The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell Read Free Book Online Page A

of juniper. When alcohol, juniper drops, and glycerin had been added to the distilled water, in proper proportion, Mr. Peters took the bottle in his hands and shook it vigorously up and down, from side to side in wide sweeping arcs. After a time his arms grew tired and he called Lymie, who came and took turns swinging the demijohn.
    To Lymie the word
party
had once meant birthday presents wrapped in white tissue paper, ice cream in the shape of a dove or an Easter lily, and games like London Bridge and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Now it meant a telephone call from the corner cigar store and the shades drawn to the window sills. The women who came to see his father had bobbed hair that more often than not was hennaed, they smoked cigarettes, their voices were raucous and hard, and their dresses kept coming up over their knees.
    If he walked into the living room they usually made a fuss over him, and asked him to come and sit beside them on the sofa. Sometimes they straightened his necktie and slicked his hair down and asked him how many girls he had and if he knew why the chicken crossed the road. He did, actually, but he pretended that he didn’t. No matter what he said, they always burst out laughing, and apparently it was about something which wasn’t exactly the thing they were talking about, some joke that Lymie wasn’t old enough to understand. He didn’t stay long. He didn’t want to, particularly, and he waited for his father to give him that look which meant it would be a good idea if Lymie said good night and went back to his own room.
    Tonight, when the doorbell rang, Lymie raised his head and listened. He was prepared for what was coming. It had happened many times before. But nevertheless the expression on his thin pointed face was of anxiety. He heard his father’s footsteps in the front hall. Mr. Peters was pressing the buzzer that released the vestibule door. A moment after he turned the double lock, a voice broke out on the stairs, a woman’s voice, and when she reached the landing, Mr. Peters joined in, both of them talking loudly.
    “Whee I’m out of breath. Lymon, the next apartment you move into better be on the second floor before I develop heart trouble from climbing the stairs.”
    “You’re getting fat, that’s all that’s the matter with you.”
    “I’m not either getting fat … Why do you say things like that?”
    “What’s this right here … feel it?”
    “Don’t be silly, that’s just my …”
    Lymie got up noiselessly and closed the door of his room. It made very little difference. The woman’s voice would havepenetrated through stone. For a while after he had undressed and got into bed, he lay curled on his right side, listening. Then he began to think about the house where he was born. It was a two-story Victorian house with a mansard roof and trellises with vines growing up them—a wistaria and a trumpet vine. The house was set back from the street and there was an iron fence around the front yard, and in one place a picket was missing. As a child he seldom went through the front gate, unless he was with some grown person. Bending down to go through the hole in the fence gave him a sense of coming to a safe and secret place.
    The odd thing was that now, when he went back to the house in his mind, and tried to walk through it, he made mistakes. It was sometimes necessary for him to rearrange rooms and place furniture exactly before he could remember the house the way it used to be.
    The house had a porch running along two sides of it, and the roof sloped down so that it included the second story. The front door opened into a hall, with the stairs going up, and then the door to the library, the door to the living room. Beyond the living room was the dining room, and beyond the dining room was the kitchen. The stairs turned at the landing, and upstairs there was another hall. The door to his room, the door to the guest room, the door to his mother and father’s room, and