Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (51 page)

“How’s your mother?” said Lily.

“Fine, thank you. She sent her love and best regards.” “That’s very kind of her: do tell her how much I have appreciated all her practical suggestions.” “Thank you, I will: she’ll be very pleased to hear it.”

“I suppose you know you’re all out of soda,” cried Heather. “Did you look on the top of the shelf on the left—
not
the dresser, the
shelf
?”
“Hold it; you’re right,” said Heather. “For a moment you had me worried,” said Lily. She added: “It would be just like them, of course,” and the two women went into an exchange that was far above Morgan’s head. “I tried changing to Peck’s,” said Lily, “but they were just as bad: Greenwich at least
does
send.” “The
little
man at Peck is the only one,” said Heather: “you have to
ask
for him when you ’phone. Otherwise you get Scarlatti, and it’s the same old story. What about oranges and lemons?” “Oh, usually two out of four,” said Lily. “Well, if you get the
little
man,” said Heather, “you’ll stick with Peck as the lesser of two evils—especially meat.” She handed Morgan his glass with a look that dared him to proffer any regrets. “I imagine it’s the same in Magister,” she said.

“Oh, while I think of it,” Lily said, “do tell your mother not to worry about that opening of Mr. Waters’: frankly, it’s the Brooklyn subway-ride that I dread; she’ll know what I mean. What about
your
plans?” “I hope to get into college as soon as possible,” said Morgan, making the decision at that very moment. Both women looked as if they had forgotten that he was still as young as all that. “Well, that sounds fine,” said Lily: “you look very well.” “What time is Morgenstern?” asked Heather, looking at her watch. “He said between four-thirty and five,” said Lily, looking at hers.

He heard the elevator door open, scuffling feet and a booming
voice. The women smiled; Lily jumped up and opened the door, Heather behind her.

Art sped in, followed by Heather’s husband, who at once began to roar: “Lily, at least you could have warned me! The little son-of-a-gun runs like Jesse Owens. At the corner of Sixth …”

“There, there, dear,” said his wife, “a little drink will fix
you
up.”

“Oh, God!” cried Mort.

Lily was now back on the couch, undoing the top button of Art’s coat. He, his head raised in the half-strangled manner of the top-button moment, pointed to Morgan and cried: “Who’s that?” “Jimmy Morgan is his name, dear.” “Jimmahmorgn?” “That’s right … So, nice Mort found you, did he?” “
Did
I?” said Mort. “Come on, tell us,” said his wife, bubbling with anticipation; and her husband, assuming the lugubrious air of a clown, positively hurled himself into the role of the incapable man-of-thought.

“First,” he said, “I no more found the damn place and forced the entrance than I was run down by a howling echelon of juvenile delinquents. Pausing for breath, I fought my way through, safely reached the elevator, asked for the third floor …” “You were told the
fourth
!”
shrieked Heather: “… shut up! … found myself landed up in an office with some dame who looked at me like Cassandra …” “The
third
floor?” cried Lily: “oh, my God, that was Miss Wagram.” She and Heather were overcome with laughter. “Mort and Miss Wagram,” Heather gurgled: “a consummation devoutly to be wished: oh God!” “Wagram or no Wagram,” said Mort; “I got to hell out, remembered to ask for four—and practically fell off the edge of the
roof
.” “You said four instead of fourth!” cried his wife. “Why didn’t you
listen
?”
“Well, nothing daunted,” Mort continued—but at this point Heather and Lily suddenly looked bored, and Heather said, “O.K You
can tell us all the rest some other time,” and her husband promptly dried up, remarking whimsically: “From now on, I stick to art with a small a.”

Now, Art, stripped of an outer layer of crushable fabrics, wrenched free of his mother’s legs and barked: “Where my darts?” “You know where they are,” said Lily: “in the usual place; but I
think
if I were
you
I should decide
not
to start throwing darts right now.” “Where’s the usual place?” “In your own room, Artie, where
all
your own things are, in the top of the box beside the radiator.”

Art scuttled out, and the adults smiled affectionately. “Seriously,” said Mort, “the little son-of-a-gun is as strong as a horse … never struck me before that he was
that
husky.” “Yes, I think he’s going to grow big,” said Lily; and their eyes turned proudly on the bereaved boy, who re-entered with a slow, stomping movement, clutching a pair of darts in either fist. “If you
must
play with them now,” said Lily: “only at
that
end, where we hung the board.” “No, here,” said Art, idly inserting a steel point into the couch-cover. “C’mon now,” said Mort, rising, “at the end where your mother says, with me, and we’ll see if you can lick the pants off me. I bet you can, what’s more.”

