by Evergreen
"Sure." She spoke brightly. "Sure, I understand." He talked a minute or two longer, something about the paper, but she wasn't really listening. She was thinking: Why don't I tell him not to bother to lie? I know perfectly well he intends to take Alice. He probably went back to the party after he left me. Why don't I?
When she hung up her mother came out of her bedroom. "My goodness," she said, smiling, "couldn't he even wait until he sees you tomorrow in school?"
"It was about the wedding. He made a mistake. He's not supposed to bring a girl, after all."
"Oh," her mother said slowly, "I see." She looked troubled for a minute, and searched Iris' face, which was guarded and proud. Then she said, "Oh well, there'll be other weddings. You'll make the best of it."
Mama didn't mean to be indifferent, not at all. That was the way she treated herself. "Short of a catastrophe, you will never admit when anything has gone wrong," Pa always complained, and yet he was really grateful for his wife's placid optimism, which Iris often found so exasperating. Didn't anything ever upset her? When Iris asked her that one time she didn't answer at once, and then she said, "If it does, I keep it to myself. Your father has enough to worry him already."
She went back to her room, brushed her teeth and got into bed. It was funny, but she didn't feel as bad about this as she would have expected. Perhaps, in a way, it was a relief not to have to go. Not to have to think about what impression you were making, or to worry about girls like Alice. Anyway, Fred was only a boy. Someday there would be a man, a real man, who would have eyes only for her.
I'm sure my mother thinks now that I'm crushed because of this —for she knows as well as I do that Fred lied. She used to think I was unhappy when we were at the beach years ago and there was
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a crowd of kids out on the lawn, while I was in the hammock reading. I remember the summer I read Ivanhoe and The Last Days of Pompeii, all those fat, wonderful books, the stories and tragedies that are so sad but never real enough to break your heart, just enough to make the sweet tears rise. I used to lay the book down and let them rise and I was very happy.
When I get to college I want to major in English literature. I've been in love with the sound and cadence, the charm and fragrance of words, as long as I can remember, probably ever since Mama first read stories aloud when I was three years old. Maybe younger than that. You can feel words, the way fingers feel velvet. Once I made a list of words that are especially beautiful. Sapphire. Tintinnabulation. Grass. Angelica. I wish my name was Angelica. I must make it a duty to learn five new words every day.
She wanted so much to write. The problem was that she had nothing to write about. Once she had written a piece about a lonely girl away at camp, and the teacher had said it was lyrical, but that was the only time. She guessed she didn't have any special talent, although perhaps after she had really lived she might find something to say.
At school there was a girl, only Iris' own age, who left to study at a conservatory; she had already played with an orchestra. How marvelous it must be to have such a way of expressing what is in you! It seemed to Iris that something was alive inside of her that wanted to get out and couldn't. There was a rising in her chest, so beautiful and dazzling that people would stop and look with surprised faces if they could know about it.
It's true, Iris thought, the person who lives inside me and the person that other people see are not at all the same.
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In the autumn of 1935 there seemed to be no place for a well-spoken, fine-appearing graduate of Yale who had majored in philosophy and was willing to do anything at all. Nor was there a place for an attractive Wellesley girl of excellent family who had studied fine arts in Europe and spoke French better than many of the natives of France. She couldn't even fill a job as a lunch-room waitress because there were fifty applicants for every such job and they had all had experience. He couldn't get a job as a porter because in the first place he didn't look like a porter and in the second place everyone was laying off, not hiring. There was no sense in it.
Every night at midnight Maury went out for the early-morning editions of the papers, read the help-wanted pages, then took the subway at five o'clock, walked from store to loft to factory, rode from the Bronx to Brooklyn and back and came home with nothing.
By October they had to believe that there were no jobs. They had seventy dollars left. And one day Maury didn't bother to buy the newspaper; it would be wasting a nickel. That was the day when, for the first time, they knew panic.
Agatha asked timidly, "Don't you know anybody? I mean, you've always lived in New York—"
How to explain? He had lost touch with all his childhood friends. He couldn't call up now and beg a favor. Besides, most of
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their fathers were doctors or lawyers who couldn't do anything for him, or else they were in business and had their own troubles.
The only possibility was Eddy Holtz. To be sure, they had drifted coolly apart. Yet there was something about Eddy that would make it possible for Maury to swallow his pride, and he recognized what a tribute that was to some quality in Eddy. Eddy was at Columbia Physicians and Surgeons. His painful grind had paid off and Maury thought wistfully that he would always hang on and get where he wanted to go. His father owned three or four shoe stores, a small chain, in Brooklyn. Perhaps he just might—
"I'll ask my father," Eddy said. "I'll see what I can do. You're happy, Maury?"
"Yes, yes, except for the job situation. You'd heard I was married?"
