Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

She didn’t bother to undress. She took off her loafers — she had refused to get all dolled up for a train ride — and then crawled in under the blankets and was asleep almost immediately.

When she awoke, the room was dark. She lay in the darkness for a moment, disoriented, and then realized where she was. She yawned sleepily and raised her arms toward the ceiling. Well, here we are, she thought. Back at the old manse. Everything cheerful and gay, the darkies singing in the south forty, the smell of magnolias oozing through the windows, the candles being lighted on the long dining-room table downstairs, Scarlett O’Hara stretched her arms to the ceiling and wondered whether she should wear the new organdy or the taffeta, after all the Tarleton twins were coming, and that was an occasion. Besides, there was talk of war in the air, war between the States, and she wanted to be dressed properly for the outbreak of hostilities .

The old manse, Gillian thought, and she climbed out of bed and walked to the window, raising the shade and looking out over the Bronx rooftops and the lights of the Woodlawn Road — Jerome Avenue elevated structure in the distance. She turned away from the window, snapped on the dresser lamp, and looked at the clock. At first she thought it had stopped. Then she heard its ticking, and she looked at the time again. Eleven o’clock. Hadn’t she asked to be awakened when Dad got home? Didn’t they ever do anything she asked them to do?

She went to the door and opened it. She could hear the sound of the radio in the living room.

“Mom?” she called.

“Yes?”

“Dad still up?”

“He’s not home yet, dear,” Virginia said.

“Didn’t he come home for supper?”

“No, Gillian.”

“Well, didn’t he call?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Well, where is he?”

“I don’t know, Gillian.”

She closed the door, leaned against it for a moment, shrugged, and decided she needed a shower. She began getting out of her clothes. She paused at the full-length mirror behind the door, studying her body. I was bigger when I was fifteen, she thought; I’m losing weight in all the wrong places. She shrugged again, examined a blemish near her jaw, and then went into the bathroom. Her father had not yet come home by the time she’d showered and brushed out her hair. In the living room, her mother was knitting and listening to the radio.

“Not back yet, huh?”

“No, not yet,” Virginia said.

“He probably got stuck downtown.”

“Probably.”

“This is his busy season,” Gillian said. “Christmas.”

“Yes, I know.”

She stood silently watching her mother. “I think I’ll go down for a walk,” she said.

“You just took a shower, Gillian.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Did you dry yourself?”

“No, I left myself all wet. I like to walk in the cold all wet.”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Gillian.”

“Well, Mom, of course I dried myself. Do I look like a cretin?”

“It’s too late for a young girl to be walking around the streets alone,” Virginia said.

“Hey, why don’t you come with me, Mom?” she said, suddenly inspired. “It’s pretty nice out. Kind of bracing.”

Virginia looked up at her daughter. In the amber glow of the single lamp burning in the living room, the two — mother and daughter — looked very much alike, the same red-brown hair, the same green eyes, the same angular face, the same bone structure; they looked very much alike.

“No,” Virginia said. “Thank you, Gillian. I want to finish this sleeve.”

“Finish it tomorrow. What’s so important about it?”

“I promised Monica she’d have it for her birthday.”

“That’s not until February.”

“Still,” Virginia said, and fell silent.

“Okay,” Gillian said. She shrugged awkwardly. “Okay.” She started out of the room, thinking, My birthday is in January. Oddly, she could not remember what her mother had given her the year before. “Well, I’ll go down then, okay?” she said. She looked back into the room. “Okay?”

Her mother did not look up from the knitting. “All right, Gillian,” she said.

She met some of the kids in the cafeteria, and they sat drinking hot chocolates. Gillian told them all about Talmadge. One of the girls said Ohio State was a very nice place because the Navy had a V-5 program there and a lot of handsome fellows were training to become officers. The girl was studying to be a teacher, and Gillian said, quite suddenly, “Are you preparing to be a teacher or a mother?”

“A teacher, of course.”

“You sound as if you went all the way to Ohio to date sailors.”

“Gillian, that’s not fair!”

“All right, I’m mistaken.”

“I can get all the dates I want right here in the Bronx!”

“Good. Why don’t you go to Hunter College? It’s right on Kings-bridge Road.”

“It’s an all-girls school, Gillian!”

“Oh, I see,” Gillian said, and at that instant her father walked into the cafeteria. He was a tall man with brilliant red hair and wide shoulders, his face as uneven as if it had been hewn from obstinate stone. He never wore a hat, and his face always looked flushed, and his blue eyes had a way of nailing you to the wall when he spoke to you. He ran a shoe store downtown on Second Avenue, but he was always being mistaken for a detective. When Gillian was a little girl, she used to tell the other kids her father was an FBI agent.

“That’s your father, isn’t—?”

“Shhh,” she said. She watched him secretly as he went to the counter, got himself a cup of coffee, and then walked to a table at the rear of the cafeteria. She smiled.

“Excuse me,” she said to the girls, and she rose, the smile still on her face, and began walking toward the rear table, suddenly wishing she were wearing heels. She walked directly to the table, and she stood there and said nothing until her father looked up at her. He didn’t recognize her for an instant.

“Hi,” she said.

“Gillian,” he answered, “how arr yuh, darrlin’?” with the exaggerated brogue he used whenever he was feeling particularly good. He stood and embraced his daughter and then kissed the top of her head. “Sit down, Gilly. When did you get in? What arr you doin’ down in the streets at this hour, shame on yuh, do yuh want someone to be draggin’ you into the bushes?”

“Oh, Dad,” she said, smiling, ducking her head, embarrassed somehow because he always made her feel like a little girl no matter what he said, and wishing again she were wearing heels. She squeezed his big fist on the table. “Why are you so late, Dad? Didn’t you know I was coming home?”

“I did, darrlin’, I did, but we were doing a lot of business downtown, and I just couldn’t turn them away. Would you like a cup of coffee? Gilly, you’re looking marrr -velous, school agrees with you, I see. I told your mother it would. How arr yuh, darlin’?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” she said, grinning.

“And are you learning your trade?”

“I am.”

“Good, good, let me get you a cup of coffee.”

“No, Dad, that’s all right. Let’s just sit and talk.”

“Did you come down by train?”

“Yes.”

“None of the kids coming home by car?”

“There’s only one girl from the Bronx who has a car, Dad, and she’s a stiff-oh. I’d rather have walked.”

“A stiff-oh, eh?” Meredith Burke said, and he burst out laughing, a laugh that erupted from his barrel chest and filled the nearly empty cafeteria. Gillian laughed with him.

“Really, Dad.”

“I know, I know,” Meredith said. “My, you’re looking fine, Gilly. You’ve got a sparkle in your eyes, and a good high color. Have you seen your mother?”