Mrs. Johnson, a handsome woman of fifty with a plump figure and a high color in her cheeks, was lying on her left side with her right arm hanging loosely over the side of the bed: her mouth was open a little, but she was breathing so softly Mary could hardly hear her. Every day now she seemed to need more sleep, a fact which worried Mary’s older sisters, Barbara and Helen, and was the subject of their long whispering conversations in their bedroom at night. It seemed to trouble Mr. Johnson too, for he started taking long walks by himself and he came home with his breath smelling of whiskey. But to Mary her mother looked as lovely and as healthy as ever. “Mother,” she called again. She reached over and gave her shoulder a little shake, and then watched her mother’s face eagerly when she opened her eyes to see if she had remembered about the shoes.
When her mother, still half asleep, only murmured, “Bring me my purse, Mary, and we’ll have our little treat,” Mary was not disappointed. She gleefully kept her secret. She took the dime her mother gave her and went up to the store to get the two ice-cream cones, just as she did on other days, only it seemed that she could already see herself coming down the street in the red leather shoes: she seemed to pass herself on the street, wearing the outfit she had planned to wear with the shoes, a red hat and a blue dress. By the time she got back to the house she had eaten most of her own cone. It was always like that. But then she sat down at the end of the kitchen table to enjoy herself watching her mother eat her share of the ice-cream. It was like watching a big eager girl. Mrs. Johnson sat down, spread her legs, and sighed with pleasure and licked the ice-cream softly and smiled with satisfaction and her mouth looked beautiful. And then when she was finished and was wiping her fingers with her apron Mary blurted out, “Are we going to get my shoes now, Mother?”
“Shoes. What shoes?” Mrs. Johnson asked.
“The red leather shoes I’ve been saving for,” Mary said, looking puzzled. “The ones we saw in the window that we talked about.”
“Oh. Oh, I see,” Mrs. Johnson said slowly as if she hadn’t thought of those particular shoes since that day months ago. “Why, Mary, have you been thinking of those shoes all this time?” And then as Mary only kept looking up at her she went on fretfully, “Why, I told you at the time, child, that your father was in debt and we couldn’t afford such shoes.”
“I’ve got the six dollars saved, haven’t I? Today.”
“Well, your father …”
“It’s my six dollars, isn’t it?”
“Mary, darling, listen. Those shoes are far too old for a little girl like you.”
“I’m twelve next month. You know I am.”
“Shoes like that are no good for running around, Mary. A pair of good serviceable shoes is what you need, Mary.”
“I can wear them on Sunday, can’t I?”
“Look, Mary,” her mother tried to reason with her, “I know I said I’d get you a pair of shoes. But a good pair of shoes. Proper shoes. Your father is going to have a lot more expense soon. Why, he’d drop dead if he found I’d paid six dollars for a pair of red leather shoes for you.”
“You promised I could save the money,” Mary whispered. And then when she saw that worried, unyielding expression on her mother’s face she knew she was not going to get the shoes; she turned away and ran into the bedroom and threw herself on the bed and pulled the pillow over her face and started to cry. Never in her life had she wanted anything as much as she wanted the red shoes. When she heard the sound of her mother moving pots and pans in the kitchen she felt that she had been cheated deliberately.
It began to get dark and she was still crying, and then she heard her mother’s slow step coming toward the bedroom. “Mary, listen to me,” she said, her voice almost rough as she reached down and shook Mary. “Get up and wipe your face, do you hear?” She had her own hat and coat on. “We’re going to get those shoes right now,” she said.
“You said I couldn’t get them,” Mary said.
“Don’t argue with me,” her mother said. She sounded blunt and grim and somehow far away from Mary. “I want you to get them. I say you’re going to. Come on.”
Mary got up and wiped her face, and on the way up to the store her mother’s grim, silent determination made her feel lonely and guilty. They bought a pair of red leather shoes. As Mary walked up and down in them on the store carpet her mother watched her, unsmiling and resolute. Coming back home Mary longed for her mother to speak to her, but Mrs. Johnson, holding Mary’s hand tight, walked along, looking straight ahead.
