The Grass Harp Read Free Page B

he made no friends, however, and was not seen in the company of anyone except Verena, who never brought him to the house and never mentioned his name until one day Catherine had the gall to say, “Miss Verena, just who is this funny looking little Dr. Morris Ritz?” and Verena, getting white around the mouth, replied: “Well now, he’s not half so funny looking as some I could name.”
    Scandalous, people said, the way Verena was carrying on with that little Jew from Chicago: and him twenty years younger. The story that got around was that they were up to something out in the old canning factory the other side of town. As it developed, they were; but not what the gang at the poolhall thought. Most any afternoon you could see Verena and Dr. Morris Ritz walking out toward the canning factory, an abandoned blasted brick ruin with jagged windows and sagging doors. For a generation no one had been near it except schoolkids who wentthere to smoke cigarettes and get naked together. Then early in September, by way of a notice in the
Courier
, we learned for the first time that Verena had bought the old canning factory; but there was no mention as to what use she was planning to make of it. Shortly after this, Verena told Catherine to kill two chickens as Dr. Morris Ritz was coming to Sunday dinner.
    During the years that I lived there, Dr. Morris Ritz was the only person ever invited to dine at the house on Talbo Lane. So for many reasons it was an occasion. Catherine and Dolly did a spring cleaning: they beat rugs, brought china from the attic, had every room smelling of floorwax and lemon polish. There was to be fried chicken and ham, English peas, sweet potatoes, rolls, banana pudding, two kinds of cake and tutti-frutti ice cream from the drugstore. Sunday noon Verena came in to look at the table: with its sprawling centerpiece of peach-colored roses and dense fancy stretches of silverware, it seemed set for a party of twenty; actually, there were only two places. Verena went ahead and set two more, and Dolly, seeing this, said weakly Well, it was all right if Collin wanted to eat at the table, but that she was going to stay in the kitchen with Catherine. Verena put her foot down: “Don’t fool with me, Dolly. This is important. Morris is coming here expressly to meet you. And what-is more, I’d appreciate it if you’d hold up your head: it makes me dizzy, hanging like that.”
    Dolly was scared to death: she hid in her room, and long after our guest had arrived I had to be sent to fetch her. She was lying in the pink bed with a wet washrag on her forehead, and Catherine was sitting beside her. Catherine was all sleeked up, rouge on her cheeks like lollipops and her jaws jammed with more cotton than ever; she said, “Honey, you ought to get up from there—you’re going to ruin that pretty dress.” It was a calico dress Verena had brought from Chicago; Dolly sat upand smoothed it, then immediately lay down again: “If Verena knew how sorry I am,” she said helplessly, and so I went and told Verena that Dolly was sick. Verena said she’d see about that, and marched off leaving me alone in the hall with Dr. Morris Ritz.
    Oh he was a hateful thing. “So you’re sixteen,” he said, winking first one, then the other of his sassy eyes. “And throwing it around, huh? Make the old lady take you next time she goes to Chicago. Plenty of good stuff there to throw it at.” He snapped his fingers and jiggled his razzle-dazzle, dagger-sharp shoes as though keeping time to some vaudeville tune: he might have been a tapdancer or a soda-jerk, except that he was carrying a brief case, which suggested a more serious occupation. I wondered what kind of doctor he was supposed to be; indeed, was on the point of asking when Verena returned steering Dolly by the elbow.
    The shadows of the hall, the tapestried furniture failed to absorb her; without raising her eyes she lifted her hand, and Dr. Ritz gripped it so ruggedly, pumped it so