The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [259]
the kitchen heat of old days, sitting with my mother. On the dresser all my postcards from Mexico were set out, and there were photos of Simon and Charlotte also. To show the seeing people who came. But besides the supervisor and his wife, who hated Simon, who did come? Only once in a while Anna Coblin. Or Simon himself. He'd come in, see how fixed up she was in her bourgeois parlor, and be satisfied. She too realized that she was being treated in a satisfactory way. On her wrist was a silver bracelet, she wore high heels, she had a radio with a big chromium zigzag across the speaker. In fact when Grandma Lausch had put on her black Od&ssa best in the Nelson Home she was laying claim feebly to the style Mama here was living in. That was how the Lausch brothers had let the old lady down, failing to appreciate legitimacy and without any sense of standards. Yet it wasn't a light duty for Mama that she had to live up to what Simon and Charlotte were doing for her. Simon was if anything even more difficult than Charlotte, I gathered. He was very fussy. He opened her closet and inspected all her clothes to see if they were cleaned or if any were missing from the rack. I knew how Simon could be when he was doing something for your good and welfare; he could make things hot. But maybe that spicy, sumptuous fish-gravy odor that belonged to the past made me too much of a critic of the present moment, exaggerating Mama's difficulties and imagining that the Gulistan and the drapes were the softenings of a cage. A blind woman, growing elderly, she had to live in a room, some room, and therefore why not a comfortable room? Moreover, it was perhaps my fault that I saw both Georgie and Mama as prisoners, and was unhappy that I was tooting freely around while they were confined. "Augie, go see him," she said. "Don't be mad on Simon. I told him he shouldn't be." "I will, Ma, as soon as I find a room and begin to settle down." "What are you going to do?" she said. "Oh--something. I hope something interesting." "What? Do you make a living, Augie?" "Well, here I am. What do you mean, Ma? I am living." "Why are you so skinny? But the clothes are good--I felt the material." They ought to have been good. Thea had paid a fancy price for them. "Augie, don't wait too long to call Simon. He wants you to. He told me I should tell you. He talks about you all the time." Simon did want to see me. As soon as he heard my voice over the phone he said, "Augie! Where are you? Stay put. I'll come and pick you up right away." I was calling from a booth near my new place, which wasn't far from the old, on the South Side. He lived in the vicinity and was there within a few minutes in his black Cadillac, this beautiful enamel shell coming so softly to the curb, inside like jewelry. He beckoned and I got in. "I have to go right back," he said. "I left without a shirt; I just put on this coat and hat. Well, let's look at you." He said this, but actually didn't much look, despite his rush to get down. Of course he was driving, but just the touch of manicured hands on the valuable stones on the wheel--something like jade--did the trick. The thing pretty well ran itself. I thought he was sorry about the fight we had had over Lucy and Mimi. I wasn't angry any more but was looking ahead. Simon was heftier than before. The light raglan with its chestnut buttons came open on his hard bare belly. Also his face was larger, and rude, autocratic. The fat of it was not clear, as it is in some faces. Mrs. Klein, Jimmy's mother, had had a fat face, almost oriental, but there the fat illuminated something. However, I found out that I couldn't be critical of Simon when I saw him after a long interval. No matter what he had done or what he was up to now, the instant I saw him I loved him again. I couldn't help it. It came over me. I wanted to be brothers again. And why did he come running for me if he didn't want the same? Well, now he wanted to know how rugged things had been for me, and I didn't have any intention of telling him. What was I up to in Mexico? "I was in love with a