Boys and Girls Together

by William Saroyan

  ‘That’s more like it. That small talk about cigarettes an inch longer was no good at all. What a liar!’

  ‘You don’t believe I’ve seen the place?’

  ‘You’re inventing it right now. You saw a photograph of an excavated grocery store in your ancient-history book one day and that night you saw the photograph again in your sleep, and ever since you think you’re a fine boy with fine dreams and a fine past.’

  ‘Do you know that’s how it might have started at that? It is true, though, that I have been to ancient cities in my sleep, I remember hanging around a deserted building that was beside the sea once. That was a handsome dream if I ever had one. It was an abandoned place.’

  ‘What happened to the place on the banks of the Euphrates?’

  ‘I may have invented that one. Or at any rate I think I went out of my way to put it on the banks of the Euphrates because that’s where my people lived a long time.’

  ‘You and your people. You’d think they’d done something. Did they invent anything at all? Didn’t everybody have to wait for a poor boy who got his ears boxed to invent the electric-light bulb and the phonograph and everything else? I read all about it at school One man, hardly belonging to any people, did all that inventing. What the hell did your people ever invent?’

  ‘They say my great-grandfather Red Haig built fine-looking houses out of stone.’

  ‘Was that his real name?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘How did he ever get a name like that?’

  ‘He had red hair.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘I thought they all had black hair in that part of the world.’

  ‘Most of them did. He had red hair, so his name became Red.’

  ‘Your hair isn’t red.’

  ‘No, but yours is, and maybe Johnny’s will be. The red helped, you know.’

  ‘Helped what?’

  ‘Helped me decide you might just be the one.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘To get in my bed and talk all night and be Johnny’s mother.’

  ‘You thought about things like that?’

  ‘You know damn well I did. We talked about things like that every time we were together. What’s the matter? Memory gone blank?’

  ‘Oh, I just thought that that was to string me along, make me feel better, make it a better lay, and all like that. I never took any of it seriously. Suppose I didn’t have red hair, what then?’

  ‘I may not have decided you might be the one.’

  ‘I could have been dyeing my hair red. How do you know I wasn’t? It’s easy to do. How do you know I don’t have it dyed every time I go to the beauty parlour? Maybe my hair’s black for all you know. You may have got took.’

  ‘I just felt that the mother of my kids should have red hair.’

  The woman turned swiftly, swarming and slipping under him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to stop being thoughtful, but as for me, this is when I just let go and speak without thinking.’

  Chapter 27

  ‘Is there anything in this apartment to eat?’ the woman said.

  ‘Not unless Marta put something in the refrigerator.’

  ‘Did you ask her to?’

  ‘No, but maybe she did anyway. If she didn’t, though, you could sneak downstairs and bring something up.’

  ‘Are you hungry, too?’

  ‘I could go for a little something.’

  ‘How come? It’s after three, you know.’

  ‘So what? Marta’s downstairs. I don’t have to get up tomorrow. I plan to sleep until evening.’

  ‘We can’t do that. What about Lucretia?’

  ‘You get up around two or three if you want to. Take a taxi and spend some time with her, and around seven take a taxi and come home and we’ll go to dinner some place.’

  ‘What about Alice and Oscar?’

  ‘Bring them along. Bring Lucretia, too. What I mean is, I want to sleep until I’m sick and tired of sleeping. I need a lot of sleep.’

  ‘No, you’ve got to get up at a reasonable hour and take me in. It wouldn’t do for you to fall out at this stage of the game. Things are going to be getting more and more exciting for Lucretia and I know she’d be miserable if you weren’t there to notice how exciting and beautiful she is even with a funeral staring her in the face.’

  ‘I’d like to get out of it. After all, I never knew him. Why don’t you just go in and then come back alone and we’ll drive somewhere and have a good dinner? The funeral’s not until day after tomorrow. I’ll go to that funeral if you think I must, but for God’s sake after the funeral don’t bring her here.’

  ‘I’ve already asked her, and she’s accepted. We can’t get out of it now.’

