His wife had always spoiled him outrageously. No doubt of that. Take,
for example, the matter of the pillows merely. Old man Minick slept
high. That is, he thought he slept high. He liked two plump pillows on
his side of the great, wide, old-fashioned cherry bed. He would sink
into them with a vast grunting and sighing and puffing expressive of
nerves and muscles relaxed and gratified. But in the morning there was
always one pillow on the floor. He had thrown it there. Always, in the
morning, there it lay, its plump white cheek turned reproachfully up at
him from the side of the bed. Ma Minick knew this, naturally, after
forty years of the cherry bed. But she never begrudged him that extra
pillow. Each morning, when she arose, she picked it up on her way to
shut the window. Each morning the bed was made up with two pillows on
his side of it, as usual.
Then there was the window. Ma Minick liked it open wide. Old man Minick,
who rather prided himself on his modernism (he called it being up to
date) was distrustful of the night air. In the folds of its sable
mantle lurked a swarm of dread things--colds, clammy miasmas, fevers.
"Night air's just like any other air," Ma Minick would say, with some
asperity. Ma Minick was no worm; and as modern as he. So when they went
to bed the window would be open wide. They would lie there, the two old
ones, talking comfortably about commonplace things. The kind of talk
that goes on between a man and a woman who have lived together in
wholesome peace (spiced with occasional wholesome bickerings) for more
than forty years.
"Remind me to see Gerson to-morrow about that lock on the basement door.
The paper's full of burglars."
"If I think of it." She never failed to.
"George and Nettie haven't been over in a week now."
"Oh, well, young folks.... Did you stop in and pay that Koritz the fifty
cents for pressing your suit?"
"By golly, I forgot again! First thing in the morning."
A sniff. "Just smell the Yards." It was Chicago.
"Wind must be from the west."
Sleep came with reluctant feet, but they wooed her patiently. And
presently she settled down between them and they slept lightly. Usually,
some time during the night, he awoke, slid cautiously and with infinite
stealth from beneath the covers and closed the wide-flung window to
within a bare two inches of the sill. Almost invariably she heard him;
but she was a wise old woman; a philosopher of parts. She knew better
than to allow a window to shatter the peace of their marital felicity.
As she lay there, smiling a little grimly in the dark and giving no sign
of being awake, she thought, "Oh, well, I guess a closed window won't
kill me either."
Still, sometimes, just to punish him a little, and to prove that she was
nobody's fool, she would wait until he had dropped off to sleep again
and then she, too, would achieve a stealthy trip to the window and would
raise it slowly, carefully, inch by inch.
"How did that window come to be open?" he would say in the morning,
being a poor dissembler.
"Window? Why, it's just the way it was when we went to bed." And she
would stoop to pick up the pillow that lay on the floor.
There was little or no talk of death between this comfortable, active,
sound-appearing man of almost seventy and this plump capable woman of
sixty-six. But as always, between husband and wife, it was understood
wordlessly (and without reason) that old man Minick would go first. Not
that either of them had the slightest intention of going. In fact, when
it happened they were planning to spend the winter in California and
perhaps live there indefinitely if they liked it and didn't get too
lonesome for George and Nettie, and the Chicago smoke, and Chicago
noise, and Chicago smells and rush and dirt. Still, the solid sum paid
yearly in insurance premiums showed clearly that he meant to leave her
in comfort and security. Besides, the world is full of widows. Everyone
sees that. But how many widowers? Few. Widows there are by the
thousands; living alone; living in hotels; living with married daughters
and sons-in-law or married sons and daughters-in-law. But of widowers in
a like situation there are bewilderingly few. And why this should be no
one knows.
