Slow Sculpture Read Online Free PDF Page A

when you go coeducational.” After that she didn’t put a stop to the picnics, either, which would have pleased him by permitting him to resent her. He found himself wishing she would ask again, but he knew she would not, not ever. And if he should ask her to come, and she should refuse … he could not bear the thought. Sometimes he thought the whole business of amusing the child was done to impress the mother; he had overheard Mary Haunt make a remark to Miss Schmidt once that intimated as much, and had furiously sworn off for all of sixhours, which was when Robin asked him where they would go next. As long as it was simple, a matter between him and the child, it required no excuses or explanations. As soon as he placed the matter in any matrix, he became confused and uncertain. He therefore avoided analyses, and asked himself admiringly and academically, little son of a gun, how did you do it? while he watched Robin’s animated conversation with the electric mixer.
    He rumpled Robin’s hair and went to the stove, where he picked up the coffeepot and swirled it. It was almost full, and he lit the gas under it.
    “Wha’ you do, Tonio? Make coffee?”
    “Yea bo.”
    “Okay,” said Robin, as if granting permission. “Boff doesn’t drink coffee, Tonio,” he confided. “Oh no.”
    “He doesn’t, hm?” O’Banion looked around and up. “Is Boff here?”
    “No,” said Robin. “He not here.”
    “Where’d he go? Out with the Bittelmans?”
    “Yis.” The coffeepot grumbled and Robin said, “
Hello
, Coffeepot.”
    Halvorsen came in and stood blindly in the doorway. O’Banion looked up and greeted him, then said under his breath, “My God!” and crossed the room. “You all right, Halvorsen?”
    Halvorsen directed blind eyes at the sound of his voice, and O’Banion could watch seeing enter them slowly, like the fade-in on a movie screen. “What?” His face was wet with the rain, fish-belly pale, and he stood slumping like a man with a weight on his back, raising his face to look up rather than lifting his head.
    “You’d better sit down,” said O’Banion. He told himself that this unwonted concern for the tribulations of a fellow-human was purely a selfish matter of not wanting to shovel the stunned creature up off the floor. Yet as Halvorsen turned toward the ell with its wooden chairs, O’Banion caught at the open front of Halvorsen’s coat. “Let me take this, it’s sopping.”
    “No,” said Halvorsen. “No.” But he let O’Banion take the coat; rather, he walked out of it, leaving O’Banion with it foolishly in his hands. O’Banion cast about him, then hung it up on the broom-hookand turned again to Halvorsen, who had just fallen heavily back into a chair.
    Again Halvorsen went through that slow transition from blindness to sight, from isolation to awareness. He made some difficult, internal effort and then said, “Supper ready?”
    “We roll our own,” said O’Banion. “Bitty and Sam are taking their once-a-month trip to the fleshpots.”
    “Fleshpots,” said Robin, without turning his head.
    Carefully controlling his face and his voice, O’Banion continued, “They said to raid the refrigerator, only hands off the leg o’ lamb, that’s for tomorrow.” Motioning toward Robin with his head, he added, “He doesn’t miss a trick,” and at last released a broad grin.
    Halvorsen said, “I’m not hungry.”
    “I’ve got some coffee going.”
    “Good.”
    O’Banion dropped a round asbestos mat on the table and went for the coffeepot. On the way back he got a cup and saucer. He put them on the table and sat down. Sugar was already there; spoons were in a tumbler, handles down, country-style. He poured and added sugar and stirred. He looked across at Halvorsen, and saw something on that reserved face that he had read about but had never seen before; the man’s lips were blue. Only then did it occur to him to get a cup for Halvorsen. He went for it, and remembered milk,