“Now if only your father doesn’t make a fuss,” Mrs. Johnson said when they were standing together in the hall, listening. From the living room came the sound of a rustled newspaper. Mr. Johnson, who worked in a publishing house, was home. In the last few months Mary had grown afraid of her father: she did not understand why he had become so moody and short-tempered. As her mother, standing there, hesitated nervously, Mary began to get scared. “Go on into the bedroom,” Mrs. Johnson whispered to her. She followed Mary and had her sit down on the bed and she knelt down and put the red shoes on Mary’s feet. It was a strangely solemn, secret little ceremony. Mrs. Johnson’s breathing was heavy and labored as she straightened up. “Now don’t you come in until I call you,” she warned Mary.
But Mary tiptoed into the kitchen and her heart was pounding as she tried to listen. For a while she heard only the sound of her mother’s quiet voice, and then suddenly her father cried angrily, “Are you serious? Money for luxuries at a time like this!” His voice became explosive. “Are we going crazy? You’ll take them back, do you hear?” But her mother’s voice flowed on, the one quiet voice, slow and even. Then there was a long and strange silence. “Mary, come here,” her father suddenly called.
“Come on and show your father your shoes, Mary,” her mother urged her.
The new shoes squeaked as Mary went into the living room and they felt like heavy weights that might prevent her from fleeing from her father’s wrath. Her father was sitting at the little table by the light and Mary watched his face desperately to see if the big vein at the side of his head had started to swell. As he turned slowly to her and fumbled with his glasses a wild hope shone in Mary’s scared brown eyes.
Her father did not seem to be looking at her shoes. With a kind of pain in his eyes he was looking steadily at her as if he had never really been aware of her before. “They’re fine shoes, aren’t they?” he asked.
“Can I keep them? Can I really?” Mary asked breathlessly.
“Why, sure you can,” he said quietly.
Shouting with joy Mary skipped out of the room and along the hall, for she had heard her sisters come in. “Look, Barbara, look, Helen,” she cried. Her two older sisters, who were stenographers, and a bit prim, were slightly scandalized. “Why, they’re far too old for you,” Barbara said. “Get out, get out,” Mary laughed. “Mother knows better than you do.” Then she went out to the kitchen to help her mother with the dinner and watch her face steadily with a kind of rapt wonder, as if she was trying to understand the strange power her mother possessed that could make an angry man like her father suddenly gentle and quiet.
Mary intended to wear the shoes to church that Sunday, but it rained, so she put them back in the box and decided to wait a week. But in the middle of the week her father told her that her mother was going to the hospital for an operation.
“Is it for the pains in her legs?” Mary asked.
“Well, you see, Mary, if everything comes off all right,” her father answered, “she may not have any pains at all.”
It was to be an operation for cancer, and the doctor said the operation was successful. But Mrs. Johnson died under the anaesthetic. The two older sisters and Mr. Johnson kept repeating dumbly to the doctor, “But she looked all right. She looked fine.” Then they all went home. They seemed to huddle first in one room then in another. They took turns trying to comfort Mary, but no one could console her.
In the preparations for the funeral they were all bu
sy for a while because the older sisters were arranging for everyone to have the proper clothes for mourning. The new blue dress that Helen, the fair-haired one, had bought only a few weeks ago, was sent to the cleaners to be dyed black, and of course Mary had to have a black dress and black stockings too. On the night when they were arranging these things Mary suddenly blurted out, “I’m going to wear my red shoes.”
“Have some sense, Mary. That would be terrible,” Helen said.
“You can’t wear red shoes,” Barbara said crossly.
“Yes, I can,” Mary said stubbornly. “Mother wanted me to wear them. I know she did. I know why she bought them.” She was confronting them all with her fists clenched desperately.