So, then. The California trip never materialized. And the year that
followed never was quite clear in old man Minick's dazed mind. In the
first place, it was the year in which stocks tumbled and broke their
backs. Gilt-edged securities showed themselves to be tinsel. Old man
Minick had retired from active business just one year before, meaning to
live comfortably on the fruit of a half-century's toil. He now saw that
fruit rotting all about him. There was in it hardly enough nourishment
to sustain them. Then came the day when Ma Minick went downtown to see
Matthews about that pain right here and came home looking shrivelled,
talking shrilly about nothing, and evading Pa's eyes. Followed months
that were just a jumble of agony, X-rays, hope, despair, morphia,
nothingness.
After it was all over: "But I was going first," old man Minick said,
dazedly.
The old house on Ellis near Thirty-ninth was sold for what it would
bring. George, who knew Chicago real-estate if any one did, said they
might as well get what they could. Things would only go lower. You'll
see. And nobody's going to have any money for years. Besides, look at
the neighbourhood!
Old man Minick said George was right. He said everybody was right. You
would hardly have recognized in this shrunken figure and wattled face
the spruce and dressy old man whom Ma Minick used to spoil so
delightfully. "You know best, George. You know best." He who used to
stand up to George until Ma Minick was moved to say, "Now, Pa, you don't
know everything."
After Matthews' bills, and the hospital, and the nurses and the
medicines and the thousand and one things were paid there was left
exactly five hundred dollars a year.
"You're going to make your home with us, Father," George and Nettie
said. Alma, too, said this would be the best. Alma, the married
daughter, lived in Seattle. "Though you know Ferd and I would be only
too glad to have you."
Seattle! The ends of the earth. Oh, no. No! he protested, every fibre
of his old frame clinging to the accustomed. Seattle, at seventy! He
turned piteous eyes on his son George and his daughter-in-law Nettie.
"You're going to make your home with us, Father," they reassured him. He
clung to them gratefully. After it was over Alma went home to her
husband and their children.
So now he lived with George and Nettie in the five-room flat on South
Park Avenue, just across from Washington Park. And there was no extra
pillow on the floor.
Nettie hadn't said he couldn't have the extra pillow. He had told her he
used two and she had given him two the first week. But every morning she
had found a pillow cast on the floor.
"I thought you used two pillows, Father."
"I do."
"But there's always one on the floor when I make the bed in the morning.
You always throw one on the floor. You only sleep on one pillow,
really."
"I use two pillows."
But the second week there was one pillow. He tossed and turned a good
deal there in his bedroom off the kitchen. But he got used to it in
time. Not used to it, exactly, but--well----
The bedroom off the kitchen wasn't as menial as it sounds. It was really
rather cosy. The five-room flat held living room, front bedroom, dining
room, kitchen, and maid's room. The room off the kitchen was intended as
a maid's room but Nettie had no maid. George's business had suffered
with the rest. George and Nettie had said, "I wish there was a front
room for you, Father. You could have ours and we'd move back here, only
this room's too small for twin beds and the dressing table and the
chiffonier." They had meant it--or meant to mean it.
"This is fine," old man Minick had said. "This is good enough for
anybody." There was a narrow white enamel bed and a tiny dresser and a
table. Nettie had made gay cretonne covers and spreads and put a little
reading lamp on the table and arranged his things. Ma Minick's picture
on the dresser with her mouth sort of pursed to make it look small. It
wasn't a recent picture. Nettie and George had had it framed for him as
a surprise. They had often urged her to have a picture taken, but she
had dreaded it. Old man Minick didn't think much of that photograph,
though he never said so. He needed no photograph of Ma Minick. He had a
dozen of them; a gallery of them; thousands of them. Lying on his one
pillow he could take them out and look at them one by one as they passed
in review, smiling, serious, chiding, praising, there in the dark. He
needed no picture on his dresser.
A handsome girl, Nettie, and a good girl. He thought of her as a girl,
though she was well past thirty. George and Nettie had married late.
