“Boy!”
“If I had a start as good as his, I bet I’d do it in eleven flat. Maybe better.”
“Eleven flat! Wow!”
“He gets away in a flash. Like Hardy, that black guy in school who eats hot dogs and ice cream at the same time. Remember him? He got away like a rabbit. But I caught up with him.”
“Yeah.”
“The coach kept me practicing against him. Making me try to catch up with him sooner.”
“Gee, it was wonderful.”
They talked, talked tirelessly, without let, talked whole city blocks behind them, the long crosstown blocks as little noticed in their immersion in each other as the short downtown blocks. They talked about everything, everything that had happened since they separated: school and law office, training and interscholastic meets, hopes, intentions, expectations, two months of news and information tumbling chaotically out of each one’s mouth. Farley had been on the point of moping over to Ira’s house to find him. Why hadn’t he come around? No, he’d never told his parents. “What d’you think I am? I told ’em you had to go to work.”
“Oh. So they don’t know.”
“No. Nobody knows. O’Neil, my coach, knows. Couple of others. Gym teachers. And the guy. I see him every gym period. Marney. He never says anything. Why didn’t you tell me the pen wasn’t yours? You coulda got away with it. Easy.” Farley was so matter-of-fact, casual, forgiving. “All you had to do was say you found it.”
“I know. I know. Don’t I know.”
“What’d old man Osborne say to you?”
“He said everybody would — everybody would hear about it. I had to quit Stuyvesant for my own good.”
“Nah! Nobody even knows, nobody in the class. Nobody ever said anything to me.”
“He said there’d be others—”
“What d’you mean?”
“Other fellas lost fountain pens.”
“Other fellas? You mean—” Farley turned his head in midstride, his blue eyes puzzled. “What the hell got into you, Irey?”
“I don’t know.”
But he did, or thought he did, at least in part, but all of it was too, too snarled now, too unspeakable, yes, not merely the stolen briefcase, stolen fountain pens, straightedges, and protractors. No, too far gone. . driven into the self, remorseless and cruel and incorrigible, his stealing of the fountain pens only part of the forbidden he felt within himself, only part of the corroding evil. Stealing was easily overcome; he might never steal again, never really steal from another person. He had the power of choice. The other was amalgamated, was fused with bodily rapture, with a name never to be named. The other he couldn’t refuse.
Ira and Farley rounded Madison Avenue. And there was the church, and a block south of it, the Hewin Funeral Parlor.
“C’mon in. I’m hungry. What about you?” Farley invited. His lips squirmed. “And thirsty, wow. A sandwich and a glass o’ milk.”
Ira balked. “I better not.”
“I told you I didn’t say anything.”
“No?”
“They don’t know anything about it,” Farley stressed. “My mom’s asked about you lots o’ times. ‘What happened to your Jewish friend who was so quiet and shy?’ She likes you.”
“Yeah? What did she say about the pen?”
“You mean I didn’t have it anymore? I lost it. I’m tellin’ you, Irey. Come on in.”
They went in together, Ira following diffidently through basement gate and hallway, into the kitchen.
“You’re quite a stranger.” Always so joyless-seeming and resigned, nunlike Mrs. Hewin regarded Ira through gold-rimmed eyeglasses. The heavy down above her upper lip curved with her mouth in a rare smile.
“Yes, ma’am. I had to go to work.”
“So Farley told me. But not all the time. You don’t work all the time, do you? You don’t work every day?”
He hadn’t reckoned with quick, unsettling Irish wit. “No, ma’am.” He delved for a plausible reply, unearthed a sorry one, a bedraggled one. “I didn’t think I should — bother Farley. I’m working. He’s going to high school.”
“Oh, pshaw! I’ve yet to see anything like that bother Farley. The only thing I’ve known to bother Farley is that he can’t drive one of the limousines.”
“I can, too,” Farley protested.
“Of course you can. Ever since you were ten.” She turned to Ira. “I was so sorry when Farley told me you had to go to work. I know how much you wanted to go to high school. Do you like the work you’re doing?”
“My job? No. First I worked in a law office. But they fired me already. I was working in a toy warehouse until about a week ago.”
“Oh.” So faintly amused, the heavy down on her upper lip was all the more conspicuous. “Why did they fire you at the law office? Did they think you were too honest to make a good lawyer?”
“No, ma’am. I–I guess I wasn’t smart enough.”
“Tush! Are you ever going back to high school?”
“I’m going at night.”
“You are?” She studied him appreciatively. “I’m glad to hear it. Pity is it takes so long to get a diploma in night school. You’ll be a grown man when you graduate.”
“Well, maybe I can go back.”
“To Stuyvesant?”
“No, ma’am. To some other high school.”
“Mom, can we have a sandwich?” Farley interposed.
“Supper is in a little while. As soon as Katy and Celia get home. They’ve gone with Sister Wilma to the aquarium.”
“I’m hungry now, Mom. So is Irey.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. You didn’t even ask me how I made out at the meet.”
“Oh. Of course you did well.”
“Yeah, but I won a gold medal this time, Mom. I came in first. I beat Le Vine.”
“Oh, you did?” Her hand rested on the icebox latch.
“Wait’ll you see it.” Farley opened his canvas bag, drew out the little wooden box.
Footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs.
“Show it to your pa, too.”
“Hey, Dad, what do you think o’ this?” Farley queried as brushy-mustached Mr. Hewin entered.
Mr. Hewin paused, glanced at the medal on its white satin cushion, continued on his way to the kitchen sink. “You win that?”
“Yeah. I placed first, Dad.”
Lifting his eyebrows to signify acknowledgment of his son’s achievement, Mr. Hewin turned on the faucet, washed his hands. He was probably embalming a cadaver upstairs — for he turned away from the sink, lingering only long enough to dry his hands, while he surveyed his son with preoccupied approval. Then he went upstairs again.
So undemonstrative, Mrs. Hewin, so matter-of-fact, Farley’s father. Ira thought of how Mom and Pop would have behaved in a similar situation — if he had brought home a gold medal, if he had won a gold medal — for anything. All the mazel tovs that would have poured out, and the blessings and praisings of God. Even Pop: “S’iz takeh gold?” His features kindled by the yellow disk: “Azoy? A bisl nakhes!” How different. And, yes, what did Le Vine’s parents do or say to console him in his defeat? Jewish surely, with that twist of disappointment contorting his face: Jewish, but a different breed from his own Galitzianer kind. His parents already Americanized, not like Mom and Pop, but gants geler, as Mom would have said: yellow-ripe — like the parents, Ira was sure, of the fellow whose silver-filigreed pen he stole, or like those of that smart aleck who displaced him in the law office. Different already. Mrs. Hewin brought out a platter of meat — a large pale platter, on which rib bones showed above red beef already carved.
“Can we have some milk, Ma? Irey worked up an appetite, too,” Farley prompted. “Didn’t you, Irey?”