Bereavements

by Richard Lortz

  “. . . I must add that this dream is now being realized; I write every night, without fail, and am well into my first novel. I don’t know how many words so far, but I have completed 151 pages in long-hand on legal-size, yellow ruled paper. I remind myself of Henry James, or Proust, in style, but this may be temporary. I do suppose all novice writers are imitative in style, following in the footsteps of those they so greatly admire.

  “In addition to my writing, I have, as I mentioned, a daytime job, providing bread-and-butter living, fortunately close enough to the novelist’s world to be stimulating. I am a mail clerk.for a large publishing house—McGraw-Hill to be exact. Perhaps you have heard of it. It is one of the largest in the world, I believe, though their fiction list, I must say, is small and ultra-conservative.

  “In any event, I am there and have endless opportunities to handle books, although, alas, most of them are of a highly technical, scientific or other esoteric nature. Still—they are books: beautiful and weighted in my hand; I may touch them, stroke them, inhale the heady aroma of printer’s ink and bindery glue! All of which must sound like a fetish, but it is not. It is genuine love—a love I have had all my life, the one love I know could never betray, mock or abandon me.

  “But I must conclude!—else go on all night.

  “Dear lady, through intuition or loneliness, if you find in what I have written any clue to me—my character, my capacity for friendship, my deep sympathy for you in your intolerable loss and bereavement, my empathy (since my own loss was similar if not the same) then let us, by all means, spin the mysterious wheel of fate and make our lives cross. Please write. Please. Tell me I may meet you. Do you remember Blake from your high school or college days? I recall one of his Proverbs of Hell in particular: “Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.”

  “With this wisdom providing strength, I know I shall find the final courage to go out and mail to you what is essentially my heart.

  “That done, I shall be—

  “Waiting . . .”

  Mrs. Evans could not read the signature momentarily, her eyes too filled with tears. This boy, this “writer’s” absurd prose—pretentious, florid, some of it brilliant for an eighteen-year-old, and utterly sincere, aching with loneliness, had touched her so painfully that she wept—or, as perhaps he might have said it in his unlikely James-Proustian prose, “wept copiously.” Along with her pain, however, she was aware of the pleasure and drama of weeping as drop after drop crept slowly to her chin, gathered, trembled, and fell to the paper below.

  What, what was his name?—and she brushed impatiently at the tears under her eyeglasses, finally making out: Bruno David Carlson-Wade (goodness! almost as complicated as her own) in a large, wavering, hairline script, followed by his address. No telephone. Probably his means could not provide one.

  Bruno.

  Bruno David Carlson-Wade.

  Possibly she could have resisted the letter, everything he had written, including the “wax” that grew too long, together with the “metal maw,” but one word was devastating, as exquisite, almost, as “fine me.”

  That word: “Waiting . . .”

  The final letter, a patch of whiteness glowing on the desk was, in its way, perhaps the strangest of all: virtually a telegram!—so brief, succinct.

  It was from a “young actor” who extended his “profound sympathy,” revealing that he had in his own grief some years ago after his mother’s death made a suicide attempt. He was certain he could “ease the burden” of her “‘son’s’ loss.” The quotes around “son” suggested something quite as unpleasant as Mr. Passannante’s implication. In any event, she was informed that the young man was “with a show” out of town that was closing in a few days and that after he had returned to Manhattan he would, chez vous (no less) come by and see her. He named the day and time! Tuesday, October 15th at 4 P.M. And it was signed, with considerable vigor, Martin Dzierlatka.

  No return address on letter or envelope; only, astonishingly (what turned out to be) a three-by-five photograph torn roughly into eight pieces! She stared at the puzzle, then, unable to resist, carefully fitted it together like the jigsaw it was.

  What she saw was a beautiful young man; no other word would do: dark-haired, brilliant-eyed, strong-jawed, masculine, half-smiling: expending—if she was any judge at all—an aura of frankness, warmth, and generosity.

  But, as her mother used to say of any eccentric neighbor: “he’s one of the mad ones all right,” quite believing that a cabala, a secret society of functional psychotics truly existed, charter and all.

