by Philip Roth
And how did her parents take all of this? Mrs. Patimkin continued to smile at me and Mr. Patimkin continued to think I ate like a bird. When invited to dinner I would, for his benefit, eat twice what I wanted, but the truth seemed to be that after he’d characterized my appetite that first time, he never really bothered to look again. I might have eaten ten times my normal amount, have finally killed myself with food, he would still have considered me not a man but a sparrow. No one seemed distressed by my presence, though Julie had cooled considerably; consequently, when Brenda suggested to her father that at the end of August I spend a week of my vacation at the Patimkin house, he pondered a moment, decided on the five iron, made his approach shot, and said yes. And when she passed on to her mother the decision of Patimkin Sink, there wasn’t much Mrs. Patimkin could do. So, through Brenda’s craftiness, I was invited.
On that Friday morning that was to be my last day of work, my Aunt Gladys saw me packing my bag and she asked where I was going. I told her. She did not answer and I thought I saw awe in those red-rimmed hysterical eyes—I had come a long way since that day she’d said to me on the phone, “Fancy-shmancy.”
“How long you going, I should know how to shop I wouldn’t buy too much. You’ll leave me with a refrigerator full of milk it’ll go bad it’ll stink up the refrigerator—”
“A week,” I said.
“A week?” she said. “They got room for a week?”
“Aunt Gladys, they don’t live over the store.”
“I lived over a store I wasn’t ashamed. Thank God we always had a roof. We never went begging in the streets,” she told me as I packed the Bermudas I’d just bought, “and your cousin Susan we’ll put through college, Uncle Max should live and be well. We didn’t send her away to camp for August, she doesn’t have shoes when she wants them, sweaters she doesn’t have a drawerful—”
“I didn’t say anything, Aunt Gladys.”
“You don’t get enough to eat here? You leave over sometimes I show your Uncle Max your plate it’s a shame. A child in Europe could make a four-course meal from what you leave over.”
“Aunt Gladys.” I went over to her. “I get everything I want here. I’m just taking a vacation. Don’t I deserve a vacation?”
She held herself to me and I could feel her trembling. “I told your mother I would take care of her Neil she shouldn’t worry. And now you go running—”
I put my arms around her and kissed her on the top of her head. “C’mon,” I said, “you’re being silly. I’m not running away. I’m just going away for a week, on a vacation.”
“You’ll leave their telephone number God forbid you should get sick.”
“Okay.”
“Millburn they live?”
“Short Hills. I’ll leave the number.”
“Since when do Jewish people live in Short Hills? They couldn’t be real Jews believe me.”
“They’re real Jews,” I said.
“I’ll see it I’ll believe it.” She wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron, just as I was zipping up the sides of the suitcase. “Don’t close the bag yet. I’ll make a little package with some fruit in it, you’ll take with you.”
“Okay, Aunt Gladys,” and on the way to work that morning I ate the orange and the two peaches that she’d put in a bag for me.
A few hours later Mr. Scapello informed me that when I returned from my vacation after Labor Day, I would be hoisted up onto Martha Winney’s stool. He himself, he said, had made the same move some twelve years ago, and so it appeared that if I could manage to maintain my balance I might someday be Mr. Scapello. I would also get an eight-dollar increase in salary which was five dollars more than the increase Mr. Scapello had received years before. He shook my hand and then started back up the long flight of marble stairs, his behind barging against his suit jacket like a hoop. No sooner had he left my side then I smelled spearmint and looked up to see the old man with veiny nose and jowls.
“Hello, young man,” he said pleasantly. “Is the book back?”
“What book?”
“The Gauguin. I was shopping and I thought I’d stop by to ask. I haven’t gotten the card yet. It’s two weeks already.”
“No,” I said, and as I spoke I saw that Mr. Scapello had stopped midway up the stairs and turned as though he’d forgotten to tell me something. “Look,” I said to the old man, “it should be back any day.” I said it with a finality that bordered on rudeness, and I alarmed myself, for suddenly I saw what would happen: the old man making a fuss, Mr. Scapello gliding down the stairs, Mr. Scapello scampering up to the stacks, Scapello scandalized, Scapello profuse, Scapello presiding at the ascension of John McKee to Miss Winney’s stool. I turned to the old man, “Why don’t you leave your phone number and I’ll try to get a hold of it this afternoon—” but my attempt at concern and courtesy came too late and the man growled some words about public servants, a letter to the Mayor, snotty kids, and left the library, thank God, only a second before Mr. Scapello returned to my desk to remind me that everyone was chipping in for a present for Miss Winney and that if I liked I should leave a half dollar on his desk during the day.
After lunch the colored kid came in. When he headed past the desk for the stairs, I called over to him. “Come here,” I said. “Where are you going?”
“The heart section.”
“What book are you reading?”
“That Mr. Go-again’s book. Look, man, I ain’t doing nothing wrong. I didn’t do no writing in anything. You could search me—”
“I know you didn’t. Listen, if you like that book so much why don’t you please take it home? Do you have a library card?”
“No, sir, I didn’t take nothing.”
