Chapter 7
In Which Herb and Lorna Ignite the Flame of Passion
HERB’S UNCLE BEN met his train when Herb returned to Boston. Millie Piper couldn’t trust herself to meet her son in public. She was determined not to cry, absolutely determined, but she knew that she would cry, and she didn’t want to cry over him with everyone watching — if she was going to cry and make a fuss, and she was afraid that she was, she wanted to do it at home, where she could do it without embarrassing Herb.
And cry she did, but not at all as she had supposed she would. Silent tears began running down her cheeks when she heard Herb’s rapid footsteps on the stairs. Herb meant to keep her from crying. He intended to burst into the room and fill it with noise, fling his cap against the wall, pick Millie up, and whirl her around the room, but when he opened the door and saw her there, he couldn’t even say hello. All he could do was clear his throat. His hands and feet seemed suddenly so much heavier than normal, like the puffed and clumsy hands and feet we sometimes find attached to us in dreams. He couldn’t move. Millie had imagined herself running to him the moment he opened the door, but her feet seemed to have undergone the same nightmarish transformation, and for a minute she couldn’t move, either. They stood across the room from each other without moving or speaking. Herb began to sniffle. He held his arms out to Millie and began shuffling toward her. She held her arms out and began shuffling toward him. Slumped in his chair in the corner, Lester Piper watched. There wasn’t a sound in the room but Millie and Herb’s sniffling and the shuffling of their feet. Lester felt something unfamiliar. He had a sudden awareness of his chair, the presence of it behind his back, under him, the worn spots on the arms, the burnished, darkened cork in the places where he rested his hands. He seemed to be able to feel every tiny fissure in the cork, to feel the floor through his shoes. He seemed to be able to taste the air he breathed, to hear the crunch of individual grains of grit beneath the shoes of Herb and Millie as they shuffled toward each other. What was this odd sensation? It was — it was — joy.
“Herb!” he shouted. He leaped up from his chair. “Herb!” He swept Millie off her feet and carried her in one arm to Herb, where he crushed them together and began whirling them around the room, crying, “What a wonderful day, a wonderful day!”
Ben appeared in the doorway, red-faced and sweating. “All right, all right, all right,” he said. “He’s home. You’re out of your chair. It’s a wonderful day, but I’m holding the bags, remember? How about a hand?”
Millie sat Herb at the table and made him eat. While he ate, she stood behind him with both hands on his shoulders, crying as quietly as she could manage, her tears running down her cheeks.
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🎧 281: Herb’s Uncle Ben . . .