The Folded Leaf (3 page)

The boys who hung out at LeClerc’s had broad shoulders, or if they didn’t, the padding in their coats took care of it. They wore plus fours as a rule, but some of them wore plus eights. Their legs were well shaped. Their bow ties were real and not attached to a piece of black elastic, like Lymie’s. The little caps that clung to the backs of their heads matched the herringbone or the basket weave of their very light, their almost white suits. They had at their disposal a set of remarks which they could use over and over again, and the fact that there were a great many things in the world about which they had no knowledge and no experience did not trouble them.

The year before, they went to a Greek confectionery half a block up the street. Although the food in the school lunchroom was cheaper and more nourishing, so many of them insisted on eating at Nick’s at noon that getting in and out of the door could only be achieved through force of character. You had to brace yourself and then shove and squirm and have friends make a place for you so that, together, you could elbow your way up to the counter. Once there, if you were lucky or if you had the kind of voice that outshouts other voices, you might come away with a bottle of milk and a ham sandwich or a cinnamon bun. But in the spring something (the same instinct, could it have been, that governs the migrations of starlings?) caused them to abandon the Greek confectionery and settle in LeClerc’s, which was even smaller. Here every afternoon were to be found all the girls who never made the honor
society or served as Senior Sponsors or took part in dramatics or played the viola; and yet who were, Lymie couldn’t help noticing, so much better looking than the ones who did.

In the late afternoon LeClerc’s was seldom overcrowded. If Lymie had pushed the door open and walked in, nobody would have indicated any surprise at seeing him. Mark Wheeler would have said “Hi there,” over the heads of several people, and Peggy Johnston, who was in his division room, would probably have smiled at him. Her smile seemed to mean more than it did actually, but there were others. There were undoubtedly three or four groups he could have stood on the outside of, without anybody’s minding it. After all, that was how it was done. Ray Snyder and Irma Hartnell and Lester Adams had all had to stand around on the outside before they were taken in. But Lymie didn’t try.

He was too proud perhaps and at the same time too uncertain of himself. The fact that his legs were too thin for him to wear knickers may have had something to do with it; or that he had no set of remarks. Also, the one time that he had screwed up his courage to ask a girl for a date, she had refused him. Considering how popular Peggy Johnston was, he should have asked her at least two days before he did. She said she was awfully sorry but she was going to the Edgewater Beach Hotel that night with Bob Edwards, and Lymie believed her. It wasn’t that he doubted her word. But deep down inside of him he knew as he hung up the phone what would have happened if he’d called earlier. And because he still carried that heavy knowledge around with him, when he got abreast of LeClerc’s big plate glass window he looked in and saw everything there was to see but kept right on walking.

Perhaps it was just as well; Lymie was only fifteen.

But why, since he was so proud and in many ways older than his years, did he let himself be drawn into the Venetian Candy Shop farther up the street and come out half a minute later with a large red taffy apple and proceed to smear his whole face up with it, in public, walking along the street?

M
rs. Latham reached up and turned on the bridge lamp at her elbow, though it was still daylight outside, and the lamplight fell upon her lap, which was overflowing with curtain material. There were piles of it on the sofa and on the floor around her, and it was hard to believe all this white net could hang from the four living room windows that now were bare and looked out on a park.

She sat with her back not quite touching the back of the big upholstered chair and her head bent over her sewing. In shadow her face was expressive and full of character but when the light shone directly on it, although the features remained the same, it seemed wan. It was the face of a woman who might be unwell. Her soft brown hair had very little gray in it and was done on top of her head in a way that had been fashionable when she was a girl. Anyone coming into the room and seeing her there in the pale yellow light would have found her very sympathetic, very appealing. Without having the least idea what was in her mind as she raised the spool to her lips and bit through the white cotton thread, he would have felt sure that she had been through a great deal; that she had given herself heart and soul to undertakings which ought to have turned out
well but hadn’t always; and that she was still, in all probability, an innocent person.

