Letting Go (46 page)

After lunch my temperature shot up, and Dr. Slimmer came to give me another shot of penicillin. We pushed him for a diagnosis of my case, but he took another twelve dollars, whispered some words about an X virus, and drove off in his Thunderbird.

“If he’d only say he didn’t know! Just once. Honest to God, I’m going to start packing for England.”

“Why don’t you get another doctor?”

“I can’t. I love that bastard. He makes me feel so
right.
You better go to sleep.”

“You too,” I said. “You look tired.”

“I’m tired, but I’m happy. I love feeding you, do you know that? I’d like really to fatten you up. You don’t happen to be losing your hair, do you?”

“Sorry.”

“Because that’s what I really go for, you know—nice bald old fat fellows with big sweet paunches and thick greasy beards.”

“It sounds to me,” I said, “as though you want to settle down.”

She gave me some fruit juice and I went to sleep; but just before I slipped off I had a vision of Markie napping in his crayoned bedroom, and Martha sleeping on the sofa beside the Christmas tree, and me in my own warm bed. What peace, under one roof.

Later in the afternoon Cynthia came home from school, drank her milk, and went off with Markie to the playground to build a snowman. I lay in bed, listening to the radio, and choosing from amongst those offered me only the most ancient of programs. I tuned in to the old ladies selling lumber yards, and to the young girls searching, with perfect enunciation, for the love of English lords, or, later in the day, brain surgeons with baritone voices and tweed coats. “Oh put on a smile, Mary—here comes that young Dr. Baxter in his tweed coat. Hi there, Doctor …” Yes, there harassing the air waves were those same luckless couples who had struggled through my childhood—for
then too a radio had glowed beside my convalescent’s bed—and who turned out to be struggling still. And recovering from a minor ailment, I discovered—being waited upon with orange juice and aspirin, starting books and feeling no cultural obligation to finish them, reading in today’s newspaper what the temperature had been the day before in all the major cities of the world, pouring over the woman’s page and racing results with little foothold in either world—it was all as cocoonish and heartwarming on the south side of Chicago as it had been fifteen years before on the west side of New York.

At dusk, I smelled dinner being prepared in the kitchen. Martha stuck her head in to ask if I was all right, and she must have understood precisely the kind of pleasure I was lolling in. I heard the back door open and close and after five minutes had passed, I heard it swing open again. When she came into my room, she dumped a stack of glossy magazines at the foot of the bed.

“Go ahead,” she told me, “stuff yourself. Mrs. Fletcher says she’s through, I can keep them.”

“What is it?”

“
Golden Screen, Movieland, Star World
, everything.”

“God bless you, Mrs. Fletcher. How did she know?”

“I managed to convey the expression on your face. How is it up there in Pig Heaven?”

“I love it. Come here.”

“I’m making dinner.”

“Come here. Just for a minute.”

Recuperation! Convalescence! Long live minor ailments! Long live Pig Heaven!

When it was nearly dark outside, the children returned from the playground. My dinner was brought to me on a tray, and in the kitchen I could hear the others eating.

“Mother, he’s swallowing without chewing.”

“Chew first, Markie. You’ll get a pain.”

“I have a pain.”

“No he doesn’t, Mother.”

“Eat slowly, Cynthia. Where’s the fire?”

“What fire?”

“Markie, don’t talk. Eat.”

“When’s Santa Claus?”

“On Wednesday, honey.”

“Boy!” Markie exclaimed.

“There is no such person as Santa Claus.”

Markie sent up a howl.

“Cynthia, that’s silly. For Markie there is.”

“That’s right, Markie,” Cynthia said, “for you there is.”

“I know,” the little boy said.

A wind rattled the window panes back of the drawn shades, but it was of no consequence to me. In her coat and kerchief and snow boots, Martha appeared to take my tray away.

“Good night,” she said.

“Wake me when you come in.”

“You better sleep through. If you are awake—”

“Please wake me. And thank you for dinner, Martha. I appreciate you for being so perfect.”

