J. Powers - The Stories of J.F. Powers

“I can always buy him back. That’s part of the deal.”

“ You can’t sell Beebee . Go get him. Now .”

“In the morning,” Mama said.

“No, now .”

“He’s got his pajamas on,” Mama said.

“He can take ’em off.”

Mama said nothing.

“O.K., I ’ll go.”

So Daddy went, and at the friend’s house, a cottage, did not say that the older boy missed his teddy bear, or that others did, but still told the truth. “Beebee was a gift from my mother”—his mother whose funeral he, in Ireland then, had been too broke to attend—“and I don’t think she’d like it if he left us.” The friend, his mother, his older sister, his two small brothers, they all seemed to understand. No trouble. Ten bob. And after a cup of tea, Daddy and Beebee — who looked the same, grumpy, stuffy, and still sure of himself — came home.

The electricity was on when they got there, the Christmas tree was going, and the younger children were in bed.

When Daddy put Beebee in with the older boy and said, “Good night, Millions,” there was a gurgle in the dark that made him wonder if he’d been taken.

“Where’s the money?”

“Spent it.”

“ What? Already? All of it? On what ?”

“Billiards.”

Mama and Daddy had work to do, but were tired, and spent the evening in the parlor before the fire (it and the tree gave enough light to talk by), with their drinks. There hadn’t been time until then for him to tell her what Mrs Maroon had said: that it hadn’t originally been the plan to open the hotel for the Christmas season, that unforeseen requests for bookings (she had thanked him again for sending on the mail) and the dearness of things in London had combined to change the plan, and that she and her husband had hesitated to inform the tenants, for fear of upsetting them.

“We’re well out of that,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

They talked about the house, about the carved mahogany chimney piece, which, though, was spoiled by the glazed tiles (these reminding him of the Men’s Room at the Union Station in Chicago), and about what they’d need in the way of equipment — different plugs for the brass lamps, for instance, for there were a number of types in use in Ireland and they had the wrong type for this house, which, though, had to be expected.

“The odds are three or four to one against you whenever you move,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

He tuned in the American Forces Network, Europe, for the home news, and heard that there was a blizzard sweeping across the Midwest. Then “Mr Midnight” came on with his usual drivel about “music for night people, romance, and quiet listening… lonesome sounds of a metropolitan city after dark”—and they discussed “metropolitan city,” Mama saying that it was redundant, Daddy that he didn’t like the sound of it but pointing out that it might not be redundant in certain circumstances, citing bishops who were metropolitans, whose seats, sees, or see cities, were rightly called metropolitan seats, sees, or cities. But Mama still took exception to it.

After that, they talked — he did — about their friends in America, about Joe and the highway, about Fred and the river, more about Dick and those big old trees that were probably heavy with snow and ice now, and about that big frame house that had to be painted every five years.

“That’s one good thing about a house like this,” he said. “Pebbledash.”

“Yes,” she said.