Just Around the Corner Part 8

"I ain't hungry, mamma--honest! Don't fix no supper for me--I go in the front room and lay down for a while. Never have I known such heat as I had it in the store to-day--and with Miss Ruby gone it was bad enough, I can tell you."

Mrs. Ginsburg reached up suddenly and turned high a tiny bead of gas-light--it flared for a moment like a ragged-edged fan and then settled into a sooty flare. In its low-candle-power light their faces were far away and without outline--like shadows seen through the mirage of a dream.

"Abie--tell mamma--you ain't sick, are you? Abie, you look pale."

"Now, mamma, begin to worry about nothing when--"

"It ain't like you to come up early, heat or no heat. _Ach!_ I should have known when he comes up-stairs early it means something. What hurts you, Abie? That's what I need yet, a sickness! What hurts you, Abie?"

"Mamma, the way you go on it's enough to make me sick if I ain't. Can't a boy come up-stairs just because--"

"I know you like a book; when you close the store and lay down before supper there's something wrong. Tell me, Abie--"

"All right, then! You know it so well I can't tell you nothing--all I got is a little tiredness from the heat."

"Go in and lay down. Can't you tell mamma what hurts you, Abie? Are you afraid it would give me a little pleasure if you tell me? No consideration that boy has got for his mother!"

"Honest, mamma, ain't I told you three times I ain't nothing but tired?"

"He snaps me up yet like he was a turtle and me his worst enemy! For what should I worry myself? For my part, I don't care. I only say, Abie, if there's anything hurts you--you know how poor papa started to complain just one night like this how he fussed at me when I wanted the doctor. If there's anything hurts you--"

"There ain't, mamma."

"Come in and let me fix the sofa for you. I only say when you close the store early there's something wrong. That Miss Ruby should go off yet--vacation she has to have--a girl like that, with her satin shoes and all--comes into the store at nine o'clock 'cause she runs to the picture shows all night! Yetta Washeim seen her. Vacation yet she has to have! Twenty years I spent with poor papa in the store, and no vacation did I have. Lay down, Abie."

"All right, then," said Mr. Ginsburg, as if duty were a geological eon, and throwing himself across the flowered velvet lounge in the parlor.

"I'll lay down if it suits you better."

Mr. Ginsburg was of a cut that never appears on a cla.s.sy clothes advertis.e.m.e.nt or in the silver frame on the bird's-eye maple dressing-table of sweet sixteen or more; he belonged to the less ornamented but not unimportant stratum that manufactures the cla.s.sy clothes by the hundred thousand, and eventually develops into husbands and sponsors for full-length double-breasted sealskin coats for the sweet sixteens and more.

He was as tall as Napoleon, with a round, un-Napoleonic head, close-shaved so that his short-nap hair grew tight like moss on a rock, and a beard that defied every hirsute precaution by p.r.i.c.king darkly through the lower half of his face as phenomenally as the first gra.s.s-blades of spring push out in an hour.

"Let me fix you a little something, Abie. I got grand broth in the ice-box--all I need to do is to heat it."

"Ain't I told you I ain't hungry, mamma?"

"When that boy don't eat he's sick. I should worry yet! Poor papa! If he'd listened to me he'd be living to-day. I'm your worst enemy--I am! I work against my own child--that's the thanks what I get."

Sappho, who never wore a gingham wrapper and whose throat was unwrinkled and full of music, never sang more surely than did Mrs. Ginsburg into the heart-cells of her son. He reached out for her wrapper and drew her to him.

"Aw, mamma, you know I don't mean nothing; just when you get all worried over nothing it makes me mad. Come, sit down by me."

"To-night we don't go up to Washeims'. I care a lot for Yetta's talk--her Beulah this and her Beulah that! It makes me sick!"

"I'll take you up, mamma, if you want to go."

"Indeed, you stay where you are! For their front steps and refreshments I don't need to ride in the Subway to Harlem anyway."

"What's the difference? A little evening's pleasure won't hurt you, mamma."

