Man and Boy Read online

  Spreading a newspaper on the floor, Mr. Ormsby got down on his knees, lifted the wooden diaper, and carefully withdrew the pan. It was full to the lip, and at the bump in the linoleum it spilled. He felt it soak the bottom of his sleeve, and then both knees. He spilled a little more getting up with it, a little more again at the screen, and in his haste to miss the porch he poured most of it into the lidless garbage-pail. Scallions, wads of Kleenex, and other tidbits floated to the top. He stood a moment speculating whether Mother would notice this, decided that she would, and went off with the pail behind the garage. There he poured off the water, brought the rest of the garbage back to the house. Mother kept an eye on every piece of garbage for her compost pit. As he crossed the yard he saw two birds fighting over a piece of suet, one of the birds a small woodpecker of some kind. Mother had told him, time and again, just which pecker it was, but somehow he could never remember it. He liked birds—that is to say he didn’t have anything against them; or hadn’t, anyhow, until he was supposed to remember their names. It was because of birds that he had met Mother—won her, as a matter of fact— because he was the one who used to feed them in the park. He had always liked birds—he had just assumed that they had enough sense to go about their own business, until the summer Mother got him to spying on them. One morning he had stood at the kitchen window and watched one of them worm the yard just to be worming—not eating a single one of them. The first two or three worms had been interesting—he had made a mental note of it for Mother—but after that he had the feeling that the bird was just a plain damn fool. He was just another one of these modern gadgets put out by some firm for worming your yard, and like most gadgets he didn’t have sense enough to stop. What seemed very sweet about hauling out one worm drove a man crazy on the tenth, with all the other nine worms lying there in the yard. He had gone out himself and buried five or six of them.

  The same week Mother pointed out a robin with one of his pipe cleaners in his beak, which she said it was going to put in its nest. A busy woman, Mother didn’t have time to wait and see what it did with it, or tried to do with it for the next two weeks. For two weeks that fool robin had tried to build a nest where no bird in its right mind would build anything. It would get so far, then all the grass and the string and the pipe cleaner would tumble down—and then it would start all over again. That went on for two weeks, and naturally he didn’t tell Mother, as something like that would have just made her sick. He wasn’t Mother, but he hadn’t felt any too well himself. It was on his mind at night, and sometimes kept him from getting to sleep. After a week or so he had to stop watching, and he even left the house by the front door, something he seldom did, rather than see that fool pipe cleaner again. As for that robin, he hoped she cracked up. It made him nearly sick to think what the male robin must think of her. Mother simply didn’t have the time to watch birds long enough to see something like that, and though he seemed to have the time, he didn’t have the temperament.

  On his knees again, facing the icebox, Mr. Ormsby wiped up the water he had spilled, and then returned the pan to the left-hand corner, under the drip. Kneeling there, he wiped up the dirt he had tracked in. The linoleum was blue, with a white and gray speckle, but Mr. Ormsby saw it so seldom he was never sure just what the color was. Six days a week the kitchen floor was covered with newspapers. Saturday night they were taken up, and the floor remained uncovered until Sunday noon, at which time he came back from town with the Sunday New York Times and the Bulletin. Mr. Ormsby had a glance at the papers in the drugstore, along with a cup or two of coffee, as it was usually his last chance for a look at parts of them. Once he got them home, they were spread out on the kitchen floor. Mother liked to have the floor newly covered before they got around to the Sunday dinner, as it was apt to be the messiest meal of the week. Grease was meant for axles, she liked to say, and not linoleum.

  The truth was—it occurred to Mr. Ormsby as he was kneeling there, reading—that they both did most of their reading with the papers spread out on the floor. They missed a good deal that way, but they didn’t miss everything. He nearly always missed the comics, as Mother couldn’t stand to see them face up on the floor, and most continued stories were pretty difficult to track down. But the headlines were usually there at the foot of the stairs. That was why Mother—it had taken him two, maybe three or four, years to catch on to it—liked to have a little snack, with her second cup of coffee, sitting there. Sitting down that low she could read most of the fine print as well.

