Boys and Girls Together

by William Saroyan

  He bet $300 across the board on a horse named Me First in the first race at Bay Meadows, post position one, Longden up, maiden three-year-olds, six furlongs, so if Me First didn’t get in the money he would owe the bookie $2,320, which meant that he would have to borrow $2,500 from somebody, only there wasn’t anybody to borrow from.

  But the horse won and paid a pretty good price. The man got up and walked around, even though he hadn’t figured his winnings yet. When he figured them he was astonished to discover that they came to so much: $1,880 net. Well, he couldn’t pay his debts with it, but at least he had it, and it was better than needing to go out and try to borrow $2,500. He got into the shower, then put on fresh clothes, and felt a little easier.

  He had been in another tough spot and again he had gotten out of it. Now, instead of having only $140, he had a little better than $2,000. He could bet another horse and maybe win again, but to hell with it. All he wanted was to get something, and he had, he’d gotten more than he had expected to get, so it was enough. Maybe if he could have a little luck every day like that he could get hold of enough money to pay the debts and have something left over for the other things.

  He dressed the kids and put the girl in her chair in the car and drove to town. He put the car in the garage a block and a half from the bookie’s and asked the man to fill the tank and check the oil and water. He told the kids he was going to get a package of cigarettes and would be back in a minute, and not to move. He went up to the bookie’s and chatted with the boys a few minutes and then Leo looked into his book and said, ‘Eighteen eighty, right?’ and counted the money out and thanked him.

  He took the money and put it in his pocket and chatted with the boys some more, and then he got up and went back to the car.

  The kids were laughing together about something.

  He paid the man and drove out Geary to the ocean, along the ocean four or five miles, and then he stopped where some new houses were being built and he and the boy piled scraps of lumber in the back of the car for the fireplace because doing that made the boy happier than anything else he knew how to do. He drove home and left the car out front and took the kids for a walk to a drugstore and got them each and himself an ice-cream soda.

  It wouldn’t be so bad if he could get hold of money that way any time he needed it.

  Chapter 13

  He was clean and calm sitting with the kids in the booth in the ice-cream-parlour part of the drugstore and that’s what a man wanted, that’s what he always wanted, to be clean and calm, his kids across a table from him with their new eyes, new voices, hands and fingers, hair and lips, teeth and nostrils and ears, moisture and skin, their new beating hearts and working lungs, that’s all any man ever wanted, just to be decently at peace with himself and his woman and to have his kids around and happy about vanilla and chocolate and soda, the long spoon and the straws, and the drama of other people around, the druggist, the girl who brought the stuff, the boy who made it, and the other people having other stuff.

  All any man ever wanted was peace and the only way he could have it was to have money, and now he had a little. Betting the races was the best way to get money if you had to get it that way at all. You never hurt anybody by winning on the races because whatever you got you got anonymously and whoever lost because he had picked another horse in the same race was unknown to you. It was a dirty business, but if you won, it certainly made a lot of difference.

  He asked the kids if they would like to go to the notion store across the street and have a look at the junk, and they said they did, so they went there and he let them have one thing each because having too much, or being free to have too much, made them unhappy, confused them, so the girl had a blown-up balloon that was red on a stick, and the boy had a gyroscope in a square paste-board box. They stepped out into the street and began to move homeward, but the man noticed that the old North Carolina barber, whose shop had only one chair, had nobody in it, so he asked the kids if they would sit nicely while he got a haircut and they said they would, so he got a haircut. Then he stepped into the Safeway, to the butcher’s, and bought four thick sirloins and six French lamb chops, but didn’t buy anything else because you had to stand in line to pay and have your stuff wrapped everywhere except at the butcher’s. In the delicatessen next door that the lady who loved her big ugly cat and was always making rugs out of rags and listening to the radio owned he bought six cans of chili with beans, and that was enough to carry, so they walked home. He and the boy unloaded the pieces of lumber from the car to the basement. He took up an armful, put them in the fireplace and lighted the fire because they all liked to see a fire.

  The red balloon popped and the little girl looked astonished, as she always did when a balloon popped.

  ‘It was my balloon,’ the girl said. ‘I want my balloon.’

  She held what was left of it, the thin limp absurd-looking rubber and the skinny stick, and she didn’t like it. The man examined the wreckage, got a piece of string and tied some of the rubber together. He undid the neck from the stick to which it was attached and blew into it and the little girl saw the balloon again, but different, tied, lopsided, the colour different, ends hanging loose, but she laughed and liked it. The man tied the neck, and the girl waited to have her balloon again. When she had it she squeezed it and let it fall and bounce, but the boy just sat and watched the fire.

  ‘What is fire?’ he said.

  ‘What we see there.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘What it really is I don’t know,’ the man said. ‘But I know that the sun in the sky is fire.’

  ‘It’s my balloon,’ the girl said. ‘Johnny can’t have it.’

  ‘I got this,’ the boy said. He lifted the square pasteboard box containing the gyroscope. ‘Whatever it is.’

  ‘It’s a gyroscope.’

  ‘What does it do?’

  ‘It turns.’

  ‘What’s it for?’

