Chapter 18
Arthur invited the poker crowd to play at his house on a hot Saturday night in July. It was the first time the boys had visited him at Eighty-second Street. The game was set up in the dining room where Cy O’Malley, Tremont, Dick Reber, Hagerty, Chuck Adams, Paul Schmid, Lucy’s Uncle Ed, and Jack Michaels, a friend of Ed’s, were hard at play. Bemrose, who sat in the game for a while, was taking it easy now, stretched out on a sofa in the air-conditioned living room, visiting with Larry and with Edna Michaels.
The Michaels were new friends whom Marge and Ed Daugherty had brought around recently. Edna came from Albany and reminded Bemrose that they used to walk home from school together. Once he might have shied off Edna because she came from Albany, but ever since his illness, he seemed to want to talk about the old days. Maybe this recollection of his childhood relieved Arthur, or maybe it was just that he liked Edna.
Tonight Larry noted that Edna sat with one foot twisted under her in a defiance of comfort which seemed to pattern her life. She had left home at sixteen when her mother forbade her to squander a week’s salary on a red straw hat. Edna bought the hat, bummed a ride to New York, and as rapidly as nature’s lethargic process would permit, gave birth to a girl and boy by different men, unencumbered by marriage. She supported the children working as Jack Michaels’ secretary, learned the textile business from him, and when she became indispensable during and after business hours, he married her. That was ten years ago, and there had been another son by Jack who amiably transferred his name to the preceding anonymous offspring.
An unretouched white that streaked Edna’s dark hair was the only index to these rather severe episodes. Larry noted that she had retained her plump cheeks, unlined lips, and firm, single chin, but not by taking care of herself, he knew. In the milieu of lava around Edna, things exploded, seethed, boiled, erupted, or went dramatically flat. The source of eruption was always Edna herself who, even on days that ran smoothly, had a trick of inflating phases, moods, and chance incidents into “problems.” Edna’s ’teen age children did not merely refuse to wash or dress neatly, but “went through adolescence” with all the farce and tragedy she could inject into the inevitable transition. Her servants were not drab recruits from Harlem’s wage-earning thousands, but “types,” meriting the bold master stroke of a Hemingway. Instead of going through an early menopause aided by sound therapy, Edna manufactured enough adrenalin, thyroid, and estrogens to swing her giddily over the troughs of depression which bogged down other women. Since Jack Michaels had rescued her from major catastrophe, she had constantly been in minor trouble, synthesized, Larry decided, for the pleasure Edna had in telling about it.
Arthur bought aisle seats to Edna’s performances. He was encouraging her now to tell Larry a story she had excavated earlier in the week about the Albany days. Bemrose’s head lay back on the sofa as he laughingly recalled the details.
“Tell him about the time your brother Micky tied fifty knots in the sheets my mother hung up in the yard. Tell him what she did,” he urged.
“Clapped his ears and said his father must be a crook and his mother a whore to have such a kid.” Edna fluttered her eyelids in a false show of refinement.
“That was my mother all right. Her language upset my father’s sense of what was decent and proper. He was furious the time she rented an apartment over a garage. Do you remember that place?”
Edna nodded. “There was nothing wrong with it. It had steam heat.”
“It didn’t have a street address. My father worried what to tell people when they came to visit us. ‘We can’t tell them we live between number one forty-five and one forty-six,’ he’d say.”
“Couldn’t you tell them one forty-five and a half?” Larry asked.
“My mother wasn’t bothered for a minute. The rent was cheap, and it was the first steam-heated place we’d ever lived in. The entire two years we stayed there my father refused to invite anyone to the house.”
“People couldn’t stay away from your mother. They came anyway.” Edna talked rapidly with teeth that worked up and down like a cutting edge. “My mother always said she’d bust if she couldn’t tell Mrs. Bemrose her troubles.”
“She never went to school past the third grade, but all sorts of people used to ask her advice,” Arthur said thoughtfully. “The high school principal scared most of us. He was a quiet scared little man himself, a history teacher who lived in the time of Alexander the Great. He hated administrative work, and cut interviews short with the students so he could get back to his research. My mother went to see him about a college scholarship for me, and he kept her in his office for three and a half hours.” Arthur shrugged. “I still don’t know what they talked about, but I remember mother invited him to have coffee with us above the garage, and my father almost died of shame.”
Bemrose bent over and rubbed his legs which were stretched lifelessly on the sofa. “She insists they talked about children. He probably wanted her advice on how to run the school.” His voice, low and rhythmic when he was relaxed like this, gave Larry as much pleasure as a good performance at the theater. “A Mrs. Allen, one of the society women in town, took a shine to mother when she came to talk to her once about a neighborhood settlement house. Every month after that mother was invited for coffee at the Allens’ big place near the country club.”
“I never saw the inside of a nice house until I moved away,” Edna Michaels said. “Until I was seventeen, I never knew people had dining rooms.”
“You think you were poor,” Arthur protested. “I still can’t spend fifteen cents for a shine without feeling guilty. Do you know how many miles I used to walk to save fifteen cents?”
