by Sol Stein
All the way home, the taxi meter ticked like a metronome.
At their street the driver said, “Mind if I drop you on the corner? I can go straight up Park.”
“Sure,” said Peter. They got out, and the man lowered his window so that Peter could pay him. As Peter put the wallet back in his pocket and the cab roared off, he noticed Elizabeth’s attention riveted on a shadow against the wall.
The shadow moved toward them.
“Git over here,” the shadow said. “Outa the light.”
Peter’s eyes adjusted to the semidarkness. The shadow was holding a pistol. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. He was wearing a badly soiled Ike jacket. He licked his lips.
“Wallet,” the voice said.
Peter obeyed.
“Gimme the bills.”
Peter removed the bills, leaving a ten behind.
“All of ’em,” said the kid. “Put ’em on the ground.”
“They’ll blow away,” said Peter, his voice husky.
“Step on ’em,” said the kid.
The kid put his foot next to Peter’s, holding the bills down. “Move back,” he said, waving the pistol.
Peter and Elizabeth stepped back.
The kid separated the money like cards to see how much there was. “Gimme the pearls,” he said to Elizabeth.
“They’re just cultured pearls,” said Elizabeth.
“Gimme ’em,” said the kid, licking his lips again.
“Give him the pearls,” said Peter. “Junkies get desperate.”
The kid laughed. Elizabeth held the pearls out to him. He snatched them from her hand, breaking the string, and the pearls scattered on the street.
“Shit,” said the kid.
Peter started to pick up the pearls.
“Never mind that,” said the kid. “Gimme your watch.”
It was a very good watch.
“I’ll give you a check made to cash for fifty dollars if I can keep the watch,” said Peter, hoping a policeman would turn up somewhere on the deserted street.
“Fuck the check,” said the kid. “Gimme the watch.”
Peter handed him the watch.
“You scared?” said the kid.
Peter thought, “Yes,” he said finally, “I’m scared.”
That pleased the kid.
“You, missus,” he said to Elizabeth, “your watch, too.”
“I don’t have a watch,” lied Elizabeth. Her watch was on a pin she wore on her dress.
“The snatch don’t have a watch,” said the kid.
Anger rose in Peter. Think, think, be careful.
“You better go get your stuff,” he said to the kid.
“I could kill you,” said the kid casually, the gun bobbing in his hand.
“Get your stuff,” Peter ordered.
The kid turned and ran. They watched him run all the way down the block and then a second block and then around the corner out of sight. Peter bent down to pick up the pearls. Elizabeth helped. It seemed to take forever. Some of the pearls had rolled into the gutter, in the wet dirt.
“I hope we got them all,” he said finally.
“Never mind,” she said.
They walked down the street to her house.
“Are you going to call the police?” she asked.
“It’s pointless. They’d never find him now, and we’d have to identify you and identify me, and we don’t need that.”
She took his hand. His hand was cold, too. She squeezed it. She approved of the way he had handled things. An easy form of bravery, he thought, compared to what’s coming up.
Inside the apartment, he went directly to the phone. “Rose,” he said when she answered, “I thought I’d drop by at ten on Saturday and pick up the kids for a few hours.”
After a long silence, Rose said, “All right.”
“Good night,” he said. When he hung up he saw Elizabeth, still in her coat, standing near the door where they had come in.
Chapter Nine
At ten o’clock Saturday morning Peter found himself standing in front of the door of his own house, feeling as if it had an “off limits” sign.
Wouldn’t be right to use my key, would it? he thought.
His finger pushed the bell button.
He wished they’d hurry; he wouldn’t want a neighbor to see him standing on his own doorstep that way.
Finally he heard steps. Margaret opened the door gingerly.
“Hello,” said Peter.
“Hello, Dad,” said Margaret flatly.
He had expected her to leap up in his arms. Instead, she kept her physical distance.
“Won’t you come in?” she asked.
The expression on her face was studied, noncommittal. She knew there was a war on, that he and Rose were on different sides.
He took one measured step into the house. The occasion seemed very formal.
“I’ll be ready in a minute, Dad,” said Margaret.
At that moment Jonathan came down the stairs.
“Hi, Dad.”
Peter nodded.
“All set,” said Margaret, her coat on.
Jonathan stood at the bottom of the stairs.
“Coming?” Peter asked.
“Well, Frank and I were going to do something today ’cause it’s Saturday.”
“Like what?”
“You know, swing around the block, see what the kids are doing, maybe listen to the new Jimi Hendrix record over at Frank’s house. You know, Saturday.”
“Jimmy who?”
“Hendrix.”
“I see,” said Peter. He didn’t see at all. The point was that Jonathan wasn’t coming.
The surprise stung Peter.
“Margaret and I should be back about five. Maybe I’ll see you then. We could walk down to—”
“Frank and I’ll probably be at the movies, Dad.”
He had been planning to take both children to the movies after lunch. Now he’d better not take Margaret. If they wound up at the same show as Jonathan and Frank, it might be embarrassing.
Rose was nowhere to be seen or heard. Planned that way.