  He stood up—all that bending for the drip pan nearly always stirred up his bowels—and measured out a pint of water, a little more than a pint, in the enamel saucepan. He added salt, and put the pan over a medium flame. From the raincoat on the cellar door he removed his pipe and four or five matches, and then walked down the cellar stairs to the basement, made a turn to the left. Standing there in the cool darkness he lit his pipe. Then he dipped his head, bending low, to pass beneath a sagging line of wash, and with one hand out before him like a sleepwalker, he entered the closet.

  The basement toilet had been put in to accommodate the help, who had to use something, and Mother wouldn’t have them on her Oriental rug. But until the day he dropped some money on the floor, and had to strike a match, inside, to look for it, Mr. Ormsby hadn’t noticed just what kind of a stool it was. Mother had picked it up, as she had told him, second-hand. There was no use, as she had pointed out, why she should buy anything new or fancy for a place that was meant to be in the dark. He hadn’t pushed the matter, and she hadn’t offered more than that. What he saw was very old, with a chain pull, and operated on a principle that was very effective, but invariably produced quite a splash. The boy had named it the Ormsby Falls. That described it pretty well, it was constructed on that principle, and in spite of the splash they both preferred it to the one upstairs. This was a hard thing to explain, as the seat was pretty cold over the winter; but it was private like no other room in the house. The first time the boy had turned up missing, he had been there. It was that time when the boy had said—when his father nearly stepped on him —Et tu, Brutus and sat there blowing through his nose. Laughing so hard Mr. Ormsby thought he might be sick. Like everything the boy said there had been two or three ways to take it, and there in the dark Mr. Ormsby couldn’t see his face. He had just stood there, not knowing what to say. Then the boy stopped laughing and said: “You think we ought to make one flush do, Pop?” and Mr. Ormsby had had to brace himself on the door. To be called Pop had made him so weak he couldn’t speak, his legs felt hollow, and when he got himself back to the stairs he had to sit down. Just as he had never had a name for the boy, the boy had never had a name for him —one, that is, that Mother would permit him to use. And of all the names she couldn’t stand, Pop was the worst. Mr. Ormsby didn’t like it either, he thought it just a vulgar common name, a comic name used by smart alecks to flatter old men. He agreed with her completely—until he heard the word in the boy’s mouth. It was hard to believe a common word like that could mean what it did. Nothing more had been said, ever, but it remained their most important conversation—so important that they were both afraid to improve on it. Only later, hours later, did he remember the rest of the boy’s sentence, that it wasn’t very proper, and implied a very strange state of mind. But he had better sense than to bring the matter up. When you know what you’ll find under rocks you don’t have to go around turning them over.

  When the telegram came—and when he knew, knew without a doubt, what he would find in it— he had put it in his pocket and come downstairs to open it. There in the dark he had struck a match, read what it said. The match had filled the cell with light, and when he looked up from the telegram he saw—he couldn’t help seeing—small piles of canned goods in the space beneath the stairs. Several dozen cans of tunafish and salmon, among other things. As Mr. Ormsby was the man who had the ration points—they were pinned to his coat, on the inside pocket—there was only one place that Mother could have obtained such things
. It had been a greater shock than the telegram—that was the honest-to-God truth—and anyone who knew Mother, really knew her, would have felt the same. Cultures died, wars came and went, young men gave their lives for their country, but Mother did not stash away black market tunafish. It was unthinkable, but there it was—and there were more cans piled on top of the water closet, tins of pineapple, crabmeat, liver paste, and Argentine beef. He had been stunned, the match had burned down and blackened the nails on two fingers, and then he had nearly killed himself when he stepped off the stool. He had forgotten that he had climbed up there to peek.

  Later in the day—after he had sent flowers to ease the terrible blow for Mother—it occurred to him how such a thing must have happened. Mother knew hundreds of influential people, top people in all the walks of life, and such people were always giving her things. They had been, up until the war that is. Then it had stopped—or rather it had gone underground. Around Christmas he had often wondered about it. Rather than turn these offerings down and needlessly alienate some very fine people, Mother had managed, worked out, that is, the stow-away plan. It was, in a way, typical of her. While the war was on she had refused to serve the food, or profiteer in any way, and at the same time she didn’t alienate people foolishly. It was the way she had pushed the quail bill through the House.

