Morris said, “Excuse me?” but the others didn’t react, having heard this story before.
“The summer after he graduated from high school, I’m talking about,” Robin told Morris. “Before he started college. He wanted to volunteer with this theater group, downtown theater group, but I told him he should get a paying job. That college wasn’t cheap! And it’s true we could swing the tuition fees, on account of some money Mercy’s dad had left her, but I’m talking about the principle of the thing. You know? I mean, larking about with this theater bunch like some rich kid, then heading to college in the fall all expenses paid and not a care in the world. I said, ‘No, sir. No, you’re going to have to do something this summer to pull your own weight,’ I said. ‘Take on some kind of work that at least will foot your incidentals.’ And I still believe I was right about that. How else was he going to learn, I ask you. How else would he ever learn how the actual world operates?”
“Good point,” Morris said.
“So I got him a job with this friend of mine who was a plumber. A real job, that is, wrestling pipes and digging ditches, serving his time like ordinary folk. And he did do it; he did go through with it. But acting put-upon the whole while. Wouldn’t say two words to me; wouldn’t answer my questions. ‘So how was your day?’ I’d ask, and he’d say, ‘How do you think it was?’？”
“How did you think it was?” Mercy asked. She was sitting in the rocking chair across the room; she rocked forward so sharply that her cup clinked in its saucer. “What did you expect him to say?”
“Then come September,” Robin went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “he left for college. Stayed away till Christmas, and then again till spring break. Around spring break I said, ‘What’re your plans when school is out, son?’ and he said, ‘Well, I’m not about to sign up for another summer of the plumber, that’s for sure.’ And after his exams he just stayed on in Islington, did something with a playhouse there, and never once came down to visit before sophomore year began. Never came again, in fact, for any more than a couple days.”
“Now, that’s not true,” Mercy said. “He came longer than that for Christmas vacations! Christmas vacations he would come for a whole week or so.”
Robin merely raised his eyebrows at Morris, as if she had proven his point.
“Well,” Morris said, “but it’s true that different folks are cut out for different jobs.”
“You think Paul Dee loved snaking drains?” Robin asked.
“Who?”
“The guy I sent him to work for? You think he craved to go to some stranger’s basement and wade through their backed-up sewage?”
“Well, but, clerking in a bookstore, maybe—”
“Paul Dee? I’m not even sure he could read.”
This made the others laugh, but Morris pressed on doggedly. “David, I meant,” he told Robin. “David could have found some job that was more compatible, maybe. Different types of people favor different types of work, is all I’m saying.”
“Huh.”
“Like this one guy I went to high school with,” Morris said, “he ended up trimming trees for a living. Forty feet high in every kind of weather, sprinting from branch to branch. I said one time, I said, ‘Richie, how can you stand doing that?’ and he said, ‘Are you kidding? I’m outdoors all day!’ he said. ‘I’m not slaving away in some office, or sweet-talking some asshole looking to buy a house. How can you stand it?’ he asks.”
“But the thing I was trying to teach David,” Robin said, “is sometimes a man has to set his teeth and do what he has to do. Never mind if it’s not ‘compatible,’ so-called. Never mind what ‘type’ he is. He just has to go against his type, and make up his mind to get on with it.”
“I see,” Morris said.
“Did I do wrong? Are you thinking I did wrong?”
It was the whole room, now, that he seemed to be asking, but Morris was the one who answered. “No, no. I understand,” he said gently. And none of the others said anything at all.
* * *
—
“I don’t blame David’s plumbing job,” Alice told Lily that evening on the phone. “I mean, look at how he worded it: ‘summer of the plumber.’ Kind of joking. Kind of flip. I know he hated the job—who wouldn’t?—but he survived it. You can stand anything for three months. No, I blame Mom. I blame her moving out.”