I
Joe and Mattie Harper lived in Harlem. They lived in a four-room
apartment in the second of a row of brown, unattractive-looking
apartment buildings—six of them just alike—in One Hundred and
Thirty-second Street.
They lived in Apartment 52, which means the fifth floor, and there was
no elevator. But the rent was reasonable, fifty dollars, and both Joe
and Mattie said they didn’t mind a “walk-up” at all—you get used to it
after a while, and Mattie knew it kept her hips down. Then, too, by
going to the fifth floor, you get a much better view, though why a view
of the building across the street—another brown barracks of exactly
the same age and design—is desirable, only Joe and Mattie and other
similarly situated folks know. The air was cleaner, though, on the
fifth floor—they felt that any one would know that.
One Hundred and Thirty-second Street, Harlem, lacked all outstanding
features. If the street signs had suddenly disappeared, there would
have been nothing to identify it, to pin it to—a bleak street, without
trees, a fairly clean street, decent and neat looking (after the
garbage man had passed and the tins had disappeared), wide enough to
lack misery, narrow enough to lack grandeur.
We are about to have two meals with Joe and Mattie—the most important
meals of their day, for Joe’s lunch was usually a sandwich and a glass
of milk at the Automat, or beans or a beef stew in the lunch room
across from his office; Mattie’s a glass of soda and a sandwich or a
dish of ice cream, if she were down-town—it is a shame about the new
price of sodas—a scramble of left overs from last night’s dinner, if
she spent the day at home.
Breakfast:
The alarm clock had buzzed at six-thirty, as it always did. It was a
good alarm clock and had cost $1.48 at Liggett’s, two years before.
Mattie’s little dog, who slept in the front hall, had heard the alarm
and scrambled into their bedroom with his usual yip of pleasure—he was
rather deaf, but he could make out sounds as definite as the ringing
of a bell and he listened for the alarm each morning. He was a nice
fellow, a white poodle, overly fat, with red-rimmed eyes. If you didn’t
molest him nor try to pet him nor step on him, he wouldn’t snap or try
to bite you. Mattie and Joe were quite fond of him and took him for
walks in Central Park on Sundays or around Harlem in the evenings. His
name had, in turn, been, stylishly, Snowball, Snoodles and Snookums and
had at last reached Ikkle Floppit, all of which he answered to with
stolid indifference.
Joe had heard the alarm, had jumped up and turned it off, and had waked
Mattie, who slept more soundly. Ikkle Floppit had jumped, wheezily,
upon the bed and licked all visible portions of Mattie’s face. Mattie,
then, had given up trying to doze again and had stroked the dog’s
uneven coat with a fond hand.
Toilets followed, rapid plunges into the dwarf-sized white tub with its
rather insecure shower attachment—Joe talking while he shaved, about
the office, the men who worked with him, his boss who didn’t appreciate
him, the weather that was still too warm for comfort, their friends,
the Taylors, who they both agreed were too stuck up for words since
Taylor had got his new job.
“His people aren’t anything at all,” Mattie had said, “awfully
ordinary—and the way they do put on airs, you’d think they amounted to
something. Why, my cousin Mabel knew his sister in Perryville, where
they used to live, and she said they weren’t anything at all there. And
now, how they do go on with a maid and a car. They’ve never even taken
us for a ride in their old car and they can hold their breath until I’d
step into it. It beats all—”
And Joe, his face twisted for the razor’s path beyond the possibilities
of conversation, had grunted assent.
Now Mattie had completed the simple breakfast, six pieces of toast,
buttered unevenly and a bit burned on the edges, as always, a halved
orange for each of them, some coffee and some bought preserves with a
slight strawberry-like flavour. She and Joe faced each other over the
almost clean tablecloth—it had been clean on Sunday and this was just
Tuesday morning.
The dining-room was small, lighted vaguely with two court windows. Even
now, at seven-thirty, the electric light had been turned on in the red
and green glass electrolier.
Mattie knew the electrolier was out of fashion, she would have
preferred a more modern “inverted bowl,” but this one was included with
the apartment, so there seemed nothing to do about it. She would also
have preferred mahogany to the fumed oak dining-room set, bought eight
years before—she had bought the mahogany tea wagon with her last year’s
Christmas money from Joe, looking forward to the time when they could
buy a whole new mahogany set.
Mattie was not at all a bad-looking breakfast companion, seated there
in her half-clean pink gingham bungalow apron—she wore these aprons
constantly in the house to save her other clothes. She was a slender,
brown-haired woman of about thirty, with clear brown eyes, a nose
that turned slightly upward, a mouth inclined to be a little large,
rather uneven but white teeth—indefinite features, a pleasant, usual,
hard-to-place face.
