Indignation Read Free Page B

there. It wouldn’t have dawned on him to go downtown and look for me at the public library—the reason being that you can’t get cracked over the head with a pool cue at the library for being a pool shark or have someone pull a knife on you because you are sitting there reading a chapter assigned from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as I’d been doing since six that night.
    “So there you are,” he announced. “Yeah. Strange, isn’t it? At home. I sleep here. I live here. I am your son, remember?” “Are you? I’ve been everywhere looking for you.” “Why? Why? Somebody,please, tell me why ‘everywhere.’” “Because if anything were to happen to you—if something were ever to happen to you—” “But nothing will happen. Dad, I am not this terror of the earth who plays pool, Eddie Pearlgreen! Nothing is going to happen.” “I know that you’re not him, for God’s sake. I know better than anybody that I’m lucky with my boy.” “Then what is this all about, Dad?” “It’s about life, where the tiniest misstep can have tragic consequences.” “Oh, Christ, you sound like a fortune cookie.” “Do I? Do I? Not like a concerned father but like a fortune cookie? That’s what I sound like when I’m talking to my son about the future he has ahead of him, which any little thing could destroy, the tiniest thing?” “Oh, the hell with it!” I cried, and ran out of the house, wondering where I could find a car to steal to go to Scranton to play pool and maybe pick up the clap on the side.
    Later I learned from my mother the full circumstances of that day, about how Mr. Pearlgreen had come to see about the toilet at the back of the store that morning and left my father brooding over their conversation from then until closing time. He must have smoked three packs of cigarettes, she told me, he was so upset. “You don’t know howproud of you he is,” my mother said. “Everybody who comes into the store—‘My son, all A’s. Never lets us down. Doesn’t even have to look at his books—automatically, A’s.’ Darling, when you’re not present you are the focus of all his praise. You must believe that. He boasts about you all the time.” “And when I am present I’m the focus of these crazy new fears, and I’m sick and tired of it, Ma.” My mother said, “But I heard him, Markie. He told Mr. Pearlgreen, ‘Thank God I don’t have to worry about these things with my boy.’ I was there with him in the store when Mr. Pearlgreen came because of the leak. That’s exactly what he said when Mr. Pearlgreen was telling him about Eddie. Those were his words: ‘I don’t have to worry about these things with my boy.’ But what does Mr. Pearlgreen say back to him—and this is what started him off—he says, ‘Listen to me, Messner. I like you, Messner, you were good to us, you took care of my wife during the war with meat, listen to somebody who knows from it happening to him. Eddie is a college boy too, but that doesn’t mean he knows enough to stay away from the pool hall. How did we lose Eddie? He’s not a bad boy. And what about his younger brother—what kind of example is he to hisyounger brother? What did we do wrong that the next thing we know he’s in a pool hall in Scranton, three hours from home! With my car! Where does he get the money for the gas? From playing pool! Pool! Pool! Mark my words, Messner: the world is waiting, it’s licking its chops, to take your boy away.’ ” “And my father believes him,” I said. “My father believes not what he sees with his eyes for an entire lifetime, instead he believes what he’s told by the plumber on his knees fixing the toilet in the back of the store!” I couldn’t stop. He’d been driven crazy by the chance remark of a plumber! “Yeah, Ma,” I finally said, storming off to my room, “the tiniest, littlest things do have tragic consequences. He proves it!”
    I had to get away but I didn’t know where to