“For heaven’s sake, tell her she can’t do a thing like that,” Helen said irritably to Mr. Johnson. Yet he only shook his head, looking at Mary with that same gentle, puzzled expression he had had on his face the night his wife had talked to him about the shoes. “I kind of think Mary’s right,” he began, rubbing his hand slowly over his face.
“Red shoes. Good Lord, it would be terrible,” said Helen, now outraged.
“You’d think we’d all want to be proper,” Barbara agreed.
“Proper. It would be simply terrible, I tell you. It would look as if we had no respect.”
“Well, I guess that’s right. All the relatives will be here,” Mr. Johnson agreed reluctantly. Then he turned hopefully to Mary. “Look, Mary,” he began. “If you get the shoes dyed you can wear them to the funeral and then you’ll be able to wear them to school every day too. How about it?”
But it had frightened Mary to think that anyone might say she hadn’t shown the proper respect for her mother. She got the red shoes and handed them to her father that he might take them up to the shoemaker. As her father took the box from her, he fumbled with a few apologetic words. “It’s just what people might say. Do you see, Mary?” he asked.
When the shoes, now dyed black, were returned to Mary the next day she put them on slowly, and then she put her feet together and looked at the shoes a long time. They were no longer the beautiful red shoes, and yet as she stared at them, solemn-faced, she suddenly felt a strange kind of secret joy, a feeling of certainty that her mother had got the shoes so that she might understand at this time that she still had her special blessing and protection.
At the funeral the shoes hurt Mary’s feet for they were new and hadn’t been worn. Yet she was fiercely glad that she had them on. After that she wore them every day. Of course now that they were black they were not noticed by other children. But she was very careful with them. Every night she polished them up and looked at them and was touched again by that secret joy. She wanted them to last a long time.
1943
A CAP FOR STEVE
Dave Diamond, a poor man, a carpenter’s assistant, was a small, wiry, quick-tempered individual who had learned how to make every dollar count in his home. His wife, Anna, had been sick a lot, and his twelve-year-old son, Steve, had to be kept in school. Steve, a big-eyed, shy kid, ought to have known the value of money as well as Dave did. It had been ground into him.
But the boy was crazy about baseball, and after school, when he could have been working as a delivery boy or selling papers, he played ball with the kids. His failure to appreciate that the family needed a few extra dollars disgusted Dave. Around the house he wouldn’t let Steve talk about baseball, and he scowled when he saw him hurrying off with his glove after dinner.
When the Phillies came to town to play an exhibition game with the home team and Steve pleaded to be taken to the ball park, Dave, of course, was outraged. Steve knew they couldn’t afford it. But he had got his mother on his side. Finally Dave made a bargain with them. He said that if Steve came home after school and worked hard helping to make some kitchen shelves he would take him that night to the ball park.
Steve worked hard, but Dave was still resentful. They had to coax him to put on his good suit. When they started out Steve held aloof, feeling guilty, and they walked down the street like strangers; then Dave glanced at Steve’s face and, half-ashamed, took his arm more cheerfully.
As the game went on, Dave had to listen to Steve’s recitation of the batting average of every Philly that stepped up to the plate; the time the boy must have wasted learning these averages began to appal him. He showed it so plainly that Steve felt guilty again and was silent.
After the game Dave let Steve drag him onto the field to keep him company while he tried to get some autographs from the Philly players, who were being hemmed in by gangs of kids blocking the way to the club-house. But Steve, who was shy, let the other kids block him off from the players. Steve would push his way in, get blocked out, and come back to stand mournfully beside Dave. And Dave grew impatient. He was wasting valuable time. He wanted to get home; Steve knew it and was worried.
Then the big, blond Philly outfielder, Eddie Condon, who had been held up by a gang of kids tugging at his arm and thrusting their score cards at him, broke loose and made a run for the club-house. He was jostled, and his blue cap with the red peak, tilted far back on his head, fell off. It fell at Steve’s feet, and Steve stooped quickly and grabbed it. “Okay, son,” the outfielder called, turning back. But Steve, holding the hat in both hands, only stared at him.