  Mr. Ormsby struck another match to see if everything was all right—hastily blew it out when he saw that the pineapple pile had increased. It had been an odd thing, certainly, and what Mother would call a coincidence, that he had discovered the pirate’s horde with the same match he had read the telegram by. One match had done for both of them. And when this match went out, they remained buried in the same spot. The same darkness fell about both of them. Mr. Ormsby paused to reflect on this, to ponder again its hidden meaning, but he was distracted by a bubbling sound at the top of the stairs. The egg water was boiling. Holding his pants with one hand, he ran for the stairs.

  As the water had boiled down considerably he added half a cup, wiped the steam from the face of the stove clock. Seven thirty. He checked his own watch. As it would be a hard day for Mother —naming a boat sounded complicated—he would give her eight or ten minutes more. If a bottle had to be broken, it would take strength. He took two egg cups from the cupboard, set them on powder-blue pottery saucers, and the saucers on ivory-white plates. On one side of the plates he put a knife, on the other a spoon. Then he turned, out of habit, and opened the icebox door.

  As he put in his head—it was dark inside, and about the temperature of a cave—Mr. Ormsby checked his breathing, closed his eyes. What had been dying for some time was now dead. He leaned back, inhaled deeply, leaned in again. The floor of the icebox was covered with assorted jars, deep and shallow saucers, and Mason-jar lids containing a spoonful of something. Some of the jars were covered with transparent hoods, some with saucers, inverted cups, and paper snapped down with a rubber band. Something seemed to be growing, thriving, in all of them. From the outside, peering in, no nose could tell you which was the culprit, but it could tell you, beyond doubt, that something was dead. Mr. Ormsby seated himself on the floor. He began at the front, and worked slowly toward the back. As he had done this many times before, he got well into the problem, near the middle, that is, before troubling to sniff at anything. Otherwise, he might not last it out. A mayonnaise jar that might have been carrots—it was hard to tell without probing—was now a furry marvel of green mold. Not unlike the glass bells— terrariums, Mother called them—that were offered for sale in the windows of florist shops. It smelled only mildly, however, and Mr. Ormsby reflected that this was probably penicillin, the life-giver. A spoonful of cabbage—it had been two or three months since they had had cabbage—had a powerful stench but was still not the odor he had in mind. He found two more jars of mold, and the one with the lid on tight he ignored, as the glass had a frosted look and the top of the heavy lid bulged. It would have to be buried as it was, not looked into. The culprit, however, was not in a jar at all, but in an open saucer covering a green cherry tart. Part of an egg—Mr. Ormsby had beaten the white himself. He placed this saucer in the sink, then he returned all of the jars to the icebox, in their proper order, except for the one with the bulging lid. When they reached that stage he took them out. He wasn’t pulling any wool over Mother’s eyes, as she knew every jar and smell in the box, but she had learned that it was wise to accept some things. A jar with a tight, bulging lid was one of them.

  When the boy had been just a little shaver, maybe six or seven years old, he had once walked in on one of Mother’s parties, with a jar in his hands. He had walked around the room with it, showing it to Mother’s guests. The glass was foggy, but it wasn’t hard to see the explosive inside. Any other woman would have died, any mother, certainly, would have died on the spot, but Mother just sat there with a charming smile on her face. She didn’t speak to him, or get up and hustle him out. By her not saying a word every woman in the room got the impression that this was something the boy was growing for himself. One of his nature studies, and that she was very proud of him. There was simply no accounting for the way Mother could turn a blow like that, but it always made him think of what Mrs. Dinardo said. Mrs. Dinardo had known Mother right from the first. “She’ll surprise you, Mr. Ormsby,” she said. And that was that. Even after twenty years there was no disputing that.

