Harold Matejowsky had no memories of a feminine influence, other than vague recollections of a soft pinkness enveloping his beginnings. His mother had died shortly after his birth and the pastel widow Gresham had immediately established herself in the Matejowsky household as a more-than-willing substitute.
Mrs. Gresham had set her cap for Harold's daddy right after his wife's funeral and had taken over the nursemaiding of young Harold ostensibly out of a thwarted love for children. (She had none.) In actuality, Mrs. Gresham's maternal fervor was designed to ensnare Harold's daddy in matrimony. Mr. Matejowsky, however, was impervious to her subtle innuendoes and, at the same time, knew he was dependent upon her as long as Harold was an infant, so Mrs. Gresham vacillated between discouragement and adrenaline flushings of hope. And there was enough hope rampant in Mrs. Gresham's fantasies to keep her around for nearly six years.
Harold remembered the day Mrs. Gresham left, more clearly than he remembered any of the previous years. Her tears were profuse, possessive, and in vain. She disappeared behind a slamming car door and after the noise of the bronchial exhaust no longer echoed, Harold's daddy looked down at Harold with an appraising eye. He was relieved at the thought of no longer having to pay an interfering female to help care for his small son.
Harold's first regular duty in the feed store was to sweep the wooden floor and the outside stoop every morning at six o'clock. At first, the long broom handle was too awkward for him but under the stern tutoring of his daddy, he learned to keep his tiny fists closer together and to take shorter strokes. Harold was obedient, quiet, and he learned quickly. He copied his daddy's every motion, even perching on a high stool behind the cash register and counting out imaginary change. His posturings and mimicry were a source of uncomfortable amusement for the customers, but Harold's daddy never seemed to notice. Nor did he ever compliment Harold on any chore, no matter how meticulously Harold had executed it. Nothing was every quite good enough for Harold's daddy.
By the time Harold entered high school, there had been a few occasions when he had dared to disagree with his daddy about one thing or another. Each time, his daddy flared with resentment and fury, taking at least a week to get over Harold's insubordination. Harold hated the silence of his daddy's sulks so much he tried not to antagonize him very often. As the years went by, Harold disagreed less and less with his daddy and, by the time he graduated, he had become his daddy's twin, his mute shadow. The shoppers were awed by the uncanny resemblance between father and son.
One February morning, Harold awoke at the customary hour of five o'clock and immediately sensed something awry. He sat up on the edge of the sway-backed mattress and stared, logy with sleep, at his white feet. The cold wooden floor burned like dry ice against his soles, but he remained motionless, his overgrown hands curved limply over the edge of the rumpled bed. He had never owned any slippers always pulling on his heavy socks instead. This particular morning however, something alien seemed to pulse in the darkness. He waited patiently for his mind to pinpoint the reason for the strangeness.
One of his legs shivered convulsively, enlarging an old rip in his twisted nightshirt, and he felt the awful cold creep up his legs and arms, like an invisible sheath of freezing fire. Fire. That was the strangeness. His daddy had not yet stoked the furnace in the basement. There were no popping, creaking sounds of an old house warming up. There were no sounds at all.
Harold began to dress himself with no more haste than any other day. He wondered what particular chore he had forgotten the night before that would cause his daddy to change his morning routine. Harold's daddy never failed to rise at four, start the furnace, light the stove, steep the tea and boil the porridge. Sometimes Harold's daddy fried a few pieces of fatback, but not often. He said it was too costly.
As he hurried downstairs, Harold's stomach growled and he hoped his daddy wouldn't hear it. He was not allowed to show greed.
Harold pushed open the swinging door at the foot of the stairs, flicked on the light, and stared in disbelief at the empty kitchen. Everything was just as they had left it the night before. Even the smell of the hash they had eaten still hung over the bareness of the white wooden table.
Letting the door swing itself to a standstill, Harold pulled two wooden matches from the holder above the stove and lit the oven, then the two back burners. The odor of the gas flames made the kitchen seem warmer immediately and Harold moved briskly about, filling the teakettle and the pot for the porridge with water from the faucet over the sink. He kept looking over his shoulder at the door to the stairs as he placed both containers on the stove to heat.
