34
SANFORD FRIEDMAN
quivering as she raised the handkerchief to her nose. Empathically,
Stephen reached towards Mommy's bare, freckled arm and stroked her
vaccination. In response Mommy turned around, pressed Stephen's
hand endearingly and tried to force a smile, but her chin was as
flat and pocked as a cooking pancake, and her mascara trickled
down the sides of her nose, silently staining her cheeks.
"Then stop it!" Daddy said.
Mommy turned back toward the window. Stephen could hear her
muted whimpering, and the tears welled up in his own eyes. Suddenly
Daddy stopped short again, and Stephen gagged, his mouth flooding
with saliva. "Daddy!"
"Stop it,
I
said," Daddy repeated, driving on, "before
I
really
give you something to cry about."
"Daddy!"
"What is it,
kleine?"
"Will you stop a second? I'm car-sick."
By the time they reached Asbury it was one o'clock. There
were seventy-five thousand people there looking at the liner and
Daddy had to park eleven blocks away from Sixth Avenue and the
Boardwalk, off which the
MOTTO
Castle
was grounded. Because
Stephen had been car-sick, Harriet thought he should have some
chicken broth, but no one else agreed, so they gulped down hot dogs
and pressed toward the Boardwalk. Daddy, running interference for
the family, had several verbal battles with strangers along the
way but managed by a combination of height and brawn, charm and
tyranny, to get within a quarter of a mile of the disabled vessel.
"There it is! There it is!" he shouted. "Will you look at that:
still smoking."
"Where? Where? I can't see!" Roggie and Stephen cried in
unison.
"Come on, fellow, up you go," Daddy said, hoisting Roggie onto
his shoulders.
"Tut! Tut! Tut!" Mommy clucked, seeing the wreck and strain–
ing to lift up Stephen by his waist.
"Higher, Mommy! Higher!" Stephen pleaded. "The man's hat's
in ..." But suddenly it was there: the gigantic, red-streaked hulk
swerving in the lively surf as if
it
were on a pivot, its broadside
parallel to shore but listing slightly toward the sea, its lifeboats
