The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell Page A

We’re all ready to sit down as soon as your father comes.” Then she was gone.
    “You see?” Spud said, straddling the bowl of the toilet while Lymie washed his hands. “All that fuss for nothing.”

16
    T o know the world’s injustice requires only a small amount of experience. To accept it without bitterness or envy you need almost the sum total of human wisdom, which Lymie Peters at fifteen did not have. He couldn’t help noticing that the scales of fortune were tipped considerably in Spud’s favor, and resenting it. But what gnawed at him most was that Spud should be, besides, a natural athlete, the personification of the daydream which he himself most frequently indulged in.
    In this fantasy Lymie was in another place. His father had had to move, for business reasons, and he went along, of course, and they settled down in a nice big house in some place like New York or Philadelphia, where nobody knew them or anything about them. His father stopped drinking and was home every night for dinner, and they had a housekeeper who kept the place spick-and-span and saw to it that they had his favorite dessert (made of pineapple, marshmallows, oranges, maraschino cherries, and whipped cream) at least once a week.
    One day, one Saturday morning, he was walking past a vacant lot where some guys were playing baseball, and he stopped to watch. In the last of the ninth inning the pitcher sprained his ankle and had to quit. They asked Lymie if he wanted to play. He didn’t want to particularly but he didn’t have anything else to do so he said all right and took his coat off and threw it on the ground. Then he tossed his cap beside it, loosenedhis necktie, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. They asked him if he wanted to pitch and he said “Sure.” His side had a slight lead. The score was five to four, but there were three men on bases and no outs. Lymie (who had never pitched before) stepped into the dirt-drawn square which was the pitcher’s box and with the heavy end of the batting order coming up, struck out three men, one right after the other, and won the game.
    That was the way it was with everything he did in that place he moved to. He didn’t care whether people liked him or not, so he didn’t try to keep on the good side of everybody, and sometimes he got in a fight because this person or that didn’t like his attitude, but he always came out on top, and the other guy apologized afterward and they became good friends.
    After the guys found out he was so good at games, they always took him first when they were choosing up sides, and whichever side he was on won. He was never by himself any more because somebody always seemed to be waiting for him by his locker after school, and when the phone rang at night it was invariably for him. The guys were always after him to go to a movie or do something with them but he stayed home night after night with his father, reading or listening to the radio, and went to bed early and got plenty of rest. Because he’d been playing games a lot and exercising, his arm and leg muscles developed. He looked like all the rest of the guys in plus fours, only better. The girls smiled at him when he walked past with his chin in the air but he only nodded; he didn’t smile back. He didn’t have any time for girls. He hardly had time for his homework but he managed somehow so that he got all S’s and was elected president of the senior class and captain of the football, basketball, baseball, and fencing teams, before he grew tired of daydreaming and let himself slip back into the actual world.
    With gentle jabbing Spud propelled Lymie through the dining room, and Lymie’s head swam for a second with the wonderful conglomeration of long-forgotten cooking smells that met him as soon as he set foot in the kitchen. The predominating one was of roast pork, which he could hear sizzling in the oven. A girl with light hair like Spud’s was standing on a stool. In her hands was a large blue