People Who Knock on the Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

grandmother lived in Kansas City, Missouri, and had a school for ballet and ballroom dancing.
    “Love to see her again.—And I’ll sure miss you when you take off in September, Arthur.”
    Norma talked on, and Arthur’s mind drifted. If for some reason his father balked at paying his Columbia fees, his grandmother Joan would certainly put in a good word for him, even probably contribute to the cost, which would be about ten thousand five hundred for the first year. It would be more, but Arthur had a fifteen hundred dollar grant on the basis of his biology grades. His grandmother was indeed different from his father, and even from his mother. Arthur suddenly remembered a fact he seldom thought about: His mother’s family, the Waggoners, had not been pleased about her marriage to his father. The Waggoners were better off and had been against her marrying a young man with no money and whose prospects were vague. However, once they had married, his mother had once told Arthur, her family had accepted Richard and even come to like him and respect him, and Arthur could see this in his grandmother’s attitude.
    “Went over this evening to see Robbie,” Norma said. “Took him a Mad magazine, which seemed to please him. He looked well. Happier than usual—in the eyes. In bed, but so full of pep your mother had to tell him to shut up.—Another drop, Arthur?”
    “No thanks, Norma.” Arthur stood up. “I’ll be shoving off.” He smiled, waved a hand and departed.

4
    A rthur ran smack into his father in the front hall. His father, in pajamas and bathrobe, had evidently just come from the living room, where the only light in the house showed, and Arthur was so startled he almost fell back against the door.
    “You’re out late—for exam week,” said his father, who had stopped, hands in robe pockets, so that Arthur had to turn sideways to get past him in the hall.
    Arthur put on the kitchen light. “I hope you weren’t waiting up for me.” Arthur opened the fridge. “As if I were a girl.”
    “You’ve been drinking, too?”
    Arthur felt quite sober enough to hold his own. “Yes. I had a drink with Norma just now.”
    “And before that?”
    “Two beers, I think. Big evening.” Arthur poured a glass of milk to the rim and sipped without spilling a drop.
    “And you want to go to Columbia.”
    What was his father getting at now? That he wasn’t worthy, that he was having a good time, that he was silly?
    “Before Norma, you were out with your latest girlfriend, I gather.”
    “Latest? Since when do I have a harem?”
    “Fine time to be drunk,” said his father, nodding his big head. His straight brown hair was graying. Some strands of hair bobbed over his heavy, creased forehead.
    Arthur kept Maggie in his mind, her beautiful cool, and he faced his father with equanimity.
    “Nothing to say for yourself?”
    Arthur took a couple of seconds to answer. “No.” His father wore his sandal house-slippers with crossing leather straps, which Arthur knew his father didn’t like. A present from Arthur’s mother. Was his father wearing them now because they looked sort of biblical? Arthur repressed a smile, but saw that his father had noticed the start of it.
    “You’d better change your ways, Arthur. Or you can put yourself through college.” His father nodded, then relaxed a little, having fired his guns.
    Big news! Very hostile. “I don’t see what I’ve done to—”
    “In the time that you waste,” his father interrupted, “you could be doing something for your own good. Studying or working at a job to bring in a little money. That’s my point.”
    Arthur had supposed that that was his father’s point.
    “I shall speak to your mother about this.”
    About what? Arthur nodded, with a brisk but polite air, and watched his father enter the living room and put out the light. Then his father disappeared into the bedroom on the left in the hall.
    Arthur was awakened the next morning by a gentle rap at