Near the center of the park—it was no more than an open field with young elm trees set at regular intervals around the edge—boys were playing touchball. Their voices penetrated to the living room, through the closed windows. Mrs. Latham may or may not have heard them; she did not commit herself. A bakery truck passed in the street, and several cars, one of them choking and sputtering. The sound of footsteps on the cement walk caused Mrs. Latham to raise her head and listen. Whoever it was that she was expecting, this couldn’t have been the one, for she went back to her sewing immediately and did not even bother to look out.

In spite of the solid row of front windows, the living room was dark. It was the fault of the wallpaper and of the furniture, which had obviously been acquired over many years, at no great expense, and perhaps even accidentally. There was barely enough of it here and there in the room to make it livable. A plain grayish-blue rug covered most of the floor. The sofa and the chair Mrs. Latham sat in were upholstered in a subdued green. There was a phonograph and three wooden chairs, none of them wholly comfortable. The table was mission, with a piece of Chinese embroidery for a runner, and a pottery lamp with a brown shade. Also a round ashtray with cigar bands glued in a garish wheel to the underside of the glass, and a small brass bowl. The bowl was for calling cards. It had nothing in it now but a key (to a trunk possibly, or to the storeroom in the basement) and thumbtacks. On the shelf under the table were two books, an album partly filled with snapshots and a somewhat larger one containing views in color of the Wisconsin Dells.

The opposite wall of the living room was broken by a fireplace
of smooth green tile made to look like bricks. The gas log had at one time or other been used. It was not lit now. At either end of the mantelpiece were two thin brass candlesticks, each holding a battered blue candle. Between them hung a framed sepia engraving of an English cottage at twilight. The cottage had a high thatched roof and was surrounded by ancient willow trees. The only other picture in the room hung at eye level above the sofa. It was a color print of a young girl, her head wound round with a turban, a sweet simpering expression on her face, and (surprisingly) one breast exposed.

Beyond the living room was the hall, with the front door bolted and chained, and then a rickety telephone stand. On the right was a door with a full-length mirror set into it, and another door that opened into Mr. and Mrs. Latham’s bedroom. The hall opened into the dining room, which had two large windows looking out on a blank wall (this was not the apartment Mrs. Latham would have chosen if they’d had all the money in the world) and was a trifle too narrow for anyone to pass easily between the table and the sideboard at mealtime. In the center of the dining room table, on a crocheted doily, was a small house plant, a Brazilian violet which showed no sign of blooming.

After the dining room came the kitchen, and right beside it a bedroom—a girl’s room by the look of the dressing table and the white painted bed. On the dressing table there was a letter. The room had a single window and French doors at the far end. The curtains must have been intended originally for some other room than this, since they did not quite reach the window sill. They were organdy and had ruffles. The glass in the French doors was covered with white net.

It was easy to guess that the door in the hall, the one with
the mirror set into it, would, if opened, have revealed a closet. But these two French doors were tightly shut and without the help of Mrs. Latham there would have been no telling what lay beyond them. When the street lamps were turned on outside, something prompted her to stand up, brush the threads from her lap, and walk back here. She put her hand on a glass knob and turned it slowly. The door opened, revealing a boy’s body lying fully clothed except for shoes, on a cot that was too small for it. The position—knees bent awkwardly, right arm dangling in space—seemed too inert for sleep. It looked rather as if he had a short time before been blindfolded and led out here to meet a firing squad. But such things seldom happen on a sleeping porch, which this clearly was, and besides, there was no wound.

W
hen Mrs. Latham spread a blanket over Spud he turned and lay on his back. His face, freed for the time being of both suspicion and misery, was turned toward the ceiling.

It was too bad, Mrs. Latham thought as she bent over him, it was a great pity that they had to leave Wisconsin where they knew everybody and the children had so many friends. But at least Evans had been able to find another job. That wasn’t ah ways easy for a man his age. And in time he’d probably get a raise, like they promised him, and be making the same salary he had been making before. The children were still young. They’d have to learn to make new friends, and be adaptable.

