Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole
"See! Right away mad he gets with me. Izzy, them noodles I made only on
your account; in the city you don't get 'em like that, huh? Some more
_Kartoffel Salad_, Julius?"
"Ya, but not so much! My face don't suit my wife and children yet,
that's the latest."
"Three times a day all week, Izzy, I ask your papa if he don't feel
right. 'Yes,' he says, always 'yes.' Like I says to Poil, what's got him
since he's in the new store I don't know."
"_Ach_, you--the whole three of you make me sick! What you want me to
do, walk the tight rope to show what a good humor I got?"
"No; we want, Julius, that you should come home every night with a long
face on you till for the neighbors I'm ashamed."
"A little more _Kartoffel Salad_, Becky? Not so much!"
"Like they don't talk enough about us already. With a young lady in the
house we live out here where the dogs won't bark at us."
"I only wish all girls had just so good a home as Pearlie."
"Aw, papa, that ain't no argument! I'd rather live in a coop in the
city, where a girl can have some life, than in a palace out in this
hole."
"Hole, she calls a room like this! A dining-room set she sits on what
her grandfather made with his own hands out of the finest cherry wood--"
"For a young girl can you blame her? She feels like if she lived in the
city she would meet people and Izzy's friends. Talk for yourself,
Poil."
"I--"
"Boys like Ignatz Landauer and Max Teitlebaum, what he meets at the
Young Men's Association. Talk for yourself, Poil."
"I--"
"Poil's got a tenant for the house, Julius. I ain't afraid to tell you."
"I don't listen to such nonsense."
"From the real-estate offices they sent 'em, Julius, and Poil took 'em
through. Furnished off our hands they take it for three months, till
their bungalow is done for 'em. Forty dollars for a house like ours on
the wrong side of town away from the improvements ain't so bad. A grand
young couple, no children. Izzy thinks it's a grand idea, too, Julius.
He says if we move to the city he don't have to live in such a dark
little hall-room no more. To the hotel he can come with us on family
rates just so cheap. Ain't it, Izzy?"
Mr. Isadore Binswanger broke his conspiracy of silence gently, like a
skeptic at breakfast taps his candle-blown egg with the tip of a silver
spoon once, twice, thrice, then opens it slowly, suspiciously.
"I said, pa, that with forty dollars a month rent from the house, and--"
"In my own house, where I belong and can afford, I stay. I'm an old man,
and--"
"Not so fast, pa, not so fast! I only said that with forty dollars from
the house for three months this winter you can live almost as cheap in
the city as here. And for me to come out every Saturday night to take
Pearlie to the theater ain't such a cinch, neither. Take a boy like Max
Teitlebaum, he likes her well enough to take her to the theater hisself,
but by the time he gets out here for her he ain't go no enjoyment left
in him."
"When a young man likes well enough a young lady, a forty-five-minutes
street-car ride is like nothing."
"Aw, papa, in story-books such talk is all right, but when a young man
has got to change cars at Low Bridge and wait for the Owl going home it
don't work out so easy--does it Izzy, does it, mamma?"
"For three years, pa, even before I got my first job in the city, always
mamma and Pearlie been wantin' a few months away."
"With my son in the city losing every two months his job I got enough
city to last me so long as I live. When in my store I need so bad a good
young man for the new-fashioned advertising and stock, to the city he
has to go for a salesman's job. When a young man can't get along in
business with his old father I don't go running after him in the city."
"Pa, for heaven's sakes don't begin that! I'm sick of listening to it.
Newton ain't no place for a fellow to waste his time in."
"What else you do in the city, I like to know!"
"Julius, leave Izzy alone when one night a week he comes home."
"For my part you don't need to move to the city. I only said to Pearlie
and ma, when they asked me, that a few months in a family hotel like the
Wellington can't bust you. For me to come out home every Saturday night
to take Pearlie into the theater ain't no cinch. In town there's plenty
of grand boys that I know who live at the Wellington--Ignatz Landauer,
Max Teitlebaum, and all that crowd. Yourself I've heard you say how much
you like Max."
"For why, when everybody is moving out to Newton, we move away?"
"That's just it, papa, now with the interurban boom you got the chance
to sublet. Ain't it, mamma and Izzy?"
"Sure it--"
"Ya, ya; I know just what's coming, but for me Newton is good enough."
"What about your children, Julius? You ain't the only one in the
family."
"Twenty-five year I've lived in this one place since the store was only
so big as this room, and on this house we didn't have a second story. A
home that I did everything but build with my own hands I don't move out
of so easy. Such ideas you let your children pump you with, Becky."
"See, children, you say he can't never refuse me nothing; listen how he
won't let me get in a word crossways before he snaps me off. If we
sublet, Julius, we--"
"Sublet we don't neither! I should ride forty-five minutes into the city
after my hard day's work, when away from the city forty-five minutes
every one else is riding. My house is my house, my yard is my yard. I
don't got no ideas like my high-toned son and daughter for a hotel where
to stretch your feet you got to pay for the space."
"Listen to your papa, children, even before I got my mouth open good how
he talks back to a wife that nursed him through ten years of
bronchitis. All he thinks I'm good enough for is to make poultices and
rub on his chest goose grease."
"_Ach_, Becky, don't fuss so with your old man. Look, even the cat you
got scared. Here, Billy--here, kitty, kitty."
