Read Boys and Girls Together Online

Authors: William Saroyan

Boys and Girls Together (7 page)

BOOK: Boys and Girls Together
11.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Maybe if he could get hold of thirty thousand dollars straight off and be out of debt and have enough left over for a new house for her and five hundred dollars to go in her pocket for anything she felt like buying, everything might straighten out and he might be able to get ready to work, and then actually write again.

He couldn't get to work the way things were because he couldn't get
ready
to. He was willing to believe that it was just as important to work for the family, for the kids and for her, as it was to work at his profession, but the way things were he just couldn't afford not to try to work at his profession, too. If he was rich, he'd be glad to help her all the time and let his work go.

There's the typewriter, he thought. Sit down and write.

He put paper into the machine and began to work, but after an hour he knew it wouldn't do. He wasn't ready. He couldn't work until he was ready. The only way he could get ready was for her to feel at home and to know something about her kids and about him and about love and about fun, and she either just couldn't feel at home or wouldn't, she wouldn't stop biting her fingernails and going off into despair, making any work he was trying to do seem hopeless and
useless, she could only have the fun they were always having and then go right back into homelessness.

Writing had always been a fight, but for a long time he had always believed he could win the fight. He had plunged in and tried, but sooner or later the fight had always been too much for him. He had always believed he could write under any circumstance, any set of circumstances, but he had found that he couldn't.

He could still read a little, but he was finding a lot of fault with everything he was reading, too.

He was trying to think of an entire work, something that would turn out to be full, that he could do in two or three months, when she let herself in and said, ‘What you doing?'

‘I'm trying to think of something to write in two or three months in short daily instalments.'

‘I wish you knew how much he admires you.'

‘Who?'

‘Leander.'

‘They can't come, and I don't want to hear any more about it.'

‘He told me you're the greatest writer in America.'

‘For your own sake, stop lying, will you?'

‘It's not a lie. He told me at a party, when you were overseas.'

‘Well, I don't want them here, that's all. If they come to town, you can take a taxi and spend an afternoon and evening with them.'

‘Can I? You
said
I could. Don't take it back.'

‘O.K.'

‘And you'll let me buy a new dress so I won't look like a dog when I see them? Nothing expensive, just something new, something under fifty dollars.'

‘O.K.'

‘And you'll come downstairs and stay with the kids so I can go to the beauty parlour?'

‘O.K.'

‘I mean, now. My appointment's for eleven and it's already ten after.'

‘When did you make it?'

‘Half an hour ago.'

‘Why? You've got to get the kids their lunch and get them in bed for their naps.'

‘Oh, won't you do it for me, just this once?'

‘Why not make the appointment for tomorrow when they're napping, the way you always do once a week when you go to the beauty parlour?'

‘Well, after I'm finished at the beauty parlour I thought I'd buy the dress. I don't have to have cash for it. I'll charge it.'

‘O.K., let's have it. What are you trying to tell me?'

‘They'll be here tomorrow morning. I telephoned and told them to go to the Fairmont because …'

‘The kids are sick?'

‘I just couldn't tell them you were working. They'd never understand. And Rosey
has
a running nose.'

‘O.K.'

They went downstairs to the lower flat.

‘Could you let me have some money for the taxi and beauty parlour?'

‘O.K.'

He gave her two tens and a five, but she wanted more, so he gave her another ten. The doorbell rang and when he opened it he saw that it was a taxi-driver. The woman kissed him and said, ‘About five, I guess, but maybe a little later.'

‘O.K.'

He went to the kitchen and looked into the refrigerator to see what might be possible for their lunch, and then into the cupboard, the vegetable bin, and everywhere that food was kept. There wasn't much, but there was enough. He'd give them breakfast again, or some soup out of a can, and mashed potatoes. The back door was open but he couldn't hear them fighting, so he went out on to the steps and saw that they were lying under an army blanket talking quietly and looking up, either at the sky or at the top of their house or at the houses all around or at nothing. The neighbour on the left, Turandi Turanda, was working quietly in his vegetable garden. Either they had already had their fun with him or they hadn't noticed that he had stepped out of his house, for they always talked with him, the boy climbing the fence and hanging on to see over it, the girl getting up on an apple box to look over and watch and talk, too.

