“I left the army a year ago. You know, I wrote to you then and found out that you still lived here. That was very kind of me, I’m sure. Since then I’ve knocked about in different towns. Sleep and work, work and sleep—the twin brothers of man’s inadequacy.”
“Ye-es, still using long words, the twin brothers of something or other,” said Mrs. Felman, with a light disapproval. “Learn to talk and act like other people and you’ll be better off. I used to think a little different when I was young, but believe me, you can’t get along by just dreaming and talking to yourself. The trouble with you is that you got a lot of fancy words and no get-up.”
“Philosophical discourse number sixty-two,” answered Carl, in the drowsily chanting voice of a train announcer. “Or have I lost count of them? Your life hasn’t made you very happy, mother, and perhaps that’s why your arguments are lacking in the swagger of conviction. Or perhaps you think that it’s best to be unhappy, and in that case I agree with you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t lower myself by trying to argue with you,” said Mrs. Felman. “I’m perfectly right in everything I say, but I simply don’t know how to fiddle with words like you do.”
“Have you still got those poetry ideas in your head?” asked Mr. Felman. “Poetry is no business for a strong, grownup man. It’s a lot of foolishness good for women and children!”
“If you could write things that make money now,” said Mrs. Felman. “Why, only the other day Mrs. Benjamin was telling me she has a cousin who writes love stories for the Daily Gazette. Nice stories that make you laugh and cry. And this girl gets twenty dollars apiece for them, too.”
“Now, now, don’t be trying to encourage him again,” said Mr. Felman. “Ain’t we had enough trouble over this writing of his? Let him go out and get a regular job, like other men!”
Carl laughed, and his laugh was like an emotion interviewed by carbolic acid, and his parents eyed him with an offended surprise.
“Still squabbling over the bones,” he said, with a sarcastic apathy. “If you were more delicate you might realize that it is inappropriate to argue at a funeral. I’m only a tongue-tied fool, but I seem very elusively inarticulate to you because you’re even more tongue-tied. And now, as usual, you haven’t understood a word of what I’ve said.”
“Well, you don’t have to laugh at your parents,” said Mrs. Felman, with an air of pin-pricked dignity. “You never did show any respect for us, in spite of all that we’ve done for you. Never.”