Philip Dick: Mary And The Giant

He had no need of anything: he was plump and wrapped in warm clothes, clean and cared-for. He dozed. Against his mother he rested and heard the clang of the city. Above and around him, Mary Anne was his protection.

On the park bench with her baby she was young and fresh. She wore a long white smock and low-heeled slippers, and her brown hair, still short, tangled over her ears and fringed her fore head. Earrings, copper and hooped, glinted. Her ankles, pale, bare, were lean above her slippers. Once she took a cigarette from her pocket and lit it with her lighter.

The day was peaceful. Overhead a gull wheeled. Now and then the gull croaked like the sound of dry ropes and wood. Presently a kindly middle-aged lady in a black coat came along the path and seated herself on the bench facing Mary Anne.

Mary Anne picked up a paperbound book that she had brought with her, that Paul wanted her to read. She examined the cover, turned it over, and then she put it down. She did not feel like reading or doing anything at all; she was content to sit. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and in an hour Paul would appear. She met him here; she liked to meet him in the park.

On the opposite bench the kindly middle-aged lady leaned forward, and, with a smile, said: "What a healthy little fellow."

Mary Anne raised the baby up against her. "This is my son."

"What is his name?"

"Paul. He's eleven months old."

"What a nice name," the kindly middle-aged lady said. She waved at the baby and pantomimed faces.

"His father's name is Paul," Mary Anne said. Looking down, she examined the baby's collar, smoothed the cotton fabric. "I have seven other children. This is the youngest. The oldest is thirteen."

"Good heavens," the kindly middle-aged lady said, amazed.

"I'm just kidding," Mary Anne said. But someday it would be true; she would have a whole houseful of sons, big sons, strong and noisy sons. "He can't talk yet. He likes to listen to music. His father is a musician."

The kindly middle-aged lady nodded sagely.

"His father," Mary Anne said, "is a student in the afternoon, and in the evening he plays piano at the Club Presto on Union Street. Bop piano. There're five men in the combo."

"Music," the kindly middle-aged lady said. "I believe I haven't heard any music in the last few years, not since the war, that can compare to Richard Tauber."

"That's square," Mary Anne said, playing with the baby's hand. "Isn't it, Paul?"

"And Jeanette MacDonald," the kindly middle-aged lady said nostalgically. "I'll never forget her and Nelson Eddy in Maytime. That was such a lovely movie. I cried at the ending; I still cry at it, when I think about it."

"Go cry somewhere else," Mary Anne said, joggling her son up and down on her knee.

The kindly middle-aged lady gathered up her purse and departed. Mary Anne smiled down at Paul, and he gurgled and frothed.

Beyond the park the rise of houses glinted in the afternoon sun. Cars, dark specks, crept up the narrow streets, up the hill between the houses. At Mary Anne's feet a pigeon wandered, pecking at random.

"See the big bird?" Mary Anne said softly to her son. "Nice pigeon. Dinner for one. How about a pigeon pie? Come here, pigeon. Feed the poor."

She nudged at the pigeon with her toe and it flapped away. Almost at once it was back, again traveling in an aimless circle. Mary Anne wondered what it found to eat, and what it was thinking. She wondered where it lived and who took care of it, if anybody.

"Are you a lady?" she asked the pigeon. "Or a man'?"

She sat on the park bench with her son, holding him against her and watching the pigeons and the old men and the children. She was very happy. She watched people appear and go; she saw the leaves fall from the autumn trees and the grass glow with dampness. She saw the whole cycle of life: she saw the children grow old and become bent little men reading L'Italia and she saw them reborn in the arms of women. And she and her son remained unchanged, outside the birth and decay that went on around her.

They could not be touched. They were safe. She saw the sun go out and return, and she was not frightened.

She wondered where she had got this peacefulness. It had come with her baby; but where had he come from? She did not completely understand him. He was a mystery, a separation of herself, and he was her husband held tight in her arms. Perhaps he had come to her on the wind. The warm spring wind had plucked at her and brought her this, had filled her up with permanent life. Had carried off the emptiness.

Mary Anne and her son watched the world change around them, watched everything that had ever happened and would ever happen. And after that they got up and went to the end of the park. There they waited, because the hour was up and it was time to wait.

People hurried along Columbus Avenue, and Mary Anne shaded her eyes with her hand to see if he was coming. She held the baby across her shoulder, and the people moved by her on both sides. Presently she saw a gaunt, ambling shape making its way along, hands in its pockets, coat flapping, hair long and umcombed.

"There he is," she said to her son. "You're facing the wrong way." She turned him around to see. "See?"

"You sure look good," Paul Nitz said, arriving shyly.

"You don't; you look like a bum." She kissed him. "Let's go eat. Did you shop?"

"We can shop on the way home," he said.

"Don't you have any money?"

As they walked he searched his coat pockets, bringing up ticket stubs, paper clips, pencils, folded notes. "I guess I gave it to you." He squinted in the glare of the sidewalk. "To one of you, anyhow."

Lagging behind him, Mary Anne strolled along, hugging her son and looking into store windows, as Paul Nitz searched the rest of his pockets. Once she yawned. Once she stopped to peer at a display of imported Scottish pipes and then a shelf of harmonicas. Once she caught up with her husband and leaned against him while the three of them waited for the streetlight to change.

"Tired?" he asked.

"Sleepy. Would you look good smoking a pipe!"

"I'd look like the wrath of God," he answered.

The light changed and, with the other people, they crossed.