When he finally came downstairs only Helga was on the porch, sitting in a rocker and looking aimlessly across the road. Thank God that dizzy Grace Sapurty wasn’t monopolizing her — she was probably locked in her room combing her wig, God bless the mark. He sat down in the rocker next to hers and lit a cigarette. The woman was a pleasure to talk to, a real lady and she had better manners, you can mark my word, than half the so-called Americans he’d ever bumped into in his travels. Hardly realizing it, they began to talk of Marie and that oily gigolo and he told her that he’d warned Marie about him and let her know about him chasing chippies, but she was blind and deaf to anything he had to say to her, and suddenly he sobbed and tried to cover it up with a cough, but Helga knew. What a wise and kind woman. Without saying a word to him about it she suggested that they take a little walk so he could, she said, get these things from off the chest? He agreed and went in to get a sweater and a flashlight, and also, it would be a good idea, his bottle of citronella. As he rose, Billy came out, looking like a lost soul with his mother and his idol both gone, and he told him that he and Mrs. Schmidt were going for a walk and that he wanted no foolishness from him, he was to take a bath and be in bed by nine-thirty at the latest. Helga was standing on the path when he came out again, her sweater draped over her shoulders, and as soon as she saw him she mentioned what beautiful stars were out tonight, it looked just like the old country when she was a little girl. He opened the gate and they started down the road.
She understood everything. How lonely he was, how he felt unwanted and unneeded, the fifth wheel, how he was the butt of everything now, he didn’t mind telling her, Marie had fixed it so that his own grandson sided with her on everything, Marie and that poolroom Romeo who’d pulled the wool over her eyes. Anything, ja, but anything that Helga could do to help, she’d be only too glad, he understood of course? She had tried to talk to the young woman, she’d known her so many years, but Marie had such a chip on her shoulder this summer that it was like talking to the wall if you so much as mentioned that Mr. Thebus was maybe not all he was cracked up to be. They were passing under a clump of trees whose branches leaned out over the road and Helga took his arm in her hand so that it was pressed up against her side and bosom and he had a sudden image of her straight, strong legs, her stockings in tight rolls that pinched into the ample flesh just above her knees, and he felt himself turning red, thank God for the dark. It wasn’t his imagination, Helga was holding his arm tight against her body and he let her. He felt oddly and shamefully excited — how many years had it been since he had, with Bridget, Christ Almighty, how many years? Yet here was the proof, next to him, that he wasn’t cold in his grave yet, this wonderful, decent lady, this lady he had admired for years, a widow now, alone as he was alone. Why not? Let Marie go and shift for herself if she was so goddamn independent. Maybe. Maybe is all. Helga was saying how much she understood his pain, oh ja, how children can hurt and hurt even when they are grown big, they haven’t got a thought in their heads. And as far as she was concerned, this good, good woman, she was praying on her hands and knees for the last week for Marie, ja, for God to give her the strength she would need against this, how is the word they say? this bum? He is just the sort of a man that in Germany now Hitler is punishing, the trash running after good women.
They had turned around and started back, no need for the citronella this evening, and he and Helga as natural as you please and without any self-consciousness, put their arms around each other as they walked, nice and slow through the cool darkness and the sound of crickets — there must have been thousands of them! Her heavy solid hip and thigh brushed his leg as they walked, poor man, the worried look on his face made her worry, and she would get down on her hands and knees again this night and pray for him too and for that poor fatherless boy. They discreetly removed their arms from each other’s waists as they neared the house, Christ, no sense in giving that old woman Ralph Sapurty and his old woman of a wife anything to gossip about, and as they got closer Helga said that it was none of her business and as he knew after all these years she was not a busybody with a long nose prying into private things, but she thought he should really put his foot down, a man like him, with an important job and in the prime of life, he shouldn’t be aggravated by a grown-up daughter, but it was only a suggestion. But it was time to let Marie know who was the boss and tell her to stop giving him a headache. Ja? Excuse my butting in. And John agreed and agreed again, what a wonderful lady! And as they turned in at the gate he took her hand for just a second and squeezed it and Helga turned to him and smiled, her gold tooth shining.
