The apartment house had a foyer. It was tiled in grimy white and brown
squares. The walls were rough and dark. Dot had always thought of oak
bark, or rather she thought of trees; she didn’t know the name of any
particular one.
Two chairs stared lonesomely at each other across a wide empty gap.
They were pensioners. You could picture them in years gone by,
important and useful in a high-ceilinged room where a fire burned
brightly and whisky and soda stood on a tray near by. You didn’t know
why you thought of whisky and soda, but you did, and you looked again
at the chairs. Pensioners. Fit for further service, but not concordant
with the demands of the day. You fancied some one saying, “But you
can’t destroy them--” and so they stood miserable and embarrassed in
their uselessness. Foyer chairs.
There was a telephone booth, too, for the convenience of the tenants,
and a rug with its edges frayed and its jolly colors dimming with cruel
gradualness. You knew that in time it would be a strange nondescript
shade.
The stairs stood beside the telephone booth. They were marble and gave
an air of elegance to the foyer, Dot thought. It never occurred to her
that there should be an elevator.
Dot was standing on the third marble step looking down at Eddie. They
were truly alone now. Edna Driggs had left them together.
“I suppose you’re so popular that I’ll never see you again,” Eddie
said. There was irony in his tone. He didn’t doubt Dot’s popularity,
but he was following a standardized line of attack. In Eddie’s circle,
men said those things in that manner and were successful. Dot’s orbit
was the same.
“You don’t think I’d make a date with you, do you?” she asked. “You
were all right on the boat when I was lonesome--” She broke off in a
laugh.
“Suits me,” he came back. “I was just sorry for you. It sure looks like
you can’t get a fellow to take you out.”
“Well, I’m particular.” She said this with her little tip-tilted nose
in the air and the brown, wavy bob swinging low and silky on her neck.
The ukulele was under her arm, mute and forgotten. It had no place in
the grimy foyer with its barnlike walls and embarrassed chairs. In a
few minutes it would be thrown carelessly in the spare closet, the
limbo of winter coats, hoarded magazines, and useless radio parts.
“What about it?” Eddie prompted. “Want to see me again?”
“I should say not, but accidents do happen.”
Eddie smiled a little. He liked girls to say things like that. No
fun kidding a dame who couldn’t think up a quick answer. This Dot
Haley was all right. She was a little stuck on herself, but she was a
good-looker, though he’d never tell her that she was.
This noble resolution to refrain from adding to Dot’s conceit was
pure swagger on Eddie’s part. It would have been impossible for him
to sing praises to Dot’s charms had he desired passionately to do so.
He knew that other fellows, when they chose, could toss compliments
about with enviable ease. Pretty expressions flowed liquidly as they
willed. They could even extol the beauty of an unattractive girl
without experiencing any difficulties. Eddie was different. Flattery
froze on his lips. He had tried it once. He had failed, or perhaps he
had succeeded. The lying words wouldn’t come. Honest admiration was
almost as hard to express. He fumbled for words, suffered terror,
helplessness, humiliation, and fury before crawling back in his shell,
defeated. Hard words and silences came more easily.
“Want to go to a chop suey place?” Dot asked him. “I know a dandy one.
You can dance there, too.”
“Where is it?”
“Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street near Seventh.”
Eddie knew the place. He signified approval by nodding.
“Thursday night be all right?”
Again Eddie nodded.
“Well, then that’s settled,” Dot said briskly. She moved up another
step and delayed going farther. Her hands drifted lingeringly over the
balustrade, and one foot made strange little jerky motions expressive
of indecision.
“I got to go up now,” she said.
“Thursday then,” Eddie reminded her.
“Yes, Thursday. I’ll meet you in front of the place at eight o’clock. I
won’t eat no dinner. Gee, I love chow mein, don’t you?”
Eddie said it was good stuff.
Dot sat down on the fourth step. “I should go upstairs,” she said.
“I’ll get Hail Columbia if my brother’s in.”
“He your boss?”
“Sure, but he ain’t strict. He don’t care much what I do, but once in a
while if something goes wrong down at work, he’s funny. You know how it
is.”
Eddie appeared to know how it was. Out of deference to the funniness of
Dot’s brother, he waited in silence for her to speak again.
Somewhere aloft a door banged open with a loud, brassy jangle.
Footsteps sounded on the marble stairs, and a voice pursued them
hollowly.
“Bring ten cents’ worth of potato salad, too, Ben.”
A man with a proud, businesslike purposefulness appeared on the
landing. His brow was puckered importantly. He was skinning the inside
of his lip by a system of nervous, rapid snatches. His impressive mien
was designed to conceal the smallness of his errand.
Dot slid over on the steps and the man walked past her, down the hall,
and out of the door.
“I hope he remembers the liverwurst,” Eddie said.
Dot smiled, but not at Eddie’s remark. It was a thoughtful, wondering
smile.
“That woman who hollered don’t care no more about living,” she said.
“Do you know her?”
“No, but when a woman hollers down a stairs like that, it’s ’cause
she don’t care what the neighbors think, and she gets like that when
nothing counts any more.”
