Just Around the Corner Part 49

"What Max Teitlebaum thinks of Pearlie I already know. To-day he invited me to lunch with him."

"Izzy!"

"Izzy! Why you been so close-mouthed?"

Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger threw her short, heavy arm full length across the table-top and leaned toward her son, so that the table-lamp lighted her face with its generous scallop of chin and exacerbated the concern in her eyes.

"You had lunch to-day with Max Teitlebaum, and about Poil you talked!"

"That's what I said."

Miss Binsw.a.n.ger leaned forward in her low rocker, suddenly pink as each word had been a fillip to her blood, and a faint terra-cotta ran under the olive of her skin, lighting it.

"Like--fun--you--did!"

"All right then, missy, I'm lyin', and won't say no more."

"I didn't mean it, Izzy!"

"Izzy, tell your sister what he said."

"Well, right to my face she contradicts me."

"Please, Izzy!"

"Well, he--he likes you, all righty--"

"Did he say that about me, honest, Izz?"

Her breath came sweet as thyme between her open lips, and her eyes could not meet her mother's gaze, which burned against her lids.

"See, Poil! Wake up a minute, papa, and listen. When I mentioned Max Teitlebaum, papa, you always said a grand boy like one of the Teitlebaum boys, with such prospects, ain't got no time for a goil like our Poil.

Always I told you that you got to work up the appet.i.te. See, papa, how things work out! See, Poil! What else did he have to say, Izzy--he likes her, eh?"

Isadore turned on his side and flecked a rim of ash off his cigarette with a manicured forefinger.

"Don't get excited too soon, ma. He didn't come out plain and say anything, but I guess a boy like Max Teitlebaum thinks we don't need a brick house to fall on us."

"What you mean, Izzy?"

"What I mean? Say, ain't it as plain as the nose on your face? You don't need two brick houses to fall on you, do you?"

Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger admitted to a mental phthisis, and threw out her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

"Believe me, Izzy, maybe I am dumb. So bad my head works when your papa worries me, but what you mean I don't know."

"Me neither, Izzy!"

"Say, there ain't much to tell. He likes Pearlie--that much he wasn't bashful to me about. He likes Pearlie, and he wants to go in the general store and ladies' furnishing goods business. Just clothing like his father's store he hates. Why should he stay in a business, he says, that is already built up? His two married brothers, he says, is enough with his father in the one business."

"Such an ambitious boy always anxious to do for hisself. I wish, Izzy, you had some of his ambitions. You hear, Poil, in the same business as papa he wants to go?"

Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger rocked complacently, a smile crawled across her lips, and she nodded rhythmically to the tilting of her rocking-chair, her eyes closed in the pleasant phantasmagoria of a dream.

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger slumped lower in his chair.

"A good head for business that Max Teitlebaum has on him. Like your mamma says, Izzy, you should have one just half so good."

"There you go again, pa, pickin', pickin'! If you'd give a fellow a start and lend him a little capital--I'd have some ambition, too, and start for myself."

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger leaped forward full stretch, as a jetty of flame shoots through a stream of oil.

"For yourself! On what? From where would I get it? Cut it out from my heart? Two months already I begged you to come out by me in the store and see if you can't help start something to get back the trade--How we need young blood in the store to get--"

"Aw, I--"

"Five thousand dollars I give you for to lose in the ladies'

ready-to-wear. Another white elephant we need in the family yet. Not five thousand dollars outside my insurance I got to my name, and even if I did have it I wouldn't--"

"Julius!"

"I mean it, so help me! Even if I did have it, not a cent to a boy what don't listen to his old father."

"For G.o.d's sakes, pa, quit your hollering; if you ain't got it to your name I'm sorry for Pearlie."

"For me?"

"You think, pa, a boy like Max Teitlebaum, a boy that banker Finburg's daughter is crazy after, is getting married only because you got a nice daughter?"

"What do you mean, Izzy?"

"The woods are full of 'em just as nice. I didn't need no brick house to fall on me to-day at lunch. He didn't come right out and say nothing, but when he said he wanted to get in a business he could build up, right away I seen what he meant."

"What?"

"Sure I seen it. I guess his father gives him six or seven thousand dollars to get his start, and just so much he wants from the girl's side. He can get it easy, too. If--if you'd fork over, pa, I--him and I could start maybe together and--"

"You--you--"

"Your papa, Izzy, can do for his girl just like the best can do for theirs Julius, can't you?"

"_Gott in Himmel!_ I--I--you--you pack of wolfs, you!"

"Such names you can't call your wife, Julius! Just let me tell you that!

Such names you can't call me!"

Anger trembled in Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger's vocal cords like current running over a wire. But Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger sprang suddenly to his feet and crashed the white knuckles of his clenched fist down on the table with a force that broke the flesh. The red lights of anger lay mirrored in the pool of his eyes like danger lanterns on a dark bridge are reflected in black water.

"Wolfs--wolfs, all of you! You--you--to-night you got me where I am at an end! To-night you got to _know_--I--I can't keep it in no more--you got--to _know_ to-night--to-night!"