“How do you do, Captain Merivale,” said the elevator man.
“Well, are you out James?” cried his mother running into his arms.
He nodded and kissed her. She looked pale and wilted in her black dress. Maisie, also in black, came rustling tall and rosycheeked behind her. “It’s wonderful to find you both looking so well.”
“Of course we are … as well as could be expected. My dear we’ve had a terrible time. … You’re the head of the family now, James.”
“Poor daddy … to go off like that.”
“That was something you missed. … Thousands of people died of it in New York alone.”
He hugged Maisie with one arm and his mother with the other. Nobody spoke.
“Well,” said Merivale walking into the living room, “it was a great war while it lasted.” His mother and sister followed on his heels. He sat down in the leather chair and stretched out his polished legs. “You dont know how wonderful it is to get home.”
Mrs. Merivale drew up her chair close to his. “Now dear you just tell us all about it.”
In the dark of the stoop in front of the tenement door, he reaches for her and drags her to him. “Dont Bouy, dont; dont be rough.” His arms tighten like knotted cords round her back; her knees are trembling. His mouth is groping for her mouth along one cheekbone, down the side of her nose. She cant breathe with his lips probing her lips. “Oh I cant stand it.” He holds her away from him. She is staggering panting against the wall held up by his big hands.
“Nutten to worry about,” he whispers gently.
“I’ve got to go, it’s late. … I have to get up at six.”
“Well what time do you think I get up?”
“It’s mommer who might catch me. …”
“Tell her to go to hell.”
“I will some day … worse’n that … if she dont quit pickin on me.” She takes hold of his stubbly cheeks and kisses him quickly on the mouth and has broken away from him and run up the four flights of grimy stairs.
The door is still on the latch. She strips off her dancing pumps and walks carefully through the kitchenette on aching feet. From the next room comes the wheezy doublebarreled snoring of her uncle and aunt. Somebody loves me, I wonder who. … The tune is all through her body, in the throb of her feet, in the tingling place on her back where he held her tight dancing with her. Anna you’ve got to forget it or you wont sleep. Anna you got to forget. Dishes on the tables set for breakfast jingle tingle hideously when she bumps against it.
“That you Anna?” comes a sleepy querulous voice from her mother’s bed.
“Went to get a drink o water mommer.” The old woman lets the breath out in a groan through her teeth, the bedsprings creak as she turns over. Asleep all the time.
Somebody loves me, I wonder who. She slips off her party dress and gets into her nightgown. Then she tiptoes to the closet to hang up the dress and at last slides between the covers little by little so the slats wont creak. I wonder who. Shuffle shuffle, bright lights, pink blobbing faces, grabbing arms, tense thighs, bouncing feet. I wonder who. Shuffle, droning saxophone tease, shuffle in time to the drum, trombone, clarinet. Feet, thighs, cheek to cheek, Somebody loves me. … Shuffle shuffle. I wonder who.
The baby with tiny shut purplishpink face and fists lay asleep on the berth. Ellen was leaning over a black leather suitcase. Jimmy Herf in his shirtsleeves was looking out the porthole.
“Well there’s the statue of Liberty. … Ellie we ought to be out on deck.”
“It’ll be ages before we dock. … Go ahead up. I’ll come up with Martin in a minute.”
“Oh come ahead; we’ll put the baby’s stuff in the bag while we’re warping into the slip.”
They came out on deck into a dazzling September afternoon. The water was greenindigo. A steady wind kept sweeping coils of brown smoke and blobs of whitecotton steam off the high enormous blueindigo arch of sky. Against a sootsmudged horizon, tangled with barges, steamers, chimneys of powerplants, covered wharves, bridges, lower New York was a pink and white tapering pyramid cut slenderly out of cardboard.
“Ellie we ought to have Martin out so he can see.”
“And start yelling like a tugboat. … He’s better off where he is.”
They ducked under some ropes, slipped past the rattling steamwinch and out to the bow.
“God Ellie it’s the greatest sight in the world. … I never thought I’d ever come back, did you?”
“I had every intention of coming back.”
“Not like this.”
“No I dont suppose I did.”
“S’il vous plait madame …”
A sailor was motioning them back. Ellen turned her face into the wind to get the coppery whisps of hair out of her eyes. “C’est beau, n’est-ce pas?” She smiled into the wind into the sailor’s red face.
“J’aime mieux Le Havre … S’il vous plait madame.”
“Well I’ll go down and pack Martin up.”
The hard chug, chug of the tugboat coming alongside beat Jimmy’s answer out of her ears. She slipped away from him and went down to the cabin again.
They were wedged in the jam of people at the end of the gangplank.
“Look we could wait for a porter,” said Ellen.
“No dear I’ve got them.” Jimmy was sweating and staggering with a suitcase in each hand and packages under his arms. In Ellen’s arms the baby was cooing stretching tiny spread hands towards the faces all round.
“D’you know it?” said Jimmy as they crossed the gangplank, “I kinder wish we were just going on board. … I hate getting home.”
“I dont hate it. … There’s H …
