People Who Knock on the Door (3 page)

“And we prayed,” said Richard, swinging his arms in a downward motion. “We prayed and our prayers were answered. Isn’t that right, Loey?”

“Uh-hm,” said his mother.

“Christ answered us. I prayed to Christ,” said Richard, filling the kettle, setting it on the burner.

The telephone rang.

“That’s Norma, Mom. I’ll get it.” Arthur went to the telephone. “
Yes
, Norma, thanks, I just heard. My folks just got back.”

“Now isn’t that wonderful? He’s out of danger.” Norma asked if she could speak to his mother, and Arthur called her.

Arthur didn’t want to go back into the kitchen with his father in his present mood, but he did, and picked up his coffee cup.

“I had a great experience last night,” said his father. “Maybe one day you’ll have one like it, too. I hope you will.”

Arthur nodded. He knew that his father meant that Robbie had pulled through because of his praying. “I phoned the hospital last night around eleven. They just said there was no change, not that he was worse. Maggie even offered to drive me to the hospital, but they wouldn’t have allowed visitors then.”

His father might as well not have heard, and his smile was dreamy. “You’ve been in a daze for a week or more. A girl. More important than your brother or a human life.”

That was not true. Or was it? At any rate, Arthur took the remark as a rebuke, which was plainly the way his father meant it. He wasn’t going to say that he loved Maggie and loved his brother too. Now he was sorry that he had uttered Maggie’s name. “I don’t know why you’re—scolding me.”

“Because you’re selfish—thoughtless about the things that matter in life.”

Since Arthur felt that his eyes had been opened to life in the last week or so, he shook his head and remained silent.

His mother had come in and heard part of this. “Richard, we’re both tired. Haven’t we something to be happy about now? What if I make us all some scrambled eggs and then—both of us could use a little shut-eye, I think.”

“Scrambled eggs, fine,” said Richard, removing his jacket. “But I don’t feel like sleeping. Too keyed up, too happy. Today’s Sunday. I may take a stroll around the yard.”

Lois looked at Richard with faint surprise as he headed for the living room. A door opened from his study into the backyard.

Arthur went to his room to get dressed. He didn’t want to sit and eat breakfast with them now, but he knew his mother wished him to, so he did. His father ate in silence, and with his usual good appetite. His mother only picked at her food and shyly said she was going to lie down for a while before they left for church.

Of all days, Arthur thought, to go off to church at 11, when they’d had hardly any sleep. Then his father said:

“I would like you to come too, Arthur.”

Arthur took a breath, ready to make an excuse about studying before exams, even to lie about a date with Gus for studying, but a look from his mother kept him from speaking.

3

S
o that Sunday became, in Arthur’s mind, the day his father found God, or was “reborn,” as his father put it. The hour in church had been almost embarrassing. His father had knelt with head bowed almost the whole time, except when the congregation had stood up to sing something; then his father had boomed out in rather good baritone, though so loudly that a couple of people in pews in front of them had turned around to see who it was. Then at the good-byes at the door afterward, when the preacher, Bob Cole, always shook everyone’s hand, his father had made a speech to the Reverend Cole which several around had heard, even paused to listen to, about his younger son Robbie having recovered, been called back from death by his prayers to Christ. “I know the doctors had given up. I could see it in their faces,” his father had told the attentive Bob Cole. “He’d even developed a strep throat . . .”

Arthur told some of this to Maggie on their next date, which was the following Thursday evening. They’d had a date for Wednesday, but Maggie had canceled it, for no reason that Arthur could see, and she had been unwilling to make another date either, so Tuesday evening, when he had heard from Maggie that the Wednesday date was canceled, Arthur had felt a bit gloomy. And his father, with his new-leaf-turning, had made a speech in regard to Arthur’s doing part-time work this summer, like Gus, to make him less dependent on his twenty-dollar-a-week allowance, and finally even his mother had said, “Let Arthur finish his exams right now, Richard. They’re important this year, because Columbia’s going to look at his grades.”

Robbie had come home Tuesday morning, and Lois had taken the afternoon off from the Beverley Home for Children to be with him. Robbie for once looked happy and content, tucked into bed and living on ice cream and caramel custard. He smiled, and his brows were unfrowning. It occurred to Arthur that maybe he
had
been near death, and then saved, and that Robbie realized it.