He stepped back into the kitchen and began to peel the potatoes. By the time they were boiling he heard
the three of them talking. The man was more or less retired, a plasterer by trade, so he spent a lot of time in his garden, and he either liked the kids or put up with them because they were always there and there was nothing he could do about it. Sometimes he lifted the little girl and walked around with her in his garden and the boy hoisted himself over the fence and let himself down, falling part of the way, and skinning his hands a little. They seemed to be friends, the three of them, and the man's wife (whenever she came out into the yard) talked with them and admired the girl and teased the boy about putting him in a hole in the ground. But it was all play, and the boy only hollered at her because he knew she would never put him in a hole in the ground.

Their voices grew louder, so he stepped to the door to see what it was about. Turandi Turanda was standing at the fence, looking down at them and talking. The boy was holding a tennis ball and the girl wanted it but he wouldn't let her have it.

‘You be a good boy, Johnny,' Turanda said. ‘You give her the ball. You got other things.'

The boy handed the ball to the girl.

‘Shit,' he said.

Turanda looked around to see if anybody had heard, and then he said: ‘There, Rosey, see? Johnny's a good boy. Tell him thanks.'

‘Shit,' the girl said. She said it softly and sweetly,
like a beautiful word. ‘Thanks, Johnny, my little brother.'

The neighbour went back to his garden, and the man thought, I've got to lay off letting them hear words like that.

But it was hard not to keep saying words like that all the time.

He got them their lunch and told them Mama had gone shopping for supper and he took off their clothes and put them in their beds and then sat down in the living-room and went on thinking about money. He turned on the radio to the station that gave the race results and listened to the music that came in between, and then to the results at two Eastern tracks. He got the morning paper and turned to the sports page and studied the entries at all the tracks and figured that if he bet two hundred dollars across the board and just happened to get a winner he would be able to drive to town sometime that afternoon and pick up anywhere from a thousand to two or three thousand, and maybe with that make a beginning.

He picked a horse in the next race at both of the Eastern tracks and when the announcer gave the results one of the horses won and paid $16.40, $8.20 and $5.40, and the other one ran third and paid $4.40.

He did some more brooding and then picked a horse named Sugar, at four to one in the fifth at Arlington. He telephoned the bookie where his credit was good and bet the horse two hundred across the board. He
sat and waited for the radio man to give the results, smoking one cigarette after another and feeling sick because all he had in the bank was $140.

The horse wasn't in the money, so he bet a horse in the seventh, but that horse ran third, so he owed the bookie $820 instead of $1,200, which is what he would have owed if the horse had run out of the money. But that wasn't winning, that wasn't even getting out of debt to the bookie, let alone out of debt to all the people he had borrowed money from, so he bet a horse in the last race at one of the Eastern tracks but that horse wasn't in the money either, so now he owed the bookie $1,420.

He bet $300 across the board on a horse named Me First in the first race at Bay Meadows, post position one, Longden up, maiden three-year-olds, six furlongs, so if Me First didn't get in the money he would owe the bookie $2,320, which meant that he would have to borrow $2,500 from somebody, only there wasn't anybody to borrow from.

But the horse won and paid a pretty good price. The man got up and walked around, even though he hadn't figured his winnings yet. When he figured them he was astonished to discover that they came to so much: $1,880 net. Well, he couldn't pay his debts with it, but at least he
had
it, and it was better than needing to go out and try to borrow $2,500. He got into the shower, then put on fresh clothes, and felt a little easier.

He had been in another tough spot and again he had gotten out of it. Now, instead of having only $140, he had a little better than $2,000. He could bet another horse and maybe win again, but to hell with it. All he wanted was to get something, and he had, he'd gotten more than he had expected to get, so it was enough. Maybe if he could have a little luck every day like that he could get hold of enough money to pay the debts and have something left over for the other things.

