New Yorkers by Hortense Calisher Page B

chaise.
    The blond beef-face of the other man broke into a grimace too tender for its own hacked lineaments, the head shaking again—the fearful glance gliding away toward the room’s shorter ell, signaling—what more could it warn him of now?
    Before he could fully turn from the phone, a gun dropped to the floor, not from those big, stained fists the man was pressing round a handkerchief, not from the warm, dead hand. It had been dropped yards away. By whom?
    He was afraid to turn; had already done so. Lines of force drew themselves forever, into the triangle ceaseless, they three. The man was an outsider.
    She stood there, his daughter, in her old laundered-out pajamas, fuzzy with a sleep just come from, yet wide awake: This was all that could be said, now or ever. Like the young of any animal, her clear, limited face couldn’t yet express what was inside it—or know? Her hair fell in a clipped round on her forehead. As always before she was sent to bed, a long strand from either temple had been tied together with a ribbon at the crown. She’d been cleansed with soap after her vomit, her mouth chubby still with the lost innocence of mustard sandwiches, still the sweet babe’s mouth, rarely doleful, staunch not only for him, he knew that now forever, but for brother and mother too. Only he could see behind it—as a father would know from childish mishaps—her bewilderment. Only he would ever see her as a baby again—his Ruth.
    As he went toward her, this upbore him. Her knees buckled in answer. Though she was almost as tall as he, this helped him take her up to him. It was an enormous relief to carry her, his arms grown to iron. He lifted her away and out of there. On the landing, bawling for Anna, this action of itself came to him like an answer. He held on, leaning against the banister, hearing Anna call “What, what?” from that eyrie where she heard nothing of their lives unless rung for. She called again, from the children’s floor above, and again when she saw him, “My hosh, is she sick again? You naughty girl, at the icebox yet, what you boddering down dere?”
    And then he thought: Only I. But Anna too. This came to him like a jewel of deduction he might have polished for years. Or like one Anna herself had picked up and handed him, in the trust which ready servants gave ready masters. Not only he: Anna too.
    “What, what?” she said, reaching them. She took Ruth from him easily, not an ox-strong woman, but solid, in David’s teens able to best him in their fake jousts, until these had stopped for his dignity’s sake. Had she already glanced covertly aside for a moment, at Mirriam’s door, wondering why no response there—and then loyally back to him? But Anna had been trained to expect these nocturnal comings and goings of her mistress—any notion otherwise was his. It was in that minute—and from his lipreading—that he became aware of how careful he must be. Always to remember the gap, even in the most normal lives, between what was said and half believed of most people behind their backs, and the way in which most—against their own knowledge not only of what might be said but of what was true—walked steadily, steadily on! From now on, the worst of his dangers might be the temptation to create his own whispers. This would be the chess game he could never lay down.
    He gave Ruth up to her. He had a babe, a jewel he must keep hidden; but in the best place—exposed. Everything he did now came to him like a choice, made after long thought—as if, twelve years after his daughter’s birth, she’d been born again out of a dead mother, and he was carrying her into the maw already opening up for them, saying, “I choose her .”
    “Take her back upstairs,” he said. “I think she’s fainted.” He wasn’t sure of it. “Mrs. Mannix has had an accident.” He put his hands on Anna’s shoulders. It would be best if he shocked her with the other news, the final news—already and forever