Just Around the Corner Part 48

His son crumpled his napkin and tossed it toward the center of the table. His soft, moist lips were twisted in anger, and his voice, under cover of a whisper, trembled with that same anger.

"For what little board you've paid for me I can't hear about it no more.

I'll go out and--"

"'Sh-h-h, Izzy--'sh-h-h, papa, all over the dining-room they can hear you, 'sh-h-h!"

"Home I ain't never denied my children--open doors they get always in my house but in a highway-robbery hotel, where I can't afford--"

"We got the cheapest family rates here. Such rates we get here, children, and highway robbery your father calls it!"

"Five months we been in the city, and three months already a empty house standing out there waiting, and nothing from it coming in. A house I love like my life, a house what me and your mamma wish we was back in every minute of the day!"

"I only said, Julius, for myself I like my little home best, but--"

"I ain't got the strength for the street-car ride no more. I ain't got appet.i.te for this sloppy American food no more. I can't breathe no more in that coop up-stairs. Right now you should know how my feet hurt for slippers; a collar I got to wear to supper when like a knife it cuts me.

I can't afford this. I got such troubles with business I only wish for one day you should have 'em. I want my little house, my porch, my vines, and my chickens. I want my comforts. My son ain't my boss."

Isadore pushed back from the table, his jaw low and sullen.

"I ain't going to sit through a meal and be abused like--like I was a--"

"You ain't got to sit; stand up, then."

"Izzy--for G.o.d's sakes, Izzy, the people! Julius, so help me if I come down to a meal with you again. Look, Julius, for G.o.d's sake--the Teitlebaums are watching us--the people! Smile at me, Poil, like we was joking. Izzy, if you leave this table now I--I can't stand it! Laugh, Poil, like we was having our little fun among us."

The women exchanged the ghastly simulacrum of a smile, and the meal resumed in silence. Only small beads sprang out on the shiny surface of Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger's head like dewdrops on the glossy surface of leaves, and twice his fork slipped and clattered from his hand.

"So excited you get right away, Julius. Nervous as a cat you are."

"I--I ain't got the strength no more, Becky. Pink sleeping-tablets I got to take yet to make me sleep. I ain't got the strength."

"'Shh-h-h, Julius; don't get excited. In the spring we go home. You don't want, Julius, to spoil everything right this minute. Ain't it enough the way our Poil has come out in these five months? Such a grand time that goil has had this winter. Do you want that the Teitlebaums should know all our business and spoil things?"

"I--I wish sometimes that name I had never heard in my life. In my days a young girl--"

"'Shh-h-h, Julius; we won't talk about it now--we change the subject."

"I--"

"Look over there, will you, Poil? Always extras the Teitlebaums have on their table. Paprica, and what is that red stuff? Chili sauce! Such service we don't get. Pink carnations on their table, too. To-morrow at the desk I complain. Our money is just as good as theirs."

Miss Binsw.a.n.ger raised her harried eyes from her plate and smiled at her mother; she was like a dark red rose, trembling, t.i.tillating, and with dewy eyes.

"Don't stare so, mamma."

"Izzy, are you going to stay home to-night? One night it won't hurt you.

Like you run around nights to dance-halls ain't nothing to be proud of."

"Now start something, mamma, so pa can jump on me again. If Pearlie and Max are going to use the front room this evening, what shall I do? Sit in a corner till he's gone and I can go to bed?"

"I should care if he goes to dance-halls or not. What I say, Becky, don't make no difference to my son. Take how I begged him to hold on his job!"

"If you're done your dessert wait till we get up-stairs, papa. The dining-room knows already enough of our business."

Miss Binsw.a.n.ger pushed back from the table to her feet. Tears rose in a sheer film across her eyes, but she smiled with her lips and led the procession of her family from the gabbling dining-room, her small, dark head held upward by the check-rein of scorched pride and the corner of her tear-dimmed glance for the remote table with the centerpiece of pink carnations.

By what seemed demoniac aforethought the Binsw.a.n.ger three-room suite was rigidly impervious to sunlight, air, and daylight. Its infinitesimal sitting-room, which the jerking backward of a couch-cover transformed into Mr. Isadore Binsw.a.n.ger's bedchamber, afforded a one-window view of a long, narrow shaft which rose ten stories from a square of asphalt courtyard, up from which the heterogeneous fumes of cookery wafted like smoke through a legitimate flue.

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger dropped into a veteran arm-chair that had long since finished duty in the deluxe suite, and breathed onward through a beard as close-napped as Spanish moss.

He was suddenly old and as withered as an aspen leaf trembling on its rotten stem. Vermiculate cords of veins ran through the flesh like the chirography of pain written in the blue of an indelible pencil; yellow crow's-feet, which rayed outward from his eyes, were deep as claw-prints in damp clay.

"Becky, help me off with my shoes; heavy like lead they feel."

"Poil, unlace your papa's shoes. Since I got to dress for dinner I can't stoop no more."

Miss Binsw.a.n.ger tugged daintily at her father's boots, staggering backward at each pull.

"_Ach_, go way, Pearlie! Better than that I can do myself."

"See, mamma; nothing suits him."

Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger regarded her husband's batrachian sallowness with anxious eyes; her large bosom heaved under its showy lace yoke, and her short, dimpled hands twirled at their rings.

"To-night, Julius, if you don't do like the doctor says I telephone him to come. That a man should be such a coward! It don't do you no good to take only one sleeping-tablet; two, he said, is what you need."

"Too much sleeping-powder is what killed old man Knauss."

"_Ach_, Julius, you heard yourself what Dr. Ellenburg said. Six of the little pink tablets he said it would take to kill a man. How can two of 'em hurt you? Already by the bed I got the box of 'em waiting, Julius, with an orange so they don't even taste."

"It ain't doctors and their _ged.i.n.ks_, Becky, can do me good. Pink tablets can't make me sleep. I--_ach_, Becky, I'm tired--tired."

Isadore rose from the couch-bed and punched his head-print out of the cushion.

"Lay here, pa."

"Na, na, I go me to bed. Such a thing full of lumps don't rest me like a sofa at home. Na, I go me to bed, Becky."

Isadore relaxed to the couch once more, pillowed his head on interlaced hands, yawned to the ceiling, blew two columns of cigarette-smoke through his nostrils, and watched them curl upward.

"This ain't so worse, pa."

"I go me to bed."

"For a little while, Julius, can't you stay up? At nine o'clock comes Max to see Poil. I always say a young man thinks more of a young girl when her parents stay in the room a minute."

Isadore fitted his thumbs in his waistcoat armholes and flung one reclining limb over the other.