William Saroyan - The Laughing Matter

He sat in the room in deadly stupor, staring at the floor, his eyes open but blind, listening to the poor woman, not thinking anything and not speaking. It was more than an hour until their daughter, finding them, flung herself into his arms, as if she were her mother absolved. He hugged her, putting his lips to her neck, keeping them there in the same deadly stupor, still unable to think or understand. The woman stopped sobbing when the girl appeared, for she knew she must.

“You’re up before me , Papa,” the girl said, “and I’m always first.” She turned to the woman. “Mama!” she said. “You’re awake, too.”

The woman tried to smile. The girl went to the woman and got in bed beside her, moving swiftly to get as close to her as possible.

“Papa,” she said, “what’s the matter with your face?”

“I stumbled.”

“Papa!” the girl said with absolute disbelief. “You don’t stumble! Red stumbles! I stumble! You never stumble, Papa.”

“I stumbled.”

“Did you fall , Papa?”

“On my face.”

“Oh, Papa!” the girl said, getting out of bed.

She ran to kiss him. He watched the woman, and when he saw her face twisting to cry, he shook his head, and she stopped.

“Poor Papa,” the girl said. “Did you stumble like a little boy?”

“No,” he said, and then had to go on, speaking to both of them. “I stumbled like a husband, like a father.” He hugged the girl suddenly, bitterly angry at himself, and then, speaking almost with laughter, “Anybody can stumble.”

“Does it hurt , Papa?”

“No.”

“Mama,” the girl said, “next time Papa’s going to stumble, you help him.”

“Yes.”

“Can I go tell Red, Papa?”

“Sure.”

The girl ran out of the room. After a moment the woman whispered the man’s name again, as if she were the girl herself.

“You’d better get up,” the man said. “Get them breakfast. You can sleep some more after they’re out in the yard.”

The woman leaped out of bed and ran to the bathroom. The girl came back with the boy.

“Let me see.”

He examined his father’s face.

“Papa?”

“Yes, Red.”

“I heard you last night.”

“We’ll talk about it some other time, Red. Now, go get dressed.”

“Will you help me get dressed, Papa?” the girl said.

“Sure.”

He got up at last, getting up suddenly, and went with the girl to her room, the boy running there after a moment, to be with them, bringing his clothes, dressing there.

“I heard a lot of birds singing a long time ago,” he said.

“Me, too,” the girl said.

“I didn’t get out of bed to look at them,” he said. “I almost didn’t even wake up to hear them, but I heard them just the same. They sang a long time, and they’re still doing it. One of them—I guess it was one of them—did it in the dark, in the night, all the time Mama was crying and waiting for you to come home.”

“Red?”

The man looked at his son and shook his head.

“Yes, Papa,” the boy said. And then he said, “What is a bird?”

“Well,” the man said, “whatever it is, it’s there by accident, like everything else alive.”

“Accident?” the boy said. “Like the accident on the highway we saw that time, two automobiles smashed and turned over, the wheels up instead of down?”

“No,” he said. “Like the accident of seeing somebody you’ve never seen before and liking her so much that together you make a family. Like the accident of meeting her, and the accident of who your children are when they are born.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I do,” the girl said.

“No, you don’t,” the boy said. “You just say you do.”

“I do!” the girl said. “I do understand.”

“Then explain it,” the boy said.

“Well,” the girl said.

“Well…”

The boy laughed.

“She didn’t say anything , Papa.”

“Don’t laugh,” the girl said. “I said something . Didn’t I, Papa?”

The woman came to the room, washed and clean, in a blue cotton dress, her hair combed neatly.

“I’ll get you both a big breakfast,” she said. She was trying hard to go along as if nothing were the matter. “I’ll gather some figs from the tree, peel them, cut them up, pour cream over them. Then you’ll have crisp bacon with boiled eggs, toast, and milk.”

She glanced at the man as she went off, but he wasn’t looking at her.

He went to the bathroom for a shower. When he was dressed the kids were in the yard playing, the boy high in the fig tree, the girl standing under it to catch the ripe figs he was finding for her. They were speaking with voices louder than he had ever before heard in them because they were in the country, in another climate, in a place where things were growing and ripening, where the sun was near and hot. The woman was somewhere in the house. He went to the telephone and asked the operator to get him Warren Walz. When the man came on the line he said, “Come to dinner tonight. Bring the girls. Come at six, and we’ll have a drink.”

He went out on the porch and stood there in the sunlight. A car drove up and Cody Bone got out.

“I met your son last night,” Evan said.

“So he told me,” Cody said. “I pass here every morning on my way to work. Thought I’d stop in case the boy wants to ride in the locomotive.”

“Where would you go? I mean, that’s what he wanted to know.”

“We’d work around the yards.”

They went to the fig tree, and from high up in it the boy saw Cody. At first he wasn’t sure it was Cody because when he had first seen him Cody had been part of the locomotive, but when the man smiled and Red saw the square teeth, he knew who it was.

“This is my daughter, Eva,” Evan said.

“Eva,” Cody said.

“How do you do,” the girl said.

The boy was down and out of the tree, to see the man out of the locomotive, away from it, a thing he especially wanted to notice. It was a great difference, but the man was still the man Red liked.

“You want a fig?” Red said. He offered the one in his hand.

“I certainly do,” Cody said. He ate the fig whole. “I just came by to say hello.”

“No,” Evan said. “Mr. Bone came by to find out if you’d like to ride in the locomotive. Around the yards.”

“When?” Red said.

“Now,” his father said, “if you like.”

The boy looked from his father to Cody, thinking about it, perhaps a little frightened.

“All right,” he said. “You want to go watch, Eva?”

“Yes,” the girl said.

They walked around the house to Cody’s car, the woman in the house moving from the kitchen to the parlor to watch. She saw the engineer help the children into the front seat, to sit there beside him, and she saw her husband get in the back. When they were gone she wept bitterly, wandering around the house, straightening things out.

She had heard her husband on the telephone speaking to Warren Walz, and she knew that by six o’clock she’d have to gather herself together, but what was she to do?

“He’s just like his brother,” Warren Walz said to his wife. “Not a word about last night. No concern at all about what we might have put ourselves through trying to be helpful. Not even the decency to ask if we’d like to come to dinner. An order. Come to dinner. Come at six. Bring the girls. We’ll have a drink. Just like that.”