And Joe, across from her, was equally pleasing, with a straight nose
and rather a weak chin, dark hair starting to recede just a little at
thirty-three, sloping shoulders inclined a bit to the roundness of the
office man.
“What’s in the paper, Joe?” asked Mattie, already nibbling toast.
Joe, deep in the morning _World_, threw out interesting items—the
progress of a murder trial, news of an airplane flight.
They talked about little things, a friend Joe had passed on the street
the day before, the choice of a show for Friday or Saturday night—they
tried to attend the theatre once each week, during the winter.
The door bell rang, three short rings. Ikkle Floppit gave three
asthmatic yips. Mattie threw down her napkin, sprang to her feet.
“I’ll go,” she said, as she usually said it, “you go on eating or
you’ll be late again. I bet it’s nothing but a bill, anyhow.”
She returned in a moment with a thick letter in her hand.
“From your mother, Joe,” she said.
She knew the printed address in the corner of the envelope, “The
Banner Store, General Merchandise, E. J. Harper, Prop., Burton Center,
Missouri,” the neat, old-fashioned handwriting, the post-mark.
Mattie and Joe had come from Burton Center, Mattie eight years and Joe
nine years before. They had grown up together in Burton Center, one
of the jolly crowd who attended the High School, went to Friday night
dances, later were graduated into the older crowd, which meant a few
more dances, went to the Opera House when a show came to town, had
happy love affairs.
Joe and Mattie became engaged three years after Joe left High School,
which was the year after Mattie graduated. Joe went to work at the
Banner Store, under his father. But youth and ambition knew not Burton
Center, so, a little later, Joe had come to New York in search of
fortune.
He had not obeyed the usual law of fiction and forgotten Mattie, nor
had Mattie changed while she waited. No, though Joe found neither
fame nor fortune, he did get an office job that looked as if it might
support two in comfort, if Mattie and Joe were the two concerned,
took a vacation, went back to Burton Center, found Mattie even more
alluring and dimpled and giggling than he had remembered her—how much
prettier Burton Center girls looked than those in New York!—and they
were married.
Eight years, then, of New York, of subway rides, of the weekly theatre,
the weekly restaurant dinner, of apartment hunting about every second
October, of infrequent clothes buying, of occasional calls on stray
acquaintances, of little quarrels and little peace-makings, weekly
letters from home—little lives going on—
Joe tore open the letter.
“Gee, it’s a thick one,” he said.
Then:
“Well, I guess they are all well or ma wouldn’t have written so much.
Listen, Mattie.”
Joe read the letter, a folksy letter—Mrs. Harper, senior, was well and
so was “your father,” as all mothers speak of their husbands to their
children, in letters. She had seen Millie’s mother a few days before
and she was looking well and hoping to see them soon in Burton Center.
The youngest Rosemond girl was engaged to a Mr. Secor from St. Louis,
who was in the lumber business.
Then there followed, long and unparagraphed, something that made Joe
and Mattie look at each other, hard and seriously, across the table.
For Joe’s mother had written something that they had always thought
might be suggested to them but they had never discussed, even with each
other:
“Your father isn’t as well as he once was, nor as young, you know,
and, though you need not worry about him, he is eating and sleeping
fine, even in hot weather, I think it would be better if you and
Mattie came here to live. You could step right into the store and
take charge of things as soon as you wanted to. It is not a big store
as you know, but your father has always made a nice living from it
and Burton Center is growing right along. The Millers have put up
some new bungalows out on Crescent Hill, you’d be surprised to see
how it has grown up out there, all of the young people are moving
out there and with the new Thirteenth Street car line it is very
convenient. The cottages are all taken but two, both white with green
blinds and room back of them for garages and we could get you one of
them if you wanted us to. The George Hendricks are living there and
Mr. and Mrs. Tucker and the Williams boy, Phillip, I think that’s
his name, you used to go with. The new country club isn’t far from
there and you could play tennis after work, which would be good for
you. I wish you could make up your mind at once, so you could get
here before long or your father will have to get a man to help him,
for he really ought to have more time to himself and take a nap after
dinner, now that the season’s trade is starting. Talk this over with
Mattie and let us know as soon as you can. I hope you are keeping
well in this changeable weather. Your father sends love to both and
so do I.
“Affectionately, your Mother.”
Mattie and Joe looked at each other, looked and looked and forgot their
toast and coffee. But they saw each other not at all. Nor did they
visualize One Hundred and Thirty-second Street, New York, drab and
bare, nor even Fifth Avenue nor Broadway.
