Look at the Birdie (25 page)

“Whisper,” said Karpinsky, as he turned on the light over the table. He put his finger to his lips, and nodded meaningfully at a bed tucked under the eaves. The bed was so deep in shadows that it might have gone unnoticed, if Karpinsky hadn’t pointed it out. His mother was sleeping there.

She did not stir. Her breathing was slow. Each time she exhaled, she seemed to be saying, “Thee.”

Karpinsky touched the apparatus on the lion-clawed table—touched it with emotions that plainly teetered between love and hate.

“This,” whispered Karpinsky, “is what everyone at the Athletic Club was talking about tonight. The captains of finance and industry could talk of nothing else.” He raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Your father said I was going to be very rich on account of this, didn’t he?” he said to Henry.

Henry managed a smile.

“Say yes,” said Karpinsky.

Henry and Anne said nothing for fear of involving their fathers in an unprofitable business enterprise.

“Don’t you see what this is?” whispered Karpinsky, his eyes wide. He was playing the magician now. “You mean it isn’t self-evident?”

Henry and Anne exchanged glances, shook their heads.

“It’s my mother’s and father’s dream come true,” said Karpinsky. “It’s what made their son rich and famous. Think of it—they were humble peasants in a strange land, unable to even read or write. But they worked hard in this land of promise, and every tearstained penny they got they put into an education for their son. They sent him not only to high school, but to college! Not only to college, but to graduate school! Now look at him—how successful he is!”

Henry and Anne were too young, too innocent, to recognize Karpinsky’s performance for what it was—bloodcurdling satire. They looked at his apparatus gravely, and were prepared to believe that it really would make a fortune.

Karpinsky watched them for a reaction. And, when he got none, he flabbergasted them by bursting into tears. He made as though to grab the apparatus and hurl it to the floor. He stopped just short of doing that, one hand fighting with the other.

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” he whispered. “My father
worked himself to death for my future; my mother is dying, killed by the same thing. And now, college degrees and all, I can’t even get a job as a dishwasher!”

He closed in on the apparatus with his hands again, again seemed on the verge of destroying it. “This?” he said wistfully. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s something and maybe it isn’t. Take years and thousands of dollars to find out.” He looked toward the bed. “My mother hasn’t got years to see me be a big success,” he said. “She hasn’t even got days, probably. She’s going to the hospital for an operation tomorrow, and they tell me she hasn’t got much of a chance of coming back.”

Now the woman awakened. She didn’t move, but she spoke her son’s name.

“So I’ve got to be a big success tonight or never,” said Karpinsky. “Stand there and admire the apparatus—look at it as though it were the most wonderful thing you ever laid eyes on, while I tell her you are millionaires, and you’ve come to buy the apparatus for a fortune!”

He went to his mother’s side, knelt by the bed, and told her the good news in exulting Polish.

Henry and Anne went to the apparatus self-consciously, their arms limp at their sides.

Now Karpinsky’s mother sat up, exclaiming.

Henry smiled glassily at the apparatus. “It’s very nice, isn’t it?” he said.

“Oh, yes—isn’t it?” said Anne.

“Smile!” said Henry.

“What?” said Anne.

“Smile—look happy!” said Henry. It was the first order he had ever given her.

Anne was startled, and then she smiled. “He’s a great success,” said Henry. “It’s a wonderful thing.”

“It’s going to make him so rich,” said Anne.

“His mother should be very proud of him,” said Henry.

“She wants to meet you,” said Karpinsky.

Henry and Anne went to the foot of the old woman’s bed. She was speechless and radiant.

Karpinsky was wildly happy, too. His deception had paid off stunningly. In less than a minute, his mother had received her full reward, a perfectly gorgeous reward, for a life of awful sacrifices. Her joy shot with the speed of light into her past, illuminating every wretched moment of it with great joy.

“Tell her your names,” said Karpinsky. “Any names. Doesn’t make any difference.”

Henry bowed. “Henry Davidson Merrill,” he said. “Anne Lawson Heiler,” said Anne.

It would have been a shame to use any names other than the true ones. What Henry and Anne had just done was, after all, perfectly beautiful—and the first thing they had ever done that was likely to be noticed in Heaven.

