A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 3/Chapter 7
He found a tiny flat of three rooms over a drugstore halfway up the hill from the railway station. It had been occupied by the family of a salesman who traveled for a house which manufactured false teeth. He had been promoted to a western territory where, with the great boom in the silver mines, the market for gold teeth had risen enormously.
He was a little fat man, with enormous black mustaches, all aglow with his promotion. "It's the best gold tooth territory in America," he told Philip.
The apartment rented for thirty dollars a month. The bubbling salesman would leave the furniture behind for two hundred and fifty dollars. Philip could move in the day after to-morrow.
He left the place, his whole body warmed by the satisfaction of having acted, of having done something definite. But the thing was not settled yet, because his mother still remained to be told.
He found her in the kitchen of the restaurant, superintending the preparation of mince-meat according to a recipe of her own which eliminated all intoxicating liquors. Standing over the negress who did the work, she was the essence of vigor and authority, her face crimsoned by the heat of the place, her hair all in disorder.
"Ma," he said to her. "I have something I want to discuss with you."
After bidding the negress wait until she returned, she followed him quickly, surprised and troubled by the look in his eye and the set of his jaw. The talk took place at the table behind the screen where Moses Slade came every day to eat.
"It's about Naomi, Ma . . . I've taken some rooms for her to live in. She won't trouble you any longer. We'll move out on Tuesday."
She looked at him for a moment in astonishment. "But, Philip," she said, "you ought to have consulted me. You mustn't do that. We can't even think of it."
"The rent is paid. I've bought furniture."
"Where did you get the money?"
"I used what Grandpa left me."
"I thought you'd pledged the interest on that to the mission."
"I've taken it back. I took it back before I was sick."
She didn't say anything for a long while. She saw suddenly that he was changed, more hardened even than she had feared. He didn't even come to her any longer for advice. He had shut her out altogether. At last she said, "But, Philip, what will people think—when I've a house big enough for you all?"
"I don't care any longer what people think. I can't go through any more scenes like yesterday. Besides, a man has a right to his own house."
"But, Philip . . . my house is your house. I've worked all these years and sacrificed. . . . Oh, you don't know what it's meant sometimes. I wouldn't even let Uncle Elmer help me—so that you'd have the house for your own. It wasn't for myself. . . . I could have got along somehow."
He looked away from her at the mustard-pot in the center of the table. "You know that you can't get on with Naomi—and she hates living in your house."
"I can try . . . we can both try. If only she'd take a little interest and not make the place into a pig-stye."
"You know she won't change."
"Philip, I'll do anything . . . I'll put up with Naomi . . . I won't say a word, only don't leave me now after all the years when I'm an old woman."
She saw the stubborn jaw set in a hard line. The sight of it stirred a sudden, turbulent emotion: it was his father's jaw over again, terrifying in its identity. What had she done to deserve such treatment from these two men to whom she had given up all her life without once a thought of herself? She had worked for them, sacrificed. . . .
Philip was saying, "It won't make any difference. Even if you and Naomi never spoke to each other. You'd be hating each other all the time. Don't you see? That's what I can't stand."
She reached over and touched his hand. "Philip . . . once you used to come to me with everything, and now . . . now you treat me like a stranger . . . me, your own mother. Why don't you come to me? I want to share your life, to be a part of it. It's all I live for. You're all I've got."
He felt her trying to capture him once more. What she said was true . . . you couldn't deny it. She had given her whole life to him. Every word she spoke hurt him.
"I don't know, Ma. Nothing has happened except maybe that I'm grown up now. I'm a man. I've got to decide things for myself."
It was that hard, brutal jaw which she couldn't overcome. It had thwarted her always. With Jason, when his jaw was set thus, it was as if his heart had turned to stone.
"Where did you go last night?"
He told her, and the answer frightened her. In the Flats, in a Dago's boarding-house, her son had passed a night.
"Where did that coat come from?"
"It belonged to Jim Baxter, who was killed at the grade-crossing last week. I borrowed it from McTavish."
"So you've been seeing him."
"Yes, he told you I wouldn't come home, didn't he?"
"Yes," she said, with a sudden flash of anger. "Yes . . . he told me. I wish you wouldn't see so much of him, Philip. He's a wicked man."
He made no response to this sudden, feeble sally of the old authority. He had, she discovered with awe, that old trick of his father's—of not answering in an argument unless he had something to say. It was an unfair method, because it always kept the argument upon the level of reason, excluding all the force of the emotions.
