«IN DREAMS BEGIN RESPONSIBILITIES"
9
acquired only two rings, my father, however, ten of them, although it
was my mother who really wanted them.
They walk on along the boardwalk as the afternoon descends by
imperceptible degrees into the incredible violet of dusk. Everything
fades into a relaxed glow, even the ceaseless murmuring from the
beach. They look for a place to have dinner. My father suggests the
best restaurant on the boardwalk and my mother demurs, according to
her principles of economy and housewifeliness.
However they do go to the best place, asking for a table near the
window so that they look out upon the boardwalk and the mobile
ocean. My father feels omnipotent as he places a quarter in the
waiter's hand in asking for a table. The place is crowded and here
too there is music, this time from a kind of string-trio. My father
orders with a fine confidence.
As their dinner goes on, my father tells of his plans for the future
and my mother shows with expressive face how interested she is, and
how impressed. My father becomes exultant, lifted up by the waltz
that is being played, and his own future begins to intoxicate him. My
father tells my mother that he is going to expand his business, for
there is a great deal of money to be made. He wants to settle. down.
Mter all, he is twenty-nine, he has lived by himself since his thirteenth
year, he is making more and more money, and he is envious of his
friends when he visits them in the security of their homes, sur-
rounded, it seems, by the calm domestic pleasures, and by delightful
children, and then as the waltz reaches the moment when the dancers
all swing madly, then, then with awful daring, then he asks my
mother to marry him, although awkwardly enough and puzzled as
to how he had arrived at the question, and she, to make the whole
business worse, begins to cry, and my father looks nervously about,
not knowing at all what to do now, and my mother says: "It's all
I've wanted from the first moment I saw you," sobbing, and he finds
all of this very difficult, scarcely to his tate, scarcely as he thought it
would be, on his long walks over Brooklyn Bridge in the revery of a
fine cigar; and it was then, at that point, that I stood up in the
theater and shouted: "Don't do it! It's not too late to change your
minds, both of you. Nothing good will come of it, only remorse,
hatred, scandal, and two children whose characters are monstrous."
The whole audience turned to look at me, annoyed, the usher came
hurrying down the aisle flashing his searchlight, and the old lady next
to me tugged me down into my seat, saying: "Be quiet. You'll be put
out, and you paid thirty-five cents to come in." And so I shut my
eyes because I could not bear to see what was happening. I sat there
quietly.
