Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole
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-buttoners 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! Hello! 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."
Insidious darkness crept into the room like a cool hand descending on
the feverish brow of day; the red glow shifted farther along the mantel
and lay vivid as blood across the blue vase and the photograph of a
grizzled head in a seashell frame. Mrs. Ginsburg rocked over a loose
board in the floor and waved a palm-leaf fan toward the reclining shadow
of her son until he could taste its tape-bound edge.
"Next week to-night five years since we lost poor papa, Abie--five
years! _Gott!_ When I think of it! Just like his picture he looked up to
the last, too--just like his picture."
"Yes, mamma."
"I ain't so spry as I used to be, neither, Abie--or, believe me, I would
never let you take on a clerk. Sometimes I think, when the rheumatism
gets up round my heart, it won't be long as I go too. Poor papa! If I
could have gone with him! How he always hated to go alone to places! To
the barber he hated to go, till I got so I could cut it myself."
"Mamma, you ain't got nothing to worry about."
"I worry enough."
"You can take it as easy as you want to now--I even want we should have
a better apartment. We got the best little business between here and One
Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street! If poor papa could see it now he
wouldn't know it from five years ago. Poor papa! He wasn't willing to
spend on improvements."
"Papa always said you had a good business head on you, Abie; but I ain't
one, neither, for funny businesses like a clerk. And what you needed
them new glass shoe-stands for when the old ones--"
"Now, mamma, don't begin on that again."
"When I was down in the store papa used to say to me: 'Wait till Abie's
grown up, mamma! By how his ears stand out from his head I can tell he's
got good business sense.' And to think that so little of you he had in
the store--such a man that deserved the best of everything! He had to
die just when things might have got easy for him."
"Don't cry, mamma; everything is for the best."
"You're a good boy, Abie. Sometimes I think I stand in your way enough."
"Such talk!"
"Any girl would do well enough for herself to get you. Believe me,
Beulah Washeim don't need a new pair of shoes every two weeks for
nothing! Her mother thinks I don't notice it--she's always braggin' to
me how hard her Beulah is on shoes and what a good customer she makes."
"Beulah Washeim! I don't even know what last she wears--that's how much
I think of Beulah Washeim."
"Don't let me stand in your way, Abie. Ain't I often told you, now since
you do a grand business and we're all paid up, don't let your old mother
stand in your way?"
"Like you could be in my way!"
"Once I said to poor papa, the night we paid the mortgage off and had
wine for supper: 'Papa,' I said, 'we're out of debt now--_Gott sei
Dank!_--except one debt we owe to some girl when Abie grows up; and
that debt we got to pay with money that won't come from work and
struggle and saving; we got to pay that debt with our boy--with
_blood-money_.' Poor papa! Already he was asleep when I said it--half a
glass of wine, and he was mussy-headed."
"Yes, yes, mamma."
"A girl like Beulah Washeim I ain't got so much use for neither--with
her silk petticoats and silk stockings; but Sol Washeim's got a grand
business there, Abie. They don't move in a nine-room house from a
four-room apartment for nothing."
"For Beulah's weight in gold I don't want her--the way she looks at me
with her eyes and shoots 'em round like I was a three-ringed circus."
"You're right--for money you shouldn't marry neither; only I always say
it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich one as a poor one. But I'm
the last one to force you. There's Hannah Rosenblatt--a grand,
economical girl!"
"Hannah Rosenblatt--a girl that teaches school, she pushes on me. I got
to get educated yet!"
Mrs. Ginsburg rocked and fanned rhythmically; her unsubtle lips curled
upward with the subtle smile of a zingaro. The placidity of peace on a
mountain-top, shade in a dell, and love in a garden crept into her
tones.
"I just want you to know I don't stand in your way, Abie. You ain't a
child no more; but while I'm here you got so good a home as you
want--not?"
"Sure!"
"Girls you can always get--not? Girls nowadays ain't what they used to
be neither. I'd like to see a girl do to-day for papa what I did--how I
was in the store and kitchen all at once; then we didn't have no
satin-shoe clerks! Girls ain't what they used to be; in my day
working-girls had no time for fine-smelling cologne-water and--"
"All girls ain't alike, mamma--satin shoes cost no more nowadays as
leather. We got a dollar-ninety-eight satin pump, you wouldn't believe
it--and such a seller! All girls ain't alike, mamma."
"What you mean, Abie?"
Mr. Ginsburg turned on the couch so that his face was close to the wall,
and his voice half lost in the curve of his arm.
"Well, once in a while you come across a girl that ain't--ain't like the
rest of 'em. Well, there ought to be girls that ain't like the rest of
'em, oughtn't there?"
Mrs. Ginsburg's rocking and fanning slowed down a bit; a curious moment
fell over the little room; a nerve-tingling quiescence that in its
pregnant moment can race the mind back over an eternity--a silence that
is cold with sweat, like the second when a doctor removes his
stethoscope from over a patient's left breast and looks at him with a
film of pity glazing his eyes.
"What you mean, Abie? Tell mamma what you mean. I ain't the one to stand
in your light." Mrs. Ginsburg's speech clogged in her throat.
"You know you always got a home with me, mamma. You know, no matter what
comes, I always got to tuck you in bed at night and fix the windows for
you. You know you always got with me the best kind of a home I got to
give you. Ain't it?"
His hand crept out and rested lightly--ever so lightly--on his mother's
knee.
"Abie, you never talked like this before--I won't stand in your way,
Abie. If you can make up your mind, Beulah Washeim or Hannah Rosenblatt,
either would be--"
"Aw, mamma, it ain't them."
Mrs. Ginsburg's hand closed tightly over her son's; a train swooped past
and created a flurry of warm breeze in the room.
"Who--is--it, Abie? Don't be afraid to tell mamma."
"Why, mamma, it ain't no one! Can't a fellow just talk? You started it,
didn't you? I was just talking 'cause you was."
"He scares me yet! No consideration that boy has got for his mother!
Abie, a little broth--you ain't got no fever, Abie--your head is cool
like ice."
"You ain't had no supper yet, mamma."
"I had coffee at five o'clock; for myself I never worry. I'm glad enough
you feel all right. It's eight o'clock, Abie--I go me to bed. To-morrow
I go to market with Yetta."
"Aw, mamma, now why for do you--"