IV
The Forges, on coming to Paris, had taken a small gray cottage on Spring Street. This cottage stood on a corner with a short width of yard between the Adams Street sidewalk and the windows of the Forge dining room. And on summer nights when the heat required opened windows, neighbors and pedestrians overheard the full barrage of vocal artillery that husband and wife laid down over trivial family matters or the scion who was “bringing their gray hairs down in sorrow to the grave.”
From the day he was born until the day he married, the boy seemed a bone of contention between his parents. For the most part these altercations had to do with his mother’s animosity toward the father’s method of raising his family. But always, when the man’s brutality got the better of hysterical argument, the affair ended with the wife’s contention, voiced in no very refined terms, that she “was going home to her mother.”
I forget how many times Anna Forge “went home to her mother”, if I ever knew. She threatened to do it a couple of times a week. About twice a year she made the threat good. On these occasions she packed all her personal clothes and possessions in several bags and telescope valises, took a half day to “wash and iron the children”; called Uncle Joe Fodder’s depot hack and “left her husband in style”, as Uncle Joe put it.
She returned to a grass-widowed mother who lived in a small manufacturing city out in York State. This mother sympathized with her the first day; listened in silence to her troubles the second; was indifferent to them the third; tolerated them the fourth; endured them the fifth; “had words” with her daughter the sixth; quarreled with her openly on the seventh and ordered her out of the house on the eighth. Then back Anna Forge returned to John, entered her own home haughtily, failed to speak to him until the third day, then started around the six-month cycle all over.
These semiannual trips were gala days in the lives of Nathan and his sister,—until he began to realize the tragedy that sponsored them.
One night he came running over to my house in great distress. He “whistled me out” and I found him sobbing distraughtly.
“Pa an’ Ma have had an awful fight, Billy!” he told me. “Pa wouldn’t give her no money for a dress to-day. But when he came home from downtown he fetched one he’d bought himself. Ma looked at it and said she wouldn’t be seen in the thing. Pa says she could wear it or go naked. They got to havin’ words, Billy, and pretty soon Ma picked up the butcher knife and says by the White Christ she’d cut Pa’s throat. And Pa chucked a blue-glass pitcher at her all full o’ milk and said she was full o’ high-flown Yankee notions and he’d take ’em out of her. Ma says she’d go back to her mother and Pa says, ‘Yes, that’d be a good scheme, only in a few days she’d have a fight with her mother and be right back again.’ Then Ma says she’d chuck herself in the river. And Pa says she didn’t have the guts, And Ma says oh, she didn’t have, did she, and started right out of the house. She’s off toward the river now, Billy, and I’m scared stiff she’ll do it.”
“You mean she’s went to commit suicide?” I demanded aghast.
“Yeah!—And her forehead was all bloody where the pitcher struck her.”
“How long’s she been gone?”
“She just started. I came right over. Pa sent me up to bed and I skipped out over the woodshed roof.”
“Can she swim?”
“No! Anyhow, people that’s committing suicide don’t care whether they can swim! Most of ’em don’t!”
“Gosh, she may really kill herself. Whatcher want me to do?”
“Come with me, Billy. Maybe we can stop her!”
We reached the river but found no woman. Nathan felt for a certainty his mother had cast herself into the water and would not be consoled. He knelt upon the close-cropped grass and with face on his hands he sobbed distressingly.
“Why can’t I have a Pa and Ma that don’t fight all the time?” he cried hysterically. “Other fellows do! Why can’t I? Oh, Ma! Ma! Ma!”
I tried to console him but I was rather ill myself. Somehow I felt responsible for Mrs. Forge’s death, not having reached the stream in time to intercept and dissuade her. My own face was awash with tears as I tried to persuade my friend to go home and tell his dad.
“I climbed out on the shed roof and skun away,” cried Nathan. “I’m scared stiff to go home again—ever! He’ll whale the daylights out o’ me fer tellin’ anybody about it, even you!”
“We better go somewheres,” I argued. “We can’t save her now. And we can’t stay out here all night. You better come home with me, and I’ll tell my Ma and she’ll see what you better do. She ain’t afraid of your Pa! She’ll tell him what she thinks of him. My Ma’s great at tellin’ your folks what she thinks of ’em!”
I persuaded Nat to come home with me. It was a tragic return.
My mother gathered us against her ample bosom, an arm about each of us, while she listened to the horror of the thing we blurted out. Then she smiled sadly and kissed us.
“Bless your hearts! Nathan’s mother has been here with me, telling me about it,” mother said. “She must have turned back through Pine Street while you were on the way to the river. She wouldn’t kill herself. She loves Nathan too much to do that. She said so!”