Free When We Argued All Night by Alice Mattison Page B

Harold turned away, his shoulders sagged and he looked older than he was, and for a moment Artie wanted to run after him. For a man who hadn’t put a prayer shawl around his shoulders since his bar mitzvah, Harold was obsessed with being Jewish. Harold—and his whole family—could think about frightening subjects longer than Artie or any of his brothers or his parents. Enough, his father would say, if someone began talking about Hitler. His mother would weep and run from the room, and his father would say, You have to upset her? But when Hitler’s speeches were on the radio, the whole family listened.
    As he rode over the river to Brooklyn, Artie’s mind returned to the subject of women. Harold thought Artie attracted women without trying, while he had no success. But Harold’s life was full of women, while Artie had—well, he sort of had Evelyn, but that never went anywhere. If his supervisor had once liked him, the feeling had turned to hatred. Staring at his own reflection in the train’s dark window, the lights of the city behind his own narrow, bespectacled face, Artie understood for a moment that he’d caused Beatrice London to hate him. He should stop teasing and challenging her, if it wasn’t too late. He knew he wouldn’t stop, just as he knew that his various brothers wouldn’t change in one way or another, and the thought made him sad.
    It was Beatrice London’s fault, anyway. He had to get away from her, even if that meant being alone in a classroom with kids all day. He had no idea what you did with children, though he’d gone back to City College and daydreamed his way through some ed courses so he’d be qualified for a regular teaching job if he could get one. He was twenty-eight: he should get a real job, find a real girl, get out of his parents’ apartment. But that was another sad thought. He liked slouching around with a camera, playing a little handball in the park on weekends, listening to music or walking the streets with Evelyn—or alone, whistling and daydreaming. Women in daydreams were easier to manage, and he hadn’t seen Evelyn since their argument about—whatever it had been about.
    But a few weeks later she called him and they walked. The weather was cool, and they followed their cold-weather routine; the walk would lead, eventually, not to ice cream but to tea in the kitchen of Evelyn’s parents. Excited to see her, Artie had much to tell: at the last minute—right at the start of the new school year—he’d been called to teach seventh-grade social studies. The classroom maps were from before the world war, and the principal didn’t like him, but the kids were funny and he was done with Beatrice London forever. I can’t learn all those kids’ names, he said. I call them all Johnny or Sadie.
    They reached the two-family house where she lived, but instead of leading him inside, Evelyn dropped to the porch steps. She ran her hands through her hair and said, Do you think you might want to get married?
    Artie sat down. Something went through his body as if he’d swallowed a fishing line with a hook attached, but it was not exactly painful. A hook made of metal so bright it seemed sharp, though it was not sharp. He began to whistle. After a while, he said, Why do you ask?
    â€”Somebody wants to marry me. I’m twenty-seven. There comes a point. But if you want me to, I’ll say no.
    She wiggled her shoulders as if to say six of this, half a dozen of that, but her voice betrayed that the question was not casual.
    â€”Say no, Artie said. Who is he?
    â€”A nice person. He’s becoming a pharmacist.
    â€”A pharmacist, Artie said, somehow expelling the syllable through his nose. A pha-ah-ah-ah-armacist.
    â€”Artie!
    â€”So you’re proposing? he said. He stuck his finger in her side. Her blouse felt stiff to his finger, but under it her body was soft. Sometimes when he put his