One night when Louise came home from work, she was so tired she couldn’t eat. She sat looking at Timothy with a kind of helpless earnestness, and then she almost fainted. When he was rubbing her forehead and her wrists, she told him she was going to have a baby, and she watched him with a dogged eagerness, her whole manner full of apology. At last he took a deep breath, and said, “Good, good. That gives a man a sense of completion. Let’s hope it’s a boy, Louise.” He became very gay. He played his flute for her. He explained he had bought a neat little machine for rolling his own cigarettes, and his good humour so pleased her she let herself whisper, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have the baby born in France?”
She worked the rest of the winter, but in March she had to stop. The baby was born early one grey morning in May. Timothy had got a young obstetrical specialist who was willing to take the case without having Louise go to a hospital. It never occurred to Timothy that he would have to pay him. All that damp spring night the doctor and Timothy sat in the kitchen waiting. Timothy was polite, but he looked sick. With a mild graciousness, while the light overhead shone on his fair bright head, he talked about the Sorbonne, though sometimes he halted and listened for sounds from the other room. The doctor liked him and nodded his head patiently.
At five o’clock in the morning, the doctor called Timothy into the other room, and he went in and kissed his wife. For a moment he was so relieved he could only grin without even thinking of the baby. Louise, looking waxen-faced and fragile, smiled at Timothy and said, “We’ve got a boy, even if we’re not in Paris, Timothy.”
“It’s splendid,” he said, beaming with pride and relief and making her love him. He bent down and whispered, “Last time I was in Paris in the spring, it was cold and damp. The fall is a far better time, dear. Paris’ll wait. It’ll always be there for us.”
Then the doctor beckoned to Timothy and they went back to the kitchen. The doctor said, “I might as well tell you, Mr. Harshaw, you’ll have to give your wife your undivided attention for a while. However, I congratulate you.” They shook hands very solemnly. “Remember, be cheerful. Don’t let this interfere with your wife’s plans. Do what you want to do.”
“We were going to go to Europe. We won’t be able to do that for a while.”
“No. Not for a while, of course.”
“Of course not. Not for months, anyway,” Timothy said. Then they were both silent.
“If I can be of any assistance at all,” the doctor said diffidently. Timothy, reflecting a moment, said eagerly, “By the way, tell me, do you know a good indoor tennis court? When Mrs. Harshaw gets up, I’d like her to take exercise. We don’t want her to lose her shape, you know. She wouldn’t want this to make any difference.”
“I’ll let you know if I hear of one,” the doctor said, as he picked up his bag to leave.
Outside, the grey, misty morning had become a morning of fine, thin rain. On the street the doctor stopped suddenly, listening. He stood looking back at Timothy’s place, hearing faint flute music.
YOUNGER BROTHER
Just after dark on Sunday evening five fellows from the neighbourhood stood on the corner under the light opposite the cigar store. They were dressed in dark overcoats, fedoras, and white scarves, except Jimmie Stevens, the smallest, who was without a hat and the only one without an overcoat. Jimmie was eager to please the big fellows, who did not take him seriously because he was a few years younger. They rarely talked directly to him. So he wanted to show off. He got a laugh out of them, whirling and twisting out to the middle of the road, his body hunched down at the knees, his left arm held out and his right arm moving as though he were playing a violin, like a dancer he had seen on the stage. He sang hoarsely till one of the fellows, Bill Spiers, shouted, “What a voice, put the skids under him!” and he ran out in the road and tackled Jimmie around the waist, though not hard enough to make them both fall. He kept pushing Jimmie across the street.
Then somebody yelled, “Lay off the kid!” just as Jimmie’s sister, Millie, passed the cigar store, going out for the evening. She was an unusually tall, slim blonde girl, graceful and stylish in her short beige-coloured jacket, who walked with a free, firm stride, fully aware that she was admired by the fellows at the corner, and at the same time faintly amused as though she knew she was far beyond them. She didn’t speak to Jimmie as she passed, for she knew he was always there on a Sunday evening. He was glad she passed so jauntily and was proud and warm with satisfaction because his sister had such fine clean lines to her body and was so smartly independent and utterly beyond any of the corner gang. Sometimes he felt that the big fellows let him hang around because they had so much admiration for his sister, who never spoke to them, though she knew them.
“She’s smart,” Buck Thompson, a thin fellow, said, looking after her. “If I get some dough one of these days, I’ll take her out and give her a chance.”
“Fat chance for a little guy like you, just up to her shoulder,” Bill Spiers said.
“That so?”
“She got too much class for you, Buck.”
“I dunno. I’ve known her since she was a kid. I saw her uptown a few months ago with Muddy Maguire.”
Muddy Maguire, a roughneck, had grown up around the corner and had moved uptown. Jimmie started to snicker: “If my old lady ever heard you say that she’d rip out your tongue.” They all knew Mrs. Stevens, a competent, practical woman, who had left her husband fourteen years ago and she had never let her daughter bring one of the fellows near the house. Jimmie grinned, pleased that they had given Buck the horse laugh for thinking he could get anywhere with his sister.
