91 REVERE STREET
477
how he "practiced the sport of kings" (i.e., commanded a destroyer)
and combed the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Black Seas gypsy
fashion-seldom knowing what admiral he served under or where his
next meal or load of fuel oil was coming from.
It
always vexed the Commander, however, to think of the
strings that had been pulled to have Father transferred from Wash–
ington to Boston. He would ask Mother, "Why in God's name should
a man with Bob's brilliant cerebellum go and mess up his record
by actually
begging
for that impotent field nigger's job of second
in command at the defunct Boston Yard!"
I would squirm. I dared not look up because I knew that the
Commander abhorred Mother's dominion over my father, thought
my asthma, supposedly brought on by the miasmal damp of Wash–
ington, a myth, and considered our final flight to Boston a scandal.
My mother, on the other hand, would talk back sharply and
explain to Billy that there was nothing second-string about the Boston
Yard except its commandant, Admiral De Stahl, who had gone into a
frenzy when he learned that my parents, supposed to live at the
naval yard, had set themselves up without his permission at 91 Revere
Street. The Admiral had
commanded
Father to reside at the yard,
but Mother had bravely and stubbornly held on at Revere Street.
"A really great person," she would say, "knows how to bend."
Then Commander Harkness would throw up
his
hands in des–
pair and make a long buffoonish speech. "Would you believe it?"
he'd say. "De Stahl, the anile slob, would make Bob Lowell sleep
seven nights a week and twice on Sundays in that venerable twenty–
room pile provided for his third in command at the yard. 'Bobby me
boy,' the Man says, 'henceforth I will that you sleep wifeless. You're
to push your beauteous mug into me boudoir each night at ten–
thirty and each morn at six. And don't mind the Missus De Stahl,'
the old boy squeaks; 'we're just two oldsters as weak as babies. But
Robbie Boy,' he says, 'don't let me hear of you hanging on your
telephone wire and bending off the ear of that forsaken frau of yours
sojourning on Revere Street. I might have to phone you in a hurry,
if I should happen to have me stroke.' "
Taking hold of the table with both hands, the Commander
tilted his chair backwards and gaped down at me with sorrowing
Gargantuan wonder: "I know why Young Bob is an only child."