She went off to work. I dozed for a while and read, while in the living room Markie and Cynthia watched television. At about eight, the front door opened.

Cynthia ran out into the hall to greet whoever had arrived. “Hi!” the child cried. “Hi, Blair!”

Mark joined in. “Blair! Blair! Tell a story!”

Sissy spoke. “Cut it out, kids. Please. We’re busy.”

“Are you moving away?” Cynthia asked.

Sissy started down the hall toward her room; I saw her flick by my own door.

“But
where?
” Cynthia demanded.

“You go back and watch TV, Cyn, please. Go ahead.”

“Hi, Blair,” Cynthia said, forlornly.

“How are you?” he asked. Then the door to Sissy’s room slammed, and Mark and Cynthia’s slippers padded back toward the living room.

Not much could be heard over the noise of the TV, but some fifteen minutes later there were footsteps down the corridor; then Cynthia again, running out into the hall.

“What are you doing with that, Blair?”

“Open the door, will you?”

“Where are you going?” Cynthia asked, but Blair passed down the stairs.

Cynthia walked to Sissy’s room, scraping her heels; she knocked at her door, and then I couldn’t hear anything.

Now Markie ran by my room; he was wearing his pajamas and
his hair was slicked back from his bath. He looked in at me with half his face, then took off down the hall. I heard Sissy and Cynthia talking as they moved toward the front door.

“You can keep the phonograph here, Sis, if you want.”

“Watch it, Cynthia, it’s heavy. Please, honey, move—”

“You want to leave your records? I don’t think Mommy would mind if you left your records.”

“Mommy would mind, all right,” said Sissy, and she went down the stairs. She called back from a flight below, “Don’t close the door.”

There were half a dozen more trips up and down the hall. Finally Blair was saying, “Why don’t you burn all this crap?”

“Shhhhh.”

“I got only one closet, Sister,”

“Oh Blair, how can you be so selfish! I want to go with
you!
Where am I going to go?”

“You got Dave Brubeck and Jerry Mulligan, Sister—there won’t even be
room
for me.”

“Oh Blair,” she was weeping. “You’re disloyal …”

They went out the door again.

I heard Cynthia call, “Should I leave it open? Sissy, do you want it open? Are you gone?”

“I’ll be right up,” Sissy answered.

When Sissy returned, she was alone.

“Are you going now?” Cynthia asked.

“Uh-huh.” Sissy had stopped crying. “I just want to check the room.”

Cynthia followed her down the hall. “Where are you going? Where are you going to live? Are you going to go home?”

“I’m going to live on Kimbark.”

“Oh goodie, Stephanie lives on Kimbark!” Cynthia replied. “Are you going to live with Blair? Is he your husband?”

“Cynthia, you know he’s not my husband.”

“Are you going to sleep in bed with him?”

“Of course not!” Sissy shot back. “Look, Cynthia—” But that was all she said; she went into her old room.

Soon they were back on the landing.

“Goodbye, Sissy,” Cynthia said.

“Goodbye, Cynthia. Goodbye, Markie. I’ll see you in Hildreth’s.”

As Sissy started down the stairs, Cynthia called, in a last attempt if not to stop what was happening, at least to slow it down, “Sissy, what’s your real name? Do you have a real first name?”

Sissy stopped a moment. “Aline,” she said. “My first name is Aline.”

“Don’t you like it?” Cynthia asked. “Don’t you like people to call you that?”

“Oh, I don’t mind.” Outside Blair leaned on the horn of the car.

“Can I call you that?” Cynthia asked.

“Cynthia, I have to go now.”

“Do you like Cynthia for a name?”

“Sure—listen, I have to—”

“I think it’s horrible.” Cynthia said, and she was crying. “Don’t you want to stay here any more? You sure you don’t want to sleep here tonight?”

“Cyn, I have to go. I don’t think your mother wants me to live here any more.”

“Oh,” cried Cynthia, “rotten Mommy!”

The horn blew again—and Sissy was gone, having decided at the last, it seemed, to let Cynthia’s judgment of her mother stand. For all the girl’s hard luck and all her weakness of character, it still seemed to me a disgusting and unnecessary trick.