“You’re crazy,” Eddie said. “My mother use to holler down the stairs
when she wanted something.”
“Is she dead?” Dot asked.
“Yeh, so’s the old man. He died from pneumonia. He sold his coat for
a drink and caught cold.” The corners of Eddie’s mouth twisted into a
travestied smile. “He sold all the parlor furniture one day and stayed
drunk for a week. My old lady was good though, she.... But say, I got
off the track, she use to holler downstairs.”
Dot said nothing. Her head was resting against the balustrade bars, and
her pleated skirt lay in soft folds on the bottom step. The front door
slammed, and a woman of thirty or thereabouts with keen brown eyes and
a fine figure came into the foyer.
She smiled at Dot as she passed and said something kittenish about
love’s young dream. Eddie blushed and the woman ran blithely up the
stairs laughing.
“She works in a Wall Street office,” Dot said when the door one flight
above them had closed with a quiet dignity. “She gets fifty dollars a
week.”
Eddie looked up the marble flight. There was respect in his gaze and
a tinge of resentment. Fifty dollars! Could a woman be worth that
much to a business firm? He doubted it. The respect vanished from his
gaze; for a second the tinge of resentment lingered; then it too died.
No, a woman couldn’t earn fifty dollars. Some one had lied to Dot, or
perhaps--he shot a quick, suspicious glance at her, but she was looking
up the stairs at the door that concealed the woman, and her expression
was reverential. He wouldn’t tell Dot that she had been fooled. Eddie
considered it a harmless deception.
“Guess I’ll go,” he said. “I got to get up early tomorrow morning.”
Dot stood up. “I should have gone half an hour ago. I’ll get killed.”
Neither of them made a decisive move. The man with the pitiable air
returned carrying a large paper bag. The bottom of it was wet, and
small wrapped packages protruded from the top. He passed through the
hall swiftly, but the odor of spiced meats and vinegar followed with
slow and languid ease.
“Thursday night at eight then?”
“Yep, in front of the Chinee place.” Dot turned her back and climbed
two steps. “Good night, Eddie.”
“Say, Dot.”
She wheeled around with her dark brows raised in question. He had not
moved an inch.
“Why don’t you say good night in the proper way?”
“Oh.” She laughed a little and flew down the stairs, a sudden swirl of
white silken pleats and shining hair that danced in a mad little flare
about her face.
He caught her in his arms and held her fast. Her cheek was against
his. It was soft and smelled faintly of the powder she used. He kissed
her lips, and she responded. It was in such situations that Eddie felt
the need of honeyed phrases. At such times, other fellows whispered
pet names and extravagant compliments. He could only press her against
himself and kiss her.
“I like you an awful lot, Eddie.”
“Do you?”
“Don’t you like me?”
“Sure.”
“You didn’t say so.”
“Didn’t I?”
“You know you didn’t.”
He kissed her again to silence her. Her body was sweetly, fragrantly
warm. It was a perennial warmth independent of climate. It would be
there when August had gone, when the _Burma_ lay asleep and dreaming of
starry silver nights on the river. When the whistling, humming herd was
no longer whistling and humming “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More.”
She drew herself away from Eddie and faced the stairs again. Kisses
were different here with the fading rug and the unhappy chairs looking
on in silent, shocked amazement. It wasn’t like the boat. Dot arduously
examined a tiny nick in one of the ukulele strings. She hated to look
at Eddie. No, it wasn’t at all like the boat.
“I got to go,” she said. Her words trampled on each other; some
survived, others were lost. “I’ll get murdered. See you Thursday night
at eight. Good night.”
She scrambled hastily up the marble steps, pausing on the second
landing to hear the door slam. He was going home. Where was that? A
little panicky feeling leaped within her. She didn’t know where he
lived. Suppose he should disappoint her Thursday night; she might never
see him again. The pert little bob tossed indifferently. Suppose she
never did see him again? There were other men. Lots of other men. Dot
shrugged her shoulders with jaunty carelessness. One’s line is one’s
line even if one happens to be alone.
On the third floor she fumbled for her key and opened the door at the
head of the stairs.
“Is that you, Dottie?” Her father’s querulous voice came waveringly
down the hall to meet her.
“Yeh, Pa, it’s me.” The question and answer had been spoken
simultaneously. Dot had had a key for five years now, and Frank Haley
always greeted his children thus. He knew Jim’s heavy, decided steps
and the light, dance-like shuffle that meant Dot. He would look up from
his magazine or evening paper and a puzzled expression would appear
in his pale blue eyes as the key turned in the lock. He would grow
apprehensive and demand in his peevish tone, “Is that you, Dottie?”
Then, having been assured that it was, he would nod contentedly and
return to his reading. He had known all along that it was Dottie, but
it was part of the game that she should say so. Sometimes when Jim was
cross he would reply to the question with a careless “Who did you think
it was?”