"Ain't I asked you often enough, Julius, not to feed on the carpet a
piece of meat to the cat? 'Sh-h-h-h, Billy, scat! All that I'm good
enough for is to clean up. How he talks to his wife yet!"
Miss Binswanger caught her breath on the crest of a sob and pushed her
untouched plate toward the center of the table; tears swam on a heavy
film across her eyes and thickened her gaze and voice.
"This--ain't--no--hole for--for a girl to live in."
"All I wish is you should never live in a worse."
"I ain't got nothin' here, papa, but sit and sit and sit on the porch
every night with you and mamma. When Izzy comes out once a week to take
me to a show, how he fusses and fusses you hear for yourselves. For a
girl nearly--twenty--it ain't no joke."
"It ain't, papa; it ain't no joke for me to have to take her in and out
every week, lemme tell you."
"Eat your supper, Poil; not eating don't get you nowheres with your
papa."
"I--I don't want nothin'."
A tear wiggle--waggled down Miss Binswanger's smooth cheek, and she
fumbled at her waist-line for her handkerchief.
"I--I--I just wish sometimes I--was dead."
Mr. Binswanger shot his bald head outward suddenly, as a turtle darts
forward from its case, and rapped the table noisily with his fist
clutched around an upright fork, and his voice climbing to a falsetto.
"I--I wish in my life I had never heard the name of the city."
"Now, Julius, don't begin."
"Ruination it has brought me. My boy won't stay by me in the store so he
can't gallivant in the city; my goil won't talk to me no more for
madness because we ain't in the city; my wife eats out of me my heart
because we ain't in the city. For supper every night when I come home
tired from the store all I get served to me is the city. I can't swallow
no more! Money you all think I got what grows on trees, just because I
give all what I got. You should know how tight--how tight I got to
squeeze for it."
Mrs. Binswanger threw her arms apart in a wide gesture of helplessness.
"See, children, just as soon as I say a word, mad like a wet hen he gets
and right away puts on a poor mouth."
"Mad yet I shouldn't get with such nonsense. Too good they both got it.
Always I told you how we spoilt 'em."
"Don't holler so, pa."
"Don't tell me what to do! You with your pretty man suit and your hair
and finger-nails polished like a shoe-shine. You go to the city, and I
stay home where I belong in my own house."
"His house--always his house!"
"Ya, a eight-room house and running water she's got if she wants to have
company. Your mamma didn't have no eight rooms and finished attic when
she was your age. In back of a feed store she sat me. Too good you got
it, I say. New hard-wood floors down-stairs didn't I have to put in, and
electric light on the porch so your company don't break his neck? Always
something new, and now no more I can't eat a meal in peace."
"'Sh-h-h-h, Julius!"
"I should worry that the Teitlebaums and the Landauers live in a fine
family hotel in Seventy-second Street. Such people with big stores in
Sixth Avenue can buy and sell us. Not even if I could afford it would I
want to give up my house and my porch, where I can smoke my pipe, and my
comforts that I worked for all my life, and move to the city in rooms so
little and so far up I can't afford to pay for 'em. I should give up my
chickens and my comforts!"
"Your comforts, always your comforts! Do I think of _my_ comforts?"
"Ma, don't you and pa begin now with your fussing. Like cats you are one
minute and the next like doves."
"Don't boss me in my own house, Izzy! So afraid your papa is that he
won't get all the comforts what's coming to him. I wish you was so good
to me as you are to that cat, Julius--twice I asked you not to feed him
on the carpet. Scat, Billy!"
"Pass me some noodles, maw."
"Good ones, eh, Izzy?"
"Fine, maw."
"I ask you, is it more comfortable, Julius, for me to be cooped up in
the city in rooms that all together ain't as big as my kitchen? No, but
of my children I think too besides my own comforts."
"Ya, ya; now, Becky, don't get excited. Look at your mamma, Pearlie;
shame on her, eh? How mad she gets at me till blue like her wrapper her
face gets."
"My house and my yard so smooth like your hand, and my big porch and my
new laundry with patent wringer is more to me as a hotel in the city.
But when I got a young lady daughter with no attentions and no prospects
I can't think always of my own comforts."
"Ya, ya, Becky; don't get excited."
"Don't ya--ya me, neither."
"_Ach_, old lady, that only means how much I love you."
"We got a young lady daughter; do you want that she should sit and sit
and sit till for ever we got a daughter, only she ain't young no more. I
tell you out here ain't no place for a young goil--what has she got?"
"Yes, papa; what have I got? The trees for company!"
"Do you see, Julius, in the new bungalows any families moving in with
young ladies? Would even your son Isadore what ain't a young lady stay
out here when he was old enough to get hisself a job in the city?"
"That a boy should leave his old father like that!"
"Wasn't you always kickin' to me, pa, that there wasn't a future in the
business after the transaction came--wasn't you?"
"No more arguments you get with me!"
"What chance, Julius, I ask you, has a goil like Poil got out here in
Newton? To sit on the front porch nights with Meena Schlossman don't get
her nowheres; to go to the moving--pictures with Eddie Goldstone, what
can't make salt for hisself, ain't nothing for a goil that hopes to do
well for herself. If she only looks out of the corner of her eye at Mike
Donnely three fits right away you take!"
"_Gott_, that's what we need yet!"
"See, even when I mention it, look at him, Poil, how red he gets! But
should she sit and sit?"