  ‘To look at when it turns. It’s beautiful then.’

  The boy lifted the top off the square paste-board box and turned the box over so that the gyroscope would come out into his hand. He held it up and looked at it.

  The girl squeezed the lopsided balloon, rubbed it against her face, tossed it up, watched it fall. The boy looked at the gyroscope and then let it rest on the floor and looked back at the fire. He had been sitting on the floor. Now he stretched out full length on his belly, rested his chin in his right hand. The man poked the fire and put more wood on it, squares and angles of house lumber, all kinds of shapes piled together.

  ‘It looks like a church burning,’ the boy said.

  The man looked to see if this was so, and it was, it did look like a church burning.

  ‘But nobody’s in it,’ the boy said. ‘They never burn churches with people in them. They always get the people out and then burn them, so the people can see the fires. Do they ring the bells when they burn churches?’

  ‘I don’t believe they do,’ the man said. ‘But when the bells fall they make quite a lot of noise.’

  ‘Did you see a church burn?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I was a little older than you are at the time. It was at night and everybody ran. You couldn’t go close because it was too hot, but you could see everything because the fire made so much light. You could hear the fire cracking the wood, and things falling inside the church, and then at last the bells fell and rang. We went home then, and the next day it was all black there, like the ashes after a fire burns in a fireplace.’

  ‘I don’t like it when it’s black in the fireplace,’ the boy said.

  They sat and talked quietly for an hour, and then he heard the taxi out front and after a moment the woman let herself in. The taxi-driver carried half a dozen packages. The little girl ran and the woman hugged her and kissed her and talked to her, and then she told the taxi-driver where to put the packages, on her bed. She handed him some currency, and the man tipped his hat and thanked her and went out. The woman clo
sed the door and stood hushed with excitement and happiness.

  ‘Wait till you see the things I’ve bought.’

  She picked up the boy and danced around with him and then put him down again.

  ‘Do you like my hair?’

  She removed a scarf wrapped over her hair and the red fell down, new and bright.

  ‘It’s beautiful, Mama,’ the boy said.

  ‘Oh, Johnny. Wait till you see Mama’s new dress. Shall I put it on now?’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  ‘Shall I?’ the woman said to the man.

  ‘Sure. Let’s have a look at it.’

  The woman hugged the man, ran off to the bedroom, and closed the door, but the little girl opened the door and went in, and then the boy went in, too, and the man heard them talking in there. The woman came out, and she looked fine.

  ‘It cost a hundred, but we’ve got so many debts anyway I thought you wouldn’t care. Do you like it?’

  ‘Yes. You look fine.’

  ‘I bought some other things, too. I’ll show them to you afterwards.’

  ‘O.K.’

  ‘They cost about a hundred, too, but they’re things I need, shoes and stockings and brassières and perfume. You won’t make me send them back, will you? It’s so humiliating. Just this once more. I’ve got everything now.’

  ‘No. You can keep them.’

  ‘Some women spend a thousand for one dress.’

  ‘You look fine in this one.’

  ‘I thought you’d be angry.’

  ‘No, it’s O.K. I’m glad you got the stuff.’

  ‘Really? How come?’

  ‘Take it off now and get supper for the kids. You and I’ll eat after they’re in bed. I’ve bought lamb chops for them and sirloins for us.’

  ‘All right,’ the woman said. ‘Johnny, Rosey, go to your room and play until Mama gets supper.’

  The children went down the hall to their room. The woman closed the door behind them, then came to the man and put her arms around him and said, ‘I love you so much. I love our life together so much. I love Johnny and Rosey so much.’

  The man held her gently, then tightly, and kissed her.

  ‘Wait till you see me tonight.’

  She was happy because she had new things to wear and she’d been to the beauty parlour and her friends from New York would be in town tomorrow and she would get all dressed up and go and see them and let them see her.

  Chapter 14

  The woman made them a good supper of broiled lamb chops, boiled spinach, stewed fruit out of a can, and milk. They didn’t finish everything but they did pretty well. She gave them each two teaspoons of the thick brown syrup that was supposed to have everything in it, that they seemed to like to take, that she had been giving them every night after supper for more than a month. It had a name that made it sound like it ought to be something somebody had figured out carefully. The doctor said it was a good thing. He gave it to his own kids, he said. It looked like molasses but didn’t smell as good. It didn’t smell fishy but it didn’t smell like candy, either.

  ‘Can I have a bath tonight?’ the boy said.

  ‘Ask Papa.’

  The boy went into the living-room and said, ‘Can I have a bath tonight, Papa?’

  ‘Ask Mama.’

  The boy’s face winked.

  ‘Papa,’ he said, ‘I asked Mama. She said ask Papa. I’ll ask Rosey.’

  He ran back to the kitchen, to keep up with the joke.

  ‘Rosey,’ he said. ‘Can I have a bath tonight?’

  The little girl looked at him sideways, knowing it was a joke.

  ‘Not tonight,’ she said, ‘because I’m too tired.’

  The boy watched her.

  ‘Because you was a bad boy,’ she said.

  He watched some more.

