Norton rubbed his forehead. “They played softball at night in the street, grown-up men, mind you. They put on sweat shirts and caps after work and played baseball in the street. When it got dark they went to a tavern on Seventy-third Street and drank beer with their buddies. They never got married, they just drifted along like they were still kids, paying board and room to my mother and occasionally going off on a fishing trip for a week-end. Am I making this clear, John? Do you see what I mean?”
“They had things under pretty good control, I’d say. What was the trouble?”
“I was ashamed of them,” Norton said, meeting Farrell’s eyes with an obvious effort. “Now listen; after I got married they got in the habit of dropping in at night on Janey and me. Just dropping in, you understand. They’d never call and ask us if we were busy or having friends in or anything like that. The doorbell would ring and they’d walk in — well, like they belonged there. They’d talk about baseball and watch television and maybe have a beer or two, that’s all. My older brother used to always explain that wrestling matches were all fixed.” Norton shook his head. “Maybe he told us that a thousand times, I don’t know. Maybe it was more. They behaved all right, in their way, but they wouldn’t call before they came over, they just wouldn’t, John. It wasn’t their fault, they didn’t know any better, you see. Janey...” Norton gulped down his drink. “Well, Janey put up with it for a long time. She’s got the patience of an angel, I’ll say that any time. But finally she suggested — suggested, John, she didn’t tell me — she just suggested that I tactfully ask them to phone us before they stopped in. But I couldn’t do it.” Norton pounded his fist softly on the bar. “I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell my brothers that. They wouldn’t have understood. My oldest brother, that’s Ernie, was my hero when I was a little kid. How could I tell him? And my other brother, well if you knew him he was the sweetest guy in the world. He was so generous he never thought about himself. And I was ashamed of them, John, but I knew Janey was in the right. Can’t you see what hell it was?”
“Yes, I understand,” Farrell said. Norton wasn’t exaggerating, he knew; it would be hell, all right; not the big, well-publicized sort of hell that writers made dramas of, but a quiet little hell, almost funny in its smallness, its insignificance. But just as unendurable as the bigger ones.
“I counted on you, John,” Norton said, with a shy and ghastly smile. “You know I respect you — you must know that now. One evening Janey and I asked her father and mother for dinner. And two couples from the bank. It was like Janey’s mother’s home almost, the kind of thing I’d always wanted. You know what I mean? The men kept their coats on during dinner, and we had coffee in the living room afterward. Well just then the doorbell rang and my brothers walked in. They’d been playing baseball and they just decided to drop in for a beer. They didn’t have the brains to see it was a special party. They made themselves at home and kidded me about having coffee in the living room — like I was trying to high-hat them or something. They meant it to be funny, I know, but that was the end. I was mad, and so was Janey. The next day I went to see them and I told them how things had to be from now on. About calling in advance, I mean.” Norton sighed wearily. “There was a fight. They laughed at me. Said I was stuck-up, said that Janey’s mother was a snob — she hadn’t been very friendly to my mother before the wedding, you see, and they raked that up, bringing up everything that was cheap and dirty...” Norton’s voice trailed away and he stared blankly at Farrell. “I never saw them after that. I haven’t seen them to this day. They don’t even know where I live. I never wrote to them after I moved to New York.”
“Well, they’re probably as sorry about it as you are,” Farrell said.
“Ernie was my hero,” Norton said. “He used to give me money. Even when I was too little to know the difference between coins. He’d give me a penny and a nickel and a dime, so I’d have one of each. Wasn’t that nice of him?”
“Yes, it was,” Farrell said, and nodded to the bartender for a check.
“I was never sorry about it,” Norton said, in a blurred, hopeless voice. “I was never sorry about anything until last night. Nobody can be that bad and hope to be forgiven. Isn’t that true, John? I respect you. Tell me the truth.”
Farrell paid for their drinks. “We can talk it over on the train,” he said.
“Will you tell me on the train, John? How I can be forgiven, I mean?”
“Sure thing.”
“Why was I never sorry, John?”
“Give me your hat check. We’ve got a nice long ride to talk things over.”
Norton fell asleep on the train. In the taxi to Faircrest he sat in a heavy withdrawn silence, occasionally shifting his position to light a cigarette or rub both hands over his pale face. Farrell was grateful for the silence; he had had enough of remorse and guilt.
But by the time they reached their homes Norton seemed to have recovered some of his mild good humor. He thanked Farrell politely, said he hoped he hadn’t been a nuisance and walked quickly into his house. Farrell paid off the driver and stood for a moment breathing the cool night air. There was no reason to hurry; his home was dark. He wasn’t hungry, he wasn’t thirsty, he wasn’t anything at all. The spectacle of Norton’s Gethsemane had drained him of everything but pity. Finally he went up the walk to his house. He turned on the lights and put his coat and hat away. The silence was unnatural and depressing. Everything his eye fell upon reminded him painfully of the warm and complex human stir that was missing; the television and record-player, a book Barbara had been reading, Angey’s red wool muffler on the floor of the closet, the faint hopeful chirp of Jimmy’s parakeets against the silence...
There was something to do, at any rate. He went upstairs and fed the birds, changed their water. In the study again he saw the pieces of glass he had broken the night before still lying on the rug. In the soft light they glared at him like accusing eyes. He made himself a mild drink and picked up Barbara’s book. It was My Antonia by Willa Cather. He let the book fall open, let his eyes find a passage. He read,
One dream I dreamed a great many times and it was always the same. I was in a harvest-field full of shocks and I was lying against one of them. Lena Lingard came across the stubble barefoot, in a short skirt, with a curved reaping-hook in her hand, and she was flushed like the dawn, with a kind of luminous rosiness all about her. She sat down beside me, turned to me with a soft sigh and said, “Now they are all gone, and I can kiss you as much as I like.”
The words blurred before his eyes. He had forgotten that she had read the book to him the first year they were married. He had forgotten so damned much, it seemed.
The phone rang and he lifted the receiver with the desperate hope that it would be Barbara. But it was Lieutenant Jameson.
“Mr. Farrell, we’ve picked up the boys who ran down your daughter,” Jameson said in a crisply pleased voice. “Actually, it wasn’t our doing; their father brought them in just a little while ago. There’ll be a Magistrate’s hearing tomorrow morning in the Rosedale municipal building. Around nine o’clock, I’d say. You don’t have to be there, of course. The Accident Investigation officers will handle everything. But I thought you’d want to know.”