“Return? Albert, what are you saying! I never went!” She hurried up the front room stairs. “Shut the door, David, darling! Take off your coat! Sit down!” She went inside. “I feared you’d think—!” And her voice was suddenly lowered.
David shed his coat, found a chair and listened morosely to the sounds in the bed-room. From the drift of the occasional words, snatches of phrases, exclamations that rose like crests above their low tones, he knew their conversation was not only about him, but about the night before. His mother was explaining, he guessed, where she had been, why she had gone. Of Luter, he could hear no mention made. He divined that no mention would be made. Finally, his father exclaimed in an impatient voice:
“Well, you’ve said enough! I take your word for it! That son of yours has to be watched day and night!”
“But it wasn’t his fault, Albert!”
“Mine then? Is that what you mean. Are you hinting that I’m to blame?”
“No! No! No! It’s the fault of no one! You’re right, there’s no more to say! Are you hungry?”
“Naturally.”
“I’ve made that veal the way you like it. And those shredded carrots. Do you want them to-night?”
“Hmm.”
David could hear her moving toward the frontroom, open the window. A few seconds later, she appeared, carrying two covered pots.
“To bed early to-night.” She came down, smiling solicitously. “To forget early.”
Silently, on stockinged feet, his father loomed into the threshold. His vest was unbuttoned, the neck-band of his shirt open on the pit of the strong, corded neck. Gripping the doorpost with lank, ink-spotted fingers, he blinked at the light, and then regarded David gloomily.
“And so you’re acquainted with the police now?”
David dropped his gaze. He hadn’t seen his father since last night when he was beaten. The face was still the face of a foe.
“Yes!” His mother laughed, looking round from the stove. “But in friendship only! Wait till I show you the cake they gave him. It’s in my pocket-book.”
“They gave him cake, eh?”
To David there was something peculiarly significant in the way his father uttered the words.
“Yes,” she continued cheerfully. “And how they must have laughed at my English!”
“How did you ever let him get so far? You’re always watching after him.”
“I don’t know. He was gone before I thought to look.”
“Hmm!” He glanced at David, reached for the newspaper on the table, became engrossed.
His mother lifted a bunch of carrots from a bag, dropped them into a dishpan and while she pared them, eyed David, fondly.
He was silent, met her gaze a moment and then vacantly tightened the table cloth against the table’s edge.
— Don’t believe Don’t believe. Don’t believe. Never!
XV
ON SUNDAY, David stayed in bed the whole morning, and then, dressed, spent the rest of the day in-doors. He had sneezed several times last night and again this morning, and what with his back aching — which David was sure ached for other reasons — his mother maintained that he might have caught a cold as a result of wandering through the streets. His father scoffed at the idea, but refrained from interfering. Although it meant having to be near his father all day, David was grateful not to have to face Yussie or Annie or the boy he pushed or anyone in fact. He clung to his mother or retreated to his bedroom, avoided the room his father was in, and in general, made himself as inconspicuous as possible. Toward evening, however, the dark forced him into the kitchen together with his father. Whereupon he fetched out his box of trinkets, found a corner least in the way, and sitting down on the linoleum floor, began constructing with the odds and ends that filled the box a zig-zag and precarious tower which his father’s or mother’s tread invariably sent toppling down.
During the late afternoon and even until supper-time, his father had several times confidently remarked that Luter would come to his senses, forego this folly of hunting for a wife and eventually appear at the table in time for the meal … However, though they waited almost an hour past the usual time, he never came. It was only when David’s mother began to complain mildly that half her cooking was over-done and the other half cold, that he gave up waiting, and shrugging his shoulders in brusque irritation, permitted her to serve the meal.
“In Tysmenicz,” he scowled sourly as he settled into a chair, “the peasant who tended my—” (There was always that hitch in his speech before the word) “my father’s cattle used to say that a man had to be born a fool to be one. My friend Luter should come on his second childhood early in years — God’s given him a new soul.” He pulled the plate toward him with abrupt impatience. “All I hope is he doesn’t blame my married happiness for his marriage!” He uttered the last words with a peculiar challenging emphasis.
David who was watching his mother as she stood above her husband serving him, saw her bosom swell up slowly as though responding to minute increments of pain, and then without response, exhale tautly her muted breath and look off blankly and resigned. David himself knew only one thing — that the relief Luter’s absence afforded him was as sharp and fervent as a prayer, and that every wordless nerve begged never to see the man again.
At bed-time, his mind seemed strangely calm, reposed without being resolved, inert after long discord. Beneath the film of apathy, the events of yesterday ruffled the surface only rarely, like the tardy infrequent wreckage of a ship long sunken. They would never be answered these questions of why his mother had let Luter do what Annie had tried to do; why she hadn’t run away the second time as she had the first; why she hadn’t told his father; or had she; or didn’t he care. Nor would there ever be the equilibrium again between his knowing what she had done and her unawareness that he knew; her unawareness of what he had done with Annie, of why he had run away; his father’s unawareness of every thing. They would never be solved, never be answered. No one would say anything, no one dared, no one could. Just don’t believe, don’t believe, never. But when would that queer weight, that odd something lodged in his bosom, that was so spiny, ramified, reminding, when would that vanish? Tomorrow, maybe? Maybe tomorrow.
Tomorrow came. Monday. The cold of the day before had either been imaginary or been thrown off. David was sent to school. Once out of the house, he walked guardedly, even taking a new route to avoid meeting Annie or Yussie. In the morning, he succeeded and again at noon, but when school was out for the day, they ran into him as he came out into the open of the crossing. David, himself, shrank away when they hailed him, but they on the other hand seemed to have forgotten all hostilities. Instead they were merely curious.
“W’od id ’ey do t’yuh in de polliss station?” Yussie engaged his arm to keep him in step with the slower limping Annie.
“Nutt’n’!” He shook him off sullenly. “Lemme go!”
“Hey, yuh mad?” Yussie looked surprised.
“Yea, I’m mad! I’ll never get glad!”
“He’s mad, Annie!”
“Nisht gefiddled!” she said spitefully. “Pooh! Who wants yuh!”
“Cry baby!” said Yussie disdainfully.
But David was already hurrying off.
At home, he could not help but observe in his mother’s actions a concealed nervousness, an irresolution as if under the strain of waiting. Unlike the fluent, methodical way in which she habitually moved about the kitchen, her manner now was disjointed, uncertain. In the midst of doing something or of saying something, she would suddenly utter a curious, suppressed exclamation like a sudden groan of dismay, or lift her hand in an obscure and hopeless gesture, or open her eyes as though staring at perplexity and brush back her hair. Everything she did seemed insecure and unfinished. She went from the sink to the window and left the water running and then remembering it was an odd overhastiness, turned, missed the handkerchief she was pegging to the clothesline and let it fall into the yard. A few minutes later, separating the yolks from the whites of the eggs to make the thick yellow pancakes that were to go with the soup, she cut the film of the yolk with eggshell, lost it in the whites. She stamped her foot, chirped with annoyance and brushed back her hair.