428
MAUREEN HOWARD
her passion - to breed and show real dogs. Despite her awkward
size Mimi handled the dogs gracefully, with an economy of move–
ment Jim had never quite attained even with his best shots on the
basketball court. She had a singleness of purpose, a dedication that
was pure and appealing. Jim found he could not belittle her to
his
mother or explain what seemed so right about his boss to Shelley
Waltz.
"What a sell-out," Shelley said, "smiling at those dead people
and that dyke."
"She's not," he said. "Mimi is something of a rebel."
Now Jim saw himself on the straight and narrow, going to
college. He must look at things honestly: his mother and father had
stood together this morning content and happy, like they never had
through all the years.
He
was going to college.
Their
dreams were
fulfilled. They had done everything in their power to defeat him:
moved him from school to school, each time the neighborhood
getting tougher and the teachers more like keepers patrolling the
aisles. They had sold themselves into captivity - his mother for a
gin bottle, his father for a stack of poker chips - and then overlaid
the whole picture with a trip to Sunday Mass. All of them pulled
together, washed and dressed as though this could absolve the sins
of the week. Ordinary sins that they had all settled into - moody
silence, dishonesty, private solace. At Mass and after when they
drove over to Brooklyn to visit relatives they looked like a family
instead of a bunch of small-time gangsters. This morning his brother
and sister, those two delinquents, presented themselves as normal
happy children-happy, happy, happy-that hollow word.
He
was going to college - the rest was a lie. Fordham because he could
live at home and save money and because he had listened to them
for years. Father this one and Father that one who had taught
his
old man - a splendid product
there
of Catholic education.
His
mother and father stood for nothing but the Sunday morning mock–
up, nothing more than muddling through. He was infected. Al–
ready he felt their dishonesty had seeped through him - insulting
an old lady on the street to set himself up, sucking up to fools with
fat purses, fussing over silly animals, making it (one more time, one
last time - already the lie was born) with a girl he did not love.
Jim Cogan worked hard during the afternoon. Taking
in
poodles from the front waiting room, following Mimi Devereux's
