Getting his little coat down off the hook, then his arms into it, not easy because he’s so excited and he always turns the wrong way anyhow. And all the time he’s looking up at you with those blue eyes. We go park Papa, he says. We go see gulls. Straining for the door. The gulls are a favorite; he discovered them on the boat coming across and can’t understand, he keeps looking for them in the park.
Wrap the muffler around his neck. Yellow, white. (Notice how white the skin is there, how the veins show through.) They call them scarves here don’t they. Stockingcap—he pulls it down over his eyes, going Haha. He hasn’t learned to laugh yet. Red mittens. Now move the zipper up and he’s packed away. The coat’s green corduroy, with black elastic at the neck and cuffs and a round hood that goes down over the cap. It’s November. In England. Thinking, the last time I’ll do this. Is there still snow on the ground, I didn’t look this morning.
Take his hand and go on out of the flat. Letting go at the door because it takes two hands to work the latch, Mary rattling dishes in the kitchen. (Good-bye, she says very softly as you shut the door.) He goes around you and beats you to the front door, waits there with his nose on the glass. The hall is full of white light. Go on down it to him. The milk’s come, two bottles, with the Guardian leaning between them. Move the mat so we can open the door. We go park Papa, we see gulls. Frosty foggy air coming in. Back for galoshes, all the little brass-tongue buckles? No the snow’s gone. Just some dirty slush. Careful. Down the steps.
Crunching down the sidewalk ahead of you, disappointed because there’s no snow but looking back, Haha. We go park? The sky is flat and white as a sheet of paper. Way off, a flock of birds goes whirling across it, circling inside themselves—black dots, like iron filings with a magnet under the paper. The block opposite is lined with trees. What kind? The leaves are all rippling together. It looks like green foil. Down the walk.
Asking, Why is everything so still. Why aren’t there any cars. Or a mailtruck. Or milkcart, gliding along with bottles jangling. Where is everyone. It’s ten in the morning, where is everyone.
But there is a car just around the corner, stuck on ice at the side of the road where it parked last night with the wheels spinning Whrrrrrr. Smile, you understand a man’s problems. And walk the other way. His mitten keeps coming off in your hand. Haha.
* * * *
She had broken down only once, at breakfast.
The same as every morning, the child had waked them. Standing in his bed in the next room and bouncing up and down till the springs were banging against the frame. Then he climbed out and came to their door, peeking around the frame, finally doing his tiptoe shyly across the floor in his white wool nightshirt. Up to their bed, where they pretended to be still asleep. Brekpust, brekpust, he would say, poking at them and tugging the covers, at last climbing onto the bed to bounce up and down between them until they rolled over: Hello. Morninggg. He is proud of his g’s. Then, Mary almost broke down, remembering what today was, what they had decided the night before.
She turned her face toward the window (they hadn’t been able to afford curtains yet) and he heard her breathe deeply several times. But a moment later she was up— out of bed in her quilted robe and heading for the kitchen, with the child behind her.
He reached and got a cigarette off the trunk they were using as a night-table. It had a small wood lamp, a bra, some single cigarettes and a jarlid full of ashes and filters on it. Smoking, listening to water running, pans clatter, cupboards and drawers. Then the sounds stopped and he heard them together in the bathroom: the tap ran for a while, then the toilet flushed and he heard the child’s pleased exclamations. They went back into the kitchen and the sounds resumed. Grease crackling, the child chattering about how good he had been. The fridge door opened and shut, opened again, Mary said something. He was trying to help.
He got out of bed and began dressing. How strange that she’d forgotten to take him to the bathroom first thing, she’d never done that before. Helpinggg, from the kitchen by way of explanation, as he walked to the bureau. It was square and ugly, with that shininess peculiar to cheap furniture, and it had been in the flat when they moved in, the only thing left behind. He opened a drawer and took out a shirt. All his shirts were white. Why, she had once asked him, years ago. He didn’t know, then or now.
He went into the kitchen with the sweater over his head. “Mail?” Through the wool. Neither of them looked around, so he pulled it the rest of the way on, reaching down inside to tug the shirtcollar out. Then the sleeves.
“A letter from my parents. They’re worried they haven’t heard from us, they hope we’re all right. Daddy’s feeling better, why don’t we write them.”
