Orrie's Story Read Free Page B

“That girl’s really a mess,” Esther had said to her son, who had given every evidence of not disagreeing.
    To Augie she protested. “I don’t want him coming home with a disease from one of the little chippies around this town. He’s going to get somewhere in life!” Which of course was to make more of an attack on her husband than to express a hope for her son, though she was sincere enough as to the latter: she wanted Orrie not simply to succeed in the monetary sense, like his uncle Erie, but to have prestige of the kind that E.G. did not enjoy. She was aware that E.G. had no real friends but herself, whereas everybody professed to adore Augie—while taking their trade not to his store but to the nearest Woolworth’s. People were such rotten hypocrites. E.G. was right in his conviction that fear was a more useful effect to evoke in others than affection. Nevertheless she did want Orrie to be a man of unimpeachable esteem, and that meant, in peacetime or war, anywhere in the world: doctor.
    Orrie had winced and shaken his crewcut fifteen-year-old head when she first mentioned that. “God. Touching sores? All that blood? Getting coughed in the face?”
    â€œThey get used to those kind of things,” said Esther. “It soon becomes just a job like any other. But you don’t have to be a family doctor. There are all kinds of specialties, and they pay a lot more besides. Not all of them would be so bloody. What about the doctor who mainly takes X rays?”
    Ellie intruded. “Or a nut-doctor. You know psy-uh—” Her mother told her to be quiet.
    Orrie continued to grimace. “We’re cutting up a frog now in biology, and I don’t like it very much.”
    â€œDoctors are honored everywhere they go,” Esther said. “Because everybody needs them. The President needs his. People will look up to you, Orrie. The greatest and strongest men in the world must obey their doctors.”
    â€œBut Orrie wouldn’t like making people take medicine,” said Ellie. “He wants to be an artist.”
    Esther glared at her. “I thought I just told you to shut up.” She resented Ellie’s implication that he might be on closer terms with his sister than with the woman who gave him birth. She turned to Orrie. “I know he thinks that’s what he wants to be at this point, but he hasn’t yet had to face the world. Who’s going to buy your art? The people around here don’t even know what art is. They hang up calendars they get for free. So you go to the big city: who do you know there? And unless you know somebody, you’re not going to get anywhere. They don’t give strangers any breaks. The day of the free lunch is long gone.”
    â€œI don’t know what I’ll be in the future,” said Orrie. “I just like to draw.”
    Ellie would not be stifled. “Mrs. Taviner hangs all his pictures up in the art room. You ought to see them.”
    With his usual modesty Orrie said, “She puts up a lot of stuff by other people, too. It’s just a school in a little town.”
    â€œShe gave him a book!” cried Ellie.
    Orrie corrected her. “She lent it to me. It’s full of oil paintings by Rembrandt and others. God, I’ve never yet even painted the right kind of water color.”
    â€œWhat’s the right kind?”
    â€œNot muddy! I’m hopeless.” He ducked his head.
    â€œNo, you’re not!” cried Ellie.
    But with justifiable self-righteousness, Esther said, “There you are. You’re probably not cut out to make art more than just a hobby. If you become a doctor you’ll be able to buy all the art your heart desires.”
    He was irritated. “Buy? That’s not the point. I like to make things of my own.”
    â€œAs a doctor, you’ll make people well,” said she. “That’s the greatest kind of making there