Peter fled from the house with Margaret. What was the boy doing? Had Rose put him up to it? Or was it personally aimed as well as kicked?
He took Margaret on the subway. The ride itself was always fun for her. For himself it provided subway faces to stare at, insufficiently distracting to keep him from thinking.
They got off three blocks from Adventureland. Margaret gave him her hand to cross the street, which made him feel a bit better. Adventureland’s slot machines, the forty pinballs, the car-driving apparatus, and the new simulated ski machine could always keep the kids busy for an hour.
Peter armed himself with five dollars’ worth of dimes. As always, the memory flicked through his mind: how much a single dime had meant when he was Maggie’s age. Depression days. Today he was quite capable of spending five dollars in a bar with a friend. Or with Elizabeth.
That was the first thought of her since he arrived to pick up the children. Child.
Something ventured.
Something gained.
Something lost. Well, not necessarily. It would work out; it had to.
Margaret was staring up at him, palm out. He gave her some more dimes. “Having fun?” he asked her.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “but you look gloomy. Do you feel all right?”
“Yes, nurse,” he said, smiling. “I feel all right.”
There were two car-driving machines unoccupied, side by side, and he slipped into one next to Margaret.
“Race you,” he said, slipping a dime into the machine. He gripped the wheel as the road on the drum in front of him started to meander. Every time he ran off the road, a red light went on and a bell clanged to announce the recording of a penalty. Margaret could hear his bell going off regularly. Peter tried very hard to concentrate on the road and to keep up with its twists and turns, but his coordination seemed off, or his attenti
on, though he was fixing it with all his power, and before he knew it, the ride was over and Margaret was grinning at him because her machine registered a score of “Good” and his said “Sunday Driver.”
He bought her a Coke and then, sensing she had had her fill of Adventureland, reminded her that their favorite bowling alley was practically around the corner. Within minutes, they were picking up their score sheet and rented bowling shoes at the counter.
Margaret liked bowling because it was the only sport in which she seemed able to compete effectively with Jonathan. Peter enjoyed bowling with the kids (kid, he reminded himself, you’ve only got one with you). Rose never joined them. She thought bowling wasn’t dignified. Peter’s friends and business acquaintances all played golf—for the exercise, they said, though they used an electric cart. The few friends who admitted to bowling always went along with their own kids. Adult bowling without kids was for beer drinkers, not college men and professionals. Peter never understood how sport got organized in America along class lines.
They were lucky to get an alley right away on a Saturday, though they had to share a scoring stand with two teen-agers showing off for their girl friends, which was quite a clatter. Peter supposed that a father with a twelve-year-old girl in the next alley was a nuisance to the teenagers, making them even.
Margaret found a ten-pound ball that fitted her small hand. She was especially pleased that it was a red and white speckled ball rather than an ordinary black one. Peter settled for the first sixteen-pounder he could get his fingers into. That was a bad omen. When he searched around for the best ball he could find, it meant he would try hard to play well. To hell with omens. He’d try hard anyway.
Margaret bowled first. Her ball spun into the gutter before reaching the pins. Peter reminded her to keep her thumb in front, told her to swing the ball back and forth a few times with her thumb in the right direction. The instruction helped. On her second try she knocked down six pins.
She gave Peter a spontaneous hug for his help,
“If you get six every turn, you’ll end up with a score of sixty, which isn’t bad, little lady.”
“I’ll do better than that,” she said.
Peter held his right hand over the blower to dry the damp. Didn’t usually sweat.
He stepped to the foul line, holding the ball up. He waited until the bowlers left and right of him had taken their turns. Moving forward, he felt uncoordinated, as if the string connecting his limbs to his body had gone slack. The minute he let the ball go, he knew it was off. The ball spun right, too sharp a curve, then curved left and just managed to clip off the seven pin before careening uselessly against the backstop.
“Here, Dad, let me show you,” said Margaret. “Keep your thumb in front. Practice it a few times so the ball will go straight up the middle.”
They had a good laugh together.
At the halfway mark, Margaret’s score was 41 and his own was 70. At least he wouldn’t have to face the ignominy of not breaking 100.
Margaret asked for a dime. He offered to go to the candy counter to get her what she wanted.
“I have to phone,” she said. “Mommy said I was to call by noon to tell her if I was having fun.”
Margaret went off to make her phone call. “Don’t take too long,” he shouted after her. “The management doesn’t like people to take intermissions.”
Was Rose afraid he’d be unpleasant to his own daughter? Did she want to disrupt the first outing?
When Margaret returned, Peter covered his thoughts with a smile.
“She says to be sure I get back by five,” said Margaret.
“Your turn,” Peter said. Fuck Rose.
Margaret’s near-perfect shot took nine pins down. With more force behind it, it would have been a strike. She aimed for the lone pin very, very carefully. The ball went down the alley in slow motion. It hit the remaining pin smack on.
“A spare!” She clapped her hands delightedly. He recorded her score and gave her a resounding kiss on the cheek.
Peter thanked God for the game of bowling, which gave the kids a fair chance against adults.
If he intentionally lost the game to Margaret, she would know it. He’d play it straight.