Millie passed out of sight by the newsstand and one of the fellows started to sing a love song softly and the others tried to croon with him, harmonizing as much as possible, wishing they had enough money to take Millie Stevens out. For almost an hour they talked intimately about girls, cursing each other.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when Jimmie went home. The Stevenses lived in a house with freshly painted shutters, third from the corner in a long row of old three-storey brick houses with high steps. They lived on the ground floor and had the basement also. Jimmie was whistling, a thin tuneless whistle, as he went up the steps. A light was in the big front room, shining through the shutters, and Jimmie wondered if his mother, who had been out for the evening, had brought one of the neighbours home with her. He was going along the hall to the kitchen when he thought he heard Millie’s voice, then a man’s voice. He knew at once that his mother had not come home. “Millie’s crazy bringing a guy home here,” he thought. He went through to the kitchen, but he wanted to see who was talking to his sister, so he went back along the hall and quietly opened one of the big folding doors.
Millie was sitting on the sofa with Muddy Maguire. Her fur jacket and a bright scarf were tossed carelessly over the back of the sofa. “She must have come home the other way around the block,” Jimmie thought. Maguire was stout with small eyes, his shiny black hair parted in the middle, self-reliant and domineering, his chest too big for his tight vest. As Jimmie saw him sitting there with his sister he felt his whole body become inert with disappointment. “What can Millie see in a guy like that?”
Millie, leaning toward Muddy, talked earnestly, her face pale, her eyes red as though she had been crying, and Muddy was leaning away from her, looking sour as though there was no mystery in her for him and he didn’t want to be there, at all. Jimmie heard her say “Ma” and then suddenly she must have said something insulting to him, for he slapped her lightly across the face.
Jimmie expected Millie to tear Maguire’s face with her nails; he couldn’t imagine her taking anything from a guy like that; he wanted to yell at her. He couldn’t understand it at all when she put her hand up to her cheek and began to cry weakly.
Then Millie said: “You promised, you know you promised.”
“I was a fool,” he said
“Then what did you come here for?”
“I
don’t know. ”
“You were going to tell Ma.”
Millie turned her head away from him and Muddy shrugged, and then slowly and clumsily let his hands fall on Millie’s shoulder. “All right,” he said, “I’m sorry, Millie.”
Jimmie, trembling and angry, heard his mother coming up the front steps. He hurried back to the kitchen and waited. Mrs. Stevens, a short woman, almost shapeless in her heavy cloth coat, with firm thin lips and steady pale-blue eyes, said, “What’s the matter, Jimmie?”
“Millie’s in there with Muddy Maguire.”
Her face got red. “In this house?” she said.
He followed his mother to the front room. Millie, resting her head against Maguire’s chest, was crying quietly, both her arms around his neck as if he had become very precious to her.
Mrs. Stevens had never wanted her daughter to belong to any man, and now she said harshly: “Millie, what is this? What’s the meaning of this?”
“We wanted to speak to you, Ma,” Millie said timidly
Mrs. Stevens, a severe, rigid woman, had expected Millie to stand up and move away from Maguire when she spoke to her, and now she was startled to feel that Millie and this fellow were drawing closer together as they stared at her; the emotion that held Maguire and Millie together seemed suddenly to touch Mrs. Stevens and puzzle and weaken her. She stood there, getting ready to speak, yet all the severity and grimness in her own way of living seemed unimportant now. Gravely she realized why they were waiting for her, and why Millie wanted to talk to her. “Millie, my dear,” she said, bending down to her daughter.
“We just want to have a few words with you, Mrs. Stevens,” Maguire said with an awkward indifference.
“Go out and close the door, Jimmie,” Mrs. Stevens said, trying to conceal her agitation.
Jimmie was disgusted with his mother. When Maguire had spoken to her so casually, so sure of his relation with Millie, Jimmie had expected his mother to scorch him with her sharp tongue, and yet, as he closed the door Jimmie heard his mother talking calmly, and only at times resentfully. He heard the mumbling and murmuring of their voices, and he could tell, by the few words he made out, that his mother would agree to let Maguire marry Millie.
He went back to the kitchen and put his elbows on the white enamelled table. “What’s the matter with Ma?” he thought. “She should spin that chuckle-headed sap on his ear. What’s got into her? Ma should do something.”
As he sat there he remembered the jaunty aloof independence of Millie as she had passed the fellows on the corner that evening, and he realized she must have known she was going to meet Maguire. He began to think of her passing; it seemed tremendously important that she should keep on passing. The more he thought of it the more eager he was, and the more pleasure he got out of thinking of her going by, always aloof and beyond them, clean, with too much class, leaving them with nothing else to do but look after her and croon songs and wish they had enough money to take her out.
THE FAITHFUL WIFE
Until a week before Christmas George worked in the station restaurant at the lunch counter. The weather was extraordinarily cold, then the sun shone strongly for a few days, though it was always cold again in the evenings. There were three other men working at the counter. They had a poor reputation. Women, unless they were careless and easygoing, never started a conversation with them over lunch at noontime. The girls at the station always avoided the red-capped negro porters and the countermen.
