“Don’t get her started, for God’s sake,” Sadie said irritably. “It takes all day to quiet her down again.” She glanced quickly at her mother with a sly look of malice. “She’s gettin’ too hard to handle. I think it’s time we put her in a home.”
“Oh no,” her mother protested, her face suddenly assuming a helplessly hurt look, “not Granny’s little darling. You couldn’t really do that. ”
“She’d be better off,” Sadie said smugly, satisfied that she had injured her mother’s most vulnerable spot once again. The threat appeared to be a standard ploy, since it came up nearly every time they visited together.
“How’s he doing?” Sadie’s mother asked quickly, changing the subject in the hope of diverting her daughter’s mind from the horrid notion of committing the idiot to custodial care. As always, the “he” referred to Sadie’s husband. They never used his name.
“His veins are breakin’ down,” Sadie replied, gloating. “His feet and hands are cold all the time, and sometimes he has trouble gettin’ his breath.”
“It’s a pity.” Her mother sighed.
Sadie snorted a savage laugh, reaching for another fistful of potato chips. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I keep his insurance premiums all paid up. I’ll be a rich woman one of these days real soon.”
“I imagine it’s a terrible strain on him-standing all the time like that.”
Sadie nodded, contentedly munching. “All his arteries are clogged almost shut,” she said smugly. “His doctor says that it’s just a question of time until one of them blows out or a clot of that gunk breaks loose and stops his heart. He could go at any time.”
“Poor man,” her mother said sadly.
“Soon as it happens, I’m gonna buy me a whole buncha new furniture.” Sadie’s tone was dreamy. “An’ I’m gonna have all them delivery trucks pullin’ up in fronta my house. “en watch them people down the street just wither up an’ blow away. Sometimes just can’t hardly wait.”
Raphael turned and went back into his little apartment. Walking was not so bad, but simply standing grew tiring after a while, and the phantom ache in the knee and foot that were no longer there began to gnaw at him.
He sat on the couch and turned on the scanner, more to cover the penetrating sound of Sadie’s voice than out of any real interest in morning police calls. A little bit of Sadie went a long way.
It was a problem. As the summer progressed the interior of the apartment was likely to become intolerably hot. He knew that. He would be driven out onto the roof for relief. The standing would simply bring on the pain, and the pain would drive him back into the apartment again. He needed something to sit on, a bench, or a chair or something like Sadie’s swing.
He checked his phone book, made some calls, and then went down to catch a bus.
The Goodwill store was a large building with the usual musty smelling clothes hanging on pipe racks and the usual battered furniture, stained mattresses, and scarred appliances. It had about it that unmistakable odor of poverty that all such places have.
“You’ve come about the job,” a pale girl with one dwarfed arm said as he crutched across toward the furniture.
“No,” he replied. “Actually, I came to buy a chair.”
“I’m sorry. I just assumed-” She glanced at his crutches and blushed furiously.
“What kind of a job is it?” he asked, more to help her out of her embarrassment than out of any real curiosity.
“Shoe repair. Our regular man is moving away.”
“I wouldn’t be much good at that.”
“You never know until you try.” She smiled shyly at him. Her face seemed somehow radiant when she smiled. “If you’re really looking for something to do, it might not hurt to talk with Mrs. Kiernan.”
“I don’t really need a job. I’ve got insurance and Social Security.” It was easy to talk with her. He hadn’t really talked with one of his own kind since the last time he’d spoken with Quillian.
“Most of us do have some kind of coverage,” she said with a certain amount of spirit. “Working here makes us at least semiuseful. It’s a matter of dignity-not money.”
Because he liked her, and because her unspoken criticism stung a little, he let her lead him back to the small office where a harassed-looking woman interviewed him.
“We don’t pay very much,” she apologized, “and we can’t guarantee you any set number of hours a week or anything like that.”
“That’s all right,” Raphael told her. “I just need something to do, that’s all.”
She nodded and had him fill out some forms. “I’ll have to get it cleared,” she said, “but I don’t think there’ll be any problem. Suppose I call you in about a week.”
He thanked her and went back out into the barnlike salesroom. The girl with the dwarfed arm was waiting for him. “Well?” she asked.
“She’s going to call me,” Raphael told her.
“Did she have you fill out any forms?”
He nodded.
“You’re in then,” she said with a great deal of satisfaction.
“Do you suppose I could look at some chairs now?” Raphael asked, smiling.
vii
His world quite suddenly expanded enormously. The advent of the chair enabled him to see the entire neighborhood in a way he had not been able to see it before. Because standing had been awkward and painful, he had not watched before, but the chair made it easier-made it almost simpler to watch than not to watch. It was a most serviceable chair-an old office chair of gray metal mounted on a squat, four-footed pedestal with casters on the bottom. It had sturdy arms and a solid back, and (here were heavy springs under the seat that enabled him to rock back to alter his position often enough to remain comfortable. The addition of a pillow provided the padding necessary to protect the still-sensitive remains of his left hip. The great thing about it was that it rolled. With his crutches and his right leg, he could easily propel himself to any spot on the roof and could watch the wonderful world expanding on the streets below.
Always before they had seemed to be quiet streets of somewhat run-down houses only in need of a nail here, a board there, some paint and a general squaring away. Now that winter had passed, however, and the first warm days of spring had come, the people who lived on the two streets that intersected at the corner of the house where he lived opened their doors and began to bring their lives outside where he could watch them.
Winter is a particularly difficult time for the poor. Heat is expensive, but more than that, the bitter cold drives them inside, although their natural habitat is outside. Given the opportunity, the poor will conduct most of the business of their lives out-of-doors, and with the arrival of spring they come out almost with gusto.
“Fuckin’ bastard.” It was an Indian girl who might have been twenty-three but already looked closer to forty. Her face was a ruin, and her arms and shoulders were covered with crudely done tattoos. She cursed loudly but without inflection, without even much interest, as if she already knew what the outcome of the meeting was going to be. There was a kind of resignation about her swearing. She stood swaying drunkenly on the porch of the large house two doors up from Tobe and Sam’s place, speaking to the big, tense-looking man on the sidewalk.
“That’s fine,” the tense man said. “You just be out of here by tomorrow morning, that’s all.”
“Fuckin’ bastard,” she said again.
“I’ll be back with the sheriff. He’ll by God put you out. I’ve had it with you, Doreen. You haven’t paid your rent in three months. That’s it. Get out.”
“Fuckin’ bastard.”
A tall, thin Negro pushed out of the house and stood behind the girl. He wore pants and a T-shirt, but no shoes. “Look here, man,” he blustered. “You can’t just kick somebody out in the street without no place to go.”
“Watch me. You got till tomorrow morning. You better sober her up and get her ass out of here.” He turned and started back toward his car.
“You’re in trouble, man,” the Negro threatened. “I got some real mean friends.”
“Whoopee,” the tense man said flatly. He got into the car.
The Indian girl glowered at him, straining to find some insult sufficient for the occasion. Finally she gave up.
“Fuckin’ bastard,” she said.
“Oh, my God!” the fat woman trundling down the sidewalk exclaimed. “Oh, my God!” She was very fair-skinned and was nearly as big as Sadie the Sitter. Her hair was blond and had been stirred into some kind of scrambled arrangement at the back of her head. The hair and her clothes were covered with flecks of lint, making her look as if she had slept in a chicken coop.