Part 9

"I can tell you that a good dutiful wife don't squander her husband's money away on gambling debts and matinees--"

"You keep your gab out of my affairs. You've done enough damage in this house as it is. My husband is my business."

"Your husband is my son!"

"More's the pity."

The shuddering, sucky, ligament-twisting cry of the mothers of sons bearing them. That was the kind of moaning noise Mrs. Wallenstein made as she went down into a little huddle on a dining-room chair.

"Mrs. Wallenstein!"

"Let 'er alone, Bertha. I'm used to those bluffs. I've seen her topple over into those fake faints for years now. Temper, that's all. She's tough as tripe."

"Oh God, why don't I die."

"Mrs. Wally--she bane old----"

"Let her alone, Bertha, I said. Hands off. That's the trouble now. Her out there in the kitchen with you all day crying for sympathy. It's a good thing you're built like a rock-of-ages, with her on your neck all day or she'd have driven you away long ago, the way she did every other servant we ever had. I'm sick of it, I am. Wally's got to decide between her and me and pretty damn quick, too. I wish to God I could go off somewhere and live in one room and never have to clap eyes on the whole shebang again. He'll have to settle good and heavy on me too--mind you that. _Matzoth house_, that's what I call this. Well, thank God, I wasn't raised no matzoth eater."

"Belittle me. Belittle even my boy ... the finest son a mother ever could be proud of--but don't make little my religion--don't make little my God because he is not your God."

"God! Who said anything about your God. Matzoth is what I said, and I say it again. _Matzoth house_. Two stoves. Two sets of dishes. Matzoth crumbs all over the house so I have to be ashamed to have company at my own table for matzoth. Matzoth. He likes 'em too--dips 'em in coffee. Once a matzoth dunker always a matzoth dunker. Can't change a leopard's spots. Matzoth is what I said. You hear! _Matzoth house!_"

"Julius, my husband! Wally, my son! I can't keep it shut up in me no more. I can't live here no more. To have to see, with every hour I live, everything what is sacred to me and to mine, made little. Papa, where are you up there--let me come to you. I'm alone--down here, and I'm afraid to leave Wally--alone--with no God--help me, Julius--help----"

May swung heavily into her chair.

"Well," she said, flopping the omelette which was cold by now to her plate and jabbing into it with her fork, "here is where I am let in for another pleasant lunch hour. It's a wonder I don't croak of _kosher_ indigestion."

"I can't hear that word no more so abused! It's like salt in a sore. Oh--oh--oh--if not for my son, I would right away pack my things--why did he pull me up away from my people down there--these ways ain't my ways--those are my people--he should let me go back."

"Well, no insin-uations, but you can take it from me if he didn't always have you nagging him over to your ways, I could make him a darn sight happier than he's ever been in his life before. He'd be a live one, that son of yours--if he dared."

"That just goes to show! A woman with her thoughts on her home and her husband's interests and--and children--don't got time for such shennanigan talk like her husband should be a--a live one."

"You're going to ram that children talk down my throat once too often. I'll have children when I get good and ready to have children and not before."

"A woman shouldn't put her time for it, before God's time for it."

"If--if you weren't his mother and--old--I'd drive you out of the house for less than that."

"Why don't you? It would make it easier than I should walk out from my son's house on my own----"

"Well then--I do! You can't stay here day after day to devil the life and soul out of me. I won't stand it. I--now--you--go--!"

"God, papa--God--Wally--no--no--it ain't possible I should live to see it--out from my own son's home----"

"Yes--yes--out of your own son's home--driven out by the devil in you--yes--yes----"

"Oh, Mrs. Wally--she bane old--oh--oh--oh, Mrs. Wally----"

"And you! Square Head, you! Lummox! There's something about you gives me the jimjams. For all I know you're one of those still ones that run deep. How do I know you're not taking sides with the old woman and running to my husband with lies! Go--the two of you--the quicker the better--go--go--go--"

It was then, because the words in her throat were a mere strangle and her hands were curved and spread out like claws, that May ran screaming to the clothes-closet, dragging down the garments in their avalanche of fury down about her and gasping, choking, spluttering:

"She devil! Matzoth God! She devil!"

***

Toward dusk Bertha began to try to feed the old woman soup out of a spoon that clicked against the square, porcelain teeth that were twenty years too young for the gums.

"Can't swallow. Leave me alone, Berthie. I'm an old woman put out from my own son's house. Where shall I go, Berthie? No. No. I won't go. Nobody can drive me out from my son who needs me and who has lost his God."

Forcing the spoon against the glassy teeth a sense of the race indomitability of this old woman smote Bertha. Exactly as she had recognized the Polish national anthem with her heart, so Bertha knew this. There was no suppressing the mother of Wallenstein. Oppress her, yes, but the light of the children of Israel was like a camp fire in her eyes and would not be ground out.

