“She doesn’t want to stay here any longer than necessary either.”
“She’d better not. And him! He’s harmless. I might have pitied him. I might have thought, the poor idiot, he doesn’t know what he’s getting. Perhaps she’s hidden her true self from him. But now I despise him! A weakling! After what he’s seen and heard to want to marry that — that vile mouth! It would shame the water-carrier in a Russian bath! To give his children into the keeping of such a one. He deserves nothing but scorn!”
“Let him look out for that. Surely he’s old enough and has seen enough and experienced enough to know what he wants. Perhaps he can even learn to handle her, one can never tell.”
“Handle her! That button-hole maker. It takes a whip hand! I say he’d best begin digging his grave. But what do I care?” He shook his head savagely as though enraged at himself for showing any concern about Aunt Bertha’s future. “Let her marry anyone, and anyone her. Let her listen to that fool’s drivel about blindness and vinegar all her life. But if she thinks she can make light with me because she has a man with her, she’d better be careful. She’s jesting with the angel of death!”
“Just don’t mind her, Albert! Please! Let her go her own way. She’ll let you go yours. I know! She’ll probably not bring him here any more than she can help. They’re already talking about rings.”
“Well, as long as she stays here, she’d better be careful or I’ll shorten her stay.” He snuffed grimly through his nostrils, stared darkly before him at the opposite wall. His eyes lit on the picture. He frowned. “On what heap did you find that?”
“That?” Her eyes traveled upward. “On a pushcart on Avenue C. I thought I couldn’t make more than a ten-cent mistake, so I bought it. You don’t like it?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps I would if you had gotten it for some other occasion. But now—” He scowled. “Why did you get a picture of corn anyway?”
“Green,” she said mildly. “Austrian lands. What would you have chosen?”
“Something alive.” He reached for the newspaper. “A herd of cattle drinking such as I’ve seen in the stores. Or a prize bull with a shine to his flanks and the black fire in his eyes.”
“That ought not to be difficult. I’m sure I could find you one of those as well.”
“You’d better let me get it,” he said curtly. And flapping the newspaper open, leaned over it. “I’m apt to be a better judge.”
She lifted her brow resignedly and then glanced at David with a faint, significant smile as though letting him share with her the knowledge that his father had been mollified and danger was over. She turned back to the sink.
IX
ON SUNDAY — a bright Sunday just before Election day — David’s father had gotten up from the table after lunch, and with some curt remark about going to listen to a campaign speech, had left. After he was gone however, Aunt Bertha scoffed at his sudden interest in political candidates and resentfully put her finger on what she declared was the real reason for his departure: Nathan (They all called Mr. Sternowitz by his first name now) was coming to call on her later this afternoon, and so David’s father had gone away merely to avoid him. Which act, Aunt Bertha added venomously, was a very gracious one, albeit unwitting, and one for which she was very thankful, since she saw no reason to inflict that man’s rude and surly presence on poor Nathan Sternowitz. Thus instead of insulting her, she concluded with spiteful triumph, David’s father had really done her a good turn — but now that he had done it, she devoutly hoped he would break a leg on the way to wherever he was going. And when David’s mother objected, Aunt Bertha charitably informed her that had her husband not been the sole support of his family, she would have prayed he had broken both legs. There! Wasn’t that solicitude? And then followed her usual, disgusted query of why her sister had married such a lunatic.
David’s mother had just folded the table cloth and now she waved it warningly at Aunt Bertha. “He’ll overhear you some day, sister, and you’ll pay for it dearly.”
“Even with my head!” she retorted defiantly. “Just so he knows what I think of him.”
His mother shook her head impatiently. “He does know! Don’t you think he’s had enough time to find out? And honestly I’m so weary of keeping you two from flying at each other. Albert must go his own way, but you — you might think of me sometimes and not make it so difficult. Let there be peace for a while. You’re going to get married. You won’t be here very much longer. Are you seeking to make your last months here end in a catastrophe?”
“Not for me!” her sister tossed her red head wilfully. “He won’t throw me against the wall again. I’ll gouge his eyes out.”
His mother shrugged. “Why tempt him?”
“Ach, you make me sick — you and your mildness! Put poison in his coffee, that’s what I’d do.”
And David who was staring at her partly in wonder at her rashness, partly in guilty elation, caught his mother’s apprehensive look directed at himself. And his aunt, detecting it also, added vociferously,
“I would! I would poison him! Let him hear me! I’m not afraid.”
“But Bertha! I am afraid! You mustn’t say those things before — ach!” she broke off. “That’s enough Bertha.” And turning to David. “Are you going downstairs, beloved?”
“Right away, Mama,” he answered. But inwardly, he was too fascinated by his aunt’s bold vituperations to want to leave just yet.
Rebuked by his mother, Aunt Bertha shrugged discontentedly, clucked her lips, wagged her head, but the next moment rebounded in her usual mad-cap fashion, and with head tilted upward bayed some Polish phrases at the ceiling. To David’s mystification, the unknown words seemed to sting his mother, for she stiffened and suddenly exclaimed with uncommon sharpness—
“That’s nonsense, Bertha!”
“Are you angry this time?” Her sister shook down several strands of coarse red hair before a provocatively wrinkled nose.
“Yes! I wish you’d stop!”
“Beloved and holy Name, give ear! She really can get angry! But listen to me! I have a right to be angry as well. I’ve been living with you for six months. For six months I’ve told you every thing, and what have you told me? Nothing! I’m no longer a child! I’m not the fourteen year old I was when you were a grown young lady. I’m about to be married. Can’t you trust me? Won’t I understand? Aaaah!” she sighed vehemently. “Would God, those twins had lived instead of died. They’d have been old enough to have seen, to have known. Then I’d have known too — Well?” She demanded challengingly.
“I don’t want to go into it.” His mother was curt. “I’ve told you before. It’s too long ago. It’s too painful. And further I haven’t time.”
“Bah!” she flopped suddenly into a chair. “Now you haven’t time. It’s just as I said. First—” She lapsed suddenly into Polish. “Very well. You might be forgiven. Then—” Again meaning disappeared. “Then — It’s just as I said! Keep it for yourself! I’ll get married without knowing.” And she was silent, staring morosely out of the window.
At the opposite side of the room, his mother was also silent, also before a window, head lifted, gazing meditatively up at the brown, glazed brim of the rooftop and the red brick chimneys overhead. To David, they looked very odd suddenly, each woman back to back, each gazing out of different windows, one down out of the curtained, noisy, street-window, the other up out of the curtainless, quiet one; one seated, fidgeting and ineffectually trying to cross thick knees, the other standing motionless and abstracted. Despite powder his aunt was ruddy in the sunlight, short-necked and squat beside the open sky; in the thin shadow where she stood, his mother was tall, brown-haired and pale against the cramping air-shaft wall.