They saw a little town, with rows of old trees along its quiet streets,
little white houses on little squares of green, each house with its
hedge or its garden or its hammocked lawn, peace, and the smell of
growing things after a rain—
“What say, Mattie?” asked Joe. “Sound pretty good? Of course, you’ve
always said you loved New York and I don’t want to persuade you against
your will. Perhaps you wouldn’t care to move—still, Burton Center,
we’ve got some good friends there—it’d be sort of fun, seeing the
old crowd, belong to a country club, tennis, things like that, even
managing the business. But, of course, if you wouldn’t want to leave
the city—”
Mattie, mentally, had far outdistanced him.
She clapped her hands, pleasantly excited.
“Joe can’t you just see that little house—I bet it’s awfully cute. Last
summer, when we were out in the country, I certainly did envy people
living in little houses—I get so tired of New York, sometimes. But I
never wanted to say anything, knowing how much you liked it here. But
that little house—we could sell all of our furniture except the tea
wagon and the table in the living-room and my new dressing-table—it
really would be cheaper to buy new things than to pay for shipping. And
we could find out how many windows there are and I could get some new
cretonne here—sort of set the styles in Burton Center. It sure would
be funny, living back there and knowing everybody. Here I never see a
soul I know in weeks, or talk to anybody. Honest, sometimes I get just
hungry for—for people. The trouble is, we haven’t really got anything
here.”
“I know,” Joe nodded. “New York’s all right for some people—if you’ve
got money. It’s a great city all right, but we don’t get anything
out of it. I get so sick of being squeezed into subways night and
morning—hardly standing room all the way home—and no place to go
Sundays or evenings but a movie or a show or to see people who live
miles away and don’t care anything about you anyhow and who you see
about twice a year. Burton Center will look awfully good—folks take an
interest in you, there.”
“You bet they do.”
“And it isn’t as if I’ve failed here. I haven’t. I’m due for another
raise pretty soon—but we aren’t putting anything aside, getting any
place. It isn’t as if we were terribly poor. You look awfully well in
your clothes on the street, but we are always having to skimp and do
without things—we never have the best of anything, always cheap seats
at shows or cheap meals in second-class restaurants, a cheap street to
live on—it gets on a person’s nerves.”
“Why, I didn’t know you felt that way, Joe. I thought you liked New
York. Why, it makes me so jealous, going down Fifth Avenue, seeing all
those people in limousines, not a bit better nor better looking than I
am, all dressed up, lolling back so—so superior, with nasty little dogs
not near so nice as Floppit—and with chauffeurs and everything. Why,
in Burton Center we’d be somebody, as good as any one. We could fix up
that house awfully nice—and have a little garden and all that. But you
said you hated the Banner Store so—now don’t go and make up your mind—”
“You needn’t worry about me. The Banner Store is all right—I think
differently about things than I did years ago. I thought the city was
just going to fall apart in my hand—but I found someone else got here
first. I’m not complaining, you know. It isn’t that I’ve failed—why,
in Burton Center they’ll look at us as a success, we’ll be city folks,
don’t you see. They know I haven’t failed. I didn’t come sneaking back
the year I left, the way Ray Wulberg did. No, sir, when folks came to
New York to visit, we showed them a good time, took ’em to restaurants
and shows—they think we got along fine here—that we’re all right—”
“You bet they do, Joe. But I just can hardly wait to see that
cottage—and everybody. I bet Crescent Hill is awfully pretty. To-night,
you write to your mother—don’t make it too sudden, you know, or too
anxious—for you know how she is—she means fine, but she’ll like to
spread the news about us coming back. You just say that, under the
circumstances, as long as your father is getting old and needs you, you
feel it’s your duty to go there and as soon as you can arrange your
affairs and resign your position and train one of your assistants so
that he can take care of your work—”
“You leave that to me. I can fix that part up all right.”
The buzzer of the dumb-waiter zinged into their talk.
“Joe, there’s the janitor. It’s late. You’d better hurry. You know the
call-down you got last week for being late.”
Mattie and Joe arose simultaneously, Joe grabbed his paper, folded it
conveniently, hurried to the door, Mattie after him.
“Going down-town to-day?” he asked.
“Thought I would, when I get the house straightened up. I want to look
at a new waist. My good one is starting to tear at the back.”
“All right. I’ll be home early, about six-thirty—won’t have to stay
over-time. In a few months, I’ll be my own boss, no hurrying off in the
morning or rushing home in subways—we’ll fix that letter up to-night.”
He brushed off his mouth with his hand and gave Mattie the usual and
rather hearty good-bye kiss and, closing the door behind him, Joe and
Mattie parted for the day with visions of little houses nestling in
green gardens uppermost in their minds.