The Laughing Matter Read Online Free PDF Page B

watch. She saw the engineer help the children into the front seat, to sit there beside him, and she saw her husband get in the back. When they were gone she wept bitterly, wandering around the house, straightening things out.
    She had heard her husband on the telephone speaking to Warren Walz, and she knew that by six o’clock she’d have to gather herself together, but what was she to do?

Chapter 9
    â€œHe’s just like his brother,” Warren Walz said to his wife. “Not a word about last night. No concern at all about what we might have put ourselves through trying to be helpful. Not even the decency to ask if we’d
like
to come to dinner. An order. Come to dinner. Come at six. Bring the girls. We’ll have a drink. Just like that.”
    â€œIt couldn’t have been something ordinary,” May Walz said. “She couldn’t have been that rude if it had been something ordinary. She slammed the door in my face.”
    â€œI went all over Clovis looking for him,” the man said.“Into every place that was open. The bars, the park, the poolroom, Susie’s.”
    â€œSusie’s?” the woman said. “You didn’t tell me.”
    â€œI was too busy trying to get you calmed down,” the man said. “You
were
frightened.”
    â€œI was
sure
she’d come and open the door,” the woman said. “Other people fight and still manage to be polite. After all, they
had
asked us over. You weren’t too busy to tell me everything else. What’s it like?”
    â€œMessy.”
    â€œWas anyone there?”
    â€œTwo Mexican boys and an old man.”
    â€œWho was
he?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œI mean, it won’t get around that you went there, will it?”
    â€œIt never occurred to me.”
    â€œA thing like that could be an awful nuisance,” the woman said. “This isn’t a big town like Fresno, or a city like San Francisco, where such things go unnoticed. Dade doesn’t go to San Francisco to visit the
museums
, does he?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œHe goes for a week or so every couple of months, doesn’t he?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHe never has to do with anybody we know here.”
    â€œI don’t know anything about Dade,” the man said. “What’s more, I don’t want to. It’s none of my business why he goes to San Francisco. I don’t like his brother any more than I like him. I’ll phone and say we can’t make it.”
    â€œWe’ve
got
to go.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œTo let them save face, at least,” the woman said. “After all, if they’ve got no manners, we have.”
    â€œBoth of them make me feel uncomfortable,” the man said.
“Inferior
, even. I don’t want to go.”
    â€œWe’ve got to go,” the woman said.
    â€œYou want to find out what the trouble was,” the man said. “I don’t
care
what it was. What could it have been? He’s crazy, like his brother. They had a fight, and he went off. He came back, and it was all over. I don’t want to go. I don’t like being
told
to come to dinner.”
    â€œI’m sure he meant to be as polite as possible under the circumstances,” the woman said. “I’m sure he gave you credit for knowing he
was
ashamed. I’m sure he believed you’d understand his need to make the invitation as short as possible. After all, he
did
remember to call. That alone shows that he’s not insensitive to our having been involved. He called early. It would be rude not to be there, all of us, at six.”
    â€œI don’t like him,” the man said.
    â€œEven so,” the woman said. “I think we’ve manners enough to go as if nothing had happened. Their kids are lovely and get along with ours so well.
They’ll
have fun, at any rate.”
    â€œI don’t like the idea of going,