Читать книгу A New World - Robert M. Keane - Страница 15

“They’re here,” said Jim to Cricket in the Connollys’ living room. Cricket was watching the Yankees game.

“I saw them from the window,” said Cricket. “I hate old ladies.”

“You’re coming, aren’t you?”

“Do we have a choice?”

“No.”

“I’ll wait a while,” said Cricket.

Jim found Harold on the screened-off porch in front, working on his stamp books. He was slim-figured, and small, like his father, though he didn’t have his father’s fragile good looks. He was even a bit monkey-faced, with a long stretch of skin from his nose to his mouth. In his manner, he was supercilious, and obnoxious, or so it seemed to Jim. “Are you coming over to the dinner?”

“Oh yes. I’ve heard that we’re supposed to have a festive belt-loosening this afternoon.”

“Are you coming?”

“I don’t know,” said Harold, pondering his answer, as if the world were waiting.

“Don’t put yourself out,” said Jim. He thought to himself: they come to dinner every Sunday; today it’s a big deal.

“I’ll see,” said Harold.

Jim restrained himself from telling Harold what a pain-in-the-ass he thought he was. He went upstairs to locate Uncle Arthur. He found him in his bed, his legs stretched to both corners, his pants still on, along with an undershirt. He looked small as he slept there in the big bed. Doll-like. Looking at him at first, a person would take him for a theatrical figure: his coloring was dramatic, silver hair, florid complexion; his features were delicate, almost childlike, with finely arched nostrils at the end of a small nose, and a fragile weak chin. He was inclined, in fact, toward the theater. He wrote publicity for the Riverdale Playhouse, and years before he had tried some plays. He claimed a producer had stolen the best of them. But he had made his living in the newspaper business, working all over the country before he married Nora, and was settled now as a rewrite man for the New York Mirror.

Jim felt sorry for him. He was breathing heavily. He looked so haggard. He had always a beaten look about him, except when he had a few drinks, then he became a pixie, with a beaming smile and a fey humor. When he was in that humor, Nora became “PeeWee.” But once he started drinking, he could never stop, and fairly soon he would just become stupid with alcohol. Jim liked him; he had told Arthur at length of his ambition to be an actor, and maybe write plays, too, and Arthur had encouraged him.

Arthur suddenly opened his eyes halfway, and sat up in the bed, resting on his right elbow. He pressed his free hand to the top of his head and moaned. He peered in Jim’s direction with half-seeing eyes, eyes that were hidden behind the slits of his eyelids. He gave a quick jerky motion and sat up straight.

“Jim?”

“Yes. How are you, Uncle Arthur?”

Arthur lay back. “I thought they had me back in Knickerbocker.”

Jim laughed. Arthur had given him detailed descriptions of his stays in Knickerbocker, the Harlem hospital where cops often dropped off unfortunates in need of detox. With his gift for mimicry, he had taken off the doctors, nurses, and orderlies until Jim had felt he was at the scene himself.

“Where’s Nora?” Arthur asked.

“She’s over at our house.”

“There’s something going on today?” He tried to recall.

Jim debated: should he tell him. No. “A dinner,” he said, without elaboration.

Arthur gave Jim a wave of dismissal. “Go away now and let me die in peace.” He shut his eyes.

“Do you want me to call a priest?” Jim asked, with a grin, remembering what Nora had told him about Arthur leaving the church.

Arthur got up on his elbows. “Get out,” he shouted and fell back, “with your talk of priests.”

“How come you’re leaving the Church?”

“Who told you that?”

“The pastor.”

Arthur was interested. “You’re joking?”

“Yes, I am,” Jim agreed.

“You little fartface. Get out.”

Jim laughed. “Maybe he’ll talk you into taking the pledge.”

“I’m taking no pledge.”

“You’re not keeping any, anyway.”

“Damn straight.”

“Why don’t you join AA?”

“Why don’t you get out of here. Bad as the father with religion, and priests and the like. A grown man and they lead him around like he was a sheep.”

“Nobody leads him around. He’s too pig-headed.”

“On his knees every morning at Mass,” said Arthur in disgust. “For what?”

“Because he loves God, I guess.” Jim was surprised to hear a sincere answer coming from his own mouth.

“Go over to the closet, and unzip the clothes bag, and get me the bottle.”

Jim did as he was told but he couldn’t find the bottle. Arthur then looked himself, to no avail.

“I think she dumped it out,” Jim said.

“No,” said Arthur. “She has it hid.”

He looked around the room, checking under the bed, behind the radiator, and in the clothes hamper.

“Maybe she hid it in another room,” said Jim.

“She wouldn’t go far with it,” said Arthur.

He pulled the drape aside at the window and there was the bottle. Arthur uncorked it, tilted the bottle back on his head and took a slug of whiskey. Jim had watched many of his relatives drink a shot as though they were taking medicine, making a face as they swallowed. But not his Uncle Arthur. Arthur loved the taste; he swished it around in his mouth before swallowing.