He dressed the kids and put the girl in her chair in the car and drove to town. He put the car in the garage a block and a half from the bookie's and asked the man to fill the tank and check the oil and water. He told the kids he was going to get a package of cigarettes and would be back in a minute, and not to move. He went up to the bookie's and chatted with the boys a few minutes and then Leo looked into his book and said, ‘Eighteen eighty, right?' and counted the money out and thanked him.

He took the money and put it in his pocket and chatted with the boys some more, and then he got up and went back to the car.

The kids were laughing together about something.

He paid the man and drove out Geary to the ocean, along the ocean four or five miles, and then he stopped where some new houses were being built and he and the boy piled scraps of lumber in the back of the car for the fireplace because doing that made the boy happier than anything else he knew how to do. He drove home and left the car out front and took the kids for a walk to a drugstore and got them each and himself an ice-cream soda.

It wouldn't be so bad if he could get hold of money that way any time he needed it.

Chapter 13

He was clean and calm sitting with the kids in the booth in the ice-cream-parlour part of the drugstore and that's what a man wanted, that's what he always wanted, to be clean and calm, his kids across a table from him with their new eyes, new voices, hands and fingers, hair and lips, teeth and nostrils and ears, moisture and skin, their new beating hearts and working lungs, that's all any man ever wanted, just to be decently at peace with himself and his woman and to have his kids around and happy about vanilla and chocolate and soda, the long spoon and the straws, and the drama of other people around, the druggist, the girl who brought the stuff, the boy who made it, and the other people having other stuff.

All any man ever wanted was peace and the only way he could have it was to have money, and now he had a little. Betting the races was the best way to
get money if you had to get it that way at all. You never hurt anybody by winning on the races because whatever you got you got anonymously and whoever lost because he had picked another horse in the same race was unknown to you. It was a dirty business, but if you won, it certainly made a lot of difference.

He asked the kids if they would like to go to the notion store across the street and have a look at the junk, and they said they did, so they went there and he let them have one thing each because having too much, or being free to have too much, made them unhappy, confused them, so the girl had a blown-up balloon that was red on a stick, and the boy had a gyroscope in a square paste-board box. They stepped out into the street and began to move homeward, but the man noticed that the old North Carolina barber, whose shop had only one chair, had nobody in it, so he asked the kids if they would sit nicely while he got a haircut and they said they would, so he got a haircut. Then he stepped into the Safeway, to the butcher's, and bought four thick sirloins and six French lamb chops, but didn't buy anything else because you had to stand in line to pay and have your stuff wrapped everywhere except at the butcher's. In the delicatessen next door that the lady who loved her big ugly cat and was always making rugs out of rags and listening to the radio owned he bought six cans of chili with beans, and that was enough to carry, so they walked home. He and the boy unloaded the
pieces of lumber from the car to the basement. He took up an armful, put them in the fireplace and lighted the fire because they all liked to see a fire.

The red balloon popped and the little girl looked astonished, as she always did when a balloon popped.

‘It was my balloon,' the girl said. ‘I want my balloon.'

She held what was left of it, the thin limp absurd-looking rubber and the skinny stick, and she didn't like it. The man examined the wreckage, got a piece of string and tied some of the rubber together. He undid the neck from the stick to which it was attached and blew into it and the little girl saw the balloon again, but different, tied, lopsided, the colour different, ends hanging loose, but she laughed and liked it. The man tied the neck, and the girl waited to have her balloon again. When she had it she squeezed it and let it fall and bounce, but the boy just sat and watched the fire.

BOOK: Boys and Girls Together
11.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Irretrievable by Theodor Fontane
UnGuarded by Ashley Robertson
The Rising Dead by Stella Green
The SILENCE of WINTER by WANDA E. BRUNSTETTER
Fast Slide by Melanie Jackson
Midnight Star by Catherine Coulter
El joven Lennon by Jordi Sierra i Fabra