"Chris Guthrie's cousin, isn't she?"
"Yes, and our families don't—we don't have anything to do with them. That's why I thought of you. I may not always have agreed with you, Eddy, but I knew you wouldn't forget the time when we were friends."
"I haven't helped you yet. But I will try."
The store was two blocks from the subway station, which was good. He didn't have far to walk. It was a long, narrow store wedged between a Woolworth's and a Kiddy Klothes shop. One entire window was a display of children's shoes. There were two other salesmen, Resnick and Santorello, men who had been there fifteen years. They earned forty dollars a week. Maury was to get twenty, taking the place of an older man who had dropped dead the week before.
"Boss saves money with Binder gone," the other men told him. "He was here longer than we were; he got forty-five dollars."
What worried Maury was that there really wasn't enough work for three men. Sometimes no more than half a dozen people came in during the hours before three o'clock: mothers with toddlers, a man buying work shoes, young girls buying cheap patent-leather pumps for dancing, an old woman with shoes cracked and split, who counted out her money for the new pair in dollar bills, the last dollar in coins from her change purse. After three, when school was out, there was a flurry and scurry of children crying and fighting over the hobbyhorse. He learned to handle them with dispatch and patience so that, coming with the rest of the family
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on another day, the mothers often asked for and waited for him. It saddened him that these shabby people could clothe and shoe their children only by neglecting themselves.
During the long mornings he stood at the windows and found that he had acquired Resnick's and Santorello's irritating habit of jingling the change in their pockets out of restless boredom. He watched the dull, ambling traffic, the bus discharging at the corner and two or three people coming out of the subway in midmorning: going where? An ambulance came for someone in a store across the street; that was an event of note. He would have liked to bring a book from the library. He could at least have used the time to take himself away from that dreary street, away from 1935 to a brighter place and a more vital time of man. But to do so would be to turn his back upon the other two men, and he knew it would not only be unwise to incur their dislike by seeming different, but in some way unkind. He didn't participate fully in their conversations, except when they talked baseball, which they often did. Mostly they talked a
bout money and family and these came down to the same thing, making one word, money-family. How to pay for the wife's hysterectomy, what to do about the father-in-law who was unemployed. They would probably have to take him and his wife in with them, which meant that their oldest boy would then have to sleep on the sofa, and then where would the daughter entertain her boy friend? She was keeping company with a nice fellow who had a good job with Consolidated Edison, and it would be a helluva thing if she lost her boy friend because of that old bastard, who had never done a thing for them when he had it! But after all, Santorello said, he's my wife's father and she cries her eyes out, it's hell to go home at night and listen to her. And Res-nick nodded, understanding and wise; his dark hooded eyes, somber, cynical and resigned, reminded Maury so much of Pa that he sometimes couldn't look into Resnick's face. Resnick nodded and sighed: Family, family, my brother owes me a hundred and fifty dollars, I know I ought to make him pay, he could take a loan someplace, he keeps promising, we've always been like that—with two fingers raised, pressed side by side—I hate to make trouble between us, but, gee, a hundred and fifty dollars.
At least, Maury thought, feeling such pity for them, for me this is temporary. These times can't go on much longer. For me at least, there's something else. But for these two who are, after all, not really any different from me except that I've read some books
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that they haven't read, is this all there is? Bending over feet and tying string on a shoe box until the end?
Too much time to think. Melancholy. Must stop. Be thankful I have Aggie at home, not their nagging, miserable women. And we are getting along. Two weeks' wages go for rent. That leaves forty dollars or thereabouts for the rest of the month. Eight a week for food, that's thirty-two, with eight over for carfare, gas and electric. Can manage, as long as the clothes hold out and "we have no medical bills. Anyway, George Andreapoulis said something about needing some typing done. He can't afford a secretary in that two-bit office. Aggie could do it for him; she knows how to type pretty well. Only, George would have to provide the typewriter because I gave mine to Iris and Aggie left hers at home, which means it's lost to us. Unless—his head whirled and it occurred to him that he'd never spent so much energy on so many details—unless Iris could prevail upon their parents to buy another for her and return his to him? ...
He had come home one afternoon a month or so ago and found his sister sitting at the table with Aggie. She'd come directly from school, wearing a plaid skirt and sweater and the string of pearls, probably the good ones that she'd had since she was a baby, and the saddle shoes that all the girls wore. She had her books in a heap on the floor next to her chair. She'd risen to kiss him.
"I've surprised you, Maury?"
"And how! Gee, I'm glad! You girls introduced yourselves to each other?"
"I just got here a few minutes ago," Iris had said. "I got lost. I've never been in Queens before."
"How'd you know where to find us?"
"From the post office. I figured you must have arranged to have your mail forwarded."
"I ought to have remembered how smart you are."