  If handsome Martin—what was it now?—Dzierlatka (Russian? Polish?) was to chez vous anyone, he’d be taking tea with Box 89 at the Village station post office come October 15th at four.

  She looked a final fatal look at his beautiful face, a glory of a young man if there ever was one, considerably older than Jamie, much different, and one of the maddest of the “mad ones” to be sure, before he joined Messrs. Fabrizzi and Passannante on the floor, his letter as much a jigsaw as his photograph.

  Only MEMOREX 60 remained.

  She listened the following afternoon, to just a few minutes of it, before tossing it away.

  It was nothing more than an elaborate expression of sympathy and a bid for reciprocity from a woman, no less, who tearfully confessed that she had lost, not a son but, a beloved father from a series of small strokes over a period of fourteen bed-confined years. For that reason (the death) she equated in sisterhood her deprivation and suffering with all those who had also sustained a loss.

  The woman, shrill and breathless, was clearly a compulsive talker seeking to embrace the fullest range and expression of her neurosis via cassette tape decks addressed to the recently bereaved whom she found, no doubt, in obituary columns and sundry reports concerning fatal accidents and deaths in local newspapers.

  So.

  Two only.

  Bruno David Carlson-Wade.

  And sweet Angel, about whom her fantasies were particularly hopeful and bizarre.

  But there would also be, to her staggered surprise, Martin Dzierlatka; actor, ex-suicide, two weeks hence, quite at his self-appointed day and hour chez vous; more accurately, since she was to find him seated comfortably in the morning room, having been already ushered in by her blushing Rose—chez moi.

  She had to dial three times and begin again before her finger found the right numbers. The voice that answered wasn’t a boy’s; it was a man’s

  “Yeah?” after a rattle of mucus.

  “I’m—” she murmured. “That is—”

  “Who is this?”—the strong voice bristling with suspicion.

  Who indeed? At the moment the ubiquitous “breather.” Or why not the “obscene caller?”

  “Is Angel there?”

  There were noises: a party, or TV in the background. It was TV: a sports event. She recognized the peculiar rhythm of the announcer’s reporting, a roar from the crowd.

  “He ain’t here. Who is this, anyway?” Are you one of his teachers?”

  Thank God for that!

  “You might say I am,” since he already had. But why leave it there? “Yes.”

  “Was he in school today?” Excited, impetuous. “Then y’saw his black eye, that cut on his head!” Quick, angry now. “He blamed it on me, din’ he! Listen—Miss—what is it now?”

  “Evans.” It came out instantly, thoughtlessly.

  “Evans—right. He tol’ me about you. Yeah. He mentions you a lot. But listen—that kid lies. You gotta know that by now. You his teacher. That Angel ain’t no angel.” Brief laughter, like an exclamation point; then, more slowly, his voice mellowed, slightly intimate: “What happens—he’s in a street fight. Secon’ this month . . .”

  It was time to stop the man, to imply a different reason for her “teacher’s” call, but there seemed no way to do so without knowing and using his name.

  He went on—

  “Them dumb mothers are fightin’
with glass now. They wire a piece on the end of a stick. Beats the shit outta you, don’ it? But hey! He’s back.” Whispering. “I sent him for a six-pack.”

  The man must have put his palm over the phone; then moments later loosened his grip. She heard faintly: “Put down that change. Now get over here and set her straight. You tell her I don’ lay no fuckin’ finger on you—ever. I’m one father loves his goddamn son, loves him, and you know it.”

  The wait seemed minutes long and she pictured the boy half a room away, staring puzzled at the phone in his father’s hand.

  “Who? Who is it?”

  “Your teacher, stupid! Miss Evans.”

  “Miss Evans?”

  Muffled, barely heard: “Yeah! Yeah! What the fuck s’a matter with you? Here! An’ tell her the truth f’a change, like I said.”

  She heard the boy breathing.

  “Hello?”

  “Angel?”—needlessly.

  “Yes?”

  “Listen carefully. Don’t speak for a moment. Your father thinks I’m your teacher, but I’m the . . . the . . .” Where were the words, any at all that would do? “I’m the . . . person” (how awful!) “who put the ad in the newspaper . . . the Voice . . . which you answered . . . with your card. Remember?”