That would grieve Frank Haley exceedingly. It was unkind and
disrespectful. A boy had no right to speak to his father in that
manner. It was too bad that he was sick and old, or he wouldn’t be
depending another day on the bounty of his son. God knows that he had
tried to raise Jim and Dottie decently after the death of their dear
mother. He cooked for them, he cleaned for them. In his old age he
couldn’t help it if he was sickly. Just to think his son begrudged him
a civil word! Well, if he was a nuisance there was a remedy for that--
But the next night Frank Haley would be peacefully reading again when
the heavy, decided step came up the stairs.
“Is that you, Jim?” he would ask.
“Yep, that’s me.” And Frank Haley would nod contentedly and return to
his reading.
Dot came into the room. She had laid aside her white pleated skirt and
the brilliant-colored sweater. She was wearing a soiled and faded dress
from which the sleeves had been torn. Threads hung from the jagged
gashes and trailed dejectedly across the white firmness of Dot’s arms.
“Did you have a good time, my dear?”
“Yes, Edna went with me, you know. We sailed up the Hudson on the
_Burma_.”
“That sounds very nice,” said Dot’s father.
“It was.”
Mr. Haley’s blue eyes waited politely to see if Dot wished to continue
the conversation. After fifteen seconds of silence they supposed not
and returned eagerly to the story.
Dot unfolded the rotogravure section of a newspaper and scanned without
interest the pictures of some society folks, the funeral of a prominent
politician, and the latest additions to the Bronx Zoo.
It was very quiet in the room. Dot pushed the paper from her and yawned
widely. She considered going to bed, but Edna had given her a message
for Jim. It was unsafe to trust it with her father, for he would twist
and alter it beyond recognition. To leave a note for Jim would injure
the feelings of the old man.
Dot waited, kicking impatiently against the thick golden-oak post that
supported the table.
Her father looked up from his magazine. “You are scratching the table,
Dottie,” he said, reprovingly.
“One more scratch won’t hurt,” she replied.
Mr. Haley continued his reading. Dottie was perfectly correct. One
more scratch wouldn’t be noticed in that jungle of criss-cross marks,
but the children must be rebuked occasionally. Dot pushed her chair
back from the table. The chair was golden oak, too. Her mother had
believed in golden oak for dining-rooms. There were two other chairs
like the one Dot sat on. One had arms and was Papa’s chair. There was
a long, massive buffet at the south wall. It wore an ecru scarf, and
a red glass bowl sat on it with vindictive satisfaction. The bowl was
an uncertain, distorted haze of red when reflected on the door of the
china closet which stood directly across the room. Dot accepted that
room. It never occurred to her that the red bowl could be set on the
top of the china closet and the blue vase substituted in its place.
Things were where they had been in the house on Lexington Avenue, and
no one had thought of changing them.
Mamma had died in that other house. Dot didn’t remember her. She had
a tintype of a black-haired girl with a large mouth and an elaborate
pompadour. That was Mamma. The tintype had been taken at Coney Island.
A dashing, derbyed youth stood proudly at her side. That wasn’t Papa.
Papa had been the photographer. Romance here perhaps, but Dot didn’t
see it, and probably Papa didn’t either any more.
Dot wondered vaguely how Mamma would have liked their Bronx apartment.
Rents had risen since Mamma’s day. Fifty-five dollars the Haleys paid
with Jim and Papa rooming together and no parlor for company. Not that
they had much company, but there were friends of Dot’s and a man now
and then from Papa’s lodge. Edna was the only one who came to see Jim,
and nobody cared with Edna that there was no parlor.
Dot’s second yawn was halted by Papa, who suddenly turned his head
expectantly toward the hall. The door opened noisily, and Papa called
out, “Is that you, Jim?”
“Yep, that’s me.”
An expression of tranquillity settled on Mr. Haley’s face. The children
were safe at home.
Jim strode into view. His coat and vest were already off, and he was
yanking at his tie as he passed through on his way to the room that he
shared with his father. He was tall and muscular. His features were
rough and uneven. When he smiled Dot liked him, but most times he was
grimly sober, and she pictured him in the machine shop being foreman to
tousled-haired, sweaty-faced men, and she pictured them hating him.
“Hello, Kid.” He pulled Dot’s hair as he passed, and she followed to
his room.
“I waited up for you,” she said. “Edna wants me to tell you that she is
having her cousin Will at her house tomorrow night. She says don’t come
if you ain’t prepared to be nice to him.”
Jim threw his coat over a chair. It fell to the floor, and neither of
them picked it up.
“All right,” Jim said.
“Are you going, anyway?”
Dot felt it her privilege in the office of messenger to make inquiries.
“What’s that to you?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“You guessed right.” Jim was eleven years older than Dot, and he could
be as rude as he pleased. “Get the deuce out of here. Going to get
undressed.”
Dot went hurriedly. She was free to go to bed now. Her mission was
accomplished. She stood uncertainly in the dining-room for a second,
then walked toward the radio-set. It was the only thing in the
room that was not golden oak. It was mahogany stain and had three
important-looking dials.
Dot lifted the lid quietly and looked inside. She wanted to see how it
was made.