This was only the third year of their marriage. Alma, the daughter, had
married young, but George had stayed on, unwed, in the old house on
Ellis until he was thirty-six and all Ma Minick's friends' daughters had
had a try at him in vain. The old people had urged him to marry, but it
had been wonderful to have him around the house, just the same. Somebody
young around the house. Not that George had stayed around very much. But
when he was there you knew he was there. He whistled while dressing. He
sang in the bath. He roared down the stairway, "Ma, where's my clean
shirts?" The telephone rang for him. Ma Minick prepared special dishes
for him. The servant girl said, "Oh, now, Mr. George, look what you've
done! Gone and spilled the grease all over my clean kitchen floor!" and
wiped it up adoringly while George laughed and gobbled his bit of food
filched from pot or frying pan.
They had been a little surprised about Nettie. George was in the bond
business and she worked for the same firm. A plump, handsome,
eye-glassed woman with fine fresh colouring, a clear skin that old man
Minick called appetizing, and a great coil of smooth dark hair. She wore
plain tailored things and understood the bond business in a way that
might have led you to think hers a masculine mind if she hadn't been so
feminine, too, in her manner. Old man Minick had liked her better than
Ma Minick had.
Nettie had called him Pop and joked with him and almost flirted with him
in a daughterly sort of way. He liked to squeeze her plump arm and pinch
her soft cheek between thumb and forefinger. She would laugh up at him
and pat his shoulder and that shoulder would straighten spryly and he
would waggle his head doggishly.
"Look out there, George!" the others in the room would say. "Your dad'll
cut you out. First thing you know you'll lose your girl, that's all."
Nettie would smile. Her teeth were white and strong and even. Old man
Minick would laugh and wink, immensely pleased and flattered. "We
understand each other, don't we, Pop?" Nettie would say.
During the first years of their married life Nettie stayed home. She
fussed happily about her little flat, gave parties, went to parties,
played bridge. She seemed to love the ease, the relaxation, the small
luxuries. She and George were very much in love. Before her marriage she
had lived in a boarding house on Michigan Avenue. At mention of it now
she puckered up her face. She did not attempt to conceal her fondness
for these five rooms of hers, so neat, so quiet, so bright, so cosy.
Over-stuffed velvet in the living room, with silk lampshades, and small
tables holding books and magazines and little boxes containing
cigarettes or hard candies. Very modern. A gate-legged table in the
dining room. Caramel-coloured walnut in the bedroom, rich and dark and
smooth. She loved it. An orderly woman. Everything in its place. Before
eleven o'clock the little apartment was shining, spotless; cushions
plumped, crumbs brushed, vegetables in cold water. The telephone.
"Hello!... Oh, hello, Bess! Oh, hours ago ... Not a thing ... Well, if
George is willing ... I'll call him up and ask him. We haven't seen a
show in two weeks. I'll call you back within the next half hour ... No,
I haven't done my marketing yet.... Yes, and have dinner downtown. Meet
at seven."
Into this orderly smooth-running mechanism was catapulted a bewildered
old man. She no longer called him Pop. He never dreamed of squeezing the
plump arm or pinching the smooth cheek. She called him Father. Sometimes
George's Father. Sometimes, when she was telephoning, there came to
him--"George's father's living with us now, you know. I can't."
They were very kind to him, Nettie and George. "Now just you sit right
down here, Father. What do you want to go poking off into your own room
for?"
He remembered that in the last year Nettie had said something about
going back to work. There wasn't enough to do around the house to keep
her busy. She was sick of afternoon parties. Sew and eat, that's all,
and gossip, or play bridge. Besides, look at the money. Business was
awful. The two old people had resented this idea as much as George
had--more, in fact. They were scandalized.
"Young folks nowdays!" shaking their heads. "Young folks nowdays. What
are they thinking of! In my day when you got married you had babies."
George and Nettie had had no babies. At first Nettie had said, "I'm so
happy. I just want a chance to rest. I've been working since I was
seventeen. I just want to rest, first." One year. Two years. Three. And
now Pa Minick.
