATHER
The baby lay in a basket beside the bed, dressed in a white bonnet and sleeper. The basket had been newly painted and tied with ice blue ribbons and padded with blue quilts. The three little sisters and the mother, who had just gotten out of bed and was still not herself, and the grandmother all stood around the baby, watching it stare and sometimes raise its fist to its mouth. He did not smile or laugh, but now and then he blinked his eyes and flicked his tongue back and forth through his lips when one of the girls rubbed his chin.
The father was in the kitchen and could hear them playing with the baby.
“Who do you love, baby?” Phyllis said and tickled his chin.
“He loves us all,” Phyllis said, “but he really loves Daddy because Daddy’s a boy tool”
The grandmother sat down on the edge of the bed and said, “Look at its little arm! So fat. And those little fingers! Just like its mother.”
“Isn’t he sweet?” the mother said. “So healthy, my little baby.” And bending over, she kissed the baby on its forehead and touched the cover over its arm. “We love him too.”
“But who does he look like, who does he look like?” Alice cried, and they all moved up closer around the basket to see who the baby looked like.
“He has pretty eyes,” Carol said.
“All babies have pretty eyes,” Phyllis said.
“He has his grandfather’s lips,” the grandmother said. “Look at those lips.”
“I don’t know . . .” the mother said. “I wouldn’t say.”
“The nose! The nose!” Alice cried.
“What about his nose?” the mother asked.
“It looks like somebody’s nose,” the girl answered.
“No, I don’t know,” the mother said. “I don’t think so.”
“Those lips .. .” the grandmother murmured. “Those little fingers . . .” she said, uncovering the baby’s hand and spreading out its fingers.
“Who does the baby look like?”
“He doesn’t look like anybody,” Phyllis said. And they moved even closer.
“I know! I know!” Carol said. “He looks like Daddy! ” Then they looked closer at the baby.
“But who does Daddy look like?” Phyllis asked.
“Who does Daddy look like?” Alice repeated, and they all at once looked through to the kitchen where the father was sitting at the table with his back to them.
“Why, nobody!” Phyllis said and began to cry a little.
“Hush,” the grandmother said and looked away and then back at the baby.
“Daddy doesn’t look like anybody/” Alice said.
“But he has to look like somebody" Phyllis said, wiping her eyes with one of the ribbons. And all of them except the grandmother looked at the father, sitting at the table.
He had turned around in his chair and his face was white and without expression.
NOBODY SAID ANYTHING
I could hear them out in the kitchen. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were arguing. Then it got quiet and she started to cry. I elbowed G
eorge. I thought he would wake up and say something to them so they would feel guilty and stop. But George is such an asshole. He started kicking and hollering.
“Stop gouging me, you bastard,” he said. “I’m going to tell!”
“You dumb chickenshit,” I said. “Can’t you wise up for once? They’re fighting and Mom’s crying. Listen.”
He listened with his head off the pillow. “I don’t care,” he said and turned over toward the wall and went back to sleep. George is a royal asshole.
Later I heard Dad leave to catch his bus. He slammed the front door. She had told me before he wanted to tear up the family. I didn’t want to listen.
After a while she came to call us for school. Her voice sounded funny—I don’t know. I said I felt sick at my stomach. It was the first week in October and I hadn’t missed any school yet, so what could she say? She looked at me, but it was like she was thinking of something else. George was awake and listening. I could tell he was awake by the way he moved in the bed. He was waiting to see how it turned out so he could make his move.
“All right.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know. Stay home, then. But no TV, remember that.”
George reared up. ‘Tm sick too,” he said to her. “I have a headache. He gouged me and kicked me all night. I didn’t get to sleep at all.”
“That’s enough!” she said. “You are going to school, George! You’re not going to stay here and fight with your brother all day. Now get up and get dressed. I mean it. I don’t feel like another battle this morning.”
George waited until she left the room. Then he climbed out over the foot of the bed. “You bastard,” he said and yanked all the covers off me. He dodged into the bathroom.
“I’ll kill you,” I said but not so loud that she could hear.
I stayed in bed until George left for school. When she started to get ready for work, I asked if she would make a bed for me on the couch. I said I wanted to study. On the coffee table I had the Edgar Rice Burroughs books I had gotten for my birthday and my Social Studies book. But I didn’t feel like reading. I wanted her to leave so I could watch TV.
She flushed the toilet.
I couldn’t wait any longer. I turned the picture on without the volume. I went out to the kitchen where she had left her pack of weeds and shook out three. I put them in the cupboard and went back to the couch and started reading The Princess of Mars. She came out and glanced at the TV but didn’t say anything. I had the book open. She poked at her hair in front of the mirror and then went into the kitchen. I looked back at the book when she came out.
“I’m late. Goodbye, sweetheart.” She wasn’t going to bring up the TV. Last night she’d said she wouldn’t know what it meant any more to go to work without being “stirred up.”
“Don’t cook anything. You don't need to turn the burners on for a thing. There’s tuna fish in the icebox if you feel hungry.” She looked at me. “But if your stomach is sick, I don't think you should put anything on it. Anyway, you don’t need to turn the burners on. Do you hear? You take that medicine, sweetheart, and I hope your stomach feels better by tonight. Maybe we’ll all feel better by tonight.”
She stood in the doorway and turned the knob. She looked as if she wanted to say something else. She wore the white blouse, the wide black belt, and the black skirt. Sometimes she called it her outfit, sometimes her uniform. For as long as I could remember, it was always hanging in the closet or hanging on the clothesline or getting washed out by hand at night or being ironed in the kitchen.
She worked Wednesdays through Sundays.
“Bye, Mom.”