He had always tried to walk away from it, Larry decided, by excelling at college, by pushing and stretching his talent in practice, and by overdoing for others.
“Do you remember the time you shined my dad’s shoes with the wrong polish?” Edna asked.
Lucy and Marge, who had been busy in the dining room serving drinks, came over to empty the ash trays. Arthur made room for Lucy on the sofa next to him. “Go on, Edna, I’d like Lucy to hear.”
“You usually came around on Saturdays to sell dad a shine,” Edna reminded him. “I think you charged three cents, but most of the time he didn’t have that much on him. This Saturday he was flush and told you to go ahead. The kitchen was dark, and you shined his brown shoes with black polish. Boy, was he mad when he found out! He sent me right over the next morning to get you.”
Delighted, Arthur pressed Lucy’s hand. “I’ll never forget that Sunday. It was way below zero, and the garage pipes were frozen solid.”
“Dad threatened to sue you if you didn’t pay for the shoes,” Edna said.
“Hell, they were probably his only pair. They laced up high and must have cost him five dollars. It took me about a year, but I paid him back, didn’t I? Ten cents a week. I used to have nightmares about going to jail.”
“Kids always worry about things like that,” Edna added. “Once I knocked against a stove at a hardware store, and something crashed. I was sure the stove was broken, and I’d be locked up if the storekeeper found me. I ran out of the place scared, and for years wouldn’t walk near the block.”
“You don’t think your old man was mean enough to have me put in jail?” Arthur asked.
“He was mean enough, all right.”
“Mine was the sweetest, the mildest—” Bemrose looked thoughtful. “I didn’t know him well, not even as well as I knew the high school principal. As a kid I didn’t try to understand him, I took him for granted. Most of his life he was broke, and when he finally got hold of some money, he gave it away. A distant cousin looked me up not long ago and said my father had given him the money to finish medical school. He has a good practice now, and wanted to repay the family.”
“What’s his name? The doctor’s?” Marge said. The cross-hatching showed clearly under her eyes, and her mouth set tightly.
“Feeling nauseous?” Lucy picked up Marge’s hand which fell limply to her lap again.
Bemrose looked at Marge and reached for his crutches. He hobbled to the phone, balancing carefully on the telephone stool. Tremont Friendly called to him from the dining room to take a hand in the game, but Arthur went on dialing. “Ask him to do it as a special favor for Mr. Bemrose,” he told the operator.
On his way back to the sofa, Bemrose touched Marge’s cheek affectionately. “Make yourself comfortable upstairs,” he said. “The doctor will be over. I left word with the messenger service to reach him.”
“Why didn’t you let me phone for you?” Larry protested.
A few minutes later chairs shifted in the dining room, and Ed Daugherty wandered in with Jack Michaels. He glanced around nervously and asked for Marge.
“Upstairs resting,” Arthur told him. “What’s the matter? Is the game breaking up?”
“We’re sitting out a round or two,” Ed explained. “She hasn’t one of her migraines, has she?” he asked anxiously.
“I think Lucy said her stomach’s upset,” Arthur told him, and Edna nodded.
“She shouldn’t have had the shrimp salad,” Ed pulled gravely at his pipe. “She can’t take care of seafood, and she’s always ordering it. She’s allergic to shrimp.”
“Remember the Saturday we thumbed a ride out to the lake?” Edna broke in.
“Your brother was sent to bring us back,” Arthur assisted her.
“Can’t you two stop rehashing old times?” Ed sounded irritable. “What’s going to happen, Arthur? Are we or aren’t we going to open a second front? We seem to be taking our time.”
A second front. Less than a year ago he thought we should stay out altogether, Larry reflected. The hindsighters always were good at making a big noise, as if to cover up their wrong guesses.
“The Army’s not paying me to think any more,” Arthur said.
“You read the papers, don’t you?” Ed snapped. “All this dillydallying! Troops sitting over in England and Ireland twiddling their thumbs.”
Their guns, Larry silently corrected.
“There’s no reason why we should be pushed into anything until we’re thoroughly prepared,” Arthur said. “There’s no percentage in losing the few trained men we have.”
Some of the poker players trooped in from the dining room and gathered around Arthur.
“How about a little aggravation?” Cy O’Malley nodded toward the card table.
“You seem to be doing all right without me. Maybe Larry would like to sit in.”
“The host should be in the game,” Tremont reminded him.
“Ask Emil Post,” Chuck said, kidding Terry. “Come on, Arthur, you’ll never get another chance to play with us in a swell, air-cooled dump like this. Wait until Danny hears about the uptown competition.”
“Where’s Lucy?” Cy O’Malley looked around.
“She went upstairs with my wife,” Ed replied. “My wife’s allergic to seafood, and she ordered shrimp——”
“Tell Lucy to come down so I can make love to her.” Cy went to the dining room to find his highball, and on his way back called up the stairs. “Hey, Beautiful, come on down, I want to make love to you.”
Arthur laughed and turned to Edna Michaels. “My pals.”