It was bitter to stay, and the lips of the mother of Wallenstein were twisted with that bitterness.

"The reason, Berthie, why nothing is so wonderful in a woman's life as to have children, is because even to suffer for them--to suffer for them is a blessing."

"To suffer--for--them----"

"But I don't wish it to no woman she should have such a knife in her heart like mine. Death is not the only way to lose a child. You should thank God, Berthie, you don't know what it is to give up a son of your own heart's blood----"

"Not know what it is----"

The brook of the frozen tears, she could feel them thawing and rushing up against her throat. Bertha who so seldom cried. She tried to hold them back, tensing her tonsils into a dam against them.

"Take the soup away--Berthie--I can't take it--you're spilling it on the sheet----"

How they pained, the pressing gorging tears. She was blind with them, and when she swallowed them down with her great strength, they ran back upon themselves and filled her with hurting torrents.

"Don't cry, Mrs. Wallenstein," she said finally, the words coming out evenly over her own inner hemorrhage of tears.

"Two babies I lost to death, Berthie--but not even such suffering was so bad as to lose a child to life."

"To--_give_--a--child--to--life, Mrs. Wallenstein."

"Hold me, Berthie, close--and say that over to me--over and over again--to _give_--and not to lose--him----."

"To--give--a--child--to--life. To--give--a--child--to--life. To--give----."

The old woman slept and finally there was dinner to be prepared and it was Bertha's day for scrubbing the kitchen floor on her hands and knees.

It was good, the great harsh drags across the splintery boards, pools of soapy water smearing before the brush, her shoulders sweating. Good, good, to sprawl for that reach under the sink, with her great legs thrown out like those of a swimming frog's, and her heart through the soft pad of breasts, beating down close where the tremors were. The little vibratory tremors....

Great soapy circles. Pain that had dimension--pain the shape of her arm sockets. Singing knees and the pleasant relief of lifting one from the floor so that the sensation died down like suds.

Zeouw! Zeouw! This way and that, the water running a little after the brush, and the smell that was almost a green one, coming up between the boards. Water under her brush. She ground it in and in and in, back into the soil from whence at some time or another it had come and from whence it would come again.

At seven Wallenstein would come. There was dinner to be prepared. A round of roast the shape of a cord of kindling wood. Gristle ran through it. She cut it out as if it had been a nerve. A nasty hurting thing. It was good to be able to slither it out and throw it away in the tin pail under the sink.

Onions to peel. Tears. Light tears that seemed to leap from the outside and lay against the eyes. Not the inner pushing ones that tore the throat in their frenzy to get past. The smart ran up to her nostrils. Good. Good. She could rub her nose, thick, white and squatting and lawk, the smart was gone. Easy pain. The pull of her arm sockets. Easy pain. But to be able to tear open her throat--somehow--and get in at the torment there--the buried secret torments that had not dimension....

Wallenstein would be home any minute now. Bertha had a sly little procedure before dinner. It was to draw together two of the most comfortable chairs in the living room, chummily, as if two women had been sewing and gossiping there during the long quiet of an afternoon. And Wallenstein liked the little first-hand attentions that May, in prime mood, would give him. His slippers with the toes out, standing waiting. A glass of orange juice on the table beside their bed.

The look of strain and of drain would run out of his face when he walked in on evidences of what might indicate that a day of rare tranquillity had rolled over the household. He was quick at these perceptions. An overturned hassock might mean that May's toe had been stubbed in rage, or the sweetish thickness of an incense stick, burning up into garlic fumes, warn of conflict before he had even fitted his key into the lock.

Bertha was particularly careful about the two chairs. She dragged them together and they squealed on their casters. They met his eye directly he entered. May was stretched asleep on the sitting room couch, her cheeks still wet and her lips, always with the sensuous look of just having been kissed very hard, slightly, rather appealingly, apart. One of her hands trailed to the floor and there was a pale scatter of freckles on her arm, great isolated ones, so large and far apart that Wallenstein could run his lips up it as if it were a flute, kissing them one by one.

But when he finally did turn his key in the lock, it was as if May, deeply simulating sleep, had been merely lying on the edge of it waiting, so quickly she pounced at him, the castle of her yellow puffs down over one ear and her right eye dragged upward from lying on it.

"May! My dear----"

"Yah, 'dear'--you'd better 'dear' me--leaving me shut up here day after day with a lunatic. Well, you don't need to go no further to hear her side of the story with her lies, lies, lies! You can hear it right here from me. Either that old woman gets out of this house--here--now--to-night--or I go! As God is my witness--I'm through!"

All the little wrinkles came running into his face like sand over paper and he tried to take her in his arms.

"Oh no, you don't! Not this time. A few smooth words can't make up for the all-day hell of living in this house. That old woman goes or I go! I couldn't stand another day of it. You've been a long time choosing, but you've got to chose now! I've tried. I've bit my tongue in two trying. But I'm done."