She raised one of the windows a few inches and then closed the door behind her softly.

It was nearly six when Spud awoke. He drew the blanket around his shoulders without wondering where it had come from. For a moment he was quite happy. Then the room identified itself by its shape in the dark, and with a heavy sigh he turned on his side and lay with his hands pressed palm to palm, between his knees.

The light went on in the next room and he saw his sister Helen through the curtained doors. She seemed to be at a great distance. Remote and dreamlike, she was reading a letter.

The letter was probably from Pete Draper’s brother Andy, Spud thought. “Gump” they called him. For three years now he had had a case on Helen, but his family didn’t want him to marry her because she wasn’t a Catholic. Every Friday night along about seven-thirty Andy used to appear at the front door with his dark blue suit on, and his hair slicked down with water. Sometimes he’d take Helen to a movie and sometimes they went to a basketball game. Once when Spud was coming home from a Boy Scout meeting on his bicycle, he saw them walking along the edge of the lake, and Andy had his arm around Helen. He was an awfully serious guy. Not like Pete. The night before they left Wisconsin, Helen sat out on the front porch talking to Andy for a long time. Spud was in bed but he wasn’t asleep yet. Nobody was asleep in the whole house. His father and mother were in their room, and his mother was packing. He could hear her taking things out of the closet and opening and closing dresser drawers, and he kept tossing and turning in bed, and wondering what it was going to be like when they got to Chicago. His window was right over the porch and he could hear Andy and Helen talking. Several minutes would pass with
no sound except the creak of the porch swing. Then they’d begin again, their voices low and serious. Spud thought once that Andy was crying but he couldn’t be sure. And at a quarter to twelve his father came down, in his bathrobe, and sent Andy home.

By the way Helen tossed the letter on the bed, without bothering to fold it and put it back in the envelope, Spud could tell that his sister was not satisfied. Something she wanted to be in the letter wasn’t in it, probably, but whatever it was, he’d never find out. She didn’t trust him any more than he trusted her.

There was six years’ difference between Spud’s age and his sister’s, and in order to feel even kindness toward her, he had to remember what she had been like when he was very small—how she looked after him all day long, defending him from ants and spiders and from strange dogs, how she stood between him and all noises in the night. Now, without either kindness or concern, he watched her dispose of her hat and coat in the closet, and brush her hair back from her forehead. His mother would have brushed her hair in the dark, so as not to waken him. Or if she needed a light to see by, she would have turned on the little lamp beside the bed, not the harsh overhead light. Helen never spared him. She didn’t believe in sparing people.

The glare of the light raised Spud to a sitting position. He threw the blanket to one side, put his stockinged feet over the edge of the bed, and stretched until both shoulder blades cracked. The air that came in through the open window was damp and heavy and smelled of rain. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, yawned once or twice, and bending down, found his shoes. Having got that far he hesitated. All remembrance of what he was about to do with them seemed to desert
him. He picked one of them up and stared at it as if by some peculiar mischance his life (and death) were inseparably bound up with this right shoe. When the light went off in the next room, the shoe dropped through his fingers. He yawned, shook his head feebly, and fell back on the bed. There he lay with his eyes open, unmoving, until Mrs. Latham came to the door and called him.

After she was gone he managed to sit up all over again, to put both shoes on, and to stand. Like a sailor wakened at midnight and obliged to make his way in a sleepy stupor up lurching ladders to the deck of the ship (or like the ship itself, pursuing blindly its charted course) Spud passed from room to room of the apartment until he found himself in the bathroom in front of the washstand. He splashed cold water on his face and reached out with his eyes shut until his hand came in contact with a towel. It was hanging on the rack marked S
ISTER
but before he discovered that fact the damage had been done. He folded the towel, now damp and streaked with dirt, and put it back in what he imagined was the same way it had been before. Then he combed his hair earnestly, made a wild tormented face at himself in the bathroom mirror, and said, “Oh fuss!” so loudly that his mother and Helen heard him in the kitchen and stopped talking.