Sitting again on the bed, the bottle beside him, Arthur sighed and said, “Ah, shit,” softly, not with anger, but just for something to say. Then he sighed again, looking at the floor.

“Big head?”

“I must have spent the whole fuckin’ night on the subway,” said Arthur. “I’m sore all over.” He reached his hand over his shoulder to knead his back muscles. “I remember some big cop giving me a hard time. They pull them out of the trees and teach them how to use a nightstick and then they make them subway cops.”

Arthur looked up, and gave an impish grin. “Do you know what the best racket in the world is?” he asked. “Those guys who beg in the subway. Did you ever see them?”

Jim had, of course; but he stayed quiet, waiting for Arthur’s imitation of one of them—sure to be good.

“I have to get a hat,” said Arthur. “They always have a hat on.” He went to the closet and put a hat on, turning back the front brim. “They always have the brim turned up.” He went to the door of the room. “What’s that instrument they play?” He held one hand chest high, and the other waist high, and moved his fingers.

“Trombone?” Jim asked.

“That’s it,” said Arthur. “Okay, now you make a subway noise, and I’ll go outside and come in.”

Jim tried to imitate the sound of a subway train, going clickety-click, clickety-click, while making a throat noise, and at the same time banging his hand rhythmically against the bed board.

Arthur went out. When he reappeared at the door, he had dark glasses on; his mouth was shut, but held in such a widespread position it seemed he had a stirrer from cheek to cheek within; he was fingering the imaginary trombone; and all the while his feet were shuffling back and forth in the motion necessary to keep one’s balance in the subway.

It was so good an imitation, Jim screamed laughing. Arthur shuffled across the room, lurching, dipping, almost falling. He pretended a rider had his legs in the aisle, and cursed out the inconsiderate man. Jim laughed so hard his breath came in gasps, and he got the pain in his side. “Stop,” he said. “Please stop.”

Arthur took his fingers from the trombone to shake an imaginary tin cup with trembling fingers. He then lifted the dark glasses to see how much he had got. He cursed out the riders. Then he resumed his shuffle up the aisle.

Arthur took off the glasses and hat and took a slug of whiskey. He sat on the bed. “It’s a good living, walking up and down the subway.”

“You have a great talent,” Jim said to Arthur.

“That’s what they told me down at the paper,” said Arthur, “the last time they refused me a raise.”

“You should have become a comedian.”

“If I could become something now,” said Arthur, “I’d be a playwright like George Bernard Shaw.”

“Is he that good?”

“A laugh in every line,” said Arthur. “And not all jokes, either. The man knew what he was talking about. Did you ever hear what he said about getting married?”

“What?”

“Let me read it to you.” Arthur went to the bookcase and brought back a green-bound volume of Shaw’s plays.

He walked back and forth beside the bed as he read aloud. Then he turned to Jim. “That part where he calls a woman seeking a husband the most dangerous of all beasts of prey? Where he says that marriage is a trap?” Arthur stabbed the book with his finger. “There it is! In black and white!”

Jim laughed, thinking of Florence. “What play is that?”

“Man and Superman,” Arthur replied. “Listen to this too. It’s Don Joo-an talking to the girl who wanted to marry him.” Arthur read out a long passage where Don Juan accused a woman of learning to play the spinet to trick her suitors into thinking their married life would be full of melodies.

Jim gasped with recognition. “That’s Florence!”

“That’s every woman,” said Arthur. “Later on—on the same page—Shaw says she forgets about the music after the marriage. That she tosses away the bait once she has the bird in the net. Let me tell you, that’s the God-honest truth. Does this man know what he’s talking about, or does he know what he’s talking about?”

“This morning,” said Jim, “Florence wanted to learn how to play ‘Danny Boy’ on the piano so she could play it for Ralph when he came to dinner this afternoon.”

“Sure, they’re all the same,” said Arthur. “So, she’s having the boy and his parents.”

“Yes,” said Jim weakly. He hadn’t intended to refresh Arthur’s memory.

“I’ll be over. I’ll warn the poor boy what he’s getting into.”

“Florence has her good points.”

Arthur took a slug of whiskey. “They’re all just grand until they get their hooks into you.”

Arthur’s speech was already beginning to slur. The bottle was half gone. “It might not be a good time,” said Jim, “to say something this afternoon.”

“When are they coming?”

“Not for a good while yet.”

Arthur corked the bottle. “I’ll get some rest first. You’ll call me, eh?”

Jim agreed, knowing that he wouldn’t.

Arthur fell asleep. Jim sat there, and worried.

Arthur would wake again. He was coming to the dinner. What could Jim do?

Tie him to the bed?

Hide his shoes?

That was it! Hide the shoes.

He gathered all of Arthur’s shoes and carried them downstairs with him as he left.