• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

"Without forgiving me," said Murra.

"Never," said the boy. "I’m sorry—that’s one thing I’ll never do." He nodded. "Whenever you’re ready to go, Father," he said, "I’ll be waiting in the car."

And he walked out of the house.

Murra sat down in a chair with his head in his hands. "What do I do now?" he said. "Maybe this is the punishment I deserve. I guess what I do is just grit my teeth and take it."

"I can only think of one other thing," I said.

"What’s that?" he said.

"Kick him in the pants," I said.

So that’s what Murra did.

He went out to the car, looking all gloomy and blue.

He told John something, was wrong with the front seat, and he made John get out so he could fix it.

Then Murra let the boy have it in the seat of the pants with the side of his foot. I don’t think there was any pain connected with it, but it did have a certain amount of loft.

The boy did a kind of polka downhill, toward the shrubbery where his father and I had been looking for thistles the night before. When he got himself stopped and turned around, he was certainly one surprised-looking boy.

"John," Murra said to him, "I’m sorry I did that, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do."

For once, the boy didn’t have a snappy come-back.

"I have made many serious mistakes in my life," said Murra, "but I don’t think that was one of them. I love you, and I love your mother, and I think I’ll go on kicking you until you can find it in your heart to give me another chance."

The boy still couldn’t think of anything to say, but I could tell he wasn’t interested in being kicked again.

"Now you come back in the house," said Murra, "and we’ll talk this thing over like civilized human beings."

When they’ got back in the house, Murra got the boy to call up his mother in Los Angeles.

"You tell her we’re having a nice time, and I’ve been terribly unhappy, and I am through with Gloria Hilton, and I want her to take me back on any terms whatsoever," said Murra.

The boy told his mother, and she cried, and the boy cried, and Murra cried, and I cried.

And then Murra’s first wife told him he could come back home any time he wanted to. And that was that.

The way we settled the bathtub enclosure door thing was that I took Murra’s door and he took mine. Actually, I was trading a twenty-two-dollar door for a forty-eight-dollar door, not counting the picture of Gloria Hilton.

My wife was out when I got home. I hung the new door. My own boy came up and watched me. He was red-nosed about something.

"Where’s your mother?" I said to him.

"She went out," he said.

"When’s she due back?" I said.

"She said maybe she’d never come back," said the boy.

I was sick, but I didn’t let the boy know it. "That’s one of her jokes," I said. "She says that all the time."

"I never heard her say it before," he said.

I was really scared when suppertime rolled around, and I still didn’t have a wife. I tried to be brave. I got supper for the boy and me, and I said, "Well, I guess she’s been delayed somewhere."

"Father—" said the boy.

"What?" I said.

"What did you do to Mother last night?" he said. He took a very high and mighty tone.

"Mind your own business," I said, "or you’re liable to get a swift kick in the pants."

That calmed him right down.

My wife came home at nine o’clock, thank God.

She was cheerful. She said she’d had a swell time just being alone—chopping alone, eating in a restaurant alone, going to a movie alone.

She gave me a kiss, and she went upstairs.

I heard the shower running, and I all of a sudden remembered the picture of Gloria Hilton on the bathtub enclosure door.

"Oh my Lord!" I said. I ran up the stairs to tell her what the picture was doing on the door, to tell her I would have it sandblasted off first thing in the morning.

I went into the bathroom.

My wife was standing up, taking a shower.

She was just the same height as Gloria Hilton, so the picture on the door made kind of a mask for her.

There was my wife’s body with the head of Gloria Hilton on it.

My wife wasn’t sore. She