George was working there till he got enough money to go back home for a week and then start late in the year at college. He had wiry brown hair receding on his forehead and bad upper teeth, but he was very polite and open. Steve, the plump Italian with the waxed black moustache, who had charge of the restaurant, was very fond of George.
Many people passed the restaurant window on the way to the platform and the trains. The four men got to know some of them. Girls, brightly dressed, loitered in front of the open door, smiling at George, who saw them so often he knew their first names. Other girls, with a few minutes to spare before going back to work, used to walk up and down the tiled tunnel to the waiting room, loafing the time away, but they never glanced in at the countermen. It was cold outside, the streets were slippery, and it was warm in the station, that was all.
George watched one girl every day at noon hour. The others had also noticed her, and two or three times she came in for a cup of coffee, but she was so gentle, and aloofly pleasant, and so unobtrusively beyond them, they were afraid to try and amuse her with easy cheerful talk. George wished she had never seen him in the restaurant behind the counter, though he knew she had not noticed him at all. Her cheeks were usually rosy from the cold wind outside. When she went out of the door to walk up and down for a few minutes, an agreeable expression on her face, she never once looked back at the restaurant. George, pouring coffee, did not expect her to look back. She was about twenty-eight, pretty, rather shy, and dressed plainly and poorly in a thin, blue cloth coat. Then, one day she had on a fawn felt hat. She smiled politely at him when having a cup of coffee, and as long as possible he stood opposite her, cleaning the counter with a damp cloth.
The last night he worked at the station he went out at about half past eight in the evening, for he had an hour to himself, and then he would work till ten o’clock. In the morning he was going home, so he walked out of the station and down the side street to the docks, and was having only pleasant thoughts, passing the warehouses, looking out over the dark cold lake and liking the tang of the wind on his face. Christmas was only a week away. The falling snow was melting when it hit the sidewalk. He was glad he was through with the job at the restaurant.
An hour later, back at the counter, Steve said, “A dame just phoned you, George, and left her number.”
“You know who she was?”
“No, you got too many girls, George. Don’t you know the number?”
“Never saw it before.”
He called the number and did not recognize the voice that answered. A woman was asking pleasantly if he remembered her. He said he did not. She said she had had a cup of coffee that afternoon at noontime, and added that she had worn a blue coat and a fawn-coloured felt hat, and even though she had not spoken to him, she thought he would remember her.
“Good Lord,” he said.
She wanted to know if he would come and see her at ten-thirty that evening. He said he would, and hardly heard her giving the address. Steve and the others started to kid him brightly, but he was too astonished, wondering how she had found out his name, to bother with them. As they said good-bye to him and elbowed him in the ribs, urging him to celebrate on his last night in the city, Steve shook his head and pulled the ends of his moustache down into his lips.
The address the girl had given him was only eight blocks away, so he walked, holding his hands clenched in his pockets, for he was cold and uncertain. The brownstone, opposite a public school on a side street, was a large old rooming house. A light was in a window on the second storey over the door. Ringing the bell he didn’t really expect anyone to answer, and was surprised when the girl opened the door.
“Good evening,” he said shyly.
“Come upstairs,” she said smiling and practical.
In the front room he took off his overcoat and hat and sat down, noticing, out of the corner of his eye, that she was slim and had nice fair hair and lovely eyes. But she was moving nervously. He had intended to ask at once how she’d found out his name, but forgot as soon as she sat down opposite him on a camp bed and smiled shyly. She had on a red woollen sweater, fitting tightly at the waist. Twice he shook his head, unable to get used to having her there opposite him, nervous and expectant. The trouble was she’d always seemed so aloof.
“You’re not very friendly,” she said awkwardly.
“Yes I am. I am.”
“Why don’t you come over here and sit beside me?”
He sat beside her on the camp bed, smiling stupidly. He was slow to see t
hat she was waiting for him to put his arms around her. He kissed her eagerly and she held on to him, her heart thumping, and she kept on holding him, closing her eyes and breathing deeply every time he kissed her. He became very eager and she got up suddenly, walking up and down the room, looking at the cheap alarm clock on a bureau. The room was clean but poorly furnished.
“What’s the matter?” he said.
“My girlfriend, the one I room with, she’ll be home in twenty minutes.”
“Come here anyway.”
“Please sit down, please do,” she said.
He sat down beside her. When he kissed her she did not object but her lips were dry, her shoulders were trembling and she kept watching the clock. Though she was holding his wrist so tightly her nails dug into the skin, he knew she would be glad when he had to go. He kissed her again and she drew her left hand slowly over her lips.
“You really must be out of here before Irene comes home,” she said.
“But I’ve only kissed and hugged you and you’re wonderful.” He noticed the red ring mark on her finger.
“You sure you’re not waiting for your husband to come home?” he said irritably.
Frowning, looking away, she said, “Why do you have to say that?”
“There’s a ring mark on your finger.”
“I can’t help it,” she said, and began to cry quietly. “I am waiting for my husband to come home. He’ll be here at Christmas.”
“Too bad. Can’t we do something about it?”
“I love my husband. I do, I really do, and I’m faithful to him too.”
“Maybe I’d better go,” he said, feeling ridiculous.
The New Yorker Stories Page 7