Irwin Shaw - Short Stories - Five Decades

“On Christmas!” the Custodian said despairingly.

Eddie carefully counted and sorted his money. “You put up a good fight,” he said comfortingly to the Custodian.

“Yeah,” the Custodian muttered. “Oh, yeah. A kid like you. Say, how old are you, anyway, a million?”

“I am thirteen years old,” Eddie said, pocketing the last coins. “But I come from New York.”

“You ought to be home with your family. On Christmas. A kid like you. I wish to hell you was home with yer family!”

“In Connecticut,” Eddie said, pulling his skimpy uniform jacket down, “nobody knows anything about crap. I’m telling you for your own good.”

“You ought to be home with yer family,” the Custodian insisted.

A veil of tears came suddenly over Eddie’s large dark eyes. “My Pop told me he don’t want to see me for a year.”

“What’d ye do?” the Custodian asked. “Win his pants from him last Christmas?”

Eddie blew his nose and the tears left his eyes. “I hit my sister with a lamp. A bridge lamp.” His mouth tightened in retrospect. “I would do it again. Her name’s Diana. She’s fifteen years old.”

“That’s nice,” the Custodian said. “You’re a fine little boy, all around.”

“It took four stitches. She cried for five hours. Diana! She said I mighta ruined her beauty.”

“Well, it wouldn’t do her beauty no good, hitting her with a bridge lamp,” the Custodian said reasonably.

“She’s going to be an actress. A stage actress.”

“That’s nice for a girl,” the Custodian said.

“Aaah,” Eddie snorted. “What’s nice about it? She takes lessons from dancing teachers and French teachers and English teachers and horseback teachers and music teachers and Pop is always kissin’ her and callin’ her his little Bernhardt. She stinks.”

“That’s no way to talk about yer sister,” the Custodian said sternly. “I won’t listen to a little boy talkin’ like that about his sister.”

“Aaah, shut up!” Eddie said bitterly. “Little Bernhardt. Pop’s an actor, too. The whole damn family’s actors. Except me,” he said with somber satisfaction.

“You’re a crap player,” the Custodian said. “You got nothing to worry about.”

“Little Bernhardt. Pop takes her with him all over the country. Detroit, Dallas, St. Louis, Hollywood.”

“Hollywood!”

“Me they send to Military Academy.”

“Military Academy is good for young minds,” the Custodian said loyally.

“Aaah,” Eddie said. “Little Bernhardt. I would like to step on her face.”

“That’s no way to talk.”

“She goes in three times a week to see my Pop act. My Pop can act better than anybody since Sir Henry Irving.”

“Who says so?” the Custodian wanted to know.

“My Pop,” Eddie said. “He’s a Polack, my Pop. He’s got feeling. Real feeling. Everybody says my Pop’s got feeling. You oughta see him act.”

“I only go to the movies,” the Custodian said.

“He’s actin’ in The Merchant of Venice . With a long white beard, you’d never know it was my Pop. When he talks people laugh and cry in the audience. You can hear my Pop’s voice for five blocks, I bet.”

“That’s the kind of actin’ I like,” the Custodian said.

Eddie threw out his arm in a tragic, pleading gesture. “Hath not a Jew eyes?” he demanded in tones of thunder. “Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Like that, that’s the way my Pop does it.” He sat down slowly on an upturned box. “It’s the most beautiful thing in the world, the way my Pop does it,” he said softly.

“You shouldn’t’ve hit yer sister with a bridge lamp,” the Custodian said morally. “Then you could’ve been seein’ him act tonight.”

“He smacked me for fifteen minutes, my Pop. He weighs two hundred and fifteen pounds an’ he’s built like Lou Gehrig, my Pop, like a truck horse, an’ he was swingin’ from his heels, but I didn’t cry an’ I didn’t tell him why I hit her with a bridge lamp. I didn’t cry one tear. I showed him. His little Bernhardt.” Eddie got up with determination. “What the hell, I might just as well spend Christmas in a Military Academy as any place else.” He started out into the bleak December afternoon.

“Lissen, Eddie,” the Custodian said hurriedly, before Eddie could get through the door, “I wanna ask you a question.”

“What?” Eddie asked coldly, sensing what was coming.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” the Custodian said, preparation in his voice.

“All right,” Eddie said, “it’s Christmas Eve.”

“I’m an old man.” The Custodian brushed his white mustache pitifully. “I’m an old man without kith or kin.”

“All right,” Eddie said.

“Ususally on Christmas, Eddie, I buy myself a little pint of something, applejack usually, and I warm my old heart in a corner to forget that I’m deserted by the world. When you get older you’ll know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said.

“This year,” the Custodian shifted uneasily, “this year you happen to’ve won all my money. Now, I was wonderin’, if you would …”

“No,” Eddie said, starting out.

“On Christmas Eve, for an old man, Eddie.”

“You lost,” Eddie said without heat. “I won. O.K.”

He left and the Custodian settled down in his carpet-seated rocker next the furnace. The Custodian rocked mournfully back and forth and shook his head as he watched Eddie go up the cellar steps out into the gray afternoon.

Eddie shambled aimlessly around the winter-bare school grounds. “Military School! Aaah!” he said to himself. He should be home in New York City, blazing with lights, green and red and white lights, filled with people hurrying happily through the streets with packages done up in colored ribbon, and Santa Clauses ringing their little bells on the street corners for the Salvation Army and the thousand movie houses gaping invitingly along the sidewalks. He should go watch Pop act tonight and go to dinner with him afterwards on Second Avenue, and eat duck and potato pancakes and drink spiced wine and go home and listen to Pop sing German songs at the top of his voice, accompanying himself on the piano loudly, until the neighbors complained to the police.

He sighed. Here he was, stuck at a Military Academy in Connecticut, because he was a bad boy. Ever since his sixth birthday he’d been known as a bad boy. He’d had a party on his sixth birthday and he’d had a fine time, with cake, candy, ice cream and bicycles, until his sister Diana had come into the middle of the room and done a scene from As You Like It that her English teacher had coached her in. “All the world’s a stage,” she’d piped in her imitation Boston accent that the English teacher gave her, “and all the men and women in’t merely playahs …” At the end of it everybody shouted “Bravo!” and Pop grabbed her and swung her up and cried on her blonde hair and said over and over again, “Little Bernhardt, my little Bernhardt!”

Eddie had thrown a plate of ice cream at her and it had spattered all over Pop and Diana had cried for two hours and he’d been spanked and sent to bed.

“I hate Connecticut,” he said to a leafless elm, leaning coldly over the dirty snow on the side of the walk.

Since then he had thrown Diana off a porch, tearing ligaments in her arm; he had run away in a rowboat off the coast of New Jersey and had had to be rescued by the Coast Guard at ten o’clock at night; he had played truant from seven different private and public schools; he had been caught coming out of burlesque houses with older friends; he had disobeyed his father on every possible occasion, and had been beaten three times to the month, standing there proud and stubborn, conscious in those moments at least, as Pop stood over him angry and terrible, that, actor or no actor, he was getting some attention, some evidence of paternal love.