Karpinsky made his mother lie down. He went over the good news for her again—crooningly. She closed her eyes.

Henry and Anne and Karpinsky, their eyes shining, tiptoed away from her, toward the door. And then the cops broke in.

There were three of them—one with his gun drawn, the other two with their clubs ready. They grabbed Karpinsky.

Right behind them came Henry’s and Anne’s fathers in tuxedos. They were wild with fear—fear that something awful had happened or was about to happen to their children. They had reported Henry’s and Anne’s disappearance as a kidnapping.

Karpinsky’s mother sat up in bed, saw her son in the hands of the police. This was the last picture to be recorded in her mind in life. Karpinsky’s mother groaned and died.

Ten minutes later, it was no longer possible to speak of Henry, Anne, and Karpinsky in a common action, in the same room, or even, poetically, in the same universe.

Karpinsky and the police worked hopelessly to revive Karpinsky’s mother. Henry walked dazedly out of the building, with his appalled father begging him to stop and listen. Anne burst into tears that let her think of nothing. She was easily led by her father to his waiting car.

Six hours later, Henry was still walking. He had reached the edge of the city, and the sun was coming up. He had done curious things to his evening clothes. He had thrown away his black tie and his cuff links and his shirt studs. He had rolled up his shirtsleeves, and had ripped the starched white bosom of his shirt, so that it looked something like an ordinary shirt opened at the throat. His once glossy black shoes were the color of city mud.

He looked like a very young bum, which is what he had decided to be. A police cruiser finally found him, took him home. He didn’t have a civil word for anybody, and he wouldn’t listen. He wasn’t a child anymore. He was a badly jangled man.

• • •

Anne cried herself to sleep. And then, just about the time Henry was being brought home, she cried herself awake again.

The light of dawn in her room was as pale as skimmed milk. In that light, Anne saw a vision. Anne’s vision was of a book. The name of the author was her own. In the book, Anne Lawson Heiler told the truth about the shallowness and cowardice and hypocrisy of the rich people in the city.

She thought of the first two lines in the book: “There was a depression on. Most of the people in the city were poor and heartbroken, but there was dancing at the Athletic Club.” She felt much better. She went back to sleep again.

Just about the time Anne went back to sleep, Stanley Karpinsky opened a window in his attic room. He took the apparatus from the table with the lion’s-claw feet, and he dropped the apparatus out the window piece by piece. Then he dropped his books and his microscope and all the rest of his equipment. He took a long time doing it, and some of the things made quite a racket when they hit the street.

Somebody finally called the police about a crazy man dropping things out of a window. When the police came, and they found out who it was that was dropping things, they didn’t say anything to Karpinsky about it. They just cleaned up the mess in the street as best they could—cleaned it up sheepishly.

Henry slept until noon that day. And when he got up, he got out of the house before anyone knew he was awake. His mother, a sweet, sheltered person, heard his car start, heard his tires swish in gravel, and he was gone.

Henry drove with elaborate caution, dramatizing every motion he made in controlling the car. He felt that he had a terribly important errand to run—but he wasn’t sure what the errand was. His driving, then, took on the importance of the nameless errand.

He arrived at Anne’s house while she was eating breakfast. The attitude of the maid who let Henry in was that Anne was a pathetic invalid. This was hardly the case. Anne was eating with gusto, and was writing in a school notebook between bites.

She was writing her novel—angrily.

Anne’s mother sat across the table from her, uneasily respecting the unfamiliar rites of creativity. The savagery of her daughter’s pencil strokes offended her, frightened her. She knew what the writing was about. Anne had let her read some of it.

Anne’s mother was delighted to see Henry. She had always liked Henry—and she was sure Henry would help her to change Anne’s very bad mood. “Oh, Henry, dear,” she said, “have you heard the good news? Did your mother tell you?”

“I haven’t seen my mother,” said Henry stolidly.

Anne’s mother wilted. “Oh,” she said. “I—I talked with her on the phone three times this morning. She’s looking forward to having a long talk with you—about what happened.”

“Um,” said Henry. “What’s the good news, Mrs. Heiler?”

“They got him a job,” said Anne. “Isn’t that swell?” Her wry expression made it clear that she thought the news was something less than swell. She thought Henry was something less than swell, too.

