course,” he replied.
Florence took the mother’s hand. “Mrs. Spaulding,” she said softly.
“You’re all welcome,” Nora cried from the rear.
Florence kissed Mrs. Spaulding. She looked to Jim to be a pleasant-enough middle-aged woman. In answer to the greetings, she widened her eyes, and fluted her mouth and said, “Oh, oh.”
Florence turned to the father. “Mr. Spaulding.” She put one hand under his, and another over, and got him in a sandwich grip to kiss him.
“You’re all welcome!” cried Aunt Nora from the back.
Mr. Spaulding, tall and thin, stepped inside the doorway, and gave everyone a lopsided grin. He had a question-mark frame, stooped at the shoulders.
Florence had the aunt now. “Aunt Anita.” As she was embraced and kissed, Aunt Anita tried to look inoffensive. She was a gray-haired woman, with a grin-and-bear-it smile.
“You’re all welcome,” boomed Aunt Nora.
Florence, Jim and Nora back-pedaled slowly into the living room. The Spauldings came forward. Everyone was talking.
Aunt Nora was introduced. “You’re welcome,” she cried.
It was Jim’s turn. Florence took his arm. “This is my brother, Jim.”
“Well,” said Ralph’s mother. “Well,” she repeated. Her mouth was in the fluted position as she said it. Each time she spoke she widened her eyes.
“Ralph told us about you,” she said to Jim. “He says you look just like your father.”
Jim stammered an incoherent answer. The reference to the father was a cue for the Spauldings to look around for the father.
Florence got a panicky look. “Dad should be back soon. He said he was going to be here at three. He should be back, shouldn’t he, Jim?”
So she had thrown the hot potato to him. “I think so.” There was an awkward moment. Jim cast about for something to say in excuse for his father’s absence, anything. “He probably stopped in at church.”
Florence seized at it. “Yes, he probably stopped in church.”
Mrs. Spaulding looked puzzled.
Jim elaborated. “He probably went to a novena.”
He said this before he realized what he was saying. There was an element of truth in his father stopping in church, for he often did on a Sunday afternoon, to sit in the pew and look up at the tabernacle. But the idea of his going to a novena, with the elderly ladies, was impossible.
“Isn’t that nice?” said Aunt Anita. “I make the novena of the Holy Souls every Tuesday night.”
“Ralph, why don’t we have a drink?” cried Florence.
“Swell,” said Ralph.
Jim felt awful. He went to the kitchen ahead of Ralph. Then he went to the backyard. He had destroyed the whole occasion. The father should have been there at the door. What must they think?
He went next door to the Connollys. He was still caught in the panic of the arrival scene. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. But he had a vague idea that, if he could do something about Uncle Arthur, then perhaps the situation wouldn’t be so bad for the rest of the afternoon. He would check on Uncle Arthur.
Anyway, he just had to get away for a few minutes.
Chapter 11
“They’re here,” said Jim to Cricket in the Connollys’ living room. Cricket was watching the Yankees game.
“I saw them from the window,” said Cricket. “I hate old ladies.”
“You’re coming, aren’t you?”
“Do we have a choice?”
“No.”
“I’ll wait a while,” said Cricket.
Jim found Harold on the screened-off porch in front, working on his stamp books. He was slim-figured, and small, like his father, though he didn’t have his father’s fragile good looks. He was even a bit monkey-faced, with a long stretch of skin from his nose to his mouth. In his manner, he was supercilious, and obnoxious, or so it seemed to Jim. “Are you coming over to the dinner?”
“Oh yes. I’ve heard that we’re supposed to have a festive belt-loosening this afternoon.”
“Are you coming?”
“I don’t know,” said Harold, pondering his answer, as if the world were waiting.
“Don’t put yourself out,” said Jim. He thought to himself: they come to dinner every Sunday; today it’s a big deal.
“I’ll see,” said Harold.
Jim restrained himself from telling Harold what a pain-in-the-ass he thought he was. He went upstairs to locate Uncle Arthur. He found him in his bed, his legs stretched to both corners, his pants still on, along with an undershirt. He looked small as he slept there in the big bed. Doll-like. Looking at him at first, a person would take him for a theatrical figure: his coloring was dramatic, silver hair, florid complexion; his features were delicate, almost childlike, with finely arched nostrils at the end of a small nose, and a fragile weak chin. He was inclined, in fact, toward the theater. He wrote publicity for the Riverdale Playhouse, and years before he had tried some plays. He claimed a producer had stolen the best of them. But he had made his living in the newspaper business, working all over the country before he married Nora, and was settled now as a rewrite man for the New York Mirror.
Jim felt sorry for him. He was breathing heavily. He looked so haggard. He had always a beaten look about him, except when he had a few drinks, then he became a pixie, with a beaming smile and a fey humor. When he was in that humor, Nora became “PeeWee.” But once he started drinking, he could never stop, and fairly soon he would just become stupid with alcohol. Jim liked him; he had told Arthur at length of his ambition to be an actor, and maybe write plays, too, and Arthur had encouraged him.
Arthur suddenly opened his eyes halfway, and sat up in the bed, resting on his right elbow. He pressed his free hand to the top of his head and moaned. He peered in Jim’s direction with half-seeing eyes, eyes that were hidden behind the slits of his eyelids. He gave a quick jerky motion and sat up straight.
“Jim?”
“Yes. How are you, Uncle Arthur?”
Arthur lay back. “I thought they had me back in Knickerbocker.”
Jim laughed. Arthur had given him detailed descriptions of his stays in Knickerbocker, the Harlem hospital where cops often dropped off unfortunates in need of detox. With his gift for mimicry, he had taken off the doctors, nurses, and orderlies until Jim had felt he was at the scene himself.
“Where’s Nora?” Arthur asked.
“She’s