Art showed some interest in this plan; then, suddenly changing his mind, advanced on Morgan, fixing the stranger with a stern eye. “You know?” he said, in a secretive, not un-proud tone: “You know what happened to Max? The Germans kicked him. So he won’t come back for a long, long time.” Hopeful of a strong reaction, he waited for the point to sink in.

All the company shuddered; but at this critical moment, when whole days of matter-of-fact behaviour might have flown up the chimney, Lily retained her grasp of basic things. “I have told you twice before, Art,” she said, “that it was the
Nazis,
not the
Germans,
… who … did that to Max.” A
flash of anger and emotion came into her cool face, and she said to the company: “I just don’t know how, or where, or who, he made that identification, but it does burn me up to think that perhaps some loose-mouth … and when he’s no older than five.” “I’ll bet!” said Heather, suddenly reaching for Lily’s hand and pressing it affectionately. “I just will not believe,” said Lily, “that he got Germans from
me
… And, in any case, Art,” she continued, “Mr. Morgan knows all about it already, so you don’t have to tell him
anything
.” “
Do
you know?” said Art, staring at the visitor—and suddenly his father’s swarthy suspicion appeared in every feature. “Yes, I do; I promise,” said Morgan, as pale as if he had seen Divver’s ghost. Art turned away with some disappointment. “C’mon, now!” Mort cried, “how’s about our little game?” “Who told you?” said Art. “Your mother, of course,” said Morgan, and Art collected his darts, giving his mother a resentful glance. “You throw first,” said Mort.

The bell rang, and Heather worked the buzzer. “I’m pretty sure that’s Morgenstern,” said Lily, “so if you’ll take care of him, Mort.” “Sure will,” said Mort, laying down his darts. “Play!” cried Art. “No, dear, Heather and I will play with you,” said Lily; “Mort has to look after Dr. Morgenstern.” “What’s he coming for?” “He’s coming to take some things away, dear.” “Why is a doctor coming?” “He’s not a real doctor, Artie; just very bright and from another country, so they call him doctor.”

Willi Morgenstern appeared in the doorway. His face was pre-arranged into the doleful contours that he presumed would be appropriate in America at such a time: but the women responded with bright smiles and waves of the hand, and Mort took him firmly by the elbow and led him away to the bedroom. When Art followed them, Lily caught his shoulder and pulled him back. “Heather and I have got a surprise to tell you,” she said.

They held Art between them, and Lily, with interjections from Heather, began to spin a very long story, inventing as she went along, unrolling a trip in the near future to the Bronx Zoo—“and ice cream after the seals, of
course
,” said Heather. From the bedroom, Morgan could hear Mort’s comments: “… any tailor who’s half-way decent … now that’s a real good tweed …” and Willi Morgenstern’s less confident replies: “…
so
large at the waist too … and the hat, of course,
impossible
… but the stockings wonderful: I badly need: I am deeply grateful …” “Take
everything
,” said Mort; “I am sure you have a
friend
you could pass things on to. We’ll just heap everything into these suitcases …
there
… just pile it all in.” “So, are you excited?” concluded Lily, leading Art into the kitchen, “and tomorrow at school you can invite any boy or girl you want to come too.” “I’ll invite Nobby.” “O.K. Nobby’s the lucky boy.”

Soon, Willi Morgenstern emerged from the bedroom, a large suitcase in each hand, uncertain what to do next. “So long, Dr. Morgenstern!” Lily called from the kitchen; “see you again soon.” “Thank you, it would be a pleasure,” stammered the doctor, and Mort threw open the apartment door. “I guess it’s time for me to run too,” said Morgan, jumping up. “Thanks for coming!” cried Lily: “be seeing you.” “Goodbye,” said Heather; “S’long,” said Mort. “Where’s he going, mom?” “To another place, dear.”

Downstairs, Morgan relieved the doctor of one of the suitcases. At the corner, Dr. Morgenstern bought a newspaper and looked at the headlines, nodding in a satisfied way. “I said all this would happen, in 1928,” he said; “but everyone in the world told me I was crazy.”

