Read Online Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth - Free Book Online Page B

for? At home somebody dee-stroy it.”
    “You could hide it someplace, in a desk—”
    “Man,” he said, squinting at me, “why don’t you want me to come round here?”
    “I didn’t say you shouldn’t.”
    “I
likes
to come here. I likes them stairs.”
    “I like them too,” I said. “But the trouble is that someday somebody’s going to take that book out.”
    He smiled. “Don’t you worry,” he said to me. “Ain’t nobody done that yet,” and he tapped off to the stairs and Stack Three.
    Did I perspire that day! It was the coolest of the summer, but when I left work in the evening my shirt was sticking to my back. In the car I opened my bag, and while the rush-hour traffic flowed down Washington Street, I huddled in the back and changed into a clean shirt so that when I reached Short Hills I’d look as though I was deserving of an interlude in the suburbs. But driving up Central Avenue I could not keep my mind on my vacation, or for that matter on my driving: to the distress of pedestrians and motorists, I ground gears, overshot crosswalks, hesitated at green and red lights alike. I kept thinking that while I was on vacation that jowly bastard would return to the library, that the colored kid’s book would disappear, that my new job would be taken away from me, that, in fact my old job—but then why should I worry about all that: the library wasn’t going to be
my
life.

5

    “Ron’s getting married!” Julie screamed at me when I came through the door. “Ron’s getting married!”
    “Now?” I said.
    “Labor Day! He’s marrying Harriet, he’s marrying Harriet.” She began to sing it like a jump-rope song, nasal and rhythmic. “I’m going to be a sister-in-law!”
    “Hi,” Brenda said, “I’m going to be a sister-in-law.”
    “So I hear. When did it happen?”
    “This afternoon he told us. They spoke long distance for forty minutes last night. She’s flying here next week, and there’s going to be a
huge
wedding. My parents are flittering all over the place. They’ve got to arrange everything in about a day or two. And my father’s taking Ron in the business—but he’s going to have to start at two hundred a week and then work himself up. That’ll take till October.”
    “I thought he was going to be a gym teacher.”
    “He was. But now he has responsibilities …”
    And at dinner Ron expanded on the subject of responsibilities and the future.
    “We’re going to have a boy,” he said, to his mother’s delight, “and when he’s about six months old I’m going to sit him down with a basketball in front of him, and a football, and a baseball, and then whichever one he reaches for, that’s the one we’re going to concentrate on.”
    “Suppose he doesn’t reach for any of them,” Brenda said.

    “Don’t be funny, young lady,” Mrs. Patimkin said.
    “I’m going to be an aunt,” Julie sang, and she stuck her tongue out at Brenda.
    “When is Harriet coming?” Mr. Patimkin breathed through a mouthful of potatoes.
    “A week from yesterday.”
    “Can she sleep in my room?” Julie cried. “
Can
she?”
    “No, the guest room—” Mrs. Patimkin began, but then she remembered me—with a crashing side glance from those purple eyes, and said, “Of course.”
    Well, I did eat like a bird. After dinner my bag was carried—by me—up to the guest room which was across from Ron’s room and right down the hall from Brenda. Brenda came along to show me the way.
    “Let me see your bed, Bren.”
    “Later,” she said.
    “Can we? Up here?”
    “I think so,” she said. “Ron sleeps like a log.”
    “Can I stay the night?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I could get up early and come back in here. We’ll set the alarm.”
    “It’ll wake everybody up.”
    “I’ll remember to get up. I can do it.”
    “I better not stay up here with you too long,” she said. “My mother’ll have a fit. I think she’s nervous about your being here.”
    “So am I. I hardly know