“Give him his cap, Steve,” Dave said, smiling apologetically at the big outfielder who towered over them. But Steve drew the hat closer to his chest. In an awed trance he looked up at big Eddie Condon. It was an embarrassing moment. All the other kids were watching. Some shouted. “Give him his cap.”
“My cap, son,” Eddie Condon said, his hand out.
“Hey, Steve,” Dave said, and he gave him a shake. But he had to jerk the cap out of Steve’s hands.
“Here you are,” he said.
The outfielder, noticing Steve’s white, worshipping face and pleading eyes, grinned and then shrugged. “Aw, let him keep it,” he said.
“No, Mister Condon, you don’t need to do that,” Steve protested.
“It’s happened before. Forget it,” Eddie Condon said, and he trotted away to the club-house.
Dave handed the cap to Steve; envious kids circled around them and Steve said, “He said I could keep it, Dad. You heard him, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I heard him,” Dave admitted. The wonder in Steve’s face made him smile. He took the boy by the arm and they hurried off the field.
On the way home Dave couldn’t get him to talk about the game; he couldn’t get him to take his eyes off the cap. Steve could hardly believe in his own happiness. “See,” he said suddenly, and he showed Dave that Eddie Condon’s name was printed on the sweatband. Then he went on dreaming. Finally he put the cap on his head and turned to Dave with a slow, proud smile. The cap was away too big for him; it fell down over his ears. “Never mind,” Dave said. “You can get your mother to take a tuck in the back.”
When they got home Dave was tired and his wife didn’t understand the cap’s importance, and they couldn’t get Steve to go to bed. He swaggered around wearing the cap and looking in the mirror every ten minutes. He took the cap to bed with him.
Dave and his wife had a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and Dave told her again how they had got the cap. They agreed that their boy must have an attractive quality that showed in his face, and that Eddie Condon must have been drawn to him – why else would he have singled Steve out from all the kids?
But Dave got tired of the fuss Steve made over that cap and of the way he wore it from the time he got up in the morning until the time he went to bed. Some kid was always coming in, wanting to try on the cap. It was childish, Dave said, for Steve to go around assuming that the cap made him important in the neighborhood, and to keep telling them how he had become a leader in the park a few blocks away where he played ball in the evenings. And Dave wouldn’t stand for Steve’s keeping the cap on while he was eating. He was always scolding his wife for accepting Steve’s explanation that he’d forgotten he had it on. Jus
t the same, it was remarkable what a little thing like a ball cap could do for a kid, Dave admitted to his wife as he smiled to himself.
One night Steve was late coming home from the park. Dave didn’t realize how late it was until he put down his newspaper and watched his wife at the window. Her restlessness got on his nerves. “See what comes from encouraging the boy to hang around with those park loafers,” he said. “I don’t encourage him,” she protested. “You do,” he insisted irritably, for he was really worried now. A gang hung around the park until midnight. It was a bad park. It was true that on one side there was a good district with fine, expensive apartment houses, but the kids from that neighborhood left the park to the kids from the poorer homes. When his wife went out and walked down to the corner it was his turn to wait and worry and watch at the open window. Each waiting moment tortured him. At last he heard his wife’s voice and Steve’s voice, and he relaxed and sighed; then he remembered his duty and rushed angrily to meet them.
“I’ll fix you, Steve, once and for all,” he said. “I’ll show you you can’t start coming into the house at midnight.”
“Hold your horses, Dave,” his wife said. “Can’t you see the state he’s in?” Steve looked utterly exhausted and beaten.
“What’s the matter?” Dave asked quickly.
“I lost my cap,” Steve whispered; he walked past his father and threw himself on the couch in the living room and lay with his face hidden.
“Now, don’t scold him, Dave,” his wife said.
“Scold him. Who’s scolding him?” Dave asked, indignantly. “It’s his cap, not mine. If it’s not worth his while to hang on to it, why should I scold him?” But he was implying resentfully that he alone recognized the cap’s value.
Ancient Lineage and Other Stories Page 21