Outside the subway, they stopped at a caféteria for a cup of coffee. “Tell me now,” said the doctor, tapping one of the suitcases, “who was this gentleman who was the husband of one of those ladies? Somebody told me he was killed by the
Germans. Where? How? What was he doing to be killed? They try
not
to kill Americans, normally.”

“Nobody seems to know exactly. He was trapped in the Polish Corridor. He was a reporter; a hell of a nice guy.”

“So … But that is a very tragic thing, no?”

“Sure.”

“Then why does the lady present in her trousers?”

“So that she can relax.”

“You mean that in her heart she is too femininely tense?”

“That’s right.”

“You see, I have to learn these things. I am here already one year, but still I am a stranger to the new customs. Now, you have told me a new fact, so I thank you: when a husband dies, a lady in America puts on the trousers, relaxing through rejection of her feminine role … how psychologically curious is this disguise! Or is it her unconscious desire to show that in this tragic moment only the masculine principle is deserving of reverence? Or perhaps it is she plays a profound game, hoping in her mad pain that her husband still survives, in the fact of trousers. Or again: no doubt she is ashamed, like all unmarried women, to have no husband, and so she hides her inferiority under a masculine symbol. How wonderful! I could think of a dozen more interpretations, all of equal merit … But after a period, when the
new
suitor comes to her door,
then
she again assumes her skirt?”

“I’ve no idea, Dr. Morgenstern: I don’t think it’s anything definite like that.”

“There must always be a definition. Slowly, I will learn all. What is your work?”

“Nothing. I go to college soon.”

“Oh; then you are very young?”

“Eighteen.”

“But eighteen is nothing! All your life is still before you. What will you do when you leave the university?”

“I have decided it is better to wait until then before I make up my mind.”

“Is that the American custom?”

“I never thought.”

“What is the difference between good-bye and so-long?”

“So-long means I’ll see you again; good-bye means I probably won’t or don’t want to.”

“Then good-bye is very rude—just for the office-boy?”

“That depends.”

“But so-long is better, safer?”

“I guess so.”

“Then so-long, my young friend, and thank you for your assistance. I wish you good luck in your university.”

They shook hands, and Willi, bowed under his heavy inheritance, descended into the subway.

*

It was almost dark when he reached home, and he was chilly and nervous. His mother had lit a fine fire in the living-room and was seated beside it in a deep chair, turning over some papers and looking very motherly. He gave her a warm kiss, which pleased her greatly, and stood in front of the logs warming his hands, losing his nervousness in the homey cosiness. “I didn’t enjoy my visit one bit,” he said.

“Poor Jimmy, naturally you didn’t. I would have suggested your not making it, if it weren’t that I promised to let you make all your own decisions. Was Lily very upset?”

“Not especially. I decided not to tell her what I told you: somehow I felt it was none of her business … Who are the Stones?”

“Very old friends of the Divvers. Heather was at school with Lily, I think; and Mort has a most stimulating mind. Were they there?”

“Yes. And the little boy.”

“Poor Jimmy! Well, it’s all over and done with now.”

“Thank God!”

He warmed himself a little longer, in silence, his mother gently watching him. “I’m not sure how to put it,” he said, “but, in the Divver issue is there going to be much that is personal and human about Max; or will it just be about his politics?”

“Oh,
all
his human side: we are doing our best to show that he was a real person. Beef Collins has done what I think is a wonderfully life-like drawing of him: he knew Max slightly, and Lily gave him some old photographs to work from. The union tributes are very warm and vigorous, and Hecky Putnam has sent a poem which, in my opinion, will be in
all
the ’39 anthologies.”

She handed him the exhibits, and the sight of so many columns clustered around Divver’s repeated name made him feel much happier. “I don’t care what they
say
so much,” he explained, “just so long as they don’t give people the feeling that he was dry and cold. I suppose I feel that way because I learnt so much from him.”

“Naturally. No, all his human qualities are there: his sense of humour, his modesty, his frankness, his love and tolerance. We are also printing a beautiful letter he once wrote to Lily from Denmark.”

“You know, he advised me to go to college, and I think he was right: I should like to go.” For a moment he saw the warmth of the hearth replaced by an icy circle of indefatigable searchers after basic truth, and became nervous again; but his mother’s pride and pleasure in his decision helped him to swallow the medicine. “I won’t
learn
anything,” he said, “but I ought to get hardened to the idea of resisting friends, of saying no when I would rather say yes, of maintaining my prejudices and irresponsibility in all social questions.”