Ma Minick, in the old house on Ellis Avenue, had kept a loose sort of
larder; not lavish, but plentiful. They both ate a great deal, as old
people are likely to do. Old man Minick, especially, had liked to
nibble. A handful of raisins from the box on the shelf. A couple of nuts
from the dish on the sideboard. A bit of candy rolled beneath the
tongue. At dinner (sometimes, toward the last, even at noon-time) a
plate of steaming soup, hot, revivifying, stimulating. Plenty of this
and plenty of that. "What's the matter, Jo? You're not eating." But he
was, amply. Ma Minick had liked to see him eat too much. She was wrong,
of course.
But at Nettie's things were different. Hers was a sufficient but stern
ménage. So many mouths to feed; just so many lamb chops. Nettie knew
about calories and vitamines and mysterious things like that, and talked
about them. So many calories in this. So many calories in that. He never
was quite clear in his mind about these things said to be lurking in his
food. He had always thought of spinach as spinach, chops as chops. But
to Nettie they were calories. They lunched together, these two. George
was, of course, downtown. For herself Nettie would have one of those
feminine pick-up lunches; a dab of apple sauce, a cup of tea, and a
slice of cold toast left from breakfast. This she would eat while old
man Minick guiltily supped up his cup of warmed-over broth, or his
coddled egg. She always pressed upon him any bit of cold meat that was
left from the night before, or any remnants of vegetable or spaghetti.
Often there was quite a little fleet of saucers and sauce plates grouped
about his main plate. Into these he dipped and swooped uncomfortably,
and yet with a relish. Sometimes, when he had finished, he would look
about, furtively.
"What'll you have, Father? Can I get you something?"
"Nothing, Nettie, nothing. I'm doing fine." She had finished the last of
her wooden toast and was waiting for him, kindly.
Still, this balanced and scientific fare seemed to agree with him. As
the winter went on he seemed actually to have regained most of his
former hardiness and vigour. A handsome old boy he was, ruddy, hale,
with the zest of a juicy old apple, slightly withered but still sappy.
It should be mentioned that he had a dimple in his cheek which flashed
unexpectedly when he smiled. It gave him a roguish--almost
boyish--effect most appealing to the beholder. Especially the feminine
beholder. Much of his spoiling at the hands of Ma Minick had doubtless
been due to this mere depression of the skin.
Spring was to bring a new and welcome source of enrichment into his
life. But these first six months of his residence with George and Nettie
were hard. No spoiling there. He missed being made much of. He got
kindness, but he needed love. Then, too, he was rather a gabby old man.
He liked to hold forth. In the old house on Ellis there had been
visiting back and forth between men and women of his own age, and Ma's.
At these gatherings he had waxed oratorical or argumentative, and they
had heard him, some in agreement, some in disagreement, but always
respectfully, whether he prated of real estate or social depravity;
prohibition or European exchange.
"Let me tell you, here and now, something's got to be done before you
can get a country back on a sound financial basis. Why, take Russia
alone, why ..." Or: "Young people nowdays! They don't know what respect
means. I tell you there's got to be a change and there will be, and it's
the older generation that's got to bring it about. What do they know of
hardship! What do they know about work--real work. Most of 'em's never
done a real day's work in their life. All they think of is dancing and
gambling and drinking. Look at the way they dress! Look at ..."
_Ad lib._
"That's so," the others would agree. "I was saying only yesterday ..."
Then, too, until a year or two before, he had taken active part in
business. He had retired only at the urging of Ma and the children. They
said he ought to rest and play and enjoy himself.
Now, as his strength and good spirits gradually returned he began to go
downtown, mornings. He would dress, carefully, though a little shakily.
He had always shaved himself and he kept this up. All in all, during the
day, he occupied the bathroom literally for hours, and this annoyed
Nettie to the point of frenzy, though she said nothing. He liked the
white cheerfulness of the little tiled room. He puddled about in the
water endlessly. Snorted and splashed and puffed and snuffled and blew.
He was one of those audible washers who emerge dripping and whose
ablutions are distributed impartially over ceiling, walls, and floor.