She got a spare on her next turn also, and he wondered if he could win even if he wanted to.
His steps as he released the ball this time were in perfect synchronization, and his eyes didn’t move from the pins ahead as the ball hit the pocket between the one and three pins perfectly, and they all came splattering down. The teen-ager in the next aisle nodded his approval.
Margaret’s final score was 101, a record for her. Peter’s 118 seemed smallish in comparison.
Margaret’s happiness pleased him more than the score because as she was playing, a new thought had begun to crawl through his mind: instruction, the tutorial in all things, was a necessary part of fatherhood. Sometimes it was fun for the kids, and sometimes not. From now on, however, fun would govern. If they didn’t have fun, they would not look forward to his visiting days. The thought coiled in him: he was an entertainer first now, instructor second.
They bowled one more game, then turned in their rented shoes and their score sheet. The cigar chomper behind the counter short-changed Peter twenty-five cents. Ordinarily Peter would have made an issue of it. The last thing he wanted was to disrupt the day. He said nothing.
He took Margaret to lunch at Nathan’s, where every item behind the counter seemed a kid’s delight: the best-tasting hot dogs in the world, hamburgers, sweet corn, huge French fries, and a place where you could dump on all the ketchup, mustard, sauerkraut you wanted. And afterward there were the great thick shakes, strawberry as well as chocolate, and cakes wallowing in berries and whipped cream, served in huge portions. Peter and Margaret ate across the table from each other, sloppily, the only way possible to really enjoy such things.
A fat man bumped against the table. The waves in Peter’s coffee cup sloshed over the side. The man turned, expecting a harsh remark and quite prepared to quarrel. “My cup runneth over,” said Peter.
The fat man pointed to the vacant chair at Peter’s table. “Saving that chair for the missus?” he asked.
Peter shook his head. “Go ahead, take it.”
The fat man took the spare chair over to a nearby table, where his three fat children sat with their very fat mother crunching away at their food.
“We,” said Margaret, leaning over to whisper, “are better-looking than they are.”
Peter nodded in affirmation. An idea occurred to him. “How,” he asked, “would you like to see my so-called apartment?”
The idea seemed to delight Margaret.
They passed the superintendent on the way upstairs to his apartment. The man stared at Margaret. Peter hoped the man didn’t think he was kinky for little girls!
Margaret surveyed his room. Expressionless. She opened cupboards and the closet, checked things out methodically like a woman shopping for a house. The refrigerator, when she opened it, proved to be nearly empty. Finally she said, “You can’t live like this.”
Margaret got a basin from under the sink, let water run into it, put a capful of detergent in, asked him for his most run-down undershirt, tore it into rags and proceeded to clean house. For Peter it was a spectacle.
At one point he asked her, “Are you sure you want to be doing this…on your day off?” He covered with a laugh.
“It has to be done,” she said. She didn’t laugh.
Peter stood around, tense and nervous.
“Why don’t you relax?” she said to him over her shoulder.
He couldn’t, so he called Elizabeth. Thank heaven she was home. He gave her a one-minute summary of Adventureland, bowling, Nathan’s, and what Margaret was now doing.
“Can I talk to her?” asked Elizabeth.
The girls chatted on the phone. Then Margaret put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Miss Kilter wants to know if we can come over,” she said.
Peter
glanced at his watch.
“She says she lives very close,” said Margaret.
“Let me talk to her,” said Peter.
On the phone he said, “It’s after four. I have to get Margaret home by five.”
He saw the film of disappointment over Margaret’s face.
“Look,” said Peter into the mouthpiece, “compromise. Can you meet us downstairs in five minutes?”
They agreed. Margaret quickly finished putting things away. She instructed Peter to get the refrigerator filled. And to keep the place clean. And to open the window a crack when he was out so the room would air out.
“I think more dirt comes in than air,” he said.
“Never mind.”
Elizabeth met them downstairs, and she talked with Margaret all the way to the subway.
Here’s where I leave you,” Elizabeth said.
Margaret shook Elizabeth’s hand, then looked for Peter to do the same. He did. He wondered what Margaret was thinking.
They descended into the subway. Their train came along in a minute and wasn’t crowded, so they were able to sit side by side. At one point Peter put his hand on Margaret’s, not casually the way he used to, but self-consciously. He quickly withdrew his hand, wondering, when parents separate, what do children feel? They must blame whoever does the leaving.
He had not wanted to be a villain in Margaret’s life. He wanted nothing to change between them.
“Penny for your thoughts,” he said, putting the copper into her hand.
She returned it, saying nothing.
Was she biting her lip?
Was she trying to keep from crying?
They got out of the subway and walked in silence to the house, where, on impulse, Peter lifted Margaret under the arms up the three stairs to the door, something she had always liked him to do. She was like wood in his arms. He put her down.
Peter rang the bell just as Margaret turned the knob. The door was open.
Rose was coming through the door from the kitchen.
“Is Jonathan around?” he asked.
“He’s not back yet,” said Rose.
Peter turned to go.
“I’d like to show you something,” said Rose. “Margaret,” she said, “Janie is playing out back.”