Things to Come and Go by Bette Howland

Author:Bette Howland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A Public Space

Well, well, well. What’s this? What have we here? Mark? Is that Mark?

The man stood in the doorway, taking it all up, looking out from under the lofty tips of his eyebrows, over his lofty lip. Drops twinkled in his black mustache; his eyes were wet-black and twinkling. There was snow on his shoulders and down the front of his coat, and the hairs on the sides of his face were thick and white too.

He scraped his foot and slapped his big gloves together.

“Well, Mark? How d’ya do?” The man put out his hand.

Mark looked at the hand and up at the man, not sure what was coming or what was expected of him. “Say hel-lo,” his mother whispered, taking Mark’s hand, its fat cluster of fingers and puddles of dimples. “Say how do you do?”

She held the hand out, offering and urging. “Shake, Markie. Shake hands.”

Mark took back his hand.

He snatched it back, hiding it behind him, wiping it possessively on the seat of his pants. That was plainly his intention—to take back what belonged to him.

“Maaarkie!”

“Shh. Never mind, don’t yell at him. He sure takes after you, doesn’t he?”

“He’s not used to you,” Sydney said.

Leo smiled to himself. She was apologizing; she thought his feelings might be hurt. She knew what people said about children and dogs. Leo had had his share of both, let others have theirs, but he’d just as soon they didn’t take a shine to him, and he didn’t put much stock in their opinions. Winks, chuckles, pats on the head, foolish grins were not his line. What to say to such small, expectant, excitable creatures? Their open mouths and big eyes?

He was surprised to see the boy up; usually Sydney kept him hidden, well out of sight; old-world of her. It reminded Leo of his mother, with her distracted ways and straying hair (coarse, black, crooked as her hairpins and it wouldn’t stay put in spite of them; his eyebrows were like that now). Five kids in a tiny flat, trying to keep them out of their father’s way. The old man came home from work in a mood, as fathers will—he was a porter in the Yards, wore a bloody apron—wanting nothing but to eat and sleep and read his paper in peace; putting a child in front of him was waving a flag at a bull. He wasn’t such a big guy (easy to say that, now), but he had big hands, made for walloping, and no telling when he might feel like taking a swing. First come first served, he didn’t care who—same way he might swat at flies. That was one thing about the old man, fair is fair, he didn’t play favorites. Their mother did; Leo was her favorite. —The times he had peered through keyholes at that awful figure, his father: asleep, flat on his back; newspapers spread over his face, smudged with inky thumbprints, and fluttering—audibly, visibly—with his snores.

Mark had withdrawn his hand, but did not take back his eyes: they continued to stare and shine.

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