Stories in an Almost Classical Mode Read Free

stories with pictures,” he said. “Would you like a movie camera?” Carefully, Marcus said, “I would like one, but I don’t think I deserve one. I mean, it isn’t my birthday. I haven’t done anything to earn it.” The chauffeur brought a movie camera from Boston, a model recommended by Nanna’s lawyer, whom she telephoned for advice. “You must think about going to visit your mother sometime this summer. Perhaps after Labor Day,” she said. Marcus said, “But you’ll be alone then.” The next day, she said, “Since you don’t seem to want to leave me, I have written your mother and asked her to come and visit us here.” Marcus was intent on making his first movie with Nils, the chauffeur, and with one of the Irish maids. “Now, you’re a murderer. You come sn-sneaking,” Marcus stammered to Nils. He had stammered when he was younger only at moments of high excitement, but lately—for the past year—he had begun to stammer more; he stammered almost all the time now. “You c-come around the garage door with the knife.…” He set the Irish maid running along the bluff, hair and skirts awhirl. “You are in mortal t-terror of your life.” Noreen came, almost as pretty as ever. He showed her the darkroom, the comic books he’d lithographed. The comic books upset her; they were lewd. Noreen said she was seeing a man named Little, a hardware dealer. “We just may get married, Markie. You’ll have another father—won’t that be fine?” she asked hopefully.
    Noreen drank quite a bit on that visit. Marcus watched—she filled herself with bubbles; the surface of her face bubbled like paint with air in it. Noreen asked, “Is it true you want to live with Nanna?” She let slide a glass tray of laughter. She said, a good sport, “After all, you have a right to all this. It’s part of your heritage.” Her gaiety was inflexible. “He can’t make a decision. Poor Markie, he won’t laugh.” She tickled him with her forefinger, saying, “Stop being a sourpuss. Come on, Markie, let’s be happy.” She said to Nanna at the dinner table, “Markie’s been disturbed; he ought to have some religious instruction. Religion is very stabilizing for a young boy.” Nanna changed the subject. In the apartment in New Rochelle, when Noreen made breakfast, she sometimes sang in a tremulous, thin, weak, charmingly lyric voice—God, what charm there was in that tremulous voice—“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, and smile, smile, smile.…” Noreen said, “Markie, you must tell me how you feel. I’ll help you think. I have to admit Nanna can do a lot for you.” Noreen said, “What’s best is what helps you to concentrate on your studies, to work hard and do well in school, Markie. Do you want to live with Nanna?” She turned her amusement-hungry, warm, and depthless face to him. The child Marcus saw a face bubbled like paint with air in it, saw noise and a party and someone shouting, saw a hillside with shepherds and shepherdesses—and Noreen singing—and a breeze ruffling the leaves of the chairs turned into roses of Sharon. Marcus said, “I don’t know.” Nanna and Noreen were closeted in the library for several hours. Noreen came out and kissed him goodbye. She said, “You work hard and do well in school, Markie.” She went to live and drink in sunny California—Nanna’s checks helped ease the strain of emigration—and Marcus made his home with his grandmother.
    A FLY struts jerkily in the sunlight. Marcus says, “We were talking about the movie. Where was I?” “Self-pity,” says Loesser. “Yes,” says Marcus. Noreen still held legal custody. “A formality,” Nanna said. Nanna said she was going to Florida for the winter; Marcus was to have Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter with his father and his father’s second wife and the four children he had by that second wife. “You must get to know them better,” Nanna said. Nanna said she had brought Marcus back to the