The child was dragging his high-chair across the floor from the corner. Long ago they had decided he should take care of as many of his own needs as he could - a sense of responsibility, Mary had said - but this morning Jim helped him carry the chair to the table, slid the tray off, lifted him into it and pushed the chair up to the table. When he looked up, Mary turned quickly away, back to the stove.
Eggs, herring, toast and ham. “I thought it would be nice,” Mary said. “To have a good breakfast.” And that was the time she broke down.
The child had started scooping the food up in his fingers, so she got up again and went across the kitchen to get his spoon. It was heavy silver, with an ivory K set into the handle, and it had been her own. She turned and came back across the tile, holding the little spoon in front of her and staring at it. Moma cryinggg, the child said. Moma cryinggg. She ran out of the room. The child turned in his chair to watch her go, then turned back and went on eating with the spoon. The plastic padding squeaked as the child moved inside it. The chair was metal, the padding white with large blue asterisks all over it. They had bought it at a Woolworths. Twelve and six. Like the bureau, it somehow fit the flat.
A few minutes later Mary came back, poured coffee for both of them and sat down across from him.
“It’s best this way,” she said. “He won’t have to suffer. It’s the only answer.”
He nodded, staring into the coffee. Then took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirttail. The child was stirring the eggs and herring together in his bowl. Holding the spoon like a chisel in his hand and going round and round the edge of the bowl. “Jim . . .”
He looked up. She seemed to him, then, very tired, very weak.
“We could take him to one of those places. Where they . . . take care of them ... for you.”
He shook his head, violently. “No, we’ve already discussed that, Mary. He wouldn’t understand. It will be easier, my way. If I do it myself.”
She went to the window and stood there watching it. It filled most of one wall. It was frosted over.
“How would you like to go for a walk after breakfast,” he asked the child. He immediately shoved the bowl away and said, “Bafroom first?”
“You or me?” Mary said from the window.
Finally: “You.”
He sat alone in the kitchen, thinking. Taps ran, the toilet flushed, he came out full of pride. “We go park,” he said. “We go see gulls.”
“Maybe.” It was this, the lie, which came back to him later; this was what he remembered most vividly. He got up and walked into the hall with the child following him and put his coat on. “Where’s his other muffler?”
“In the bureau drawer. The top one.”
He got it, then began looking for the stockingcap and mittens. Walking through the rooms, opening drawers. There aren’t any seagulls in London. When she brought the cap and mittens to him there was a hole in the top of the cap and he went off looking for the other one. Walking through rooms, again and again into the child’s own.
“For God’s sake go on,” she finally said. “Please stop. O damn Jim, go on.” And she turned and ran back into the kitchen.
Soon he heard her moving about. Clearing the table, running water, opening and shutting things. Silverware clicking.
“We go park?”
He began to dress the child. Getting his little coat down off the hook. Wrapping his neck in the muffler. There aren’t any seagulls in London. Stockingcap, Haha.
Thinking, This is the last time I’ll ever do this.
Now bump, bump, bump. Down the funny stairs.
* * * *
When he returned, Mary was lying on the bed, still in the quilted robe, watching the ceiling. It seemed very dark, very cold in the room. He sat down beside her in his coat and put his hand on her arm. Cars moved past the window. The people upstairs had their radio on.
“Why did you move the bureau?” he asked after a while.
Without moving her head she looked down toward the foot of the bed. “After you left I was lying here and I noticed a traffic light or something like that out on the street was reflected in it. It was blinking on and off, I must have watched it for an hour. We’ve been here for weeks and I never saw that before. But once I did, I had to move it.”
“You shouldn’t be doing heavy work like that.”
For a long while she was still, and when she finally moved, it was just to turn her head and look silently into his face.
He nodded, once, very slowly.
“It didn’t . . .”
No.
She smiled, sadly, and he lay down beside her in the small bed. She seemed younger now, rested, herself again. There was warmth in her hand when she took his own and put them together on her stomach.
They lay quietly through the afternoon. Ice was reforming on the streets; outside, they could hear wheels spinning, engines racing. The hall door opened, there was a jangle of milkbottles, the door closed. Then everything was quiet. The trees across the street drooped under the weight of the ice.
There was a sound in the flat. Very low and steady, like a ticking. He listened for hours before he realized it was the drip of a faucet in the bathroom.
Outside, slowly, obscuring the trees, the night came. And with it, snow. They lay together in the darkness, looking out the frosted window. Occasionally, lights moved across it.
“We’ll get rid of his things tomorrow,” she said after a while.