“My, what a big ball that is for such a little fellow.”
Well, anyone could see it was a big ball. Why did she have to tell him that? Why didn’t she go home where she lived?
“How old are you?”
What did she have to know how old he was for? “Five anna haff goin’ on six.”
“Just think. Whose little boy are you?”
What did she have to know whose little boy he was for? He wasn’t hers, she ought to know that by looking at him. “My mothers and father’s,” he mumbled patronizingly. How could anyone by anyone else’s?
“And what’s your father’s name, dear?” Didn’t she know anything at all?
She probably meant that vague, formal, never-used name that his father seemed to have for an extra appendage; not the logical “Daddy.”
“Mista Moran,” he parroted.
She said something about a door. “How doorable.” Then she said, “Have you any brothers and sisters?”
“Nope.”
“Ah, what a shame! Don’t you miss them?”
How could you miss them when you never had them? However, he could vaguely sense some sort of personal reflection involved in not having any, so he immediately tried to make good the lack with substitutes. “I got a grandma, though.”
“Isn’t that lovely? Does she live right with you?”
One’s grandma never did, didn’t she know that? “She lives in Garrison.” Another substitute came to mind with that mental image, so he threw her into the gap, too. “So does my Aunt Ada, too.” Wasn’t she ever going to let him go ahead bouncing his ball?
“Oh, all the way up there!” she marveled. “Were you ever up there to meet her?”
“Shoe I was, when I was little. But Dr. Bixby said I made too much noise, so mommy hadda bring me back home again.”
“Is Dr. Bixby your grandma’s doctor, dear?”
“Shoe, he comes there lots.”
“Tell me, dear, have you started school yet?”
What an insulting question! How old did she think he was, anyway — two? “Shoe. I go to kindergarten every day,” he said self-importantly.
“And what do you do there, dear?”
“We draw ducks and rabbits and cows. Miss Baker gave me a gole star for drawin’ a cow.” Wasn’t she ever going to go away and leave him be? This felt like it had kept up for hours. He could have bounced his ball all the way up to the corner and back, the time she’d made him waste.
He tried to go around one side of her, and she finally took the hint. “Well, dear, run along and play, I won’t keep you any longer.” She patted him twice on the bullet-shaped back of his head and moved off down the sidewalk, throwing him a fetching smile backward over her shoulder.
His mother’s voice suddenly sounded through the screen of the open ground-floor window. She must have been sitting there the whole time. You could see out through the screen, but you couldn’t see in through it; he’d found that out long ago. “What was the nice lady saying to you. Cookie?” she asked benevolently. A grown-up would have detected a note of instinctive pride that her offspring was so remarkable in every way he even attracted the attention of passing strangers.
“She wanned to know how ole I was,” he answered absently. He turned his attention to more important business. “Mommy, watch. Look how high I can throw this!”
“Yes, dear, but not too high, it might roll into the gutter.”
A moment later he’d already forgotten the incident. Two moments later his mother had.
II
Moran
Moran’s wife had called up the office while he was out to lunch; there was a message from her waiting there for him when he got back.
This didn’t startle him; it was a fairly frequent occurrence, on an average of every third day. Something she’d found out she needed from downtown and wanted him to stop off and get for her on his way home, most likely, he thought at first. Then on second thought he saw it couldn’t quite be that, either, or, having failed to reach him, she would have simply left the message with the switchboard girl. Unless, of course, it was something that needed more detailed instructions than could be conveniently conveyed at secondhand.
He made use of his brief after-lunch digestive torpor to phone.
“Here’s your wife, Mr. Moran.”
“Frank—” Margaret’s voice sounded emotionally charged, so he knew right away, before she’d got any further than his name, that this was more than just a purchase errand.
“H’lo, dear, what’s up?”
“Oh, Fuh-rank, I’m awfully glad you got back! I’m worried sick, I don’t know what to do. I just got a telegram from Ada half an hour ago—”
Ada was her unmarried sister, upstate. “A telegram?” he said. “Why a telegram?”
“Well, that’s just it. Here, I’ll read it to you.” It took her a moment or two; she must have had to fumble for it in her apron pocket and unfold it with one hand. “It says, ‘Mother down with bad spell, don’t want to frighten you but suggest you come at once. Dr. Bixby agrees. Don’t delay. Ada.’ ”
“I suppose it’s her heart again,” he said somewhat less than compassionately. Why’d she have to bother him in the middle of the business day with something like this?
She had begun to whimper in a low-keyed restrained way that was not quite outright weeping — a sort of frightened watering of her conversation.
“Frank, what’ll I do? D’you think I ought to call them up long distance?”
“If she wants you to go up there, you better go up there,” he answered shortly.
She’d evidently wanted to hear this advice; it chimed in with her own inclinations. “I guess I’d better,” she agreed tearfully. “You know Ada, she’s anything but an alarmist, she’s always been inclined to minimize these things before now. The last time mother had one of her spells she didn’t even let me know about it until it was all over, to keep from worrying me.”
“Don’t get so unnerved about it. Your mother’s had these spells before and gotten over them,” he tried to point out.
But her distress had already taken a different tack. “But what’ll I do about you and Cookie?”
He took umbrage at being lumped together with his five-year-old son in helplessness. “I can look after him,” he said sharply. “I’m no cripple. Do you want me to find out what buses there are for you?”
“I’ve already done that myself, and there’s one at five. If I take a later one I’ll have to sit up all night, and you know how miserable that is.”
“You better take the early one,” he agreed.
The pace of her conversation quickened, became a flurry. “I’m all packed — just an overnight bag. Now, Frank, will you meet me at the terminal?”
“O.K., O.K.” He was starting to get a little impatient with this endless rigmarole. Women didn’t know how to make a telephone call short and to the point. His secretary was standing in the doorway, waiting to consult him about something
“And, Frank, be sure you’re there on time. Remember, you’ll have to take Cookie home with you. I’ll have him with me; I’m picking him up at the kindergarten on my way downtown.”
As punctual as he made it a point to be, Margaret was already there ahead of him when he got down to the terminal, with the little dab of foreshortened humanity that was Cookie by her side. The latter began to jump up and down, giving vertical emphasis to the important information he had to impart. “Daddy, mommy’s going away! Mommy’s going away!”