Chapter 24 A Domestic Dilemma-2

"Marianne!" Martin called, for even the recollection of that time brought the need for reassurance. The baby girl, no longer hurt, but no less precious to her father, came into the kitchen with her brother. Martin went on with the preparations for the meal. He opened a can of soup and put two chops in the frying pan. Then he sat down by the table and took his Marianne on his knees for a pony ride. Andy watched them, his fingers wobbling the tooth that had been loose all that week. "Andy-the-candyman!" Martin said. "Is that old critter still in your mouth? Come closer, let Daddy have a look."

"I got a string to pull it with." The child brought from his pocket a tangled thread. "Virgie said to tie it to the tooth and tie the other end of the doorknob and shut the door real suddenly." Martin took out a clean handkerchief and felt the loose tooth carefully. "That tooth is coming out of my Andys mouth tonight. Otherwise Im awfully afraid well have a tooth tree in the family." "A what?" "A tooth tree," Martin said. "You'll bite into something and swallow that tooth. And the tooth will take root in poor Andys stomach and grow into a tooth tree with sharp little teeth instead of leaves."

"Shoo, Daddy," Andy said. But he held the tooth firmly between his grimy little thumb and forefinger. "There aint any tree like that. I never seen one." "There isn't any tree like that and I never saw one." Martin tensed suddenly. Emily was coming down the stairs. He listened to her fumbling footsteps, his arm embracing the little boy with dread. When Emily came into the room he saw from her movements and her sullen face that she had again been at the sherry bottle. She began to yank open drawers and set the table. "Condition!" she said in a furry voice. "You talk to me like that. Dont think Ill forget. I remember every dirty lie you say to me. Dont you think for a minute that I forget."

"Emily!" he begged. "The children --" "The children -- yes! Dont think I dont see through your dirty plots and schemes. Down here trying to turn my own children against me. Dont think I dont see and understand." "Emily! I beg you -- please go upstairs." "So you can turn my children -- my very own children --" Two large tears coursed rapidly down her cheeks. "Trying to turn my little boy, my Andy, against his own mother." With drunken impulsiveness Emily knelt on the floor before the startled child. Her hands on his shoulders balanced her. "Listen, my Andy -- you wouldn't listen to any lies your father tells you? You wouldn't believe what he says? Listen, Andy, what was your father telling you before I came downstairs?" Uncertain, the child sought his fathers face. "Tell me. Mama wants to know."

"About the tooth tree." "What?" The child repeated the words and she echoed them with unbelieving terror. "The tooth tree!" She swayed and renewed her grasp on the children shoulder. "I dont know what you talking about. But listen, Andy, Mama is all right, isn't she?" The tears were spilling down her face and Andy drew back from her, for he was afraid. Grasping the table edge, Emily stood up. "See! You have turned my child against me." Marianne began to cry, and Martin took her in his arms. "Thats all right, you can take your child. You have always shown partiality from the very first. I dont mind, but at least you can leave me my little boy."

Andy edged close to his father and touched his leg. "Daddy," he wailed. Martin took the children to the foot of the stairs. "Andy, you take up Marianne and Daddy will follow you in a minute." "But Mama?" the child asked, whispering. "Mama will be all right. Don't worry." Emily was sobbing at the kitchen table, her face buried in the crook of her arm. Martin poured a cup of soup and set it before her. Her rasping sobs unnerved him; the vehemence of her emotion, irrespective of the source, touched in him a strain of tenderness. Unwillingly he laid his hand on her dark hair. "Sit up and drink the soup." Her face as she looked up at him was chastened and imploring. The boys withdrawal or the touch of Martins hand had turned the tenor of her mood.

"Ma-Martin," she sobbed. "Im so ashamed." "Drink the soup." Obeying him, she drank between gasping breaths. After a second cup she allowed him to lead her up to their room. She was docile now and more restrained. He laid her nightgown on the bed and was about to leave the room when a fresh round of grief, the alcoholic tumult, came again. "He turned away. My Andy looked at me and turned away." Impatience and fatigue hardened his voice, but he spoke warily. "You forget that Andy is still a little child -- he cant comprehend the meaning of such scenes."

