Probably to his uncle, whose affection he valued, he would wind up seeming ungrateful—and maybe that would even be sort of true. Ingratitude was something he had to guard against in himself. Though he was sure his classmates at school and his buddies in the service thought of him as easygoing and generous—his first sergeant used to sometimes call him Steppin’ Fetchit—he had been told he had a tendency to be selfish. Not that everybody didn’t have one, of course, but certain people had a way of exaggerating things all out of proportion, and he just didn’t feel like giving an ounce of support to a suspicion about him which it was actually unfair for anybody (particularly a person’s own father) to hold in the first place.
Moreover, what he had a real taste for, following the monotony and tedium of the preceding months, was adventure, and you couldn’t really expect that the Laundromatbusiness would be packed with thrills, or even particularly interesting, to be frank about it. As for the security angle, money really didn’t matter that much to him. He now had two thousand dollars in savings and separation pay, plus the G.I. Bill, and anyway he had no ambition to be a millionaire. That’s why, when his father told him that artists wind up living in garrets, Roy was able to say, “What’s so wrong with that? What do you think a garret is? It’s an attic. My own room used to be the attic, you know,” a fact Mr. Bassart couldn’t easily dispute.
What he had a taste for was adventure, something to test himself against, some way to discover just how much of an individual he really was. And if it wasn’t the life of an artist, maybe it was some kind of a job in a foreign country, where to the natives he would be a stranger to be judged only by what he did and said, and not by what they knew about him from before … But saying such things was often only another way of saying you wanted to be a child again. Aunt Irene made that point, and he was willing to admit to himself that she could be right. He was always willing to listen to what ideas his Aunt Irene had, because (1) she usually said what she had to say in private and wasn’t just talking to impress people (a tendency of Uncle Julian’s); (2) she didn’t butt in, or raise her voice, when you argued back or disagreed (his father’s courteous approach); and (3) she didn’t ever respond with sheer hysterics to some idea or other he had most likely thrown out just to hear how it sounded (as his mother had a habit of doing).
His mother and his Aunt Irene were sisters, but two people couldn’t have been more different in terms of calmness. For example, when he said that maybe what he ought to do was leave Liberty Center with a pack on his back and see what the rest of the country had to offer, before making any major choice he would later be stuck with, Aunt Irene registered some interest in the idea. All his mother could do was push the old panic button, as they used to say in the service. Instantly she started to tell him that he had just returned from two yearsaway (which of course he didn’t know), and to tell him that he ought to make up his mind to go to the state university (and use that intelligence of his “as God meant you to use it, Roy”) and then finally to accuse him of not listening to a word she said.
But he was listening, all right; even sunk down in that big chair, he took in all her objections, more or less. Those she had raised previously a hundred times or more he felt he had the right to tune out on, but he got the drift of her remarks, more or less. She wanted him to be a good little boy and do what he was told; she wanted him to be just like everybody else. And really, right there—in his mother’s words and tone—was reason enough for him to be out of town by nightfall. Maybe that’s what he ought to do, just shove off and not look back-once he had made up his mind what part of the country he ought to see first. There
Moreover, what he had a real taste for, following the monotony and tedium of the preceding months, was adventure, and you couldn’t really expect that the Laundromatbusiness would be packed with thrills, or even particularly interesting, to be frank about it. As for the security angle, money really didn’t matter that much to him. He now had two thousand dollars in savings and separation pay, plus the G.I. Bill, and anyway he had no ambition to be a millionaire. That’s why, when his father told him that artists wind up living in garrets, Roy was able to say, “What’s so wrong with that? What do you think a garret is? It’s an attic. My own room used to be the attic, you know,” a fact Mr. Bassart couldn’t easily dispute.
What he had a taste for was adventure, something to test himself against, some way to discover just how much of an individual he really was. And if it wasn’t the life of an artist, maybe it was some kind of a job in a foreign country, where to the natives he would be a stranger to be judged only by what he did and said, and not by what they knew about him from before … But saying such things was often only another way of saying you wanted to be a child again. Aunt Irene made that point, and he was willing to admit to himself that she could be right. He was always willing to listen to what ideas his Aunt Irene had, because (1) she usually said what she had to say in private and wasn’t just talking to impress people (a tendency of Uncle Julian’s); (2) she didn’t butt in, or raise her voice, when you argued back or disagreed (his father’s courteous approach); and (3) she didn’t ever respond with sheer hysterics to some idea or other he had most likely thrown out just to hear how it sounded (as his mother had a habit of doing).
His mother and his Aunt Irene were sisters, but two people couldn’t have been more different in terms of calmness. For example, when he said that maybe what he ought to do was leave Liberty Center with a pack on his back and see what the rest of the country had to offer, before making any major choice he would later be stuck with, Aunt Irene registered some interest in the idea. All his mother could do was push the old panic button, as they used to say in the service. Instantly she started to tell him that he had just returned from two yearsaway (which of course he didn’t know), and to tell him that he ought to make up his mind to go to the state university (and use that intelligence of his “as God meant you to use it, Roy”) and then finally to accuse him of not listening to a word she said.
But he was listening, all right; even sunk down in that big chair, he took in all her objections, more or less. Those she had raised previously a hundred times or more he felt he had the right to tune out on, but he got the drift of her remarks, more or less. She wanted him to be a good little boy and do what he was told; she wanted him to be just like everybody else. And really, right there—in his mother’s words and tone—was reason enough for him to be out of town by nightfall. Maybe that’s what he ought to do, just shove off and not look back-once he had made up his mind what part of the country he ought to see first. There
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