On that Tuesday afternoon, Arthur had taken his history exam and was sure he had passed, but he was aiming for 85 or better.

The next morning, when he saw Maggie in a corridor, her face had been glowing, and she asked him if he was free the next evening. Arthur said he was. He had to brush up for Friday’s English exam, he thought to himself, but he would squeeze that in somewhere. Maggie herself was inspiration.

Thursday night, they were alone at Maggie’s house. It was her mother’s bridge night, and she mightn’t be back till 1 a.m., Maggie told him, because Arthur asked.

“My cooking,” Maggie said, pulling a tray of broiled lamb chops from the grill over the stove. “Doubt if I’ll win any prizes.”

Typical Maggie! She wasn’t fishing for compliments. She was really shy, in some situations. Arthur felt in seventh heaven, alone with Maggie in her kitchen, in the whole house! That day he had taken his biology exam (and so had Maggie taken it), looking forward to coming to her house this evening, and all the genera and phyla names had flowed from his pen with no effort on his part, and he had made a beautiful drawing.

During dinner Arthur described Sunday morning to Maggie, his parents coming home tired after Robbie’s crisis, and his father announcing that he felt he had found God because his prayers had been answered.

“Easy to see he could think that.—I suppose it was like a miracle to them.”

Was Maggie making a polite comment? Arthur felt that he hadn’t made himself clear. “Yes, but—you don’t believe that Christ personally heard somebody’s prayer, do you? That’s what my father’s saying.”

Maggie hesitated, then smiled. “No. That I don’t.—It’s a personal thing, I suppose, if someone believes that or not.”

“Yes. And I wish my father would keep it to himself.—Now he wants to drag me to church. I hope not every Sunday. I just won’t go.”

They were eating in the kitchen at a plain pine table.

“Suddenly reminds me,” Maggie said. “About two years ago my father had a drinking problem.
He
thought he drank too much sometimes, even though my mother didn’t say anything. So a friend of my father’s gave him religious things to read. About the evils of drink. Then”—Maggie laughed—“we had college students knocking on the door trying to sell us subscriptions, and there was suddenly junk mail as if we’d been put on mailing lists. My mother hated it! So my father said, ‘If I can’t lick my problem without these people, I’m not worth much.’ Then he made a resolution and kept it. Never more than two drinks a day and never on the day he’s flying.”

Maggie put on a cassette. Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940. “Mood Indigo” was on it. Even the music, which Arthur knew well, sounded better in Maggie’s house. Would he and Maggie ever have a house like this together?

“Why’d you break the date with me for Wednesday?”

“Oh—” She looked embarrassed. “I dunno. Maybe I was scared.”

“Of me?”

“Yes. Maybe.”

Arthur didn’t know what to say, because the phrases that occurred to him were either trite or too serious. “That’s silly.”

A little later, Arthur said, “Do you think we could go up to your room again—like the other afternoon?”

Maggie laughed. “Is that all you think about?”

“No! Have I mentioned it?—But since you ask, yes.”

“Suppose my mother came home early?”

“Or your father!” Arthur laughed as if in the face of catastrophe. “But—when then?”

“Don’t know. Have to think. Maybe you’ll want to give me up.”

“Not yet,” Arthur said.

That night, he walked the mile back to his house, as he had walked to Maggie’s. Maggie had said tonight that she had wanted to become a doctor or a nurse when she was about twelve. She had had a baby brother who had died around that time. And she had talked about puppets. The doll on her bed, Arthur remembered, had been a two-foot-long wooden puppet in a fireman’s uniform, and Maggie said she had made it when she was fifteen. She had more in the attic. She had used to write plays for them.

“That lasted about a year. I’m always getting enthusiasms and then dropping them,” Maggie had said. “You’re lucky, being so sure of what you want to do.”

Arthur began to trot down East Forster, causing a couple of dogs to bark in people’s backyards. He trotted around the curve into his own street, West Maple, then slowed to a walk. He could see the dim glow that meant the living room light was on in his house. Norma Keer’s light was on next door, behind her living room curtains. Norma was always up late, reading or watching TV. Arthur went softly up her front steps and knocked with two slow raps.

“Who’s there?” called Norma.

“Burglar.”

Norma unlocked the door, smiling broadly. “Come in, Arthur!—My, you look nice. Where’ve you been?”