"Such a lunch as she served last time! I got better right now in my ice-box, and I ain't expecting company. They can buy and sell us, too, I guess. Sol Washeim don't take a nine-room house when boys' pants ain't booming--but such a lunch as she served! You can believe me, I wouldn't have the nerve to. Abie, I see Herschey's got fall cloth-tops in their windows already."

"Yes?"

"Good business to-day--not, Abie?--and such heat too! Mrs. Abrahams called across the hallway just now that she was in for a pair; but you was so busy with a customer she couldn't wait--that little pink-haired clerk, with her extravagant ways, had to go off and leave you in the heat! Shoe-b.u.t.toners she puts in every box like they cost nothing. I told her so last week, too."

"She's a grand little clerk, mamma--such a business head I never seen!"

"Like I couldn't have come down and helped you to-day! Believe me--when I was in the store with papa, Abie, we wasn't so up-to-date; but none of 'em got away."

"I should know when Mrs. Abrahams wants shoes--five times a week she comes in to be sociable."

"I used to say to papa: 'Always leave a customer to go take a new one's shoes off; and then go back and take your time! Two customers in their stockinged feet is worth more than one in a new pair of shoes!' Abie, you don't look right. You'll tell me the truth if you don't feel well, won't you? I always say to have the doctor in time saves nine. If poor papa had listened to me--"

"I'm all right, mamma. Why don't you sit down by me? Don't light the gas--for why should you make it hotter? Come, sit down by me."

"I go put the oven light out. Apple-pie I was baking for you yet; for myself I don't need supper--I had coffee at five o'clock."

Dusk entered the little apartment and crowded the furniture into phantoms; a red signal light from the skeleton of the elevated road threw a glow as mellow as firelight across the mantelpiece. Mrs.

Ginsburg's canary rustled himself until he swelled up twice too fat and performed the ever-amazing ritual of thrusting his head within himself as if he would prey on his own vitals. The cooler breath of night; the smells of neighboring food; the more frequent rushing of trains, and a navy-blue sky, pit-marked with small stars, came all at once. In the hallway Mrs. Ginsburg worked the hook of the telephone impatiently up and down.

"Audubon 6879! h.e.l.lo! Washeims' residence? Yetta? Yes, this is Carrie.

Ain't it awful? I'm nearly dead with it. Yetta, Abie ain't feeling so well; so we won't be up to-night. No--it ain't nothing but the heat; but I worry enough, I can tell you."

"Mamma, don't holler in the telephone so--she can't hear you when you scream."

"It's always something, ain't it? That's what I tell him; but he's like his poor papa before him--he's afraid no one can do nothing but him; his little snip of a clerk he gives a vacation, but none for himself. I'm glad we ain't going then; you always make yourself so much trouble. It's too hot to eat, Abie says. Beef with horseradish sauce I had for supper, too--and apple-pie I baked in the heat for him; but not a bite will that boy eat! And when he don't eat I know he ain't feeling well. Who?

Beulah? Ain't that grand? Yes, cooking is always good for a girl to know even if she don't need it. No; I go to work and thicken my gravy with flour and horseradish. Believe me, I cried enough when I did it! _Ach_, Yetta, why should I leave that boy? You can believe me when I tell you that not one night except when he was took in at the lodge--not one night since poor papa died--has that boy left me at home alone. Not one step will he take without me."

"Aw, mamma!"

"Sometimes I say, 'Abie, go out like other boys and see the girls.' But he thinks if he ain't home to fix the windows and the covers for my rheumatism it ain't right. Yes; believe me, when your children ain't feeling well it's worry enough."

"Aw, maw, I can take you up to the Washeims' if you want to go."

"You ought to hear him in there, Yetta--fussing because I want to keep him laying down. Yes, I go with you; to-morrow at nine I meet you down by Fulton Street. Up round here they're forty-two cents. Ain't it so?

And I used two whites and a yolk in my pie-dough. Yes; I hope so too. If not I call a doctor. Nine o'clock! Good-by, Yetta."

"Maw, for me you shouldn't stay home."

Mrs. Ginsburg flopped into a rocker beside the flowered velvet couch.

"A little broth, Abie?"

"No."

"When you don't eat it's something wrong."

"You needn't fan me, mamma--I ain't hot now."