91 REVERE STREET
453
"Weelawaugh, we-ee-eelawaugh, weelawaugh!" "But-and, but–
and, but-and I"
During the week ends
I
was at home much of the time. All
day
I
used to look forward to the nights when my bedroom walls
would once again vibrate, when
I
would awake with rapture to the
rhythm of my parents arguing, arguing one another to exhaustion.
Sometimes, without bathrobe or slippers,
I
would wriggle out into the
cold hall on my belly and ambuscade myself behind the banister.
I
could often hear actual words. "Yes, yes, yes," Father would mumble.
He was "backsliding" and "living in the fool's paradise of habitual re–
tarding and retarded do-nothing inertia." Mother had violently set
her heart on the resignation. She was hysterical even in her calm,
but like a patient and forbearing strategist, she tried to pretend her
neutrality. One night she said with murderous coolness, "Bobby and
I
are leaving for Papa's." This was an ultimatum to force Father
to sign a deed placing the Revere Street house in Mother's name.
I
writhed with disappointment on the nights when Mother and
Father only lowed harmoniously together like cows, as they criticized
Helen Bailey or Admiral De Stahl. Once
I
heard my mother say,
"A
man
must make up his
own
mind. Oh Bob, if you are going
to resign, do it
now
so
I
can at least plan on your son's
survival
and education at a single school I"
About this time
I
was being sent for my
survival
to Dr. Dane,
a Unitarian chiropractor with an office on Marlborough Street. Dr.
Dane wore an old-fashioned light tan druggist's smock; he smelled
like a healthy old-fashioned drugstore. His laboratory was free of
intimidating technical equipment, and had only the conservative lay
roughness and toughness that was so familiar and disarming to us
in my Grandfather Winslow's country study or bedroom. Dr. Dane's
rosy hands wrenched my shoulders with tremendous eclat and made
me feel a hero;
I
felt unspeakable joy whenever an awry muscle fell
back into serenity. My mother, who had no curiosity or imagination
for cranky occultism, trusted Dr. Dane's clean, undrugged man–
liness-so like home. She believed that chiropractic had cured me of
my undiagnosed asthma, which had defeated the expensive specialists.
"A penny for your thoughts, Schopenhauer," my mother would
say.