  ‘Of course we can. Just get us out of it. The kids are sick or I’m sick, but get us out of it. I’ll tell you why. I want us to spend four or five days together alone. There’s a lot of things to talk about and we never get a chance to talk about them when we’re taking care of the kids because we’re always so tired and irritable. I’m not going to be trying to work, either. I just want to spend four or five days alone with you. It’s very important.’

  ‘We can do it after Lucretia leaves. I told her to stay as long as she likes, but she won’t stay more than a week.’

  ‘A week’s too long. One night might be all right, but you can’t get anybody to stay only one night. Just get out of it.’

  ‘What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Talk about it now.’

  ‘No. We started to have another fight tonight, and then we didn’t. I think if we work on that a little more, we can get things in order. We need time, though, away from the kids and everybody else. I’ll tell you something. I was going to tell you after things quieted down a little, but I’ll tell you now. I’ve got more than six thousand dollars. It isn’t enough but it’s a lot. It’s more than some people earn in a whole year of hard work. I won it on the horses. Two bets. Yesterday while you were at the beauty parlour and today while I took a nap at Lucretia’s. You know my credit’s good, so I took a chance. The first three bets yesterday ran out, but the next one came in and I had a profit. I only bet one today and it came in, too, and paid more than twice as much as I had expected it to pay. Well, what I want to talk about is this. It’s no good. I can’t expect to do it again, but we’ve got this money and it’ll keep us nicely for a year. I mean, I worried all the time, and I’ve got no business betting if I’m going to worry. I didn’t worry for a while last night when I drove to the airport to get Alice and Oscar, but that was because I was drunk and desperate. All we had in the bank was a hundred and forty dollars and with Lucretia coming to town I knew that wouldn’t last long, so I did what I did. But I know I was too lucky and I don’t want to kid around any more and lose what I’ve got, and more that I haven’t got, and then have to borrow, or try to, and make a fool of myself and a shambles of this family. I’m still pleased, because it is a lot of money and I got it on my nerve. I want to forget all about money now. I want to put the money in the bank and write cheques as bills come in and forget all about money and think about this family and my work. I know we’ll be all right in a year, maybe less. I’m very tired. I’m even scared because the money came so easily. It seems so simple. Just pick a horse and bet on him. But it’s not simple. It’s a miracle every time you win. I’m not up to miracles any more, and I’m not up to losing any more, either. I don’t want to need to try to kid myself. I want to quiet down and forget money. Gambling owes me a lot of money, a lot more than six thousand, but I’ve got to forget that it owes me anything. I’ve got to be satisfied that I’ve gotten six thousand when I need it so badly, when all of us do. There’s money coming from England all right. A hundred dollars or so. That’s all. There’s no other money coming. I haven’t written a story in years that any magazine would care to buy. When I get back to work I may be
able to write one every now and then and sell it. While I’m working on something long, I mean. You’ve got to help me, though. I don’t mean just to say you will. You always say you will, and I know you try, but this time you’ve got to really help me. You’ve got to put yourself out, otherwise there’s no telling what’s liable to happen to us.’

  ‘I thought something funny was going on,’ the woman laughed.

  ‘Now wait a minute. Let’s not be glad about this. It’s disgraceful. It’s pathetic. It’s something to accept quickly and forget. It’s something humiliating that nobody but you and I know about. It scares me, as if I’d won sixty thousand dollars. It might have been sixty, at that, I mean. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. I used to bet two thousand across the board, all the time. Well, I won this money betting two hundred across. Suppose when I’d telephoned I’d just said two thousand across from force of habit instead of two hundred? Leo would have taken the bet as quickly as he took the bet for two hundred. It’s all the same, except that I might have won ten times as much, and I don’t want to be bothered about it any more. I want to put the six thousand in the bank and see if you and I can get along and be decent human beings.’

  ‘If only you’d said two thousand,’ the woman said.

