Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow [80]
An interesting note is that this poor fellow, Charles Victor Faust, was actually called upon to pitch one inning in a game toward the end of this same season when the Giants had already won the pennant and were in a carefree mood. For a moment his delusion that he was a big-leaguer fused with reality. Soon thereafter the players became bored with him and he was no longer regarded as a good luck charm by Manager McGraw. His uniform was confiscated and he was unceremoniously sent on his way. He was remanded to an insane asylum and some months later died there.
31
At the end of the ball game a great anxiety came over Father. He felt it had been stupid to leave his wife alone. But as they left the park borne by the streaming crowd he realized his son had taken his hand. He felt an uplift of his spirit. On the open trolley he put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. Arriving in New Rochelle they walked briskly from the train station and when they came in the door they gave a loud hello! and for the first time in days Father felt like himself. Mother appeared from the back of the house. Her hair was bound, she was groomed and smiling and neat. She embraced him and said Look, I have something to show you. Her face was radiant. She stepped aside and walking down the hall, holding the hand of the housemaid, was Sarah’s child in his nightshirt. He tottered and swung against her skirt, righted himself and looked at Father in triumph. Everyone laughed. We can’t hold him, Mother said. He wants to walk everywhere.
The boy knelt and held out his arms and the child shook his hand free of the housemaid and lurched toward him, picking up speed as he went, outracing his instability and falling happily against the boy’s chest.
A kind of resolute serenity carried them through the evening. In the quiet of Mother’s room toward midnight she and Father discussed everything on their minds. The chances were that Coalhouse would continue for some time to elude capture. In that case they foresaw a community from which they would be increasingly alienated. Already a few of Mother’s acquaintances from her service league had reacted to the publicity given the family. She dreaded actions of spite and bitterness in which Sarah’s baby would be taken away under protection of a vengeful authority. Father could not deny that might happen. But they were in this moment so calmly in possession of themselves that there was no need for false assurances or for either of them to dissemble an optimism not truly felt. Father said he would not put it past the authorities to decide to use the child in some way to persuade Coalhouse to surrender. What we have to do, Father said, is get away. But how can we, Mother said. My father is invalided, school is not yet out, we have just taken on the responsibilities of a household staff. Each of these problems she enumerated with her right index finger tolling the fingers of her left hand. So she had been thinking the same thing and Father now perceived that she awaited his solutions in good faith. He told her to leave everything to him. His assumption of responsibility produced in her warm feelings of gratitude. Their conversation reminding them that they were after all friends of long standing, they went to bed and spent the night together. She let him make love to her, responding with such cooperative huggings and movements of her hips, and with so many caresses of encouragement to represent her best wishes to have him succeed in his efforts, that he felt for the first time in many months she appreciated she had a good man in her arms.
The answer to everything seemed to be Atlantic City. Father located a fine hotel there, the Breakers, which had available a suite of rooms facing the ocean for something less than would be expected, the season having barely begun. The South Jersey shore was easy to reach, a few