“Out on a date.” Arthur walked into her living room, where the TV was on with no sound, and a book lay open on the sofa under a standing lamp.

“What’s your news?—Would you like a drink?” Norma was in stockinged feet as usual.

“Um-m—maybe. Gin and tonic?”

“Sure thing. Come with me.”

They went to her kitchen at the back of the house, and Arthur freshened Norma’s drink and made one for himself. Norma watched him, looking pleased by his company. She pushed her fingers through her thin, orangy-colored hair, which was short and stood out around her head like a vague halo in certain lights or like the idea of hair instead of hair. She was dumpy and shapeless, perhaps one of the least attractive women Arthur had ever seen, but he liked to be with her, to answer her questions about school and family life. Norma’s dinner dishes lay unwashed in the sink.

“I’m so pleased Robbie’s home again,” Norma said, “leading the life of Riley, I gather, after his ordeal.”

“Ah, yes.” Arthur relaxed in an armchair.
I’ve met a wonderful girl
, Arthur wanted to say. Norma would listen with interest while he told her about Maggie, all except that they had been to bed together once. “And Dad—has found God. Did he tell you?”

“Wha-at? Well—he did say something. I forgot. What does he say?”

“Well, he’s thankful Robbie pulled through, and Dad thinks it’s because he prayed. He’s reborn.”

“Oh. You mean Richard says he’s born-again. Town’s full of ’em. They don’t do any harm. Very honest people as a rule. Hah!” Norma gave one of her slightly out-of-place laughs.

“So,” Arthur continued, “there’s a new law in the land next door. Church every Sunday and a grace before dinner every night. We have to thank the Lord for our bread.” Arthur smiled, realizing that bread meant money, too.

Norma tucked her feet up on the sofa with a whisking sound. “What’s your mother say?”

“Puts up with it to keep the peace.” But would she rebel about church every Sunday, when she needed her free time for paper work for the Home, and wasn’t that doing God’s work, too?

Norma took a delicate sip of her gin and tonic. “Does Richard want to make born-agains out of you and Robbie?”

“I’m sure he’d like to.”

“I heard you have to have a personal experience for that, like a revelation.—Well, honestly, as boys go—I think your father should be pleased with you compared to some of the kids I hear about, wrecking cars right and left, on drugs and dropping out of school.”

Arthur took no comfort from that. He felt vaguely uneasy, and glanced at his wristwatch.

“Not late for me, but maybe for you.”

“No. Got an English exam tomorrow, but in the afternoon, thank goodness, so I can sleep late if I want to.”

Norma’s bulging eyes explored the corners of the room thoughtfully, as if looking for something. Arthur was reminded of fortune-tellers’ eyes gazing into crystal balls in cartoons. He had a sudden and unpleasant thought: Would his father try to block his going to Columbia, somehow? Was his father jealous of him because of Maggie? Crazy thought, since Arthur was not sure his father would know Maggie if he saw her, but his father knew of the family.

“News from your grandmother?” Norma asked.

“Oh—yes. She’ll come for a visit this summer. I’m pretty sure.” Arthur’s maternal grandmother lived in Kansas City, Missouri, and had a school for ballet and ballroom dancing.

“Love to see her again.—And I’ll sure miss you when you take off in September, Arthur.”

Norma talked on, and Arthur’s mind drifted. If for some reason his father balked at paying his Columbia fees, his grandmother Joan would certainly put in a good word for him, even probably contribute to the cost, which would be about ten thousand five hundred for the first year. It would be more, but Arthur had a fifteen hundred dollar grant on the basis of his biology grades. His grandmother was indeed different from his father, and even from his mother. Arthur suddenly remembered a fact he seldom thought about: His mother’s family, the Waggoners, had not been pleased about her marriage to his father. The Waggoners were better off and had been against her marrying a young man with no money and whose prospects were vague. However, once they had married, his mother had once told Arthur, her family had accepted Richard and even come to like him and respect him, and Arthur could see this in his grandmother’s attitude.

“Went over this evening to see Robbie,” Norma said. “Took him a
Mad
magazine, which seemed to please him. He looked well. Happier than usual—in the eyes. In bed, but so full of pep your mother had to tell him to shut up.—Another drop, Arthur?”

“No thanks, Norma.” Arthur stood up. “I’ll be shoving off.” He smiled, waved a hand and departed.