"Did I make a scene? Oh, Martin, did I make a scene before the children?" Her horrified face touched and amused him against his will. "Forget it Put on your nightgown and go to sleep." "My child turned away from me. Andy looked at his mother and turned away. The children --" She was caught in the rhythmic sorrow of alcohol. Martin withdrew from the room saying: "For Gods sake go to sleep. The children will forget by tomorrow." As he said this he wondered if it was true. Would the scene glide so easily from memory -- or would it root in the unconscious to fester in the after-years? Martin did not know, and the last alternative sickened him. of Emily, foresaw the morning-after humiliation: the shards of memory, the lucidities that glared from the obliterating darkness of shame. She would call the New York office twice -- possibly three or four times. Martin anticipated his own embarrassment, wondering if the others at the office could possibly suspect. He felt that his secretary had divined the trouble long ago and that she pitied him. He suffered a moment of rebellion against his fate;

Once in the children's room he closed the door and felt secure for the first time that evening. Marianne fell down on the floor, picked herself up and calling: "Daddy, watch me," fell again, got up, and continued the falling- calling routine. Andy sat in the children low chair, wobbling the tooth. Martin ran the water in the tub, washed his own hands in the lavatory, and called the boy into the bathroom. "Lets have another look at that tooth." Martin sat on the toilet, holding Andy between his knees. The children mouth gaped and Martin grasped the tooth. A wobble, a quick twist and the nacreous milk tooth was free. Andys face was for the first moment split between terror, astonishment, and delight. He mouthed a swallow of water and spat into the lavatory. "Look, Daddy! Its blood. Marianne!"

Martin loved to bathe his children, loved inexpressibly the tender, naked bodies as they stood in the water so exposed. It was not fair of Emily to say that he showed partiality. As Martin soaped the delicate boy-body of his son he felt that further love would be impossible. Yet he admitted the difference in the quality of his emotions for the two children. His love for his daughter was graver, touched with a strain of melancholy, a gentleness that was akin to pain. little boy were the absurdities of daily inspiration -- he called the little girl always Marianne, and his voice as he spoke it was a caress. Martin patted dry the fat baby stomach and the sweet little genital fold. The washed child faces were radiant as flower petals, equally loved.

"Im putting the tooth under my pillow. Im supposed to get a quarter." "What for?" "You know, Daddy. Johnny got a quarter for his tooth." "Who puts the quarter there?" asked Martin. "I used to think the fairies left it in the night. It was a dime in my day, though." "That's what they say in kindergarten." "Who does put it there?" "Your parents," Andy said. "You!" Martin was pinning the cover on Mariannes bed. His daughter was already asleep. Scarcely breathing. Martin bent over and kissed her forehead, kissed again the tiny hand that lay palm-upward, flung in slumber beside her head. "Good night, Andy-man." The answer was only a drowsy murmur. After a minute Martin took out his change and slid a quarter underneath the pillow. He left a night light in the room. As Martin prowled about the kitchen making a late meal, it occurred to him that the children had not once mentioned their mother or the scene that must have seemed to them incomprehensible. Absorbed in the instant -- the tooth, the bath, the quarter - - the fluid passage of child-time had borne these weightless episodes like leaves in the swift current of a shallow stream while the adult enigma was beached and forgotten on the shore. Martin thanked the Lord for that. But his own anger, repressed and lurking, arose again. His youth was being frittered by a drunkards waste, his very manhood subtly undermined. And the children, once the immunity of incomprehension passed -- what would it be like in a year or so With his elbows on the table he ate his food brutally, untasting. There was no hiding the truth -- soon there would be gossip in the office and in the town; his wife was a dissolute woman. Were bound to a future of degradation and slow ruin. Martin pushed away from the table and stalked into the living room. He followed the lines of a book with his eyes but his mind conjured miserable images: he saw his children drowned in the river, his wife a disgrace on the public street. By bedtime the dull, hard anger was like a weight upon his chest and his feet dragged as he climbed the stairs. The room was dark except for the shafting light from the half-opened bathroom door. Martin undressed quietly. Little by little, mysteriously, there came in him a change. His wife was asleep, her peaceful respiration sounding gently in the room. -heeled shoes with the carefully dropped stockings made to him a mute appeal. Her underclothes were flung in disorder on the chair. Martin picked up the girdle and the soft, silk brassiere and stood for a moment with them in his hands. time that evening he looked at his wife. His eyes rested on the sweet forehead, the arch of the fine brow. The brow had descended to Marianne, and the tilt at the end of the delicate nose. In his son he could trace the high cheekbones and pointed chin. Her body was full-bosomed, slender and undulant. As Martin watched the tranquil slumber of his wife the ghost of the old anger vanished. All thoughts of blame or blemish were distant from him now. Martin put out the bathroom light and raised t he window. Careful not to awake Emily he slid into the bed. By moonlight he watched his wife for the last time. His hand sought the adjacent flesh and sorrow paralleled desire in the immense complexity of love.