Boys and Girls Together

by William Saroyan

  Now, in the upper flat he put the big porous brown rock aside and took up the papers that were the work he was doing. It was desperate work and it stank. He put the work back on the table and went to the window to look down at the street. The street stank, too. He just didn’t know where to start. What he wanted was money. What they needed was money. What they didn’t have was money. What they had was the kids and debts.

  He dialled the number of the telephone downstairs and when the woman got on he said: ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ve just figured but how we can get hold of all the money we need. We can sell the kids.’

  ‘Do you love me?’ the woman said.

  ‘I telephoned you, didn’t I? I left my work to telephone you. Take good care of the kids. Give them a good lunch and clean up the joint a little. The whole house is a shambles.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll come down and help you after a while. We’ll have some coffee when they’re having their naps. Phone me when they’re asleep.’

  Chapter 11

  He saw the mail-carrier coming down the street, so he went down to the street-level basement where the mail was dropped. The shelves along the entire far wall were loaded with books and magazines, the baby-grand pianola was there beside the gas furnace, the pianola that had been in his last play on Broadway, the flop, the third in a row. The car was there, and all the junk from New York: the baby carriages and other things with wheels that small children were pushed around in, the cribs and canvas bathing tubs for infants, the toys, the tricycles, and the boy’s bicycle that he couldn’t ride yet from the seat but could somehow ride, that he loved so much but could only have when someone was there to help and see that he didn’t hurt himself. The garden tools, the pruning shears for the rose trees and bushes, the shovel and rake, the lawn-mower.

  Christ, he thought, I ought to get up at seven and be at work in an office in town somewhere by nine and come home at six, and live the way everybody else around here does.

  One day when he was cutting the lawn and letting Johnny help—it was sundown then, about seven in the evening—a man came out of the top flat of a house just like his house across the way and called out to him, ‘What are you writing?’

  The mail was good for nothing.

  A woman in Richmond, Virginia, wrote to say that he had twice described someone as being cultured when the correct term was cultivated. The woman asked if he had done this on purpose, as part of his style, or because he didn’t know any better.

  The lecture-bureau man who had been writing him for five years wrote again saying that he could arrange for a very profitable series of lectures at a moment’s notice, in almost any part of the country, including the Far West.

  There was a royalty statement from his publisher which only reminded him that he was still in debt, even though the books had sold fairly well over a period of six months.

  There was an invitation from a cousin who lived four or five miles across town to go to the races at Bay Meadows and make a killing.

  There was a cheque for $27.81, which represented his share of royalties from an anthology of one-act plays.

  There was a letter from a girl who had been eleven years old when she had appeared in one of his plays but was now eighteen, and there was a snapshot of her in the letter. She wore a low-cut evening dress so that he could see how nicely she had grown and she said she never would forget him for picking her out from all the others and giving her her start in the theatre. She was in Hollywood now, and when was he going to go there and show them how to make moving pictures? She said her mother sent him her love and hoped he would visit them in their nice apartment when he got to Hollywood.

  And there was a letter for his wife from her friend Lucretia in New York.

  He put the letter with the small cheque in it and the one with the snapshot in it in the back pocket of his trousers, and then went up to the lower flat and let himself in with a key, calling out to the woman first so that she wouldn’t be frightened. He handed her the mail, because she liked to look at everything.

  ‘Is this all?’

  ‘What’s Lucretia say?’

  ‘Are you sure you haven’t kept out some of the mail?’

  ‘Go ahead. Open it and see what she’s up to.’

  The woman tore open the fine envelope with the fancy writing all over it and glanced quickly at the first of the five or six pages of very thin paper, and then she said, ‘They’re coming out to pay us a visit.’

  ‘The hell they are.’

  ‘They can stay upstairs.’

  ‘They can shit. That’s where I work. Now, listen, I don’t want any trouble about your friends. Things are tough enough around here without a couple of phonies coming out here.’

  ‘They have to go to Hollywood. They only want to stop and say hello.’

  ‘Hello for a week? Write and tell her I’m working. I’ve got to get to work and you know I’ll never be able to with them around. It takes time to get ready to work and you’re always arranging for something to happen that will stop me from ever getting ready.’

  ‘Can’t they come for just a little visit? She’s my best friend and he’s such a great man.’

  ‘She’s a bore and he’s a bore.’

  ‘I never see anybody out here. Just the people you know. None of my people.’

  ‘Your people stink. Your sister was here for ten days a month ago. Two months before that your mother and father were here. Now don’t try to make me put up with these two, too.’

  ‘O.K. I’ll write and tell her the kids are sick, but I think you’re mean.’

  ‘The kids aren’t sick. Tell her I’m working. She’ll understand.’

  ‘I can’t be rude.’

  ‘It’s not rude to tell the truth. I am working. We’re broke. I’ve got to see about getting hold of some money.’

  ‘O.K., I’ll tell her you’re working.’

  ‘Now, don’t fool around the way you did about your sister. Don’t have her drop in on us and then give me a long explanation about how you must have misdirected the letter telling her not to come because she hadn’t received it, and now, as long as she was here, we couldn’t turn her away. Don’t do anything like that again. That was a dirty trick.’

