About this book

Just Around the Corner: Romance en casserole

Fannie Hurst

"I ain't too proud--such high-toned notions I ain't got. For what I pay forty-two cents for eggs up here when I can get 'em for thirty-eight?" "Be careful, mamma; don't fall over the chair--you want a light?" "No. Write me a note for the milkman, Abie, before you go to bed, and leave it out with the bottles--half a pint of double cream I want. I make you cream-potatoes for supper to-morrow. I laid your blue shirt on your bed, Abie--don't go to bed on it. It's the last time I iron it; but once more you can wear it, then I make dust-rags. I ironed it soft like you like." "Yes, mamma." "Put the cover on the canary, too, Abie. That night you went to the lodge he chirped and chirped, just like you was lost and he was crying 'cause me and him was lonely." "Yes, mamma. Wait till I light the gas in your room for you--you'll stumble." "It's too hot for light; I can see by the Magintys' kitchen light across the air-shaft. What she does in her kitchen so late I don't know--such housekeeping! Yesterday with my own eyes I seen her shake a table-cloth out the window with a hole like my hand in it. She should know what I think of such ways." Mrs. Ginsburg moved through the gloom, steering carefully round the phantom furniture. From his place on the couch her son could hear her moving about her tiny room adjoining the kitchen. A shoe dropped and, after a satisfying interval, another; the padding of bare feet across a floor; the tink of a china pitcher against its bowl; the slam of a drawer; the rusty squeal of spiral bed-springs under pressure. "Abie, I'm ready." When Mr. Ginsburg groped into his mother's room she lay in the casual attitude of sleep, but the yellow patch of light from the shaft fell across her open eyes and gray wisps of hair that lay on her pillow like a sickly aura. "Good night, Abie. You're a good boy, Abie." "Good night, mamma. A sheet ain't enough--you got to have the blue-and-white quilt on you, too." "Don't, Abie--do you want to suffocate me? I can't stand so much. Take off the quilt." "Your rheumatism, you know, mamma--you'll see how much cooler it will get in the night." "_Ach_, Abie, leave that window all the way up. So hot, and that boy closes me up like--" "When the lace curtain blows in it means you're in a draught, mamma--half-way open you can have it, but not all. Without me to fuss you'd have a fine rheumatism--like it ain't dangerous for you to sleep where there's enough draught to blow the curtain in." "Abie, if you don't feel good, in two minutes I can get up and heat the broth if--" "I'm grand, mamma. Here, I move this chair so the light from Magintys' don't shine in your eyes." "What she does in her kitchen so late I don't know. Good night, Abie. In the dark you look like poor papa. How he used to fuss round the room at night fixing me just like you--poor papa, Abie--not? Poor papa?" "Good night, mamma." Mr. Ginsburg leaned over and kissed his mother lightly on the forehead. "Double cream did you say I should write the milkman?" "Yes--and, Abie, don't forget to cover the bird." "Yes. Here, I leave the door half-way open, mamma. Good night." "Abie! Abie!" "Yes?" "Oh, it ain't nothing at all, Abie--never mind." "I'm right here, mamma. Anything you want me to do?" "Nothing. Good night, Abie." "Good night, mamma." * * * * * At eight-fifteen Monday morning Miss Ruby Cohn blew into the Ginsburg & Son's shoe store like a breath of thirty-nine-cents-an-ounce perfume shot from a strong-spray atomizer. The street hung with the strong breath of Mayflower a full second after her small, tall-heeled feet had crossed its soft asphalt. At the first whiff Mr. Ginsburg drew the upper half of his body out from a case of misses' ten-button welt soles he was unpacking and smiled as if Aurora and spring, and all the heyday misses that Guido Reni and Botticelli loved to paint, had suddenly danced into his shop. "Well, well, Miss Ruby, are you back?" Miss Cohn titillated toward the rear of the store, the tail of a cockatoo titillated at a sharp angle from her hat, a patent-leather handbag titillated from a long cord at her wrist, and a smile iridescent as sunlight on spray played about her lips. She placed her hand blinker-fashion against her mouth as if she would curb the smile. "Don't tell anybody, Mr. Ginsburg, and I'll whisper you something. Listen! I ain't back; I'm shooting porcelain ducks off the shelf in a china shop." "Ah, you're back again with your fun, ain't you? Miss Ruby--believe me--I missed you enough. I bet you had a grand time at the farm!" Mr. Ginsburg shook hands with her shyly, with a sudden red in his face, and as if her fingers were holy with the dust of a butterfly's wings and he feared to brush it off. "Say, Mr. Ginsburg, you should have seen me! What I think of a shoe-tree after laying all yesterday afternoon under a oak-tree next to a brook that made a noise like playing a tune on wine-glasses, I'd hate to tell you. Say, you're unpacking them ten-button welts, ain't you? Good! It ain't too soon for the school stock." Miss Cohn withdrew two super-long, sapphire-headed hat-pins from her super-small hat, slid out of a tan summer-silk jacket, dallied with the froth of white frills at her throat, ran her fingers through the flame of her hair and turned to Mr. Ginsburg. Her skin was like thick cream and smattered with large, light-brown freckles, which enhanced its creaminess as a crescent of black plaster laid against a lady's cheek makes fairness fairer. "Well, how's business? I've come back feeling like I could sell storm rubbers to a mermaid." "You look grand for certain, Miss Ruby. They just can't look any grander'n you. Believe me, I missed you enough! To-day it's cool; but the day before yesterday you can know I was done up when I closed