"Why, May," he said in the sedative tone that must have worn a little rut along his vocal cords from the repetition of it. "I know that Ma's not easy, and there's not a day that I don't think of my girl at home under conditions that aren't just right for her, but she's old, May, and she means well and--and good God, May, a man's mother is a man's mother, little eccentricities and all."

"No--no--we ain't going to argue any more, not while my dress buttons up the back with tiddlywinks. I've been over it all till I'm as crazy loony as she is. You got to decide. This time it's me or her. One of us gets out!"

His nose was like a blade, the nostrils sort of drawn in by the sharpness of his breath, and he stood under the hall light, growing paler and paler as the fatigue lines deepened.

"May! you've never been like this! Has anything unusual happened? My mother--how--where is she?"

"Oh no! Nothing unusual. Just the usual. That's the devil of it! Just the usual, but the camel's back broke to-day. There's no argument. There's just for you to decide which of us gets out." Her body was bent backward in a curve and her head dangling, as if it were a pale lantern weighing down the bamboo pole of her body.

He looked at her and at the shine of her flesh up at him through the lace of her bodice and the old familiar trembling seized him, but he dug with his nails into his palms and his words were all crowded behind his teeth.

"Well then by God--you go!"

It was as if he had stabbed her in the up-thrust of bosom she could always dazzle him with, because she threw out her arms and stood like a great open fan, with the finery of her sleeve drapes falling to the floor.

"Me!"

"You," he said, "yes--yes--you----"

"You don't mean that--Wally."

"I do," he said, still with the jam of words behind his teeth.

For the first time her body sort of unwound itself of its tight theatricalism and she looked at him with her mouth shaped to cry out, but it only quivered.

"If anybody goes out of this house, it's not going to be my mother. Get that! I may be low--but not that low. She stays here!"

"You heard what I got to say," she said.

"Yes, I heard," he said, and looked at her steadily and without the flicker of a muscle. "I heard."

There was a pause that was full of their breathing and then with a lightning gesture she darted out for his hand, but he was too quick for her.

"Wally!"

"No," he said, holding it behind him, "no, none of that."

She darted again and he looked at her coldly and smiled, holding himself on a little oblique that eluded her.

"That don't go this time, May. I'm at the end of my rope here. You have been called upon to make certain sacrifices. I know that. And I don't say they have always been easy ones. But that's part of this game of marriage. Learning to take the hurdles. You haven't taken yours. There's no argument here. Between two women, one of them young and able to take care of herself, and the other seventy years old and--my mother--well, if it's a case of one of them having to go, it's not going to be my mother! This is one of those deadlocks in marriage where there is no solution. A woman either gives in or she--don't. You don't!"

With his body thrust back from her, the words in her mouth were meal, and she knew it and suddenly, with a sinuosity that was rare with her, she had her arms about his knees and her cheek to him and her sobs coming, so that even through the fabric of suiting her warm breath reached him.

"Wally!"

He wrenched himself, but the vise of her arms was relentless, and so with his head held up and his body still tense he stood taut, feeling the tremor of her and finally the wet of her tears--warm--warm--against his knee.

"Get up," he said, with his head back and his body away from her.

"Wally--Wally--for God's sake don't--don't throw me off for her--Wally----."

"Off! Good God, what's a man to do--murder an old woman to get her out of the way of a young one--God--God--what mess have I let myself into! God--God--May--don't----."

"Wally"--her hands were up now against his waistcoat, so that the shape of them burned through, and his face, which he kept averted, was reddening, a slow red that ran down into his collar.

"You can't get me that--way--any--more----" he said, and caught her two hands by the wrists and flung her backward, but she was too quick for him again, and, as if from the momentum of the shove, she was back again, with her arms about his neck, and her lips which were shining with tears, straight and pat against his.

"No--No--May--none of that--no--I say--oh----"

Suddenly it was quiet, and when he lifted his head she was crouched in a cradle his arms made for her and the tears were running heavily down his cheeks.

"I'm tired," he said, crying frankly and daubing his eyes with the back of her hand, "--dog tired" and sank down on a chair in the hallway and she dragged up a stool, an outlandish one on the four curved horns of a bull, and her arms were about his knees again and her shining lips always close enough for him to feel the breath.

"You love me, Wally--I love you--what's the use--you can't give me up----"

He beat his knees.

"God. God. Was ever a man in my plight? I can't give you up. Well, where does that get me? I can't give her up, and the two of you together are making my home a hell. I'm cursed _with_ you and I'm cursed without you. God, God, was ever a man in such hell? I'll be the one to get out--by God--I'll end it--I'll be the one to get out----"

"Wally--Wally, that won't solve anything. That will bust it up for all three. I've got a way out for us. Wally, it's the old woman. I tell you she--she's got to go!"