  ‘Of course I should have said two thousand, but I didn’t because I was scared to death. It would have been just as much trouble trying to borrow six thousand as to borrow six hundred, and you know what it does to me to try to borrow—from anybody. I wasn’t going to tell you for a while. I thought I’d just keep up with you and Lucretia and Leander and Oscar and Alice and every now and then glance at the entries and phone a bet and maybe after a few days have thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty thousand dollars, but you know it’s fantasy, it’s murderous fantasy, it makes a fool of a man. Sure I should have said two thousand, but if that horse had run out of the money, who’s to say I wouldn’t have picked another and bet him two thousand, too, and if that one had run out of the money, too, who’s to say, drinking all the time, knowing I’d know the outcome in the next fifteen minutes, I wouldn’t have picked another horse and bet him two thousand, too? And who’s to say that that horse wouldn’t have run out of the money, too? And there I’d be. I’d have eighteen thousand dollars to pay in the morning, or at the latest the day after. Well, I don’t want to think about it any more. I want to think about other things. I want to eat half a dozen scrambled eggs and go to bed and forget all about it. And you’ve got to help me. Do you understand?’

  ‘O.K.,’ the woman said.

  She got out of bed and put something on and went to the kitchen. There was nothing in the refrigerator, so she said, ‘Let’s both go down and have a look at the kids while we’re there.’

  They had a look at the kids, the woman said a few words to Marta, and then they took up everything they wanted. The woman made an omelet of eight eggs and some herbs, and they sat down and ate the eggs with toast and coffee and crisp bacon.

  Then the man went to his bed and went to sleep, but it was all horses and money, winning and losing, and in his sleep that part of his mind which never slept said, ‘Forget it, for the love of God.’ But he couldn’t forget it. Rosey crying the way her mother cried wouldn’t let him forget it, Johnny flinging himself at him because he had beat Johnny’s mother wouldn’t let him forget it, the woman screaming wouldn’t let him forget it, and he said to himself, ‘Pray to God, tell Him to forget it, turn it over to God, He can forget anything, turn it over to Him, let Him have it, let Him have all of it.’

  Then, at last he seemed to forget it, for he was in an old place, maybe it was near the Euphrates, and Johnny was glad there and Rosey moved about in the light there and the woman came to him there and did not bawl and she said, ‘I love our life, I love it because it’s the life everybody’s for ever wanting to live for ever and we’re living it for ever right now.’ His heart rejoiced, then, and he rested.

  Chapter 28

  He slept, dreaming of good things out of which to make good things, of the making of them, of talk between a man and his woman, of loving anger between them, of chivalry between a man and his son, the son chivalrous and forgiving, of tenderness between a man and his daughter.

  When he awoke, he awoke slowly and peacefully, believing it must be evening, but it was only six in the morning. He had slept two hours. He got out of bed to wander around the house, but his leg, now that he had relaxed at last, was gimpy again.

  If he stayed keyed-up one leg or the other went gimpy. If he relaxed, the same thing happened. He was getting old, that’s all. Thirty-nine was a number of years at that, but the gimp had entered his body when he had been only thirty. It had startled him then, for he had not been prepared to acknowledge that he was getting old. He had not believed it was possible for him not to be tireless if he chose to be and he had always chosen to be. The pain was past anything he had ever imagined he might know: and it was all the more amazing in that there was no accounting for it.

  He lifted his chair from the work-table in the living-room and placed it at the window. He sat there and looked out at the street and the sky. It was a depressing place all right: all fog, all grey, all moist and cold. But where could you go? New York stank, too. There was something the matter with every place, but people lived everywhere just the same. The place didn’t matter. The outskirts of Dublin might be a good place to go for a year or two. Oslo seemed like a pretty good place to stay in for a while. But a lot of people in Dublin and Oslo probably believed it would be fine if they could move to San Francisco.