I waited until she had started the car and had it warm. I listened as she pulled away from the curb. Then I got up and turned the sound on loud and went for the weeds. I smoked one and beat off while I watched a show about doctors and nurses. Then I turned to the other channel. Then I turned off the TV. I didn’t feel like watching.
I finished the chapter where Tars Tarkas falls for a green woman, only to see her get her head chopped off the next morning by this jealous brother-in-law. It was about the fifth time I had read it. Then I went to their bedroom and looked around. I wasn’t after anything in particular unless it was rubbers again and though I had looked all over I had never found any. Once I found a jar of Vaseline at the back of a drawer. I knew it must have something to do with it, but I didn’t know what. I studied the label and hoped it would reveal something, a description of what people did, or else about how you applied the Vaseline, that sort of thing. But it didn’t. Pure Petroleum Jelly, that was all it said on the front label. But just reading that was enough to give you a boner. An Excellent Aid in the Nursery, it said on the back. I tried to make the connection between Nursery—the swings and slides, the sandboxes, monkeybars—and what went on in bed between them. I had opened the jar lots of times and smelled inside and looked to see how much had been used since last time. This time I passed up the Pure Petroleum Jelly. I mean, all I did was look to see the jar was still there. I went through a few drawers, not really expecting to find anything. I looked under the bed. Nothing anywhere. I looked in the jar in the closet where they kept the grocery money. There was no change, only a five and a one. They would miss that. Then I thought I would get dressed and walk to Birch Creek. Trout season was open for another week or so, but almost everybody had quit fishing. Everybody was just sitting around now waiting for deer and pheasant to open.
I got out my old clothes. I put wool socks over my regular socks and took my time lacing up the boots. I made a couple of tuna sandwiches and some doubledecker peanut-butter crackers. I filled my canteen and attached the hunting knife and the canteen to my belt.
As I was going out the door, I decided to leave a note. So I wrote: “Feeling better and going to Birch Creek. Back soon. R. 3:15.” That was about four hours from now. And about fifteen minutes before George would come in from school. Before I left, I ate one of the sandwiches and had a glass of milk with it.
It was nice out. It was fall. But it wasn’t cold yet except at night. At night they would light the smudgepots in the orchards and you would wake up in the morning with a black ring of stuff in your nose. But nobody said anything. They said the smudging kept the young pears from freezing, so it was all right.
To get to Birch Creek, you go to the end of our street where you hit Sixteenth Avenue. You turn left on Sixteenth and go up the hill past the cemetery and down to Lennox, where there is a Chinese restaurant. From the crossroads there, you can see the airport, and Birch Creek is below the airport. Sixteenth changes to View Road at the crossroads. You follow View for a little way until you come to the bridge. There are orchards on both sides of the road. Sometimes when you go by the orchards you see pheasants running down the rows, but you can’t hunt there because you might get shot by a Greek named Matsos. I guess it is about a forty-minute walk all in all.
I was halfway down Sixteenth when a woman in a red car pulled onto the shoulder ahead of me. She rolled down the window on the passenger’s side and asked if I wanted a lift. She was thin and had little pimples around her mouth. Her hair was up in curlers. But she was sharp enough. She had a brown sweater with nice boobs inside.
“Playing hooky?”
“Guess so.”
“Want a ride?”
I nodded.
“Get in. I’m kind of in a hurry.”
I put the fly rod and the creel on the back seat. There were a lot of grocery sacks from Mel’s on the floorboards and back seat. I tried to think of something to say.
“I’m going fishing,” I said. I took off my cap, hitched the canteen around so I could sit, and parked myself next to the window.
“Well, I never would have guessed.” She laughed. She pulled back onto the road. “Where are you going? Birch Creek?”
I nodded again. I looked at my cap. My uncle had bought it for me in Seattle when he had gone to watch a hockey game. I couldn’t think of anything more to say. I looked out the window and sucked my
cheeks. You always see yourself getting picked up by this woman. You know you’ll fall for each other and that she’ll take you home with her and let you screw her all over the house. I began to get a boner thinking about it. I moved the cap over my lap and closed my eyes and tried to think about baseball.
“I keep saying that one of these days I’ll take up fishing,” she said. “They say it’s very relaxing. I’m a nervous person.”
I opened my eyes. We were stopped at the crossroads. I wanted to say, Are you real busy? Would you like to start this morning? But I was afraid to look at her.
“Will this help you? I have to turn here. I’m sorry I’m in a hurry this morning,” she said.
“That’s okay. This is fine.” I took my stuff out. Then I put my cap on and took it off again while I talked. “Goodbye. Thanks. Maybe next summer,” but I couldn’t finish.
“You mean fishing? Sure thing." She waved with a couple of fingers the way women do.
I started walking, going over what I should have said. I could think of a lot of things. What was wrong with me? I cut the air with the fly rod and hollered two or three times. What I should have done to start things off was ask if we could have lunch together. No one was home at my house. Suddenly we are in my bedroom under the covers. She asks me if she can keep her sweater on and I say it's okay with me. She keeps her pants on too. That’s all right, I say. I don’t mind.
A Piper Cub dipped low over my head as it came in for a landing. I was a few feet from the bridge. I could hear the water running. I hurried down the embankment, unzipped, and shot off five feet over the creek. It must have been a record. I took a while eating the other sandwich and the peanut-butter crackers. I drank up half the water in the canteen. Then I was ready to fish.
I tried to think where to start. I had fished here for three years, ever since we had moved. Dad used to bring George and me in the car and wait for us, smoking, baiting our hooks, tying up new rigs for us if we snagged. We always started at the bridge and moved down, and we always caught a few. Once in a while, at the first of the season, we caught the limit. I rigged up and tried a few casts under the bridge first.