  ‘She didn’t get the letter.’

  ‘If she didn’t, you didn’t write a letter.’

  ‘You saw me mail the letter yourself.’

  ‘Then you didn’t tell her not to come. You told her something else. Maybe you told her to pretend that she hadn’t gotten the letter. All I know is that we agreed that you would write and tell her not to come because I was working, and then a taxi came up to the house and there she was with six suitcases all the way from New York. No more of that.’

  ‘O.K.’

  ‘Just take care of your kids and let me see if I can start writing again.’

  ‘I miss my people.’

  ‘Your kids are your people now.’

  He went out and up the stairs and back to his work-table, but it was no use, he had no heart for the work, he had been fighting the idea of abandoning it for days, and now he knew it was abandoned. He’d worked eight days for nothing. It was the tenth or eleventh job he had abandoned in ten or eleven weeks. Well, he would have to start again and this time see that it was not a false start. But when he tried to think what would not be a false start, he could think of nothing that wouldn’t, everything would be a false start, anything anybody might do would be a false start, there was no such thing as a true start.

  He took the envelope with the snapshot in it, put a match to it, and tossed it into the fireplace. Then he got the cheque out of the other envelope and put it in his wallet to have when he went to the bank.

  Chapter 12

  The way things were, he wished his profession wasn’t writing, but that was silly, writing was his profession, it had always been his profession, only now he didn’t want to write, didn’t want to try to write, never reached his work-table eager to s
ee what he had written the previous day, the way it had been in the old days, all he wanted was money because he always needed money, maybe if he had enough of it once and for all, enough to pay his debts, and buy a house somewhere where she could feel more at home, in Manhattan maybe, or Long Island, or Connecticut, maybe then she would feel at home and be able to get along with a nanny and herself and the kids and himself.

  Maybe then he’d be able to get along with her, maybe help her over the hard times a little better, maybe find out why she had to bite her fingernails and be in despair so often, maybe if he could get hold of enough money all of a sudden, that would be how he would be able to forget all about money and be free to think about her only, and the kids, and the work, and never again need to be harassed.

  Maybe then she wouldn’t be for ever discontented, wanting a better house, better clothes, better times, and all the other things she seemed to be dreaming about all the time, maybe then she wouldn’t feel she was losing her youth and beauty for nothing, she’d calm down and see that what she had was just about as much as any woman could ever get, and maybe she’d be thankful for it and make the most of it and not go off by herself in her head dreaming up desperate ways to make up for the loss of her youth and beauty, writing to her friends as if she were writing from a penitentiary, asking them to visit her, for God’s sake come and see her, telegraphing them, screaming at them at the top of her voice on the telephone, and then, after talking about hats and shoes and dresses and who’d laid who and why, hanging up on a bill for thirty-six dollars and seventy-five cents, wandering around in despair, unable to fix a simple supper for the kids, or make a sandwich for herself, or think of anything to do.

  Maybe if he could get hold of thirty thousand dollars straight off and be out of debt and have enough left over for a new house for her and five hundred dollars to go in her pocket for anything she felt like buying, everything might straighten out and he might be able to get ready to work, and then actually write again.

  He couldn’t get to work the way things were because he couldn’t get ready to. He was willing to believe that it was just as important to work for the family, for the kids and for her, as it was to work at his profession, but the way things were he just couldn’t afford not to try to work at his profession, too. If he was rich, he’d be glad to help her all the time and let his work go.

  There’s the typewriter, he thought. Sit down and write.

  He put paper into the machine and began to work, but after an hour he knew it wouldn’t do. He wasn’t ready. He couldn’t work until he was ready. The only way he could get ready was for her to feel at home and to know something about her kids and about him and about love and about fun, and she either just couldn’t feel at home or wouldn’t, she wouldn’t stop biting her fingernails and going off into despair, making any work he was trying to do seem hopeless and useless, she could only have the fun they were always having and then go right back into homelessness.

  Writing had always been a fight, but for a long time he had always believed he could win the fight. He had plunged in and tried, but sooner or later the fight had always been too much for him. He had always believed he could write under any circumstance, any set of circumstances, but he had found that he couldn’t.

  He could still read a little, but he was finding a lot of fault with everything he was reading, too.

  He was trying to think of an entire work, something that would turn out to be full, that he could do in two or three months, when she let herself in and said, ‘What you doing?’

  ‘I’m trying to think of something to write in two or three months in short daily instalments.’

  ‘I wish you knew how much he admires you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Leander.’

  ‘They can’t come, and I don’t want to hear any more about it.’

  ‘He told me you’re the greatest writer in America.’

  ‘For your own sake, stop lying, will you?’

  ‘It’s not a lie. He told me at a party, when you were overseas.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want them here, that’s all. If they come to town, you can take a taxi and spend an afternoon and evening with them.’

  ‘Can I? You said I could. Don’t take it back.’

  ‘O.K.’