  With the puffy lidded jar in his hands Mr. Ormsby turned to look at the clock, saw that it was now seven thirty-eight. He stood there, his eyes lidded, calculating the amount of time he would need to dig the hole, bury the jar, and get back to the house. Hearing the clink of milk bottles he opened his eyes and saw Peter Ludlow, the milkman, staring at him over the sweating tops of two quarts of milk. On Peter Ludlow’s simple face was the expression of a man who had seen strange things. Mr. Ormsby managed to wag the jar of mold at him. Peter Ludlow backed away, then he was back—his hand was back at the window—with a jar of cottage cheese that he had forgotten to leave with the milk. The hand placed the jar on the sill, then was gone. Mr. Ormsby stood there until he heard the clop-clop-clop of General, the milk horse, and the sound of empty bottles as Mr. Ludlow hurried away. From afar, faint but persistent, he heard the Erskine’s alarm clock ring. A quarter to eight. The Ormsby clock was three minutes slow. He returned the jar of mold to the icebox, fanned the door several times to ventilate it, then opened the kitchen door to the stairwell, put in his head.

  “Ohhhh Mother!” he called, and waited for her to rap on the floor.

  MOTHER

  RAPPING her mule heels on the floor she said: “Modern man is obsolete, Mrs. Dinardo,”and rose from the bed to peer at the bird box in the window seat. A purple grackle, Quiscalus quiscula, peered back at her. He gave her eye for eye, and his yellow hatpin eye did not blink. Folding the loose flaps of her robe around her, Mother drew it closed at the knees and throat, then closed her eyes as she passed between the mirrors to the closet door. In the darkness she felt about for her corset, then overhead for the dangling cord, gave it a pull, and in a firm voice declared: “Fiat lux.” Light having been made, dim light, Mother opened her eyes.

  As the light bulb hung in the attic, behind a flowered shower curtain, the closet remained in a rosy, offstage, twilight zone. It was not light, but it was all Mother wanted to see. Seated on the steps she trimmed her toenails with Mr. Ormsby’s pearl-handled knife, the one he had been missing, along with the chain, for several years. The blade was not so good any more, and may have aggravated three ingrown toenails, but Mother preferred it to the secret weapon of the Home. Even more than the battlefield, Mrs. Dinardo, the most dangerous place in the world, thanks to scissors, bathtubs, and general failure to dry between toes.

  From the closet door she removed her kimono, cream-colored with a dragon before Pearl Harbor —after Pearl Harbor without the dragon and deep chocolate brown. On the board that did not squeak she crossed the hall, carrying her mules, and entered the bathroom, where she turned on the hot-water tap b
efore locking the door. As the pipes began to pound she removed from the roll of toilet paper three double sheets, and between these sheets she blew her nose. First the right nostril, careful to keep both of the nostrils open, then the left, with particular attention to the right. That done, she turned the hot water off, let the pounding die down. As there was still a noise in the pipes she opened the lid to the laundry chute, put in her head, and partially lidded her eyes. The sound of the basement toilet rose up to her. Her head still in the chute she said: “Oh, Warren.”

  “Yes, Mother,” he answered, then he added: “I’ll fix that right away.” As she heard his feet on the basement stairs she let the lid snap down on the chute.

  Facing the mirror, and seeing in the mirror her mouth spread wide by the index fingers, she examined the teeth, filled and unfilled, and the wax-colored gums. My dear Mrs. Bailey, she thought, then she removed the fingers from her mouth to say, there is no pyorrhea among the Indians, and moistened the first finger of her right hand, massaged her gums. Removing the cap from the bottle of Air-Wick, she took a faint whiff, up each nostril, then walked the bottle to the four corners of the room. In the window corner she paused to watch Mr. Ormsby, a garden fork in his hand, crawl through the rhododendron at the back side of the garage. He wore his rubber raincoat, and the flap concealed something. She knew. She let him get to the back of the yard, then she hammered with her brush on the bathtub plumbing until the sound, like the pipes of an organ, seemed to vibrate the house. She stopped hammering to watch him run for the house. She was in the bedroom, at the back of the closet, seated among the toenail clippings, when she heard him skid on the papers near the stove. He fell, then he got up and opened the door.