  After a moment: “Oh”—guarded, dead, but then “—Oh!” with faint surprise, perhaps even a hint of pleasure. “Yes.”

  “Good. Very good. Now listen. I’m afraid I’ve created a terribly embarrassing situation.” (Her diction!) “I mean—your father thinks I’m your teacher. Could you—make something up?—explain that I called because. . . well, I’m missing a composition of yours, which you didn’t turn in? I need it in order to grade you?”

  All of which must have sounded extraordinarily silly.

  “Angel—?”

  “Yes?”

  “You could do something like that. I mean—a little suitable lie. After all, you and I . . . this is a private matter. I’m not sure your father would understand.”

  “No.”

  “Then will you call me later? Tomorrow perhaps? I’ll give you the number. Will you remember, or write it down? It’s 555-7274.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mrs. Evans.”

  “Yes.”

  He had a nice voice. “You’ll call?”

  “Yes.”

  Not too unlike Jamie’s; slightly deeper, perhaps. “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “555-72-74.”

  “Yes. That’s easy.”

  “Then we’ll talk, and arrange . . . a visit.”

  “Yes.”

  Pause. “Well. . .” She didn’t want to hang up, desiring to hear a thousand yes’s. “Well then—I’ll be waiting . . .”

  Waiting . . .

  Like Bruno David Carlson-Wade.

  How few words there were for all the desperate, lonely people!

  Angel replaced the phone, stood silent, head bowed, his back to his father, listening to the ripping of cardboard from the six-pack of beer. Mixing with it—from the bedroom down the dark narrow hall where a door was ajar—came a light thin moaning to which neither father or son reacted in any way; they were so used to the sound they didn’t hear it, or, hearing, ignored it, as they did the multiple, incessant noise, human and traffic, rising from the street four floors below.

  “It ain’t cold enough, dummy,” came the barely audible complaint, more to himself than Angel. Then, loudly: “What was that all about? ‘yes, yes, yes.’ I din’ hear nothin’ like I tol’ you t’say.”

  “She didn’t want what you thought.”

  What?! What’s’at!”—Teasing him, prodding him, desiring to irritate, like a sharp, annoying elbow in the ribs. “Speak up, love. I can’t hear you; I can’t hear what y’sayin’!”

  “I said—She wanted something else. It wasn’t what you thought.”

  “Oh? She din’ see that spook-eye a’ yours? An’ that chop in y’head? Y’got hair missin’, didja know that? It mars y’beauty, spoils that spun-sugar hair-do we all love so well.” Pause. “An’ what’s ‘easy? What did that mean?”

  Angel turned and looked at his father: Aurelio Carlos Rivera, seeing him with the usual tinge of resentment, envy and love-hate, for the man was so many things that the boy, at fourteen was not, and maybe never would be: a full, totally-handsome six-feet-two, with the body of an athlete, stone-hard and strongly muscled from the heavy construction work he did. The head, closely crew-cropped, was a dark magnificent skull, and the olive skin so deeply tanned from constant exposure in all kinds of weather, but especially now at summer’s end, made him seem more like a Black in the half-light of the room than the full-blooded Spaniard he was.

  In the apartment, he sometimes, though not often, walked or lounged naked: big-balled and heavily-pricked, to Angel’s almost trembling rage whenever his infrequent eyes dared to find the man’s sex. At the moment, he wore a pair of white jockey shorts—occasionally the uniform of his beer-drinking evenings when he decided to say home. The briefs belonged to Angel but were wash-thin and stretched, one half the ass peppered with holes, much too big for the boy and too small for the man.

  Angel’s eyes tried to hold his father’s and not wander to look at all of him. “What do you mean? What’s easy?”

  “That’s what you tol’ that woman: somethin’s easy.”

  Angel: “Oh! I got homework. She wants it tomorrow. I’m a week late.”

  Aurelio staggered, pretending overwhelming shock. “Since when?! You kidding? I never seen you do no homework all your life.” A trickle of misplaced beer ran from his wet chin to the curled black hair on his chest, frothing a bit.

  “Well, I got a composition to write.”