  ‘And you’ll let me buy a new dress so I won’t look like a dog when I see them? Nothing expensive, just something new, something under fifty dollars.’

  ‘O.K.’

  ‘And you’ll come downstairs and stay with the kids so I can go to the beauty parlour?’

  ‘O.K.’

  ‘I mean, now. My appointment’s for eleven and it’s already ten after.’

  ‘When did you make it?’

  ‘Half an hour ago.’

  ‘Why? You’ve got to get the kids their lunch and get them in bed for their naps.’

  ‘Oh, won’t you do it for me, just this once?’

  ‘Why not make the appointment for tomorrow when they’re napping, the way you always do once a week when you go to the beauty parlour?’

  ‘Well, after I’m finished at the beauty parlour I thought I’d buy the dress. I don’t have to have cash for it. I’ll charge it.’

  ‘O.K., let’s have it. What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘They’ll be here tomorrow morning. I telephoned and told them to go to the Fairmont because …’

  ‘The kids are sick?’

  ‘I just couldn’t tell them you were working. They’d never understand. And Rosey has a running nose.’

  ‘O.K.’

  They went downstairs to the lower flat.

  ‘Could you let me have some money for the taxi and beauty parlour?’

  ‘O.K.’

  He gave her two tens and a five, but she wanted more, so he gave her another ten. The doorbell rang and when he opened it he saw that it was a taxi-driver. The woman kissed him and said, ‘About five, I guess, but maybe a little later.’

  ‘O.K.’

  He went to the kitchen and looked into the refrigerator to see what might be possible for their lunch, and then into the cupboard, the vegetable bin, and everywhere that food was kept. There wasn’t much, but there was enough. He’d give them breakfast again, or some soup out of a can, and mashed potatoes. The back door was open but he couldn’t hear them fighting, so he went out on to the steps and saw that they were lying under an army blanket talking quietly and looking up, either at the sky or at the top of their house or at the houses all around or at nothing. The neighbour on the left, Turandi Turanda, was working quietly in his vegetable garden. Either they had already had their fun with him or they hadn’t noticed that he had stepped out of his house, for they always talked with him, the boy climbing the fence and hanging on to see over it, the girl getting up on an apple box to look over and watch and talk, too.

  He stepped back into the kitchen and began to peel the potatoes. By the time they were boiling he heard the three of them talking. The man was more or less retired, a plasterer by trade, so he spent a lot of time in his garden, and he either liked the kids or put up with them because they were always there and there was nothing he could do about it. Sometimes he lifted the little girl and walked around with her in his garden and the boy hoisted himself over the fence and let himself down, falling part of the way, and skinning his hands a little. They seemed to be friends, the three of them, and the man’s wife (whenever she came out into the yard) talked with them and admired the girl and teased the boy about putting him in a hole in the ground. But it was all play, and the boy only hollered at her because he knew she would never put him in a hole in the ground.

  Their voices grew louder, so he stepped to the door to see what it was about. Turandi Turanda was standing at the fence, looking down at them and talking. The boy was holding a tennis ball and the girl wanted it but he wouldn’t let her have it.

  ‘You be a good boy, Johnny,’ Turanda said. ‘You give her the ball. You got other things.’

  The boy handed the ball
to the girl.

  ‘Shit,’ he said.

  Turanda looked around to see if anybody had heard, and then he said: ‘There, Rosey, see? Johnny’s a good boy. Tell him thanks.’

  ‘Shit,’ the girl said. She said it softly and sweetly, like a beautiful word. ‘Thanks, Johnny, my little brother.’

  The neighbour went back to his garden, and the man thought, I’ve got to lay off letting them hear words like that.

  But it was hard not to keep saying words like that all the time.

  He got them their lunch and told them Mama had gone shopping for supper and he took off their clothes and put them in their beds and then sat down in the living-room and went on thinking about money. He turned on the radio to the station that gave the race results and listened to the music that came in between, and then to the results at two Eastern tracks. He got the morning paper and turned to the sports page and studied the entries at all the tracks and figured that if he bet two hundred dollars across the board and just happened to get a winner he would be able to drive to town sometime that afternoon and pick up anywhere from a thousand to two or three thousand, and maybe with that make a beginning.

  He picked a horse in the next race at both of the Eastern tracks and when the announcer gave the results one of the horses won and paid $16.40, $8.20 and $5.40, and the other one ran third and paid $4.40.

  He did some more brooding and then picked a horse named Sugar, at four to one in the fifth at Arlington. He telephoned the bookie where his credit was good and bet the horse two hundred across the board. He sat and waited for the radio man to give the results, smoking one cigarette after another and feeling sick because all he had in the bank was $140.

  The horse wasn’t in the money, so he bet a horse in the seventh, but that horse ran third, so he owed the bookie $820 instead of $1,200, which is what he would have owed if the horse had run out of the money. But that wasn’t winning, that wasn’t even getting out of debt to the bookie, let alone out of debt to all the people he had borrowed money from, so he bet a horse in the last race at one of the Eastern tracks but that horse wasn’t in the money either, so now he owed the bookie $1,420.