She had flushed; the pink had made her austere face look tender.
"Did you—did you tell anyone you were coming?"
"I told Ma, and she cried a little. She didn't say anything but I knew she was glad."
"But that's all you told." He couldn't, wouldn't say the words: Pa, father.
"Well, I didn't want to be sneaky, so I said this morning that I'd be late because I was coming here. I said it loud enough so Pa
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could hear it from the hall. I wouldn't do anything sneaky," she had repeated with pride.
Something had welled up in Maury. She was a person. Either she had changed or he had. He'd never really looked at her before, just known she was there like a sofa or chair that has been standing in a room as long as you can recall, and that sometimes gets in the way when you stumble over it in the dark But she was a person.
"I love you, Iris," he said then, simply. Aggie, with the tact that was part of her charm, had made a bustle with the tea, saying cheerfully, "Iris is right where we were five years ago. Puzzling over college catalogues."
"Not really," Iris had said, "there's no choice for me. I'm going to Hunter. Not that I mind. I'm looking forward to it." "What's Hunter?" Aggie had wanted to know. Maury had explained, feeling a wave of guilt, though it wasn't his fault that they'd kept him in private school and sent him to Yale, "Hunter's a free college of the city of New York. You have to be very bright to go there, have to have top grades."
"Oh. And after that, Iris? Have you thought what you wanted to do? I hope you have, then you won't be in the position I'm in." "I'm going to teach," Iris had said. "That is, I will if I can find work. At least I'll be prepared."
She'd stirred the tea. There'd been something quite calm and collected in the way she sat. She's come out of childhood, Maury had thought, and as he was looking at the top of her dark, bent head, suddenly she had raised it and asked, "Don't you want to know how things are at home? Is it that you just don't want to ask me?"
He had been astonished at her perception. "Well, then, tell me," he'd said.
"So he learned that Pa and Malone were building up more management work. They were making ends meet, although just barely. Ma was busy in the same ways. Ruth and two of the girls had been staying with them for a few weeks in between moves. June was married and the others had part-time jobs working for June's father-in-law.
"But most of their support comes from Pa," she had finished, and Maury could supply what she had left unsaid: Try to remember how good Pa is, try to understand him, don't hate him too much.
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But Iris was always the one who loved Pa the most.
And then Maury had walked with her to the subway entrance because it was growing dark and had seen her descend the stairs and, turning, call back to him: "I'll come again," and take a few steps and then, turning once more, call, "I like your wife, Maury. I like her very much," and hurry down the steps, her books piled in one elbow. He had stood there until she was out of sight with a hurt in his throat, such a softness of pity or loss or goodness knew what. A whole mush of feeling, he'd thought angrily, blinking his eyes, and turned back home.
Well, that's how it is, and while you can't expect life to be entirely clear and uncomplicated, surely for some people, somewhere in the world, it must be so sometimes. But not for us in this damned place, this damned time. I want so much for Agatha, he thought; she ought to be surrounded by flowers. He counted the buses at the corner; that made two within the last five minutes and sometimes you had to wait half an hour for the next one. Ridiculous, he thought, and was thinking that when the door opened and three skirmishing boys came in with a weary mother.
"Mister! We need three pair of sneakers."
One day a few months later they received an invitation to the wedding of a girl who had been at college with Aggie. Maury saw it lying open on her bureau: Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, reception immediately following at the River Club.
"Hey," he said, "this ought to be fun! You'll see all your friends."
She was slicing bread, and didn't look up.
"Is anything the matter?"
"No. But we're not going to the wedding."
He thought instantly: She has no dress. That's why. "Aggie, we'll get a dress," he said gently.
"We can't afford one."
"You could get a nice dress for fifteen dollars, maybe even twelve."
"No, I said."
Lately he had noticed a sharp protest in her voice. Nerves, and why not? he thought, and said no more.
The next day he said gaily, "I saw a dress in Siegel's window that looks like you. It's white with blue flowers and sort of a cape thing. Go on down tomorrow and look at it."
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"I don't want to go to the wedding," she said.
"But why don't you want to?"
"I don't know
." She was knitting. The needles twisted in and out and she did not raise her eyes.
He felt rejection and anger. "Don't shut me out! What's this mystery? Are you ashamed of me?"
She raised her eyes. "What a disgusting thing to say! You owe me an apology for that!"
"All right, I apologize. But talk to me, give me the reason."
"You won't understand. It's just that it would be so artificial. One afternoon and all over. We'll never get together, we're in different worlds. Why start something you can't continue?"
"So I have taken you away from everything, after all."
"Oh," she cried. She jumped up and put her arms around him. "Maury, I didn't mean it that way. Do you think I really care about Louise and Foster? It's just all so complicated. Sometime when we're settled in a permanent place I'll be more in the mood and we'll have lots of friends."