  Aurelio pulled absently at a dark nipple the size of a quarter, teasing it until it was pointed and hard.

  “What’s a composition?”

  Angel laughed, genuinely pleased, with a sense of winning, as if they were at a game of checkers and he had just jumped his father’s last two kings.

  “You don’t know?! Boy! That’s what I call asshole dumb.”

  The man flushed, his anger always quick, and sometimes quickly deadly. He had once killed a man.

  He could see the boy was deliberately provoking him, black eyes snapping.

  “Look—I’ll break that other front tooth for you, then you’ll have a’ asshole up front, maybe where it belongs.”

  He paused, giving himself time to recover, knowing the dizzying blood-rush quality of his rage and its dangerous potential, then made a display of indifference and ease, settling comfortably and self-loved into his own fine, handsome body, brushing the wetness from his chest.

  “So tell me. What’s a composition?”

  Angel was amazed. His father sometimes really could be shit-dumb.

  “It’s a . . . ” He shrugged, impatient. “How can I explain? It’s jus’ some . . . writing: your thoughts and ideas about things, your impressions. Like—” (affecting exhausted boredom) “like—‘What I Did On My Summer Vacation’ . . . ‘My Visit To My Grandmother’s’ . . . ‘A Walk Through Central Park.’ ”

  Aurelio’s body suddenly gyrated like a puppet with its strings tangled, his mouth wide open and explosive with exaggerated laughter.

  “You—! A walk through Central Park! Don’t make it at night, love. Sweet, juicy chicken like you gets laid, maybe gang-banged. They rape boys, y’know.” And with a fake leer—“What’s a’ difference?”

  Aurelio’s deliberate confusion of sex, the reference to an easy interchange of male and female roles, frightened and infuriated Angel, but kept occurring so frequently he had learned to live with it, half pushing it down into the place where he kept all the things he dared not to think about too clearly.

  “Besides,” Aurelio went on, but not without a sly, sidelong glance which he plainly wanted the boy to see, “that’s a essay; essay, you ass-headed kid. Composition is in painting; it’s like when you say—” and his mocking manner now became put-on fairy and
fancy “—like when you say the composition in this here painting is good.’ ” Again manly, with a half-shout, as if angry: “Or’ it ain’t good!’ You don’t write no goddamn composition.”

  “Auri—” which was what Angel had learned to call his father, “it’s the same word but a different meaning.”

  Hands thrown, the boy pretended to “give up.” “Okay. So I’m writing ‘a’ es-say.”

  Aurelio scratched thoughtfully around his navel, allowed a thick calloused hand a moment’s loving, possessive pressure over the heavy mass between his legs.

  “On what?” he demanded. “You ain’t got no grandmother.”

  The man was clearly out to needle him tonight, and now, for the first time, Angel realized that Auri had known all along what a composition was. He was sparring—always so neat, so slick. He could have Angel dancing around in the ring without even knowing it.

  “And when you did,” his father continued with a big white-toothed teasing smile, “when you had a grandmother—on your mother’s side, she was black.”

  Always a reference to his blackness, as if he cared. Angel was fairer in skin than Aurelio, but perhaps not if he stayed as much in the sun; and if the blackness came out at all, it was in the small fullness of the mouth, his very slightly broad and flattened nose, but most of all in the hair; Aurelio’s was thick, heavy, straight, blue-black, fine; Angel’s was a dark cocoa brown with a tight if not kinky curl that made the most flattering and (he thought) impressive “in”-way to wear it, a modest Afro. To complete the disguise, he’d had his left ear pierced; in it he sometimes wore a tiny seed of silvered metal, or, on rare occasions, just for fun, or when there were rumors of an impending street fight, a thin, dangling, almost inch-long coke spoon. This, of course, he didn’t dare wear to school, and to let his father see it was to risk getting the shit kicked out of him.

  “Why don’t you,” Aurelio continued, considering, his expression and posture one of put-on concentration, “write about what we’ve got holed up in there”—pointing toward the crack of light from the bedroom at the end of the long dark hall. “Maybe Miss Nosey-ass Evans would like to know a little more about the seamy, sad, sordid side a’ life.”