  He was relaxed now. He could think clearly. Two hours of deep sleep had simultaneously refreshed him and brought the gimp out of hiding, warning him to slow down. They’d find a nanny again. They’d take a long time about it and find a good one. She’d live in, downstairs, they’d live up. He’d work every day, slowly and easily, taking his time, without anxiety, without a schedule, without any thought of success or profit. He’d start work some time between eight and ten and stop some time between four and six. Then they would go for a long walk, or for a drive, or to dinner, or to the theatre. They’d get to bed around midnight. They’d be relaxed, they’d get over thinking of living in terms of now, this instant. They’d take things easy and not ask so much of themselves. They’d get out of the hair of the kids, and get them out of their hair.

  The buying of the house had always been right. It was two whole houses, each small, it was true, but still two separate houses, each with its own bath, kitchen, front door, and outside hall: each well furnished, carpeted, draped, easy to keep up. The gate at the entrance locked out the street any time they liked. It was a good house, a little like a ship pushing through fog, but a good house all the same, the sea not far off, to be seen from the back rooms and front. The seagulls always flying around weren’t so bad, either.

  He couldn’t imagine why they oughtn’t to be able to live a good life in the house, why they had always wanted to get out of it. It was narrow, hugged on both sides by similar houses, and it was mainly up, had little depth, but everything was there: the hall, the living-room with the fireplace, the front bedroom, the kitchen with dining space, the back steps, the big basement for the car and storage. The back bedroom where the kids slept downstairs and the one where he was supposed to work but no longer did because it was too small. It was a fine house.

  He heard the woman call out in the first stages of panic: ‘Darling? Where are you?’

  ‘Here. I’m sitting at the window in the living-room.’

  ‘Why? What’s the matter?’

  ‘Woke up.’

  ‘For God’s sake, come to bed. I’ve been lying here awake, scared to death and listening to everything.’

  The man went to his bed and sat down.

  ‘Well, can’t you put something on? It’s freezing cold.’

  ‘I don’t feel cold.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Why can’t you sleep?’

  ‘I slept beautifully, but then I woke up and wanted to walk around
, only my leg’s out of whack again, so I sat down at the window. What did you wake up for?’

  ‘I always know when you’re not in your bed. I feel it in my sleep. It scares me and I wake up. You were gone for more than a year, and there was always that empty bed beside me for so long. When you came back I guess I never got used to it. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I feel fine. I thought I’d be sleeping until evening, but there it is. I woke up.’

  ‘Aren’t you going back to bed?’

  ‘Not just yet. I always liked this hour. I used to get up at daybreak. Of course, it would be after sleep, not like this, but I still like this hour. Everything’s new and clean and mournful but with a decent resignation about it, the resignation of a man who’s got work to do and is on his way to it.’

  ‘Are you mournful?’

  ‘I’m thinking about the impersonal general mournfulness. The quietude of the city at daybreak. Of course I’m mournful. So are you, so is Johnny, so is Rosey.’

  ‘I’m not mournful. I’m mad because you won’t get us out of this awful house, that’s all.’

  ‘Can’t. Would if I could, but can’t. But suppose I could, where could we go that wouldn’t be some sort of a place with some sort of peculiarity of its own that would not appeal to us? Places are pretty much the same, and I think you ought to get it out of your head that this house is awful. It’s not. It’s a fine house. I looked at the whole thing a few minutes ago. People get the notion they’ve got to go somewhere when something else is the matter. Don’t let anything be the matter any more. You’ll enjoy life better.’

  ‘I wish it were that easy.’

  ‘Why not make it easy?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Just notice the place with willing eyes. We’ve got two whole houses in one brand-new building, a fine yard, a big basement and garage, all paid for, two kitchens, two baths, two fireplaces, paintings by good painters hanging on the walls, books all over, a piano, an organ, radios, phonographs. It’s in California, which is my home. It’s in San Francisco where I’ve lived the better part of my life. It’s in a row of identical houses inhabited by retired Army officers of low rank, department-store clerks, bank tellers, and other people of that sort, but what’s the difference? We’ve got money enough for a year. It could be a year of peace and work and fun, and now and then a drive to Reno for two or three days.’