  ‘Because you hit your little sister,’ she said.

  He just had to watch a little longer.

  ‘Because there’s no water,’ she said.

  Would there be more?

  ‘Because you’re a poopoo,’ she said.

  More?

  ‘Pohpoh,’ she said.

  She ran into the living-room with the fun.

  ‘Isn’t Johnny a pohpoh, Papa?’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘I saw him. He’s a pohpoh and a poopoo and a piepie. That’s why he can’t have a bath tonight. He’s a paypay.

  ‘He’s a peepee,’ she said and laughed.

  ‘Peepee?’ the boy said. ‘I’ll peepee you if you say I’m a peepee.’

  ‘Shall I give him a bath?’ the woman said. ‘Shall I give them both a bath? I bathed them both night before last.’

  ‘Bathe them,’ the man said. ‘I’ll straighten out the kitchen.’

  ‘What about their sheets? I haven’t changed them in days. It must be a week at least.’

  ‘Change them. I’ll get supper, too.’

  ‘All right. If they’re going to get clean, they might as well get into clean beds, too. Will you make a green salad, with the wine vinegar from Vanessi’s?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Yum yum,’ the woman said, ‘if you know what I mean.’

  She’s happy all right. She’d be happy all the time if nobody ever had to do anything but have fun and not think about anything else all the time.

  She’s right, too. She’s got a perfect system if it would work. I’d go for that system any day if it would work.

  Chapter 15

  They were eating. It might have been the thousandth time.

  ‘What did you write today?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning, when you went upstairs.’

  ‘I’ve forgotten the precise words, but they were words.’

  ‘What did you expect them to be?’

  ‘That’s all they were.’

  ‘That’s all any writing is, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, that’s precisely what writing isn’t.’

  ‘Well, what were the words about, then?’

  ‘Nothing. If writing were words, writing would be easy. Writing is stuff that happens in spite of words. There’s no other way for writing to happen than with words, but at the same time it’s got to happen in spite of them. The thing that gets you in writing is the story the words themselves don’t tell but make you know. It’s something like that.’

  ‘Well, what did you think about, then?’

  ‘I thought about money. It’s the only thing I thought about. Most people forget it. I can’t. I think about it all the time.’

  ‘We need an awful lot, don’t we?’

  ‘We need thirty thousand. To start, I mean.’

  ‘Would that pay the debts and everything?’

  ‘Yes. I figured it out on a piece of paper and thirty thousand would pay the debts and leave a little.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘About seven thousand.’

  ‘What could we do with that?’

  ‘Take it and run. Sit on it. Look at it. Smell it. Put it in silver dollars and stack them up in piles in the living-room. I was thinking of paving the hall with them. It wouldn’t take more than two thousand and it would make quite an impression on visitors.’

  ‘On me, too. What else did you think?’

  ‘I thought if I changed a thousand dollars into dimes—just a measly thousand—this would be a rather petty and annoying thing because they’re such small coins.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I thought if I had a nickel for every dollar I pissed away in my life I’d still be rich because twenty nickels make a dollar and there ought to be about two hundred thousand of them.’

  ‘How did you spend two hundred thousand dollars?’

  ‘It was easy.’

  ‘You spent most of it before you met me.’

  ‘I spent a little after I met you.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Thirty thousand a year, I suppose.’

  ‘Six years. What’s that come to?’

  ‘A hundr
ed and eighty thousand.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Maybe it was forty thousand a year. That would make it about two hundred and forty thousand.’

  ‘You spent something the year we weren’t married, too.’

  ‘I would have spent that anyway.’

  ‘You would have spent the two hundred and forty thousand anyway, too, wouldn’t you have?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anyhow maybe it’s not the spending that makes the difference, maybe it’s whether or not you’re earning it to spend, and I’m not. I haven’t written anything that has earned anything since I got out of the Army.’

  ‘Or since you got in. How many years is that?’

  ‘Three in, three out. Six.’

  ‘That’s how long we’ve been married, too. But you haven’t written anything that has made any money since we met, have you?’

  ‘No, I guess I haven’t. The money all came from stuff I wrote before we met.’

  ‘I’m hurt. Aren’t I inspiring?’

  ‘Awe-inspiring.’

  ‘I thought a wife always inspired her husband.’

  ‘To think about money.’

  ‘Do I spend as much as all that?’

  ‘You don’t spend much. I just don’t write anything. All I do is think about money.’

  ‘Do you love money?’

  ‘I need money. I don’t hate money, but I hate to need it so badly.’

  ‘Well, what are we going to do?’

  ‘Be poor, I suppose. Wear out our clothes. Make the most of everything we have. Enjoy the things that don’t cost anything or cost only a little. Improve our health. Be happy. Forget money and remember everything else.’

  ‘How are we going to pay the debts?’

  ‘Maybe we aren’t. At least not for a while. Not until we’ve forgotten about money for so long that all of a sudden we find that I’ve written a few things that are worth something.’

  ‘Will that happen?’

  ‘It could happen, it used to happen all the time.’

  ‘I don’t like to be poor.’

  ‘I know you don’t. But it’s not nearly as bad as you think.’