"And I'm not coming home any more to sleep, Ma. That's all finished."
He must have seen the look of fear in her eyes. It was that look he had seen there whenever, for a moment, she seemed to lose control of that solid world she had built up.
"But, Philip . . . it's your house . . . your own home. You've never had any other." He said nothing, and she asked, "Where are you going to sleep?"
Slowly, and then carefully, so that it would hurt her as little as possible, he told her about the stable at Shane's Castle, and his plan of painting. She listened, half believing that she could not be in her right mind, that what she heard was only part of a nightmare. She kept interrupting him, saying, "But, Philip, you never told me . . . I didn't know," and when he had finished," she said abruptly, "That wasn't the plan I had for you, Philip; I've been talking with Reverend Castor and he thinks we could arrange to get you a good congregation."
"No . . . that's all finished. It's no use even talking of it."
She went on, ignoring him. "And if that didn't please you, I thought . . . well, you could take the restaurant because, well . . ." she looked away from him, "you see, I'm thinking of getting married."
She saw his face grow red with anger. "Not to that humbug, Moses Slade!"
"Yes, Philip. But it's wrong of you to call him a humbug. He's a distinguished man, a good man, who stands for the best in the community."
"He's a hypocrite and a humbug!"
An uncontrollable rage took possession of him. It was impossible that he was to have Moses Slade, the humbug who had written that editorial about the strike, for a stepfather. No, it was outlandish, too impossible, that a good woman like his mother should be taken in by that lecherous old rip.
"Philip," she was saying. "You don't understand. I've been alone always . . . except for you—ever since your father died. It would be a good marriage, a distinguished marriage, and I wouldn't be alone in my old age."
"You couldn't marry him. You couldn't marry a fat old man like that."
He fancied that he saw her wince. "It isn't a question of love, Philip, at our age. It's companionship. I'm very fond of him, and he's been thoughtful—so thoughtful all the time you were sick."
"It's disgusting!"
It was odd, what had happened—that he found himself for the first time in his life taking a high hand with his mother. It was an intoxicating sensation.
"If I give him up, I'll be giving up a great opportunity for good. As a Congressman's wife, there's no end to the things I could accomplish. . . ." She began to cry. "But I'll give him up . . . I'll give him up if you won't turn your back on your poor mother. I'd do anything for you, Philip. You're all I've got, and I hoped for so much—to see you one of the great men of the church, a Christian leader, fighting on the side of God."
"It's no good, Ma. I won't go back to that."
One of the waitresses appeared suddenly from behind the screen. "Mrs. Downes . . ." she began.
"Go away! Go away! I'll talk to you later."
The girl disappeared.
"And that isn't all, Ma. I'm not going to live with Naomi any more. I'm through with that. I meant what I said when I was sick."
"Philip—listen to me, Philip!"
"No . . . I'll come to see her and the children. But I'm through."
"What will people think? What will they say?"
"You can tell them I've got a night job. . . . Nobody'll know, except Aunt Mabelle, where Naomi is going to live. Nobody will see me come or go. It's in Front Street."
"Front Street! Why, that's on the edge of the Flats! You can't do that!"
He looked at her for a long time in despairing silence. "My God, Ma! Can't you see? Can't you understand? From now on, I'm going to stand on my own. I'm going to work things out. I've got to get out of this mess. . . . I've got to."
He rose abruptly, and put on his hat.
"Philip?" she asked, drying her eyes, "where are you going now?"
"I'm going to buy blankets for myself."
"Philip, listen to me. For God's sake, listen! Don't ruin everything. I've a right to something. I'm your mother. Doesn't that mean anything?"
He turned for a moment hesitating, and then quickly said, "Ma, don't talk like that, it isn't fair."
Without another word, he put on his hat and hurried out of the restaurant.
Once outside, the cold air cleared his head, and he was thankful that he had been hard as a stone. Again he was sorry for Emma in a vague, inexplicable fashion; she could never understand what it was that made him hard. She couldn't see why he had to behave thus.
"I wish to God," he thought bitterly, "that I'd had a mother who wasn't a fine woman. Life would have been so much easier. And I can't hurt her . . . I can't. I love her."
And suddenly he saw that in all their talk together nothing had really been settled. Nothing had been changed or decided.