Half Portions Part 5

She put her hand on his arm. "Dad, I want to talk to you."

"Careful there. Better not touch me. I'm all dirt. G'night, Fred."

"Listen, dad. Mother isn't well."

He stopped then, with one overall leg off and the other on, and looked at her. "Huh? What d'you mean--isn't well? Mother." His mouth was open.

His eyes looked suddenly strained.

"This house--it's killing her. She could hardly keep her eyes open at supper. It's too much for her. She ought to be enjoying herself--like other women. She's a slave to the attic and all those huge rooms. And you're another."

"Me?" feebly.

"Yes. A slave to this furnace. You said yourself to Fred, just now, that it was all worn out, and needed new pipes or something--I don't know what. And that coal was so high it would be cheaper using dollar bills for fuel. Oh, I know you were just being funny. But it was partly true.

Wasn't it? Wasn't it?"

"Yeh, but listen here, Paula." He never called her Paula unless he was terribly disturbed, "About mother--you said--"

"You and she ought to go away this winter--not just for a trip, but to stay. You"--she drew a long breath and made the plunge--"you ought to give up the house."

"Give up--"

"Permanently. Mother and you are buried alive here. You ought to come to New York to live. Both of you will love it when you are there for a few days. I don't mean to come to a hotel. I mean to take a little apartment, a furnished apartment at first, to see how you like it--two rooms and kitchenette, like a playhouse."

Hosey Brewster looked down at his own big bulk, then around the great furnace room. "Oh, but listen--"

"No, I want you to listen first. Mother's worn out, I tell you. It isn't as if she were the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind; she isn't. She loves the theatres, and pretty hats, and shoes with buckles, and lobster, and concerts."

He broke in again: "Sure; she likes 'em for a change. But for a steady diet--Besides, I've got a business to 'tend to. My gos.h.!.+ I've got a business to--"

"You know perfectly well that Wetzler practically runs the whole thing--or could, if you'd let him." Youth is cruel like that, when it wants its way.

He did not even deny it. He seemed suddenly old. Pinky's heart smote her a little. "It's just that you've got so used to this great barracks you don't know how unhappy it's making you. Why, mother said to-day that she hated it. I asked about the attic--the cleaning and all--and she said she hated it."

"Did she say that, Paula?"

"Yes."

He dusted his hands together, slowly, spiritlessly. His eyes looked pained and dull. "She did, h'm? You say she did?" He was talking to himself, and thinking, thinking.

Pinky, sensing victory, left him. She ran lightly up the cellar stairs, through the first-floor rooms, and up to the second floor. Her mother's bedroom door was open.

A little mauve lamp shed its glow upon the tired woman in one of the plump, gray-enamel beds. "No, I'm not sleeping. Come here, dear. What in the world have you been doing in the cellar all this time?"

"Talking to dad." She came over and perched herself on the side of the bed. She looked down at her mother. Then she bent and kissed her. Mrs.

Brewster looked incredibly girlish with the lamp's rosy glow on her face and her hair, warmly brown and profuse, rippling out over the pillow.

Scarcely a thread of gray in it. "You know, mother, I think dad isn't well. He ought to go away."

As if by magic the youth and glow faded out of the face on the pillow.

As she sat up, clutching her nightgown to her breast, she looked suddenly pinched and old. "What do you mean, Pinky! Father--but he isn't sick. He--"

"Not sick. I don't mean sick exactly. But sort of worn out. That furnace. He's sick and tired of the thing; that's what he said to Fred.

He needs a change. He ought to retire and enjoy life. He could. This house is killing both of you. Why in the world don't you close it up, or sell it, and come to New York?"

"But we do. We did. Last winter--"

"I don't mean just for a little trip. I mean to live. Take a little two-room apartment in one of the new buildings--near my studio--and relax. Enjoy yourselves. Meet new men and women. Live! You're in a rut--both of you. Besides, dad needs it. That rheumatism of his, with these Wisconsin winters--"

"But California--we could go to California for--"

"That's only a stop-gap. Get your little place in New York all settled, and then run away whenever you like, without feeling that this great hulk of a house is waiting for you. Father hates it; I know it."

"Did he ever say so?"

"Well, practically. He thinks you're fond of it. He--"

Slow steps ascending the stairs--heavy, painful steps. The two women listened in silence. Every footfall seemed to emphasize Pinky's words.

The older woman turned her face toward the sound, her lips parted, her eyes anxious, tender.

"How tired he sounds," said Pinky; "and old. And he's only--why, dad's only fifty-eight."

"Fifty-seven," snapped Mrs. Brewster, sharply, protectingly.

Pinky leaned forward and kissed her. "Good-night, mummy dear. You're so tired, aren't you?"

Her father stood in the doorway.

"Good-night, dear. I ought to be tucking you into bed. It's all turned around, isn't it? Biscuits and honey for breakfast, remember."

So Pinky went off to her own room (_sans_ slp cov) and slept soundly, dreamlessly, as does one whose work is well done.

Three days later Pinky left. She waved a good-bye from the car platform, a radiant, electric, confident Pinky, her work well done.

"_Au 'voir!_ The first of November! Everything begins then. You'll love it. You'll be real New Yorkers by Christmas. Now, no changing your minds, remember."

And by Christmas, somehow, miraculously, there were they, real New Yorkers; or as real and as New York as any one can be who is living in a studio apartment (duplex) that has been rented (furnished) from a lady who turned out to be from Des Moines.

When they arrived, Pinky had four apartments waiting for their inspection. She told them this in triumph, and well she might, it being the winter after the war, when New York apartments were as scarce as black diamonds and twice as costly.

Father Brewster, on hearing the price, emitted a long, low whistle and said: "How many rooms did you say?"

"Two--and a kitchenette, of course."

"Well, then, all I can say is the furniture ought to be solid gold for that; inlaid with rubies and picked out with platinum."

But it wasn't. In fact, it wasn't solid anything, being mostly of a very impermanent structure and style. Pinky explained that she had kept the best for the last. The thing that worried Father Brewster was that, no matter at what hour of the day they might happen to call on the prospective lessor, that person was always feminine and hatted. Once it was eleven in the morning. Once five in the afternoon.