"IN DREAMS BEGIN RESPONSIBILITIES"
7
Where is the older uncle, my mother's older brother? He is studying
in his bedroom upstairs, studying for his final examinations at the
College of the City of New York, having been dead of lobar
pneumonia for the last twenty-one years. My mother and father walk
down the same quiet streets once more. My mother is holding my
father's arm and telling him of the novel she has been reading and
my father utters judgments of the characters as the plot is made
clear to him. This is a habit which he very much enjoys, for he feels
the utmost superiority and confidence when he is approving or con-
demning the behavior of other people. At times he feels moved to
utter a brief "Ugh," whenever the story becomes what he would call
sugary. My mother feels satisfied by the interest she has awakened; and
she is showing my father how intelligent she is and how interesting.
They reach the avenue, and the streetcar leisurely arrives. They
are going to Coney Island this afternoon, although my mother really
considers such pleasures inferior. She has made up her mind to indulge
only in a walk on the boardwalk and a pleasant dinner, avoiding the
riotous amusements as being beneath the dignity of so dignified a
couple.
My father tells my mother how much money he has made in
the week just past, exaggerating an amount which need not have been
exaggerated. But my father has always felt that actualities somehow
fall short, no matter how fine they are. Suddenly I begin to weep.
The determined old lady who sits next to me in the theatre is an-
noyed and looks at me with an angry face, and being intimidated, I
stop. I drag out my handkerchief and dry my face, licking the drop
which has fallen near my lips. Meanwhile I have missed something,
for here are my father and mother alighting from the streetcar at the
last stop, Coney Island.
III
They walk toward the boardwalk and my mother commands my
father to inhale the pungent air from the sea. They both breathe in
deeply, both of them laughing as they do so. They have in common
a great interest in health, although my father is strong and husky,
and my mother is frail. They are both full of theories about what is
good to eat and not good to eat, and sometimes have heated discus-
sions about it, the whole matter ending in my father's announcement,
made with a scornful bluster, that you have to die sooner or later
anyway. On the boardwalk's flagpole, the American flag is pulsing
in an intermittent wind from the sea.
My father and mother go to the rail of the boardwalk and look
down on the beach where a good many bathers are casually walking
about. A few are in the surf. A peanut-whistle pierces the air with
