She kept on talking like that, but pretty soon came the rumble of her train, and I went down to the platform with her to see her aboard. She wouldn’t let me take her to her berth, but said goodbye on the step, after the redcap went aboard with her things. We shook hands, and she pushed her cheek against my face, and I remembered to wish her well with the engagement. She turned to go, then came running down the steps again, pulled me to her, and kissed me warm on the mouth, the only time she did, ever. Then she ran into the car.
5
But we never went on with my voice, because in the first place when it got through turning it was nothing but a beer-barrel bass, just good enough, with what was left of the belly support she had given me, to fool somebody that didn’t know anything about music, and just bad enough, from the wood that had got into it, to set crazy somebody that did. And in the second place she never came back, except once, when she dropped by the house at the end of the summer to say hello, after she got home from the opera. I was plenty glad to see her, and proud of the two inches I had grown, and of the blue spot on my lip, where I had begun to shave. But she seemed anxious to get away, and I thought it funny she said nothing about coming over to make peach ice cream, which she had cooked and I had cranked. Next day I found out she had met another lady, and was going to open a studio with her in New York. She wrote me for years and I wrote her, and she didn’t drop out of my life. But she wasn’t in it either, and it would come over me all the time, the loneliness I had felt the day I beat up Anderson. I didn’t mope off by myself, it was nothing like that. I went around with guys and played on the high-school basketball team and got moved from forward to center on account of the way I was shooting up all the time, and studied a little. Anyhow, I got A in math and physics and mechanics, and C in English and French and Sociology. But I got D in deportment on account of the fights I got into, which was the tip-off on how I was enjoying life.
It didn’t help any, the Old Man’s idea of how to get me interested in the serious side of life, on the basis of what we were going to do with the music money. I hadn’t paid much attention to it, that I remember now, except to do what Miss Eleanor had said do, which was to put most of it, around $4,500, in a savings account, and try to spend as little of the rest as possible. But when the end of the summer came around, and all the stores advertised sales on suits, it seemed a good idea I should buy one. There was nothing very new about it, as I’d already bought one, the one I wore to Margaret’s german, my first with long pants, back in the spring, so it wasn’t as though I was starting a one-guy revolution. But when I found a number I liked pretty well, a pin-striped, double-breasted blue in the window at the Hub, with fedora hat, malacca stick, and two-toned, suede-topped shoes to go with it, all exactly like the signed picture of Antonio Scotti that Miss Eleanor had had on the piano, you’d have thought I had set the garage on fire or something. Sheila wept and tore her hair and said I looked like “lower Broadway,” whatever that was. Nancy said I certainly had fallen under “peculiar influences.” And it was all the worse, from the standpoint of crossing me up, because the suit had had one effect of a most desirable kind, before they even saw it. I wore it home, of course, but took the car that ran near Miss Deets’s house to check with Denny on what we were doing that night, or anyhow that’s what I made out I was stopping by for. Mainly it was to let him get a load of the dazzola-dizzola, and it certainly worked. Since the flop at Camden he had been getting familiar again, marching right beside me, catching in step. But the suit did it. I didn’t advertise it, didn’t even remember it. I just asked if he could make it the late show that night, instead of the first, as there were things I had to do after dinner. He nodded and didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I could tell by the look in his eye.
So when I ran into this bawling out on Mt. Royal Terrace I felt like a typographical error. But so far as my father was concerned, nothing came of it that night, or the next, or for a month or two. It wasn’t till the cold weather hit, and Miss Eleanor had left for New York, and Denny for Frederick, that I was invited in the den one Saturday afternoon, just after lunch, and just before I was due to shove off for a football game. “Jack, I think you need a new coat.”
“I’m going to get one.”
“I’ll get it. I — had intended to.”
“I can get it. I’ve got money.”
“I think it my duty to clothe you yet, whether you’ve been fortunate about money or not. And, as to attire, you might be guided by older persons’ advice. On taste, suitability, such things. I — can’t say the latest acquisition impresses me a great deal.”
“You mean my suit?”
“Aye — and accessories.”
“What’s the matter with them?”
“A bit romantic, I would say.”
“I don’t get it.”
“‘Romantic’ means associated with the Mediterranean Sea.”
“I got it at the Hub.”
“I talked with Mr. Spicer down there, and he was good enough to inquire of the salesman who served you, and learn the circumstances. It seems you mentioned certain singers.”
“Mr. Scotti’s a dresser.”
“Perhaps that’s why I take exception.”
He started talking about clothes, and why a dresser’s not generally a guide on how to dress, all pretty good stuff, as I know now. He said taste is always acquired, and invariably relative, and that the main thing to be remembered was that appropriateness was its basic element. Wine fit for fish, he said, is not necessarily fit for beef, and clothes fit for the Metropolitan Opera weren’t necessarily the right things for Mt. Royal Terrace, Baltimore, Md. But I was still pining for Miss Eleanor, and all I could make out of it was some kind of a crack at her. “If there was something wrong with singers it’s funny Dr. Grant would put one in charge of us.”
“Did I say something against singers?”
“Sounded like it.”
“Why, I’ve been a singer. Mr. McCormack and I—”
“Yeah, I know about that.”
“As for Miss Grant, I’ve nothing but admiration for her. I was perfectly content, you may remember, that you study with her. I may say that the first suit you got yourself, at a time when you were seeing so much of her, and as I suppose accepting her guidance, did you credit — so much so that I refrained from raising the issue of parental authority, and forbade my sisters to do so.”
“I had no guidance.”
“Then you did very well. However, we’ll do better, for the next few years anyway, if you accept some sort of supervision. Tomorrow we’ll both go over to the Hub, I’ll resume my duties as a father, and I imagine come out of it with something creditable in the way of a coat.”
But who went to the Hub was all four of us, Nancy, Sheila, he, and I. And for some reason I don’t understand, even now as I write about it, I just wouldn’t try anything on. I just sat there, and when we came home it was pretty thick and each of them went upstairs.
But the weather kept getting colder, and I kept thinking of a coat I had seen a guy try on that day, a blue, with a belt, and long loose lines that would just go with the double-breasted suit. So one day I went down there, and it was still unsold, and I tried it on. It fit like it had been poured on me. I paraded up and down in front of all the mirrors, and tried it with the stick and without the stick, and the more I tried it the better I liked it. So I took it and sat down and wrote a check. I wanted to wear it out of there, but they said something about pressing it and lengthening the sleeves a bit, which of course I know now had to do with the check, which wasn’t something a fourteen-year-old boy came in there with every day. But then I paid no attention, and went home, and began watching for delivery trucks. But instead of a truck, one day came a letter from them. They said no doubt there had been some mistake; but would I kindly straighten the matter out so they could send me my coat? And enclosed was my check. On it was a stamp that said payment had been refused, but the reason it had been refused was written in ink, and I couldn’t make it out. So at lunch hour that day I went around to the bank and talked to Mr. Parrot. “Yes, Jack, it was the only thing we could do, and in fact I handled it myself. But there’s the court order, and it’s binding on us.”