A Good Woman (Bromfield)/Part 3/Chapter 21
Philip saw his father at the restaurant, but there was little conversation between them, and Emma kept talking about the riot of the night before, observing that, "now that the police had tried something besides coddling a lot of dirty foreigners, the strike was overt in a hurry."
At this remark, Philip rose quietly and went out without another word to either of them. At home he found the druggist's wife sitting with the twins. Naomi, she said, was out. She had gone to see Mabelle. Mrs. Stimson wanted more details of his father's return, and also news of what had happened at Shane's Castle. After answering a dozen questions, he went away quickly.
At four o'clock his father came and saw the twins, diddling them both on his feet until they cried and Mrs. Stimson said, with the air of a snapping-turtle, "I'm going to leave them with you. Naomi ought to have been home two hours ago, and I've got a household of my own to look after." (Even for her poor Jason appeared to have lost his fascination.)
At seven when Philip came in to sit with the twins while Naomi went to choir practice, he found little Naomi crying and his father asleep in the Morris-chair by the gas stove. Jason had removed his collar and wrapped himself in a blanket. With him, sleeping was simply a way of filling in time between the high spots in existence: he slept when he was bored, and he slept when he was forced to wait.
Holding the baby against him, and patting its back softly, Philip approached his father and touched him with the toe of his shoe. "Pa!" he said. "Pa! Wake up!"
Jason awakened with all the catlike reluctance of a sensual nature, stretching himself and yawning and closing his eyes. He would have fallen asleep a second time but for the insistence of Philip's toe, the desperate crying of the child, and Philip's voice saying, "Wake up! Wake up!" There was something in the very prodding of the toe which indicated a contempt or at least a lack of respect. Jason noticed it and scowled.
"I just fell asleep for a minute," he said. "It couldn't have been long." But all the cocksureness had turned into an air of groveling apology.
"Where's Naomi?"
"She went off to Mabelle's." He took a pair of cigars from the yellow waistcoat and asked, "Have a cigar?"
"No. Not now." Philip continued to pat the baby's fat back. Suddenly he felt desperate, suffocated and helpless. The cry of the child hurt him.
He said, "She's been at Mabelle's all day."
"I do believe she said she'd be back after choir practice." He lighted the cigar and regarded the end of it thoughtfully. Philip began to walk up and down, and presently his father said, without looking at him, "You ain't living with Naomi, are you? I mean here in this house? You ain't sleeping with her?"
"No . . . I'm not."
"I thought so. Your Ma was trying to make me believe you was." He cocked his head on one side. "But I smelled a rat . . . I smelled a rat. I knew something was wrong."
Philip continued his promenade in silence.
"How'd you ever come to hook up with Naomi?"
"Because I wanted to . . . I suppose."
Jason considered the answer thoughtfully. "No, I don't believe you did. I ain't very bright, but I know some things. No man in his right mind would hook up to anything as pious as Naomi. . . ." He saw that Philip's head tossed back and his jaw hardened, as if he were going to speak. "Now, don't get mad at your Pa . . . your poor old Pa . . . I know you don't think much of 'im, but he's kind-a proud of you, just the same. And he don't blame you for not living with Naomi. Why, the thought of it makes me kind-a seasick."
Again a silence filled by little Naomi's heartbroken crying.
"Why, she ought to be home now looking after her children instead of gadding about with preachers and such. Your Ma was always pious, too, but she was a good housekeeper. She never allowed religion to interfere with her bein' practical."
Philip, distracted, unhappy, conscience-stricken, and a little frightened at Naomi's queer avoidance of him, was aware, too, that his father was saying one by one things he'd thought himself a hundred times. It occurred to him that Jason wasn't perhaps as empty and cheap as he seemed. It was almost as if an affection were being born out of Jason's hopeless efforts toward an understanding. If only little Naomi would stop squalling. . . .
His father was saying, "No, I'm proud of you, my boy. D'you know why?"
"No."
"Because of the way you stand up to your Ma. It takes a strong man to do that, unless you learn the trick. I've learned the trick. I just let her slide off now like water off a duck's back. I just say, 'Yes, yes,' to her and then do as I damned please. Oh, I learned a lot since I last saw her . . . a hell of a lot. There's a lotta women like her . . . especially American women—that don't know their place."
The baby stopped screaming, sobbed for a moment, and then began again.
"It wasn't her piousness that drove me away. I could have managed that. It was her way of meddlin'."
Philip stopped short and turned, looking at his father. "Then you were running away from us when you fell and hit your head?"
"I wasn't runnin' away from you."
Philip stood in front of the chair. "And you didn't lose your memory at all, did you?"