Billy was asleep when he entered their room and he undressed and put on his pajamas in the dark, then reached under the bed and got his bottle of Wilson’s, took a long drink and then another, might as well be a little pie-eyed as the way I am. He lay down and thought of Helga. It was terribly disturbing to feel this excited, Jesus Christ, he was an old man, probably, if truth were known, in his dotage! But he couldn’t deny that he’d wanted to put his hands over her breasts out there in the dark, well, hell, he had a good job and enough money salted away for the two of them, why should he worry about this goddamn ungrateful snip of a daughter, mooning around all day long to make you sick. She’d see how it was without her fall guy of a father to support her and her spoiled-rotten son, see how fast Casanova would run when he saw the handwriting on the wall, ha. John dozed on and off, then took his watch to the window and saw that it was — what? ten after one in the morning! My God! The tramp! She knows goddamn good and well I expected her home by twelve, defying me! We’ll see, we’ll goddamn well see about it! He tried not to think of his feelings on the road with Helga because if that’s how he—then what was going on with that little skirt-crazy bastard with Marie? Oh God in heaven, they were at it like two dogs in the alley in that car of his somewhere — he wouldn’t put it past him to put something in her drink, oh hell, yes, he’d heard of it, hadn’t his brother told him about girls, sweet and clean girls that had been given things in a cup of tea for Christ sake, and done things you couldn’t even imagine? Was he to be made a complete horse’s ass of?
He slipped out of the room and climbed the stairs to Marie’s room, why? Hell, how in the name of God did he know why? He closed the door and shone his flashlight around, a slip on the bed, a pair of stockings in a tangle next to it, and there was, what the hell was it? Ah, yes. John put the flashlight down and opened the other bag that Marie had brought back from town — my God! A bathing suit, bejesus, that would show enough of her to get her arrested for indecent exposure. Oh my God, it had all gone far enough, too goddamn far. And this is what the little floozie thinks she’s going to wear in public, with her behind sticking out of it like some slut in the Police Gazette, to go bathing with her little dirty-minded Romeo? By God, they’d have to carry him out in his coffin first! He put the bathing suit back in its bag, thinking of Marie in a car, her clothes all up and that mutt bastard — he heard a car then and quickly left the room, went down the stairs, and back into his room. There they were, and it one-thirty in the morning! The nerve, the nerve of them! He opened the window screen and leaned out, shining his flash across the road, oh, he was yelling, you’re goddamn tootin he was yelling, and he didn’t give a damn what they thought of it or what anybody the hell else thought of it either. He heard Billy call him and he turned toward him and told him to shut up, then shone the light down at the car again. A goddamn old fool, that’s what they took him for? Well, we’ll see who’s the fool! He saw Marie get out and start quickly toward the porch, not looking up at the window. And there were some people up in the house, what in the hell did John care? They want an eyeful, they’ll get one! Let’s see how this little mongrel feels tomorrow showing his face to decent people. Marie thought she’d go out and do God knows what and then waltz in almost at dawn without so much as a by-your-leave? She had another think coming! He heard her pass the door and continue up to her room, crying she was, well let her. And tomorrow she could put that bimbo bathing suit in a drawer and forget about it. He was putting his foot down tomorrow, and if she didn’t like it, well, she could lump it. If she didn’t like what he had to say she could go back to the steam table, live on the street for all he cared. He’d get along, he was no cripple! He’d had enough of goddamn women to last him forever anyway. He saw a match flicker in the front seat of Tom’s car, ha, there you are! The great lover and gent is so worried sick that he’s having himself a lovely little smoke, just as if nothing had happened. Well, he’ll have to see somebody else’s behind in a slut bathing suit! Not an ounce of respect. And no respect from her and that boy either. After I’ve worked my fingers to the bone for both of them, and for her bitch of a mother too, God forgive me. He latched the screen and stood staring out at the soft white mass of the old church.