Acre Under a Green Sky

Both Danny and Baby Ruth were asleep on the sofa in the waiting room when we entered the office. Liz was anxious to have my grandfather sign some papers so she could go home to her family. She told him that my mother had been calling every fifteen minutes. "Get Nora on the phone –– then you can leave," he told her.

My grandfather stood behind his desk with the phone squeezed between his ear and his shoulder the whole time he was signing papers. Liz was standing by to take each paper as he signed it.

"Yeah sure, they're all fine," he was saying into the phone, "I'll bring them home as soon as I finish some work here. –– He's not here right now. –– I don't know. He's out somewhere. –– Nora, I don't know!"

Liz whispered something.

"What?" my grandfather said, "Just hold on, Nora. What?"

"Tell her I fed the kids. I sent out."

"Liz says the kids have been fed. So everything's alright. –– I can't say. He'll tell you when he gets home, I guess. –– Where did you hear that? –– My God! Already! What did the radio say? –– That's just bilge, Nora. He fainted, that's all. He's okay. –– Josh will explain when he gets home. –– I can't say. Twenty minutes; half hour maybe; soon as I finish here."

And he hung up without saying, "Good-bye.".

"Why can't Liz drive us home now?" I said.

Liz gave me a dirty look, and my grandfather signed the last of the papers.

Once again I spoke up, "Dad doesn't have his car. How's he going to get home?"

Before I could say another word, my grandfather pointed a finger at me and said, "That's enough! Liz is not your chauffeur and your Dad can damn well find his own way home. Now, get outta here –– all of you."

Liz stuffed some envelopes and licked some stamps; then she put the mail in her large red purse and left us all there in the waiting room with barely a word. I think she was a little mad at me for suggesting that she drive us home.

Eons passed. I sat at Liz's desk playing the typewriter. I took Baby Ruth to the bathroom. I answered the telephone: "Wiley and Wiley" "Wiley and Wiley" "Wiley and Wiley" They were all for my father and he wasn't in. "Wiley and Wiley" I went downstairs and played with the combination lock on the large green safe. Its combination was written on an index card and taped under a drawer in my father's office. The drawer was always locked, but someday I would get it. Until that day, I had to content myself with playing safecracker. I listened for the fall of the tumblers, but I never heard a thing. I made up my mind that safecracking was just another fraud perpetrated by movie writers like tracing phone calls. You can't trace a phone call and no one ever heard tumblers fall. There probably isn't any such thing as tumblers. I went back upstairs to play some more typewriter.

The phone rang again.

"Wiley and Wiley."

"Put your granddad on. This is Joe Scarceletti."

"What's wrong?" I said.

"Just put your granddad on the phone, okay?"

"It's Joe Scarceletti," I called out to my grandfather.

He got on the line and told me to hang up. There was no fooling my grandfather when it came to eavesdropping on the phone. His hearing was uncanny for a man who claimed to be hard-of-hearing.

I was headed for his doorway to listen when he practically knocked me over coming out of his office.

"Come on. Get your brother and sister. We gotta get moving."

"What's wrong?" I said.

"Your father's making an ass of himself down at the Royal Grill."