Jason looked up at him with an expression of astonishment. "No . . . of course not. D'you mean to say she never told you the truth . . . even you . . . my own son?"
"No . . . I guess she was trying to protect you . . . and made me believe my father wasn't the kind to run away." (The cries of the baby had begun to beat upon his brain like the steel hammers of the Mill.)
"Protect me, hell! It was to protect herself. She didn't want the Town to think that any man would desert her. Oh, I know your Ma, my boy. And it would have took a hero or a nincompoop to have stuck with her in those days." He knocked the ash from his cigar, and shook his head sadly. "But I oughtn't to have run away on your account. If I'd 'a' stuck it out, you wouldn't have got mixed up in the missionary business or with Naomi either. You wouldn't be walkin' up and down with that squallin' brat—at any rate, it wouldn't be Naomi's brat. I guess the missionary business was her way of gettin' even with me through you." He shook his head again. "Your Ma's a queer woman. She's got as much energy as a steam engine, but she never knows where she's goin', and she always thinks she's the only one with any sense. And my, ain't she hard . . . and unforgivin' . . . hard as a cocoanut!"
"She forgave you and took you back."
"But she's been aching to do that for years. That's the kind of thing she likes." His chest swelled under the yellow vest. "Besides, I always had a kind of an idea that she preferred me to any other man she's ever seen. Your Ma's a passionate woman, Philip. She's kind of ashamed of it, but deep down she's a passionate woman. If she'd had me about all these years she wouldn't have been so obnoxious, I guess."
The baby had ceased crying now, and, thrusting its soft head against the curve of Philip's throat, was lying very still. The touch of the downy little ball against his skin filled him with pity and a sudden, warm happiness. The poor little thing was trusting him, reaching out in its helpless way. He didn't even mind the things that his father was saying of his mother. He scarcely heard them. . . .
"I thought," said Jason, "that we'd cooked up that story about my memory for the Town and for old pie-faced Elmer. I thought she'd tell you the truth, but I guess she don't care much for the truth if it ain't pleasant."
Philip continued to pat little Naomi, more and more gently, as she began to fall asleep. In a low voice he asked, "You're going to stay now that you've come back, aren't you?"
"No, I gotta go back to Australia."
Philip looked at his father sharply. "You aren't going back to stay, are you?"
"I gotta look after my property, haven't I?"
"Why did you ever come back at all?"
Jason considered the question. "I suppose it was curiosity . . . I wanted to see my own son, and well . . . I wanted to see what had happened to your Ma after all these years, and then it is sort of fun to be a returned prodigal. Nothing has happened to your Ma. She's just the same. She accused me of bein' drunk this morning when I'd only had a glass. She carried on something awful."
"Have you told her you're going back to stay?"
"No . . . I've just told her I'm going back." He looked at Philip suddenly. "I suppose you think I'm lyin' about all that property in Australia. Well, I ain't. I'll send you pictures of it when I get back . . . I ought to have brought them. I can't guess why I didn't."
He rose and put on his coat. "I'd better be movin' on now, or she'll be sayin' I've been hangin' around bars. Have you eaten yet?"
"Yes . . . at the railroad lunch counter."
"That's a hell of a life for a married man."
He stood for a moment looking at little Naomi, who lay asleep on Philip's shoulder. Then, shyly, he put out his finger and touched the downy head gently. "They're fine babies," he said. "I wouldn't have thought a poor creature like Naomi could have had 'em."
Philip laid the child gently beside her brother and stood looking down at them.
"Philip," his father began. Philip turned, and, as if the burning gaze of his son's eyes extinguished his desire to speak, Jason looked away quickly, and said, "Well, good-night." He turned shyly, and Philip, aware that he was trying to pierce through the wall that separated them, felt suddenly sorry for him, and said, "Yes, Pa. What was it you meant to say?"
Jason coughed and then with an effort said, "Don't be too unhappy . . . and if there's somebody else . . . I mean another girl . . . why, don't torture yourself too much about it. Your Ma has made you like that. . . . But she's got queer ideas. We ain't alive very long, you know, and there ain't any reason why we should make our brief spell miserable."
Philip didn't answer him. He was looking down again at the children, silent, with the old, queer, pinched look about the eyes, as if he were ill again. He saw suddenly that his father wasn't such a fool, after all, and he was human. He was standing there with his hat in his two hands, looking childish and subdued and very shy.
Philip heard him saying, with another nervous cough, "Well, good-night, Philip."
"Good-night."
The door closed and Philip sank down wearily into a chair, resting his head on the edge of the crib, Presently he fell asleep thus.