Soon Cynthia was bawling in the other room. Markie came to the door. “I think Cynthia’s sick,” he said.

I did not know what good it would do if I were the one to go in and try to comfort her. Nevertheless, I got out of bed and put on an old bathrobe of Martha’s—the pajamas that barely covered me were hers too—and started to the door. Markie, who had been watching me closely, said gravely, “You need a shave.” He led me into the living room, where his sister lay face down on the floor. The Christmas tree, which I had only seen in brief glances as I went to and fro between the toilet and the bed, was so tall that its pointed top bent against the ceiling. Markie went over to the TV set and put one hand on the volume knob, as though to anchor himself to the Western he’d been watching.

I sat down on the sofa. “I’m sorry you’re so upset, Cynthia. Would you like a handkerchief? Can I do anything for you?”

“You did it. You and Mommy.”

“Did what?”

“Made Sissy go!”

Markie sat down on the floor, and stood up, and sat down again. I tried to give him a reassuring smile.

“How did I make Sissy go?” I asked Cynthia.

“You did.”

“How?”

Cynthia wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and caught a glimpse of me from under her lashes.

“You just did.”

“You’ll have to tell me how I did.”

“You told Mommy to do it.”

“That’s not so, Cynthia. I didn’t tell Martha anything either way.”

“Mommy stinks.”

She waited for a reaction, which was not forthcoming. But it was her own grossness, rather than my silence, that made her stop crying. Some moments passed, and then in a voice a good deal less certain, she said, “She does.”

“Does she?”

“Why did she have to make Sissy go? Sissy’s fun. Sissy’s my friend. She had no right to make her move.”

“It’s her house. She can ask anybody to move out, or to stay, that she likes. Don’t you think adults have rights as well as children?”

“She doesn’t own it.”

“Yes, she does,” I said.

“Ha-ha. The agency owns the house.”

“She owns you, Cynthia. She owns Markie.”

I looked at Markie, who was sitting on the floor now, reflecting.

“My father owns me too,” Cynthia said cautiously.

I went on as best I could; though there was suspicion in her voice, there was a note of inquiry too. “Of course your father owns you too. However, right now you’re living with your mother. Your mother makes your meals, and buys your clothes, and she calls the doctor, and sees you get Christmas presents, and she supports you and protects you. Do you know that, Cynthia? Your mother works to support herself, and you, and Markie.”

“So does my father. He’s a famous artist.”

“He’s a famous artist, Cynthia,” I said, and then, hesitating only a moment, I added, “but he doesn’t support you.”

“Yes, he does.”

“No,” I answered, “he doesn’t.”

“Well, he sends presents.”

He didn’t; however, I said, “That’s very nice, but sending presents to people isn’t the same as supporting them. Supporting them is
much harder. Presents are like cakes with icing, and supporting is like all the other food you eat every day. Which is more necessary, Cynthia? Which is more important?”

After a moment, in a superior tone, she said, “I don’t even like cake.”

“I like cake,” Mark said.

I smiled, and Cynthia said to me, “He doesn’t understand.”

It was by no means a friendly remark but it was the result, I thought, of some conscious decision to give up the fight—it was only depressing in that it made perfectly clear that what her brother didn’t understand, she did. It left me feeling that the child had much too small a back for all her burdens; I pitied her her intelligence.

Yet as a kind of tribute to her years, I said, “He’s just a small boy.”

“I’m her brother,” Mark said.

Cynthia stood now and feigned a yawn. “I think I’m going to sleep,” she said, quite formally. “I’m very tired.”

“Good night then,” I said.

She turned to face Mark. “I think you had better go to sleep too.” With her hands on her hips, she was, in both posture and tone, as much like Martha as she could manage to be. “Come on, Markie.”

Instantly Markie made known his objection.

Taking a quick look my way, she folded her arms, then glared at her brother. “That kid’s going to drive me crazy,” she said, and with that, made her exit.