To-day.... Seven years, nine, twelve....
“Etta, what would you say if I told you I’m through?”
“What do you mean, ‘through’?”
“That I’m going away?”
“Where are you going?”
He couldn’t answer that. Where would he be going? To the street? The street....
Etta had left him, shrugging her shoulders. She didn’t bother to try to understand him. One of his unaccountable fits! Alone, Emmanuel continued sitting at his desk. Would he really go away?
The telephone rang. He recognized the voice. His uncle. For years the “support of the family,” who had helped him through college, helped his father with the basement penny business. A self-satisfied, ruthless, self-made man, narrow, full of many hatreds. A charitable, religious Jew, a good father. Cloaks and suits.
“Manny, my son Dewey is gonna have for him a graduation party from high school. I want you positively to come.”
Emmanuel promised. He liked Dewey, a boy who was forced to be bright, who was forced to be the best student in his class, Dewey, who had once received a beating in his presence for daring to read a novel on a Saturday instead of going to the synagogue. Was Dewey perhaps like himself?