“No, a library card is what we give to you so you can take books home. Then you won’t have to come down here every day. Do you go to school?”
“Yes, sir. Miller Street School. But this here’s summertime. It’s okay I’m not in school. I ain’t supposed to be in school.”
“I know. As long as you go to school you can have a library card. You could take the book home.”
“What you keep telling me take that book home for? At home somebody dee-stroy it.”
“You could hide it someplace, in a desk—”
“Man,” he said, squinting at me, “why don’t you want me to come round here?”
“I didn’t say you shouldn’t.”
“I likes to come here. I likes them stairs.”
“I like them too,” I said. “But the trouble is that someday somebody’s going to take that book out.”
He smiled. “Don’t you worry,” he said to me. “Ain’t nobody done that yet,” and he tapped off to the stairs and Stack Three.
Did I perspire that day! It was the coolest of the summer, but when I left work in the evening my shirt was sticking to my back. In the car I opened my bag, and while the rush-hour traffic flowed down Washington Street, I huddled in the back and changed into a clean shirt so that when I reached Short Hills I’d look as though I was deserving of an interlude in the suburbs. But driving up Central Avenue I could not keep my mind on my vacation, or for that matter on my driving: to the distress of pedestrians and motorists, I ground gears, overshot crosswalks, hesitated at green and red lights alike. I kept thinking that while I was on vacation that jowly bastard would return to the library, that the colored kid’s book would disappear, that my new job would be taken away from me, that, in fact my old job—but then why should I worry about all that: the library wasn’t going to be my life.
5
“Ron’s getting married!” Julie screamed at me when I came through the door. “Ron’s getting married!”
“Now?” I said.
“Labor Day! He’s marrying Harriet, he’s marrying Harriet.” She began to sing it like a jump-rope song, nasal and rhythmic. “I’m going to be a sister-in-law!”
“Hi,” Brenda said, “I’m going to be a sister-in-law.”
“So I hear. When did it ha
ppen?”
“This afternoon he told us. They spoke long distance for forty minutes last night. She’s flying here next week, and there’s going to be a huge wedding. My parents are flittering all over the place. They’ve got to arrange everything in about a day or two. And my father’s taking Ron in the business—but he’s going to have to start at two hundred a week and then work himself up. That’ll take till October.”
“I thought he was going to be a gym teacher.”
“He was. But now he has responsibilities …”
And at dinner Ron expanded on the subject of responsibilities and the future.
“We’re going to have a boy,” he said, to his mother’s delight, “and when he’s about six months old I’m going to sit him down with a basketball in front of him, and a football, and a baseball, and then whichever one he reaches for, that’s the one we’re going to concentrate on.”
“Suppose he doesn’t reach for any of them,” Brenda said.
“Don’t be funny, young lady,” Mrs. Patimkin said.
“I’m going to be an aunt,” Julie sang, and she stuck her tongue out at Brenda.
“When is Harriet coming?” Mr. Patimkin breathed through a mouthful of potatoes.
“A week from yesterday.”
“Can she sleep in my room?” Julie cried. “Can she?”
“No, the guest room—” Mrs. Patimkin began, but then she remembered me—with a crashing side glance from those purple eyes, and said, “Of course.”
Well, I did eat like a bird. After dinner my bag was carried—by me—up to the guest room which was across from Ron’s room and right down the hall from Brenda. Brenda came along to show me the way.
“Let me see your bed, Bren.”
“Later,” she said.
“Can we? Up here?”
“I think so,” she said. “Ron sleeps like a log.”
“Can I stay the night?”
“I don’t know.”
“I could get up early and come back in here. We’ll set the alarm.”
“It’ll wake everybody up.”
“I’ll remember to get up. I can do it.”
“I better not stay up here with you too long,” she said. “My mother’ll have a fit. I think she’s nervous about your being here.”
“So am I. I hardly know them. Do you think I should really stay a whole week?”
“A whole week? Once Harriet gets here it’ll be so chaotic you can probably stay two months.”
“You think so?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes,” she said, and went down the stairs so as to ease her mother’s conscience.
I unpacked my bag and dropped my clothes into a drawer that was empty except for a packet of dress shields and a high school yearbook. In the middle of my unpacking, Ron came clunking up the stairs.
“Hi,” he called into my room.
“Congratulations,” I called back. I should have realized that any word of ceremony would provoke a handshake from Ron; he interrupted whatever it was he was about to do in his room, and came into mine.
“Thanks.” He pumped me. “Thanks.”
Then he sat down on my bed and watched me as I finished unpacking. I have one shirt with a Brooks Brothers label and I let it linger on the bed a while; the Arrows I heaped in the drawer. Ron sat there rubbing his forearm and grinning. After a while I was thoroughly unsettled by the silence.
“Well,” I said, “that’s something.”
He agreed, to what I don’t know.
“How does it feel?” I asked, after another longer silence.
“Better. Ferrari smacked it under the boards.”
“Oh. Good,” I said. “How does getting married feel?”
“Ah, okay, I guess.”
I leaned against the bureau and counted stitches in the carpet.
