He went, light-footed, out of the bedroom and down the stairs, as light and quick as he had been at Oregon and in Korea. Although he now weighed 210 pounds instead of 190, and maybe his face was a bit fleshier and blotched from beering, he was proud that he was still strong and fast and without an inch of flabbiness.
Almost breezily he entered the dining room, where Gertrude, in her usual early morning disarray, was trying to force Ogden, his ten-year-old, and Otis, who was eight, to eat their plates clean. Settling down to spear a waffle, he noticed, as he often had recently, that Gertrude, once pleasantly thin of face and trim of figure, had become sharp around the nose and mouth and baggier beneath the spotted housecoat. He noticed, too, that neither she nor his sons had acknowledged him with so much as a good morning. This time he would permit no disrespect to intrude on his good cheer.
“Well, Gertie, what’s the bad news today?” he said with a grin.
He had almost forgotten how much this greeting, which he had been using lately to anticipate and blunt her shrill attacks, infuriated her.
Her head swung toward him, threatening as a machine gun. What unholy hour did you get to sleep?”
“I don’t know. Two or three.” He buttered his waffles and poured syrup over them. “I couldn’t take my eyes off the television screen. What a night.”
“Apparently you were able to take your eyes off it long enough while my brother was here. I suppose you went to that frightful saloon?”
“Just for cigarettes.” He sliced off a piece of waffle and was pleased to find it limp and cold. “Then I guess I walked around. I as pretty shook up by that Frankfurt thing.”
“I didn’t know what to say to Austin. He only wants to help you. Even if he is my brother, he doesn’t have to.”
“I appreciate it,” Beggs said grimly. He stared at the tops of his sons’ heads. “Ogden-Otis-where’s your manners? I haven’t even heard hello.”
Both their sandy-haired heads went up and down. “Hello, Pop… hello.”
He might have been a stick of wood for all they cared, he thought. Gertrude had done a thorough job of brainwashing them against him. A few years ago they would have been swarming over him, tugging, hugging, pestering him for more stories of derring-do on the Oregon gridiron, on the Korean battlefields, on the perils of his White House job. They had looked up to him, admired him. Only Gertrude’s increased and open daily hectoring had reduced his past heroism and authority to his present symbol of failure.
He determined not to lose them. “Well, boys, it should be quite a day in school today, with a new President, eh?”
Gertrude’s querulous voice drew a discordant curtain between her sons and their father. “You sound like it’s good news. You have a Negro President. You have two sons in a predominantly Negro school. They’re both afraid they’ll be hooted at and kicked around.”
“Why make out that it’s so bad?” Beggs demanded. “Why does everything have to be bad?”
“Because it
Automatically Beggs’s eyebrows had arched with surprise. The Schearers were the last of the old crowd, their old friends in the neighborhood, who had stayed on with them. He and Gertrude saw the Schearers at least twice a week.
Gertrude was going on. “He must’ve gotten that new position he applied for. Well, at least they’ve got some sense. They’ve had enough, even if you haven’t. And I’m thinking of the boys now, especially now, and nothing else.”
“I think of them, too,” he said angrily. He paused, to control himself, and then he said, “There’s going to be a change right here. Didn’t you hear it on television or read it in the papers?”
“What? Read what?”
“Sonenberg and McCune were in the same room with the President in Frankfurt. They were killed, too. That means the Assistant job to Agajanian in the White House is open, and I’m next up. It means a solid raise.”
Gertrude seemed to deflate into weariness. “Oh, that one. I heard that one before. Do you have a contract that says you’ll get it?”
“It’s my turn, Gertie. Chief Gaynor knows I’m next in line. Besides, I was thinking”-he felt shrewd, his old confident self-“the fact that we stayed on in this neighborhood is going to work for me. Look at it any way you want, but the new President is a Negro, and knowing Gaynor’s politicking, he’ll be wanting to play up to President Dilman. Gaynor knows where we live. It shows I have no prejudices-in fact, shows I like the Negro people and get along with them. Gaynor’ll figure my promotion will look good to Dilman.”
“I’m sure Dilman doesn’t know you exist,” said Gertrude, “and I’m not sure Gaynor knows either, considering these past years.” He was furious at her remark, in front of the boys, but before he could reply, she was on her feet, hustling Ogden and Otis to the door, stuffing their arms into their jackets. “Get on your way,” she was saying, “and watch the crossings, and if there’s any trouble you report it to the principal.”
Otis had gone through the door, but the older one, Ogden, hung behind. “Pop, last night Junior Austin said there’s a holiday off when a President dies. I hope so.”
“When I get to the White House, I’ll arrange it,” Beggs said expansively.
“Ha,” Ogden chortled, “that’ll be the day.”
Flushed, Beggs shouted, “If I can get you those damn stamps from the President’s secretary, I can-” It was too late. His older son had gone.
Put down, he waited, as Gertrude came back into the dining room. She tried to push her hair out of her face, and buttoned her housecoat, and then she lifted her head and stared at her husband. The tight, unyielding lines of attack had left her forehead and mouth. When she spoke, her tone was more imploring than accusing.
“Otto, I know what that promotion means to you, and I-I hope you get it, for your sake,” she said. “I know what the Service means to you, and all that business, and the excitements, and the scrapbooks. But there’s more to life, Otto. Even if you got the promotion-”
“I’ll get it,” he said fiercely.
“So you get it. But even then, we’d have to borrow and scrape to make a down payment on a better house in a-a decent, proper neighborhood for the boys.”
“We’ll manage, that’s all that counts.”
She came forward a few steps. “Why do you make it so hard for yourself and for us, Otto? It’s been-I guess it’s over a year since Austin agreed he’d like to have you in Chevy Chase as a partner. It was no favor to a brother-in-law. He’s making money hand over fist. He wants to expand. He respects you, no matter how-how carried away he gets sometimes with his success. He’s always saying a person of your background would be a definite asset to his business.”
“I don’t need his charity-him, of all people.”
She was pleading. “Otto, there’s no charity. You’d have to work for it. Six months ago you seemed to be more agreeable. That’s why I got him to loan you those textbooks, so you could study up for the realty board examinations. I think maybe you opened them once. They’ve been rotting inside the desk ever since. But you’re smart enough to do it. Look how fast you got in the Secret Service, passing those tests when you wanted to. You could become a licensed realtor in no time. You’d triple Austin’s business.”
“Doing what? Standing in drafty houses and showing couples still wet behind the ears the view, the goddam new plumbing, the bedrooms? That’s a life, after what I lived? Listen, Gertie, you stick with me, let me do it my way, and I promise you-”
The telephone in the living room rang out, and he stopped, wondering.
“I’ll get it,” Gertrude was saying. “Probably Mae Schearer to gloat about-”
She was gone. He started to eat his bowl of yogurt, when he saw her return.
“Otto, it’s Chief Gaynor calling from the White House.”
He jumped to his feet, suddenly beaming, his temples throbbing. “I knew it, I knew it. Tell him I’ll be right on. I’ll take it upstairs.”
He wanted this triumph alone. He rushed out of the dining room and bounded up the creaking stairs two at a time. Breathless, he snatched up the telephone on the desk.