"And, by God, I tell you, no! My mother doesn't pine out her days alone in a rooming house----"

"No--no, Wally, you don't understand. Why I--you think I'd let her pine out her days in a rooming house? The old woman's sick, Wally. Her mind's sick. The old woman needs a hospital--a fine sunny big hospital where they can take care of her----"

"My mother's not sick--she's--she's old--she's orthodox and she believes so strong it makes her eccentric--she's not sick---."

"She is, Wally. Any doctor would say so. You don't see her all day in the house like I do. You're making me live with a lunatic, Wally."

"You--take that back!"

"You don't know it. But I do. She sits all day talking to herself. I'm afraid of her. I wouldn't ask you to throw her out, Wally. I'm telling you she's got screws loose. She can get violent any time and then you will have trouble. There's institutions. Fine sunny clean ones. She ought to be committed. It's the only way, Wally---to save her--and to save us. You want us to go to hell over a--a loon? Lots of people go crazy on religion--the old woman, Wally--has screws loose--it's against the law not to give her medical treatment--there's plenty places, Wally--fine clean places where they don't even know they're in that kind of a place where she can live in peace and we can stay here in peace. Wally, are you going to throw me over for a poor old woman that's lost her mind? I tell you she's crazy, Wally. What'll you have out of it if I get out and leave you here with a loon? You got to support me. No man can get away without doing his duty to me. You got her and you got me any way you look at it. If one of us got to go, the poor crazy old lady ought to be the one. Get her in a--an--asy--a--hospital, Wally--and that'll leave us here--in our home--together. Wally--poor, tired Wally--home alone--here with his May."

His head fell down against the little cove of her shoulder and he could feel her warm kisses through his hair, and finally when he looked up with the stricken eyes of a St. Bernard dog, the tears ran down over his words.

"I can't give you up, May. My poor mother--she's sick--she needs the best of care--best--institution--she's sick--and she's got--to--go----"

***

Tears. Tears. The dining room looked crazy through the blur of them, and setting out the salt cellars and the vinegar cruet Bertha could scarcely find the table. It waved up at her, Tilted. Ran in little ripples that the tears made. Tears. Tears, The old woman----

She ran down the hall. It shot off in a little ell and on the slant of wall was the door. The door that was between the old woman and the knowing. The bitter knowing that must presently creep toward it and under it like a terrible tide. She crashed through the door and stood trembling in the center of the room.

The night light was burning and the old woman flew up in her vast walnut bed with a cry.

"Wally--who? Ach, Berthie, how you frightened me. I must have been dreaming. My Wally. My Julius--Berthie--it ain't nice you should rush in so on me. You've made me a pain--here. What is it, Berthie--nothing ain't wrong--Wally--home yet? Nothing ain't wrong?"

"Why--no--Mrs. Wallenstein--nothing--I yoost looked in a minute--maybe you want something?"

"No--I--Berthie--you shouldn't rush in so--a pain here--from the fright you gave me--such a pain--my heart--ach no--Berthie--I can't lay down--it's a knife in me--you frightened me so--my heart----"

Her face was so little, and back in the frill of her cap a pointed sort of receding look had set in, and she writhed up from the support of Bertha's arm, against the pain of lying back on the pillows.

"My drops--quick, Berthie--my drops. I--you shouldn't have frightened me--quick--my drops from the doctor."

There they stood, the little colorless phial of them on the table beside the bed. Five of them. Bertha knew how--drop-drop-drop-drop-drop--into a tumbler.

"Berthie--please----"

"No, Mrs. Wallenstein--no--yoost--lay still---- No, not any drops this time--sleep--sh-h-h--no drops--sleep."

"I--my drops--pain--I--I'm so tired, Berthie--hold me--you frightened me so--I was dreaming--my boy--she didn't get him--away from me--she tried, Berthie--I dreamed--but she didn't--he wouldn't--my boy--he stuck to his mama--she's old--she's in the way--but he stuck--why don't you give me my drops, Berthie? I--he stuck by his mama, Berthie----"

"Yes, Mrs. Wallenstein--he stuck----"

"I--I was never so tired--my drops--you should give me my drops--dark--Berthie--yes, Julius--tired--he stuck--my boy--to his mama--didn't he, Berthie?"

"Yes, Mrs. Wallenstein--yes----"

"--tired--my--drops. Wally--oh--God--ouch--oh--oh--ah----"

A sudden lurch forward in Bertha's arms, so that her torso rounded up and left an arch of space between it and the bed.

It was hard to unbend it, because the body had stiffened, and with her cheek to Mrs. Wallenstein's heart, Bertha pressed, pressed gently until the little attitude of convulsion had straightened. It was so quiet there with her cheek to Mrs. Wallenstein's dead heart.

***