Ron finally risked a journey into language. “Do you know anything about music?” he asked.
“Something, yes.”
“You can listen to my phonograph if you want.”
“Thanks, Ron. I didn’t know you were interested in music.
“Sure. I got all the Andre Kostelanetz records ever made. You like Mantovani? I got all of him too. I like semi-classical a lot. You can hear my Columbus record if you want …” he dwindled off. Finally he shook my hand and left.
Downstairs I could hear Julie singing. “I’m going to be an a-a-aunt,” and Mrs. Patimkin saying to her, “No, honey, you’re going to be a sister-in-law. Sing that, sweetheart,” but Julie continued to sing, “I’m going to be an a-a-aunt,” and then I heard Brenda’s voice joining hers, singing, “We’re going to be an a-a-aunt,” and then Julie joined that, and finally Mrs. Patimkin called to Mr. Patimkin, “Will you make her stop encouraging her …” and soon the duet ended.
And then I heard Mrs. Patimkin again. I couldn’t make out the words but Brenda answered her. Their voices grew louder; finally I could hear perfectly. “I need a houseful of company at a time like this?” It was Mrs. Patimkin. “I asked you, Mother.” “You asked your father. I’m the one you should have asked first. He doesn’t know how much extra work this is for me…” “My God, Mother, you’d think we didn’t have Carlota and Jenny.” “Carlota and Jenny can’t do everything. This is not the Salvation Army!” “What the hell does that mean?” “Watch your tongue, young lady. That may be very well for your college friends” “Oh, stop it, Mother!” “Don’t raise your voice to me. When’s the last time you lifted a finger to help around here?” “I’m not a slave … I’m a daughter” “You ought to learn what a day’s work means” “Why?” Brenda said. “Why?” “Because you’re lazy,” Mrs. Patimkin answered, “and you think the world owes you a living.” “Whoever said that?” “You ought to earn some money and buy your own clothes.” “Why? Good God, Mother, Daddy could live off the stocks alone, for God’s sake. What are you complaining about?” “When’s the last time you washed the dishes!” “Jesus Christ!” Brenda flared, “Carlota washes the dishes!” “Don’t Jesus Christ me!” “Oh, Mother!” and Brenda was crying. “Why the hell are you like this’” “That’s it” Mrs Patimkin said “cry in front of your company ‘” “My company… ” Brenda wept “why don’t you go yell at him too … why is everyone so nasty to me…”
From across the hall I heard Andre Kostelanetz let several thousand singing violins loose on “Night and Day.” Ron’s door was open and I saw he was stretched out, colossal, on his bed; he was singing along with the record. The words belonged to “Night and Day,” but I didn’t recognize Ron’s tune. In a minute he picked up the phone and asked the operator for a Milwaukee number. While she connected him, he rolled over and turned up the volume on the record player, so that it would carry the nine hundred miles west.
I heard Julie downstairs. “Ha ha, Brenda’s crying, ha ha, Brenda’s crying.”
And then Brenda was running up the stairs. “Your day’ll come, you little bastard!” she called.
“Brenda!” Mrs. Patimkin called.
“Mommy!” Julie cried. “Brenda cursed at me!”
“What’s going on here!” Mr. Patimkin shouted.
“You call me, Mrs. P?” Carlota shouted.
And Ron, in the other room, said, “Hello, Har, I told them…”
I sat down on my Brooks Brothers shirt and pronounced my own name out loud.
“Goddam her!” Brenda said to me as she paced up and down my room.
“Bren, do you think I should go—”
“Shhh …” She went to the door of my room and listened. “They’re going visiting, thank God.”
“Brenda—”
“Shhh … They’ve gone.”
“Julie too?”
“Yes,” she said. “Is Ron in his room? His door is closed.”
“He went out.”
“You can’t hear anybody move around here. They all creep around in sneakers. Oh Neil.”
“Bren, I asked you, maybe I should just stay throu
gh tomorrow and then go.”
“Oh, it isn’t you she’s angry about.”
“I’m not helping any.”
“It’s Ron, really. That he’s getting married just has her flipped. And me. Now with that goody-good Harriet around she’ll just forget I ever exist.”
“Isn’t that okay with you?”
She walked off to the window and looked outside. It was dark and cool; the trees rustled and flapped as though they were sheets that had been hung out to dry. Everything outside hinted at September, and for the first time I realized how close we were to Brenda’s departure for school.
“Is it, Bren?” but she was not listening to me.
She walked across the room to a door at the far end of the room. She opened it.
“I thought that was a closet,” I said.
“Come here.”
She held the door back and we leaned into the darkness and could hear the strange wind hissing in the eaves of the house.
“What’s in here?” I said.
“Money.”
Brenda went into the room. When the puny sixty-watt bulb was twisted on, I saw that the place was full of old furniture—two wing chairs with hair-oil lines at the back, a sofa with a paunch in its middle, a bridge table, two bridge chairs with their stuffing showing, a mirror whose backing had peeled off, shadeless lamps, lampless shades, a coffee table with a cracked glass top, and a pile of rolled up shades.