“That poor man—last night—Mr. Karpinsky,” said Anne’s mother, “he has a job, a wonderful job. Your father and
Anne’s father got on the phone this morning, and they got Ed Buchwalter to hire him at Delta Chemical.” Her soft brown eyes begged Henry moistly to agree that there was nothing wrong in the world that could not be repaired easily. “Isn’t that nice, Henry?” she said.

“I—I guess it’s better than nothing,” said Henry. He didn’t feel a great deal better.

His apathy crushed Anne’s mother. “What else could anyone
do
, Henry?” she said beseechingly. “What do you children want us to do next? We feel awful. We’re doing everything we can for the poor man. If there were anything we could do for the poor woman, we would. It was all an accident, and anybody in our position would have done the same thing—with all the kidnappings and murders and I don’t know what all in the papers.” She began to weep. “And Anne’s writing a book as though we were some kind of criminals, and you come in here and can’t even smile, no matter what anybody tells you.”

“The book doesn’t say you’re any criminal,” said Anne.

“It certainly isn’t very
complimentary,”
said Anne’s mother. “You make it sound as though your father and I and Henry’s father and mother and the Buchwalters and the Wrightsons and everybody were just tickled pink so many people were out of work.” She shook her head. “I’m not. I think the Depression is sickening, just sickening. How do you want us to act?” she asked pipingly.

“The book isn’t about you,” said Anne. “It’s about me. I’m the worst person in it.”

“You’re a
nice
person!” said Anne’s mother. “A
very
nice person.” She stopped weeping now, smiled twitteringly, moved her elbows up and down as though they were the
wing tips of a happy little bird. “Can’t we all cheer up, children? Isn’t everything going to be all right?” She turned to Henry. “Smile, Henry?”

Henry knew the kind of smile she wanted, and, twenty-four hours before, he would have given it to her automatically—the kind of smile a child gave a grown-up for kissing a hurt well. He didn’t smile.

The most important thing to Henry was to demonstrate to Anne that he wasn’t the shallow booby she apparently thought he was. Not smiling helped—but something more manly, more decisive was called for. It suddenly dawned on him what the nameless errand was that he’d set out upon. “Mrs. Heiler,” he said, “I think maybe Anne and I should go see Mr. Karpinsky, and tell him how sorry we are.”

“No!” said Anne’s mother. It was sharp and quick—too sharp, too quick. There was panic in it. “I mean,” she said, making erasing motions with her hands, “it’s all taken care of. Your fathers have already been down to talk to him. They apologized to him and told him about the job and …” Her voice trailed off. It was apparent even to her what she was really saying.

She was really saying that she could not stand the idea of Henry’s and Anne’s growing up—the idea of their ever looking closely at tragedy. She was saying that she herself had never grown up, had never looked closely at tragedy. She was saying that the most beautiful thing money could buy was a childhood a lifetime long—

Anne’s mother turned away. Her turning away was the closest she could come to telling Henry and Anne to go see Karpinsky and his tragedy, if they felt they had to.

Henry and Anne went.

• • •

Stanley Karpinsky was in his room. He was sitting at the big table with the lion’s-claw feet. He was staring into the middle distance, his thumb tips clamped lightly between his teeth. Heaped on the table before him were the few things that had survived the drop from the window at dawn. Karpinsky had salvaged what he could—mostly books in sprung bindings.

Karpinsky now listened to two people coming up the stairs. His door was open, so there was no need to knock. Henry and Anne simply appeared in the doorway.

“Well,” said Karpinsky, rising, “the King and Queen of the Universe. I couldn’t be more surprised. Come in.”

Henry bowed stiffly. “We—we wanted to tell you how sorry we are,” he said.

Karpinsky bowed in reply. “Thank you very much,” he said.

“Very sorry,” said Anne. “Thank you,” said Karpinsky.

There followed an embarrassed silence. Henry and Anne had apparently prepared no speeches other than their first ones, and yet seemed to expect great things of their visit.

Karpinsky was at a loss as to what to say next. Of all the players in the tragedy, Henry and Anne had certainly been the most innocent, the most faceless. “Well!” said Karpinsky. “How about some coffee?”