Henry Roth - Mercy of a Rude Stream - The Complete Novels

Ira awoke once during the little that was left of the night, awoke to see Edith’s drawn face in the crumbling dark turned toward him — and she must have seen that he was awake and conscious of her gaze — for the face stamped on the brayed gloom seemed indurate with censure — or scorn — or contempt. He felt himself shrink away placatingly: apologizing for sharing the same bed with her, without proffering the ultimate comfort she craved and needed. How puerile could he be not to be aroused by her proximity, not to turn toward her with a hard-on? That was how he construed her gaze. . even though he attempted in the short interval between her daunting look and the time he rolled over sheepishly and fell asleep to interpret her severity with a palliating excuse: it was the manifestation of the fierce grudge she held against all men because of her resentment of Lewlyn. Still, instinct prompted, albeit fuzzily, that he was kidding himself. She wanted to be laid, needed to be laid as a kind of solace against the overwhelming rejection she had suffered. It had been that which had impelled him to his tentative-bold act of staying with her the night. Instinct in him told him that, but how to muster a hard-on for an adult woman, for a real lady, when libido, except for a single encounter with a black streetwalker, had functioned only with minors, only in a milieu of stealth and guilt? It was easy to persuade himself his instincts were wrong.

As she had predicted, Edith awoke before the alarm went off, and as soon as she stirred, Ira awoke too — slid out of bed, sat at the end, scratched, sneezed, chortled sleepily, and slipped on his jacket against the morning coolness. He waited his turn for the bathroom, tried to wash, put on his tie, and came out as Edith, olive-skinned to the vee in her bathrobe, was turning slices of toast on the slat sides of the toaster over the gas flame, while coffee burbled in the newfangled electric percolator.

“Did you manage to get any sleep?” she asked solicitously, none of the rebuke of that relentless glare of a few hours before still lingering. And when he assured her he had, “I don’t see how you could. Weren’t you cold?”

“Not me, no,” he lied. “How about you?”

“I suppose I slept a few hours.” She protracted the blink of puffy eyes. “I feel like the wrath of God.”

“You look all right,” he encouraged.

“Do I? Thanks.” She yawned. “You’re very nice to say so. I feel like something the cat dragged in.”

“Oh, no,” he protested. “I don’t know how you did it after all you’ve been through, but your look fine.”

Her eyes sought out the wall mirror. “You’ve been an angel to see me through this, Ira. I never dreamed I could be such a fool.”

“Oh, no — can I make some more toast?”

“Make all you want.”

He stood up and canted four slices of packaged bread against the sides of the frustum toaster. “You gonna want some more?”

“No, thanks, this is about all I can stomach. I’ll just have a little more coffee.” She filled her cup, all black, eschewing that healthy dollop of cream that Mom always poured. “I’m sorry I don’t have anything else to offer you for breakfast except more marmalade. If I’d known you were going to stay the night I would have had some eggs and bacon on hand.”

“That’s all right.” Ira peeped out of the corner of one eye as he gingerly turned the toast. “Bacon ain’t kosher.”

“My God!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Your parents! I’ve forgotten all about them. You have no phone? You couldn’t call?”

“No.”

“You can still send a telegram.”

“I’d scare hell out of ’em. Excuse me. I told Mom I’d be late.”

“Late? Heavens! Ira, what will they think?”

He licked his lips as he transferred slices of toast from toaster to plate. “I’m telling you: I told Mom I didn’t know when I’d be home. Not to worry, that’s all. I’ve stayed over at Larry’s a few nights.”

“You’re sure they’re all right? Do they know where you are?”

“I told them what I was going to do. They must have figured out where I was — besides, I left your phone number. My sister would have called if they were worried.”

“Thank heaven you thought of doing that.”

“Yeah, if she called, you could have told her I stowed away on board the ship.”

“I can’t get over how cavalier you are with your family. And yet your face lights up when you speak of your mother. Your love for her is so touching.”

“Yeah?” He lowered his head, reached for the coffeepot. “Well, my parents are immigrants, I don’t have to tell you. And I’m the only collegian in the whole tribe. So I lead the way in things American. You get it? I’m the authority.”

“That’s quite different from Larry’s family.”

“Zackly. There’s three more of these slices of toast here. You don’t want one?”

“You eat them. I’d love to meet your mother.”

“Mom doesn’t speak English very well.”

“Oh, we’d understand each other, I’m sure.”

“Yum.” He crunched into a second slice. “What a nice jar they sell this marmalade in. Crosse and Blackwell. You know, as soon as I tell my mother I like something, out she goes and buys it. She spoils the hell — heck out of me.”

“And your sister?”

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. Minnie practically has to fend for herself. She’s my father’s favorite.”

Edith looked steadily at Ira, appraising as was her wont, a full second — and then her gaze shifted to the clock on the mantelpiece. “I ought to begin dressing. I have a class at ten. But you don’t need to feel you have to hurry.”

“No? All right.”

Her look, animated now, scarcely belonged to the same face that had stared at him so unforgivingly — when? — just a few hours ago? Rancorous, granulated ivory in the gloom, glaring: you lummox, I need. Can’t you see I need? Like Minnie, when she came home from Richmond rejected. So what if he said to her, You know, you stared at me during the night. What did you mean? Yeah, he was a lummox, all right, that he should have to ask her such a dumb question. But what would it have led to? What would a woman say when you asked her that? Evade? Or answer candidly? I suppose I wanted you to hold me. Nah. How could she? But she had lost so much, she had lost so much. “How many classes have you got this morning?”

“Two. One after the other, and an hour and a half each.”

“Oh, boy.”

“Fortunately it’s the same lecture in both. And it’s old ground too: women poets in America. Emily Dickinson, Amy Lowell, Teasdale, Flanner, Taggard, Léonie, and of course dear Edna. Not all today. I may introduce them to Marianne Moore.” She began undoing her loose braids. “Please finish your breakfast, Ira.”

“Thanks. That’ll be easy.”

“And have some more coffee.” She stood up. “I’d love to chat, but I don’t dare.”

“Oh, wait a minute. You know something? I owe you four dollars. Change from that five. It only came to a—”

“Don’t you mention it.”

“What?”

“Mention it.”

“Aw, gee, why not?”

“I don’t want to hear about it. You make me feel ashamed of myself, owing you so much. Please!”

“Boy, I ought to go into business.”

“I just don’t know what I’d have done without you. You know that very well.”

“Yeah?” He could sense the circuitous route of his own discontent at his failure in the face of her need. “You know something? You’d have been better off. Maybe both of us.”

Edith stopped on the way to the bathroom. “Why?”

“You wouldn’t have gone. See what I mean? I mean if you hadn’t had me to go along with you, then you wouldn’t have gone.”