before six." "Can you beat it? And I was laying flat on the grass, with ants running up my sleeves and down my neck and wishing for my sealskin--it was so cool. I see Herschey's got cloth-tops in his windows. What's the matter with us springing them patent-tip kids? Say, I got a swell idea for a window comin' home on the train--lookin' at the wheat-fields made me think of it." "Whatta you know about that? Wheat-fields made her think of a shoe window--like a whip she is--so sharp!" "It's a yellow season, Mr. Ginsburg; and we can use them old-oak stands and have a tan school window that'll make every plate-glass front between here and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street look like a Sixth Avenue slightly worn display." "Good! You can have just what kind of a window you like, Miss Ruby--just anything you--you like. After such a summer we can afford such a fall window as we want. I see the Busy Bee's got red-paper poppies in theirs--something like that, maybe, with--" "Nix on paper flowers for us! I got a china-silk idea from a little drummer I met up in the country--one nice little fellow! I wonder if you know him? Simon Leavitt; he says he sold you goods. Simon Leavitt. Know him?" "No." "One nice little fellow!" Silence. "I missed you lots, Miss Ruby. When Saturday came I said to mamma: 'How I miss that girl! Only one month she's been with us, but how I miss that girl!' Oh--eh, Miss Ruby!" Miss Cohn adjusted a pair of tissue-paper sleevelets and smoothed her smooth tan hips as if she would erase them entirely; then she looked up at him delicately, and for the instant the pink aura of her hair and the rise and fall of her too high bosom gave her some of the fleshly beauty of a Flora. "Like you had time to think of me! I bet the Washeim girl was in every other day for a pair of--" "Now, Miss Ruby, you--" "'Sh! There's some one out front. It's that cashier from Truman's grocery. You finish unpacking that case, Mr. Ginsburg. I'll wait on her. I bet she wants tango slippers." Miss Cohn flitted to the front of the store as rapidly as the span of her narrow skirt would permit, and Mr. Ginsburg dived deep into the depths of his wooden case. But in his nostrils, in the creases of his coat, and in the recesses of his heart was the strong breath of the Mayflower; and in the phantasmagoria of bonfire-colored hair and cream-colored skin, and the fragrance of his own emotions, he bent so dreamily over the packing-case that the blood rushed as if by capillary attraction to his temples; and when he staggered to an upright posture large black blotches were doing an elf dance before his eyes. "Mr. Ginsburg! Oh, Mr. Ginsburg!" "Yes, Miss Ruby." From the highest rung of a ladder, parallel with the top row of a wall of shoe-boxes, Miss Cohn poised like a humming-bird. "Say, have we got any more of them 4567 French heel, chiffon rosette?" "Yes, Miss Ruby--right there under the 5678's." "Sure enough. Never mind coming out; I can find 'em--yes, here they are." From her height she smiled down at him, pushed her ladder leftward along its track, clapped a shoe-box under her arm, and hurried down, her shoe-buttoner jangling from a pink ribbon at her waist-line. Mr. Ginsburg delved deeper. "Mr. Ginsburg!" "Yes, Miss Ruby." "Just a moment, please--there's a lady out here wants low-cuts, and I'm busy with a customer. Front, please--just this way, madam. I'll have some one to wait on you in a moment." Mr. Ginsburg clapped his hands dry of dust, wriggled into his unlined alpaca coat, brushed his plush-like hair with his palms, and advanced to the front of the store. His voice was lubricated with the sweet-oil of willing servitude. "What can I do for you, madam? Low-cuts for yourself?" He straddled a stool and took the foot in the cup of his hand. Beside him on a similar stool that brought their heads parallel Miss Ruby smoothed her hand across her customer's instep. "Ain't that effect great, Mr. Ginsburg, with that swell little rosette? I was just telling this young lady if I had her instep I'd never wear anything but our dancing-shoes." "It certainly is swell," agreed Mr. Ginsburg, peering into the lining of the shoe he removed to read its size. The day's tide quickened; the yellow benches, with ceiling fans purring over them, were filled with rows of trade who tamped the floor with shiny, untried soles, bent themselves double to feel of toe and instep, and walked the narrow strip of green felt as if on clay feet they feared would break. Came noon and afternoon. Miss Cohn ascended and descended the ladder with the agility of a street vender's mechanical toy, shoes tucked under each arm, and a pencil at a violent angle in the nest of her hair. "Have we got any more of them 543 flat heels, Mr. Ginsburg?" "Yes, Miss Ruby--right there in back of you." "Say, you'd think I was using my eyes for something besides seeing, wouldn't you? Wait on that lady next, Mr. Ginsburg. She wants white kids." "Certainly." "Yes'm; we sell lots of them russet browns. It's a little shoe that gives satisfaction every time. Mr. Ginsburg is always ordering more. I wore a pair of them for two years myself. There ain't no wear-out to them. We carry that in stock, too, and it keeps them like new--just rub with a flannel cloth--fifteen cents a bottle. Just a moment, madam; I'll be over to you as soon as I'm finished here. Mr. Ginsburg, take off that lady's shoe and show her a pair of them dollar-ninety-eight elastic sides while I finish with this lady. Sure, you can have 'em by five, madam. Name? Hornschein, 3456 Eighth Avenue? Dollar-eighty out of two. Thank you! Call again. Now, madam, what can I do for you? Yes, we have them in moccasins in year-old size--sixty cents, and grand and soft for their little feet. Wait; I'll see. Mr. Ginsburg, have we got those 672 infants' in pink?"