He stopped, looked at the window and as he was about to step closer, shrill familiar voices hailed him from behind.
“Hey, Davy!”
He turned. They were Izzy and Maxie; both lived in his block and both were in his class in school.
“W’ea yuh goin’?” Izzy asked.
“No place.”
“So w’y wuz yuh lookin’ in de Chinkee-chinaman’s windeh?”
“’Cause my modder god hea de lundry, bot she didn’ ged no nots.”
“So yuh wanna esk?” Izzy caught hold of the idea quickly. “Comm on, we’ll all go in.”
“Naa, I jos’ wannid t’look.” David thought rapidly. “Maybe my modder’ll comm hea after, so I’ll go in.”
With one accord, they drew near the window, peered in under the shade of cupped hands. Within, behind the high-counter, painted green, the queued and slant-eyed laundry-man blew a spray of water on a piece of laundry out of a tin atomizer. He seemed too absorbed in his work to notice them.
“Betcha yuh could ged now!” Izzy urged. “Hey, Maxie, you go in an’ say yuh Davy, like dat. So he’ll t’ink yuh Davy, so he’ll give. So we’ll ged. Yeh? Den Danvy’s mama’ll comm so we’ll ged again.”
“Yaa!” Maxie declined. “Go in yuhself! Dey god long knifes!”
“Like a lady, he looks,” said Izzy reflectively. “Wod a big tail he’s god on his head. Led’s knock on de windeh. Maybe he’ll look op.”
“Maybe he’ll run afteh yuh too.” Maxie objected.
Izzy pressed his nose against the glass. “I knew a Chinky,” he declared. “Wot he didn’ hev no hen’s. So he wrote wit’ de mout’ wit’ dot stick all de funny like dat”—he squirmed and contracted into ideographs—“on de tickets.”
“So how did he irun, wise guy?” Maxie sneered almost wearily. “How did he hol’ de bigl-irun?”
“He didn’ hol’ id. Sommbody else holded id.”
“Yuh see w’ea de Chinee nots is?” Maxie peered obliquely into the window. “In dot box? Yee! yum! yum! Dey break foist easy. Den dere’s inside soft an’ good. Yum! Den dere’s inside black wood. So id’s hod an’ slippery. So yuh hol’ id in yuh mout’, so it gives wawdeh.”
“I know sommbody,” Izzy contributed, “wod he bruck de hod pod wid a hemmeh. An’ inside wuz annuder liddle suft an’ good. An’ inside wuz annuder liddle black one. So he bruck dat. An’ inside wuz anudder liddle suft an’ good one an’ inside wuz unudder liddle hod one. So—”
“So wot?” Maxie demanded belligerently.
“So he lost id.”
“Pfuy!”
They were silent a moment, and then Izzy wistfully. “Bet I could eat a million!”
“Me too!” Maxie concurred eagerly. “W’en’s yuh modder commin’?”
David was startled. He hadn’t thought they would take him seriously. “I don’ know,” he answered evasively and began backing away from the window.
“But yuh said she wuz commin’,” they insisted, following him.
“Maybe she ain’. I don’ know.”
“So w’ea yuh goin’?” They turned south toward Ninth, he north toward Tenth.
“No place.” He looked blank.
“Wadda boob!” said Izzy vehemently. “He neveh hengs oud wid nobody.”
And so they parted.
VIII
WHEN he came home, his father had already risen. Naked above the waist, the upper half of his heavy underwear hanging below his knees, he stood before the sink, drying the gleaming razor between the pinched ends of a towel. Under the blue mantle-light, his shaven face was stone-grey, harsher yet handsomer. The broad spindles and mounds of muscles along his arm and shoulders knotted powerfully as he moved. The muscles on his breast and smooth belly were square and flat. A few dark hairs curled over the white skin of his chest. He was powerful, his father, much more powerful than he looked fully dressed. It seemed to David, standing there before the door that he had never seen him before. And he stood there almost in awe until the single cursory glance his father cast at him, pricked him into motion and he walked waveringly toward his mother. She smiled.
“And now my second man,” she said lightly. “Come! To your labors.”
Looking round while he shed his coat and sweater, he saw that the kitchen was immaculate. The stove had been polished. The linoleum, newly mopped, glistened warmly. The windows were stainless against the blue twilight. The table, already set, had been covered with his favorite cloth, white, with narrow gold lines crossing in broad squares. He unbuttoned his shirt, removed it, slid out of his underwear just as his father was wrestling into his, and glancing at his own slender, puny arms, glanced up in time to see the last flicker of long sinews before the naked arm was sheathed. How long would it be, he wondered, before those knots appeared above his own elbow and those tough, taut braids on his own forearm. He wished it were soon, wished it were today, this minute. Strong, how strong his father was, stronger than he’d ever be. A twinge of envy and despair ran through him. He’d never have those tendons, those muscles that even beneath the thick undershirt, bulged and flattened between shoulder and armpit, No, he’d never be that strong, and yet he had to be, he had to be. He didn’t know why, but he had to be!
“Good warm water,” said his mother filling a basin in the sink. “Now that we’ve a fire in the stove.”
She pulled up a chair before the sink. David climbed up and began washing. Behind him, they were silent a few seconds and then he heard above the water he splashed about his ears, a crackling sound that reminded him of frozen wash bending. And his father’s growl.
“One needs a wedge to get into these sleeves. Do they starch them with plaster?”
“Apparently! I don’t know why they do it.” She paused. “But only this once! And if we suit him, only once more!”
“Hmph!” he grunted while the crackling continued. “Let it come soon! If she thinks I of all people would throw obstacles in her way, she’s out of her head. I wouldn’t wear this plaster shirt if I didn’t hope to get rid of her. You can tell her that for me if that’s why she’s been so secretive.”
“It wasn’t because of that, Albert. She wasn’t afraid you would interfere. But after all, these things happen — well — not very often in a woman’s life, and she wasn’t sure. Besides, she was a little frightened — a widower, a wife in her grave — a little ashamed, you see.”
“Pph! I’d call her fortunate if she were his sixth wife! And as far as he’s concerned, a Russian doesn’t know better and doesn’t deserve better. But these underhanded wiles — Dentists four nights a week, gold-teeth, powder, mirrors! That fidgeting! Only God knew what she was up to!”
“They weren’t so underhanded, Albert!” While she spoke, she pointed out to David, who had turned with dripping face, the towel beside the clean white shirt on the washtub. “Love, marriage, whatever one calls it, does that to one, makes one uncertain, wary. One wants to appear better than one is.”
“It did that to you I suppose.”
“Yes.” She seemed hesitant. “Of course!”
“Bah!”
“Of course!” she reiterated, and then laughing. “You know how the old song goes: In this way and that, one beguiles the groom.”
“Beguiles!” The lean, grey features sharpened. “Beguiles!” And then looking away absently, “Much to beguile — a Russian and a widower.”
“But Albert!” she smiled slyly. “A Russian-Jew is also a man.”
“I grant you.”
“And she’ll make him a good wife. Bertha is shrewd and what counts more she isn’t shy. Clothes, she has no use for. And with a candy store of her own,” she laughed, “there will be nothing for her to spend money on. From what she’s told me, that’s the kind of wife this Nathan wants.”