That Winter by Merle Miller

Author:Merle Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2016-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

As I walked back to my mother’s house, I thought briefly of Hilda Johnson and the lonely soldier who had picked her up in the lobby of the Drake Hotel in Chicago. And I thought there was a kind of justice about what happened, a kind of wonderful allrightness. They had both, for a time, received what each most wanted from the other, and that was good and unusual. Even if it didn’t last, it was all right and good for Hilda, and he had never expected that he would get anything out of it except what he did get. Hilda hadn’t either, not for long.

My mother was alone in the kitchen when I returned, and dinner was nearly ready, the kind of dinner I might have expected, one that was suitable only for rare occasions—weddings, holidays, and funerals. Although there were to be only the two of us, she had cooked steak and potatoes and two other vegetables and a heavy dessert with coffee, a lot of everything.

“I hope you’re hungry,” she said.

“I am,” I said, and was. “Famished.”

“Do you get plenty to eat in New York?” she asked.

“Plenty,” I said emphatically. My mother could never quite believe that one could eat his fill in a restaurant or that, even if it was possible, I’d know how to order.

“Your coat doesn’t look very heavy for this kind of weather,” she said, and then, “Do you want to wash before we eat?”

As I was washing, she spoke to me through the open bathroom door. “Most of your shirts are frayed around the collars,” she said. “You must either be buying cheap shirts, or it’s those laundries. I wouldn’t send my good things to a laundry for anything in the world. Why don’t you find some nice woman to do your clothes at home for you? There must be a lot of women in New York’d be glad to pick up a little extra spending money.” My mother had been making me this same suggestion ever since, nine years before, I had left for college. I had never found a nice woman who wanted to earn a little extra spending money by doing my laundry.

“You haven’t got a pair of socks that doesn’t need a little mending,” she went .on. “I’ll have to fix every single pair while you’re home.” As she opened the oven door and peered inside, I waited for the question that I knew was coming next.

“How long you going to be home this time, Peter?” she asked, closing the oven door with a bang.

I finished washing my hands, and, as I reached for the towel, she said, “At least a month or two,” answering her own question.

“I’m afraid not,” I said, returning to the kitchen. “I’m afraid I’ll have to get right back after the funeral. I have to earn a living. I’m a working man, you know.”

I waited, not knowing quite what to expect next. At one time it might have been tears. “I’ve been counting on it so,” she said.

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