Big Money by John Dos Passos

into a coma. Two days later she died.
    At the funeral, about halfway through the service, Charley felt the tears coming. He went out and locked himself in the toilet at the garage and sat down on the seat and cried like a child. When they came back from the cemetery he was in a black mood and wouldn’t let anybody speak to him. After supper, when he found Jim and Hedwig sit
ting at the diningroom table figuring out with pencil and paper how much it had cost them, he blew up and said he’d pay every damn cent of it and they wouldn’t have to worry about his staying around the goddam house either. He went out slamming the door after him and ran upstairs and threw himself on his bed. He lay there a long time in his uniform without undressing, staring at the ceiling and hearing mealy voices saying, deceased, bereavement, hereafter.
    The day after the funeral Emiscah called up. She said she was so sorry about his mother’s death and wouldn’t he come around to see her some evening? Before he knew what he was doing he’d said he’d come. He felt blue and lonely and he had to talk to somebody besides Jim and Hedwig. That evening he drove over to see her. She was alone. He didn’t like the cheap gimcracky look her apartment had. He took her out to the movies and she said did he remember the time they went to see
The Birth of a Nation
together. He said he didn’t, though he remembered all right. He could see that she wanted to start things up with him again.
    Driving back to her place she let her head drop on his shoulder. When he stopped the car in front of where she lived, he looked down and saw that she was crying. “Charley, won’t you give me a little kiss for old times?” she whispered. He kissed her. When she said would he come up, he stammered that he had to be home early. She kept saying, “Oh, come ahead. I won’t eat you, Charley,” and finally he went up with her though it was the last thing he’d intended to do.
    She made them cocoa on her gasburner and told him how unhappy she was, it was so tiring being on your feet all day behind the counter and the women who came to buy things were so mean to you, and the floorwalkers were always pinching your seat and expecting you to cuddlecooty with them in the fittingbooths. Some day she was going to turn on the gas. It made Charley feel bad having her talk like that and he had to pet her a little to make her stop crying. Then he got hot and had to make love to her. When he left he promised to call her up next week.
    Next morning he got a letter that she must have written right after he left saying that she’d never loved anybody but him. That night after supper he tried to write her that he didn’t want to marry anybody and least of all her; he couldn’t get it worded right, so he didn’t write at all. When she called up next day he said he was very busy and that
he’d have to go up into North Dakota to see about some property his mother had left. He didn’t like the way she said, “Of course I understand. I’ll call you up when you get back, dear.”
    Hedwig began to ask who that woman was who was calling him up all the time, and Jim said, “Look out for the women, Charley. If they think you’ve got anything they’ll hold onto you like a leech.” “Yessir,” said old man Vogel, “it’s not like ven you’re in the army yet and can say goodby, mein schatz, I’m off to the vars, now they can find out vere you live.” “You needn’t worry,” growled Charley. “I won’t stay put.”
    The day they went over to the lawyer’s office to read Ma’s will, Jim and Hedwig dressed up fit to kill. It made Charley sore to see them, Hedwig in a new black tailored dress with a little lace at the throat and Jim dressed up like an undertaker in the suit he’d bought for the funeral. The lawyer was a small elderly German Jew