Cy called to the others. “Time is money. What are we waiting for?” He settled on the arm of Edna’s chair and offered her a drink out of his glass. “Have you been here all evening?” Helplessly he addressed the others. “Why do we have to play poker when there are beautiful women around?”
Tremont lingered behind. “Sure you won’t join us, Arthur?”
“Not just now. The doctor’s coming over, and I’d have to quit anyway.”
“I’m sorry.” Terry looked concerned. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Thanks, but I’m feeling all right. He’s not coming to see me.”
Terry puckered his lips old-maidishly. “It’s sweet of you to have us up, Arthur. You know how much we all appreciate it, and we want to thank Mrs. Bemrose for going to the trouble——”
Cy whooped from the dining room, “Sandwiches!” and rushed in with a plate of food. “Found them covered up on the sideboard.”
“Maybe Mrs. Bemrose wanted to save them for later,” Terry protested.
“Uhnnufu.” Cy stuffed his mouth with sliced ham and rye bread. Swallowing, he said, “Danny can take lessons from Mrs. Beautiful,” and started back to the dining room, the plate tilted precariously.
From the doorway he turned around and winked at Edna.
Waving to him she said to Arthur, “They’re quite a gang.”
“The last few years I lost track of what really went on with any of them. I got too busy.” He turned to Larry for confirmation. “Larry tried to brief me. He was always telling me not to swap old friends for new clients, but a fellow gets—” Bemrose faltered. “A fellow gets caught up,” he finished.
“They feel swell about your inviting them. Reber and Hagerty told me it was the best session we’ve had since college,” Larry said.
“They’re good boys.”
Bemrose took an envelope out of his pocket and drew the diagram of a parlor problem in geometry which had to do with burning a hole in a carpet, and by one strategic cut, piecing the carpet into a standard size rug. “They’re right on the ball,” he said, preoccupied. “More than can be said for the clients. When the boys heard I was sick, they all wanted to know what they could do, but the clients, particularly the ones I thought were my friends——”
“Marge and Ed have been mighty attentive,” Larry reminded him.
“My own family couldn’t have done more. If I had a family that acted like one,” Arthur explained to Edna. “Not that I blame the folks. I lost touch with them, too, except for mailing a check home every month.”
“Has your mother been down since you’re sick?” Edna asked.
“My sister, Helen, still has t.b., and mother had to go to the mountains with her,” Bemrose explained.
“Give me her address, I’d like to write to her.”
Bemrose started Jack Michaels and Ed Daugherty on the rug problem and they worked silently with pencil and paper while he napped and Larry sat quietly with Edna, hearing the slap of poker chips from the next room.
When the doorbell rang, Lucy called down to Larry. The servants were out for the evening. Lucy had purposely let them go out so the boys would feel more at home.
The doctor, a harassed man with blotchy complexion and inflated cheeks, asked anxiously at the door, “Did Mr. Bemrose have an accident?”
“No, he’s fine,” Larry assured him. “It’s Mrs. Bemrose’s aunt. She took sick suddenly.”
“A neurological case?”
“You’d better talk to Mr. Bemrose before you go up.”
Larry returned to the next room and tapped Arthur’s shoulder. Bemrose instinctively reached for his crutches when he awakened, the way a myopic feels for his eyeglasses in the morning.
Larry pointed toward the hallway and whispered the message to Arthur, trying not to attract Ed’s attention.
“I’ll go up with him,” Arthur volunteered.
“Talk to him in the hall. I’ll take him up.”
“No, I want to.” Stubbornly Bemrose swung to the door and greeted the doctor whom he invited to follow him.
“Let me,” Larry offered.
“Marge would do it for me,” Arthur insisted, and handing his crutches to Larry, managed the stairs alone by clinging to the handrail.
Larry kibitzed the game a while, and finally had the boys deal him in. He lost fifteen dollars in the next half hour. Paul Schmid suggested that they quit, ribbing him about starting to play too late to get his money back, but Larry didn’t mind the loss. He was anxious to clear out so that the Bemroses could look after Marge undisturbed.
When the boys went in to say goodnight a little later, the doctor had gone and Arthur, Lucy, and Marge were downstairs in the living room. Larry sat down next to Marge. “Is it serious?” he asked.
“I have to go to another doctor in the morning and take a test.” She rolled her eyes and pressed Larry’s arm. “Don’t say anything to Ed.”
“Have you figured out the rug problem?” Larry called over.
Ed’s eyes looked red from rubbing them. “It’s a stickler, all right. Are you sure it can be done with one cut?”
“Absolutely. Your nephew solved it in ten minutes.”
“Arthur did?” Ruefully Ed took out his watch. “We must have been at it half an hour.”
At the door Cy picked up Lucy, tossed her in the air, and kissed her goodbye on both cheeks.
Breathlessly she tried to answer Larry about Marge. “Arthur will remember the name of the test.”
“Ascheim-Zondek,” Arthur said.
“You mean she might be—” Incredulously Larry looked at Marge.
Outside the entrance Ed was mopping his face and complaining about the heat.