‘Muddy.’ ‘Yes deary,’ the voice wailed frailly through the folding doors.
‘Dinner’s ready mother dear.’
‘You begin darling boy, I’ll be right in…’
‘But I dont want to begin without you mother.’
He walked round the table straightening knives and forks. He put a napkin over his arm. The head waiter at Delmonico’s was arranging the table for Graustark and the Blind King of Bohemia and Prince Henry the Navigator and…
‘Mother who d’you want to be Mary Queen of Scots or Lady Jane Grey?’
‘But they both had their heads chopped off honey… I dont want to have my head chopped off.’ Mother had on her salmon-colored teagown. When she opened the folding doors a wilted smell of cologne and medicines seeped out of the bedroom, trailed after her long lacefringed sleeves. She had put a little too much powder on her face, but her hair, her lovely brown hair was done beautifully. They sat down opposite one another; she set a plate of soup in front of him, lifting it between two long blueveined hands.
He ate the soup that was watery and not hot enough. ‘Oh I forgot the croûtons, honey.’
‘Muddy… mother why arent you eating your soup?’
‘I dont seem to like it much this evening. I couldn’t think what to order tonight my head ached so. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Would you rather be Cleopatra? She had a wonderful appetite and ate everything that was put before her like a good little girl.’
‘Even pearls… She put a pearl in a glass of vinegar and drank it down…’ Her voice trembled. She stretched out her hand to him across the table; he patted her hand manfully and smiled. ‘Only you and me Jimmy boy… Honey you’ll always love your mother wont you?’
‘What’s the matter muddy dear?’
‘Oh nothing; I feel strange this evening… Oh I’m so tired of never really feeling well.’
‘But after you’ve had your operation…’
‘Oh yes after I’ve had my operation… Deary there’s a paper of fresh butter on the windowledge in the bathroom… I’ll put some on these turnips if you fetch it for me… I’m afraid I’ll have to complain about the food again. This lamb’s not all it should be; I hope it wont make us sick.’
Jimmy ran through the folding doors and his mother’s room into the little passage that smelled of mothballs and silky bits of clothing littered on a chair; the red rubber tubing of a douche swung in his face as he opened the bathroom door; the whiff of medicines made his ribs contract with misery. He pushed up the window at the end of the tub. The ledge was gritty and feathery specks of soot covered the plate turned up over the butter. He stood a moment staring down the airshaft, breathing through his mouth to keep from smelling the coalgas that rose from the furnaces. Below him a maid in a white cap leaned out of a window and talked to one of the furnacemen who stood looking up at her with his bare grimy arms crossed over his chest. Jimmy strained his ears to hear what they were saying; to be dirty and handle coal all day and have grease in your hair and up to your armpits.
‘Jimmee!’
‘Coming mother.’ Blushing he slammed down the window and walked back to the sittingroom, slowly so that the red would have time to fade out of his face.
‘Dreaming again, Jimmy. My little dreamer.’
He put the butter beside his mother’s plate and sat down.
‘Hurry up and eat your lamb while it’s hot. Why dont you try a little French mustard on it? It’ll make it taste better.’
The mustard burnt his tongue, brought tears to his eyes.
‘Is it too hot?’ mother asked laughing. ‘You must learn to like hot things… He always liked hot things.’
‘Who mother?’
‘Someone I loved very much.’
They were silent. He could hear himself chewing. A few rattling sounds of cabs and trolleycars squirmed in brokenly through the closed windows. The steampipes knocked and hissed. Down the airshaft the furnaceman with grease up to his armpits was spitting words out of his wabbly mouth up at the maid in the starched cap - dirty words. Mustard’s the color of…
‘A penny for your thoughts.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of anything.’
‘We mustn’t have any secrets from each other dear. Remember you’re the only comfort your mother has in the world.’
‘I wonder what it’d be like to be a seal, a little harbor seal.’
‘Very chilly I should think.’
‘But you wouldn’t feel it… Seals are protected by a layer of blubber so that they’re always warm even sitting on an iceberg. But it would be such fun to swim around in the sea whenever you wanted to. They travel thousands of miles without stopping.’
‘But mother’s traveled thousands of miles without stopping and so have you.’
‘When?’
‘Going abroad and coming back.’ She was laughing at him with bright eyes.
‘Oh but that’s in a boat.’
‘And when we used to go cruising on the Mary Stuart.’
‘Oh tell me about that muddy.’
There was a knock. ‘Come.’ The spikyhaired waiter put his head in the door.
‘Can I clear mum?’
‘Yes and bring me some fruit salad and see that the fruit is fresh cut… Things are wretched this evening.’
Puffing, the waiter was piling dishes on the tray. ‘I’m sorry mum,’ he puffed.
‘All right, I know it’s not your fault waiter… What’ll you have Jimmy?’
‘May I have a meringue glacé muddy?’
‘All right if you’ll be very good.’
‘Yea,’ Jimmy let out a yell.
‘Darling you mustn’t shout like that at table.’
‘But we dont mind when there are just the two of us… Hooray meringue glacé.’
‘James a gentleman always behaves the same way whether he’s in his own home or in the wilds of Africa.’
‘Gee I wish we were in the wilds of Africa.’
‘I’d be terrified, dear.’
‘I’d shout like that and scare away all the lions and tigers… Yes I would.’
The waiter came back with two plates on the tray. ‘I’m sorry mum but meringue glacé’s all out… I brought the young gentleman chocolate icecream instead.’
‘Oh mother.’
‘Never mind dear… It would have been too rich anyway… You eat that and I’ll let you run out after dinner and buy some candy.’
‘Oh goody.’
‘But dont eat the icecream too fast or you’ll have collywobbles.’
‘I’m all through.’
‘You bolted it you little wretch… Put on your rubbers honey.’
‘But it’s not raining at all.’
‘Do as your mother wants you dear… please dont be long. I put you on your honor to come right back. Mother’s not a bit well tonight and she gets so nervous when you’re out in the street. There are such terrible dangers…’
He sat down to pull on his rubbers. While he was snapping them tight over his heels she came to him with a dollar bill. She put her arm with its long silky sleeve round his shoulder. ‘Oh my darling.’
She was crying.
‘Mother you mustnt.’ He squeezed her hard; he could feel the ribs of her corset against his arms. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, in the teenciest weenciest minute.’
On the stairs where a brass rod held the dull crimson carpet in place on each step, Jimmy pulled off his rubbers and stuffed them into the pockets of his raincoat. With his head in the air he hurried through the web of prying glances of the bellhops on the bench beside the desk. ‘Goin fer a walk?’ the youngest lighthaired bellhop asked him. Jimmy nodded wisely, slipped past the staring buttons of the doorman and out onto Broadway full of clangor and footsteps and faces putting on shadowmasks when they slid out of the splotches of light from stores and arclamps. He walked fast uptown past the Ansonia. In the doorway lounged a blackbrowed man with a cigar in his mouth, maybe a kidnapper. But nice people live in the Ansonia like where we live. Next a telegraph office, drygoods stores, a dyers and cleaners, a Chinese laundry sending out a scorched mysterious steamy smell. He walks faster, the chinks are terrible kidnappers. Footpads. A man with a can of coaloil brushes past him, a greasy sleeve brushes against his shoulder, smells of sweat and coaloil; suppose he’s a firebug. The thought of firebug gives him gooseflesh. Fire. Fire.