Teddy by J. D. Salinger

I'LL EXQUISITE DAY you, buddy, if you don't get down off that bag this minute. And I
mean it," Mr. McArdle said. He was speaking from the inside twin bed--the bed farther
away from the porthole. Viciously, with more of a whimper than a sigh, he foot-pushed
his top sheet clear of his ankles, as though any kind of coverlet was suddenly too much
for his sunburned, debilitated-looking body to bear. He was lying supine, in just the
trousers of his pajamas, a lighted cigarette in his right hand. His head was propped up
just enough to rest uncomfortably, almost masochistically, against the very base of the
headboard. His pillow and ashtray were both on the floor, between his and Mrs.
McArdle's bed. Without raising his body, he reached out a nude, inflamed-pink, right
arm and flicked his ashes in the general direction of the night table. "October, for God's
sake," he said. "If this is October weather, gimme August." He turned his head to the
right again, toward Teddy, looking for trouble. "C'mon," he said. "What the hell do you
think I'm talking for? My health? Get down off there, please." Teddy was standing on
the broadside of a new looking cowhide Gladstone, the better to see out of his parents'
open porthole. He was wearing extremely dirty, white ankle-sneakers, no socks,
seersucker shorts that were both too long for him and at least a size too large in the
seat, an overly laundered T shirt that had a hole the size of a dime in the right
shoulder, and an incongruously handsome, black alligator belt. He needed a haircut--
especially at the nape of the neck--the worst way, as only a small boy with an almost
full-grown head and a reedlike neck can need one.
"Teddy, did you hear me?"
Teddy was not leaning out of the porthole quite so far or so precariously as small boys
are apt to lean out of open portholes--both his feet, in fact, were flat on the surface of
the Gladstone--but neither was he just conservatively well-tipped; his face was
considerably more outside than inside the cabin. Nonetheless, he was well within
hearing of his father's voice--his father's voice, that is, most singularly. Mr. McArdle
played leading roles on no fewer than three daytime radio serials when he was in New
York, and he had what might be called a third-class leading man's speaking voice:
narcissistically deep and resonant, functionally prepared at a moment's notice to
outmale anyone in the same room with it, if necessary even a small boy. When it was on
vacation from its professional chores, it fell, as a rule, alternately in love with sheer
volume and a theatrical brand of quietness-steadiness. Right now, volume was in order.
"Teddy. God damn it--did you hear me?"
Teddy turned around at the waist, without changing the vigilant position of his feet on
the Gladstone, and gave his father a look of inquiry, whole and pure. His eyes, which
were pale brown in color, and not at all large, were slightly crossed--the left eye more
than the right. They were not crossed enough to be disfiguring, or even to be necessarily
noticeable at first glance. They were crossed just enough to be mentioned, and only in
context with the fact that one might have thought long and seriously before wishing
them straighter, or deeper, or browner, or wider set. His face, just as it was, carried the
impact, however oblique and slow-travelling, of real beauty.
"I want you to get down off that bag, now. How many times do you want me to tell
you?" Mr. McArdle said.

"Stay exactly where you are, darling," said Mrs. McArdle, who evidently had a little
trouble with her sinuses early in the morning. Her eyes were open, but only just. "Don't
move the tiniest part of an inch." She was lying on her right side, her face, on the
pillow, turned left, toward Teddy and the porthole, her back to her husband. Her second
sheet was drawn tight over her very probably nude body, enclosing her, arms and all,
up to the chin. "Jump up and down," she said, and closed her eyes. "Crush Daddy's
bag."
"That's a Jesus-brilliant thing to say," Mr. McArdle said quietly-steadily, addressing
the back of his wife's head. "I pay twenty-two pounds for a bag, and I ask the boy civilly
not to stand on it, and you tell him to jump up and down on it. What's that supposed to
be? Funny?"