by Howard Fast
“No—no, but thank you. Thank you.” Food was a symbol, she realized, symbolic of the bottom structure of life. She had never thought of it that way, only annoyed and resentful of those who brought food to the home of the dead. Food was joy and food was sorrow; it knit both together.
Lola stood over the phone. “What will I do?” It was Schwartz who led her to the bedroom and said to her, “You know, don’t you—he won’t call.”
“He will—he must!”
“No—not until he decides what to do, it’s too dangerous to call.”
“He will,” she insisted.
“All right. I’ll answer the phone, and if it’s him, I’ll get you in a matter of seconds. But you got to talk to the boy.”
She stared at Schwartz and then at the other people; and then she nodded and went into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. Roger was looking out of the window, down at the street where a truck moved ahead of a crew of sanitation men. The clang and crash echoed up to the room, as the men emptied can after can into the moving belt at the back of the truck.
“They’re strong,” Roger said with admiration.
She was moved to say, “Your dad is stronger.”
“Is he dead?” Still he didn’t look at her, and Lola took him by one arm and turned him to face her. His round, freckled face, with its wide, serious eyes looked up at her.
“Gregg’s not dead, Roger. He won’t be either. I give you my word that’s the truth.”
“Why did they say he’s dead?”
“It was a mistake, someone else. Gregg isn’t dead—do you understand? He’s alive.”
The boy stared at her, and then the tension about his small compact body eased, and Lola realized that this small fight was won, and that he believed her.
“But they want to kill my father, don’t they?” he said slowly.
“They don’t want to kill him, Roger. They want to find him.”
“They’re chasing him?”
“Yes—they are.”
“Hunting him everywhere, like a manhunt. And he’s afraid and he’s running away.”
“He’s not afraid.”
“But he’s hiding from them, isn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s true. He’s hiding now.”
“Do they know where?”
Lola shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“It happened too quickly. He didn’t have a chance to tell me.”
“And now, all the time, he’s hiding?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Do you know why, Roger?”
He shook his head and then shrugged. “I know what the kids say. I don’t care what they say, but I know what they say.”
“What do they say, Roger?”
“They say my father’s like a crook or a murderer, like on TV, and he’s a commie and he wants to over-throw the government and kill us all with atom bombs and that he was part of a gang that stole the atom bomb and gave it to the Russians so that they could kill everyone——”
“You know that isn’t true, don’t you, Roger?”
“That’s what the kids say.”
“But that doesn’t make it true, Roger. It’s not true.”
Desperately, he cried, “Why can’t we be like everybody else? Why can’t we be? Why can’t we be?” His voice came like an ache and a prayer, and it had to be answered. It had to be answered.
“We’re like everyone else, Roger.”
“No! We’re not!”
Then she sat for a little while, just looking at him and feeling that her heart would break, but knowing that hearts did not break that easily and that some hearts never break. And then she nodded and said quietly:
“I guess we’re different. We didn’t set out to be different. I guess you know, Roger, that it’s easier and more comfortable to be like everyone else than it is to be different; and when I was a little girl, like you are a little boy now, I didn’t want to be different either, but it just happened.”
“Why did it happen?” he pleaded.
“Why? I never thought of just why. Maybe some of it was because of Grandpa.”
“I like Grandpa,” Roger muttered.
“I know you do, but he was different, just like Gregg and I are. He used to say that always there was one man at least in every town and village in America who made use of the brains God gave him, and saw through the lies and deceit that surrounded him, but you don’t understand that, do you?”
“No.”
“Anyway, I don’t think it was that. I think it was the hurt I saw—the way people were hurt, and the way they wept when they were hurt, and I could never understand why they had to be hurt so much and why there was nothing they could do but weep over their hurt, like children. And even if they didn’t cry, there was nothing they could do. Do you understand me, darling?”
“I think so,” Roger whispered. “There’s nothing we can do.” He said it like an adult, gravely and hopelessly, his eyes fixed upon her.
“There is something we can do,” she said, begging him to understand what he could not possibly understand, begging him to meet her mind and her dreams, searching for words that would pierce the barrier between seven and thirty-two and make clear to him why his strong, tall father, whom he idolized and imitated, must crawl in the jungle like a hunted beast. “There is something we can do, a lot we can do, and that is why your father and I are different, I guess. There are always a few people who want to try very hard to make things better. When these people hear a lie, they can’t remain quiet. They have to say it’s a lie. When they see an unjust thing done, they have to say that it is unjust. And that is why bad people fear them—because they try to make the world better, a better place to live in.”
All of the little boy was straining with the desire, the need to understand her. It was too much for him. “Why don’t—the bad people want the world to be better? What difference would it make to them if the world was better?”
How to tell him—how to reach him? The complex of the answer took shape in her mind, complex and argumentative and many-sided and subtly shaded, and she recalled the first year of their marriage, when they had lived in Akron, Ohio, and Gregg had organized the plant and the first time she had walked on a picket line in unholy fear, and how the workers marched against the plant and were met by a barrage of fire, and how she had set up a hospital in their house and treated the wounded herself because it took six hours to find a doctor who had courage enough to come, and how she had performed an operation and saved a man’s life with Gregg and two other workers helping her in silent wonder and amazement, and how all of it had resulted in a wage increase of seven and a half cents an hour and a funeral in the pouring rain—and the memory of herself standing in the rain and watching the workers being buried in the drab, cold, ugly cemetery with the stained hulks of factories as a background and the bearded, strange Orthodox priests intoning prayers. Do you tell this to a seven-year-old, and what of those, who were five and six times his age who had come to their house, and she and Gregg talking to them and arguing and explaining and convincing them of absolutely nothing.
He asked her suddenly, “Are there a lot of bad people?”
“No, Roger, only a few.”
“A few.” He grappled with that; words that meant size and numbers were not the same to him as to her, and she wondered what he was making of “a few.” He was fighting to become a man, and he had not shaken off his forlorn sense of the bereft. Lola realized that until he saw Gregg again in the flesh and blood, he would not truly believe that his father was alive. Gregg was so much to him. He was, for his age, a large, solidly built little boy, and only Gregg could swing him into the air, toss him and catch him amidst his laughter and squeals of utter trust. Gregg was his idol and image and companion, and like Lola, in his own way, he was fighting for Gregg. His creased brow relaxed and he asked Lola:
“Are there more bad people than good people?”
“No, baby—no, only a few bad people, but many, many good people.”
“Well—well, then why doesn’t Gregg ask the good people to help him, so he doesn’t have to hide any more?”
“If he only could——”
“But why can’t he?”
“They would have to know what they say about your father is a lie.”
“But I know.”
“But your friends don’t and they’re good people. It’s hard to tell what is true and what is a lie, Roger—the hardest thing in the whole world.”
“Then he won’t come back, ever?”
“He’ll come back,” she insisted. “Believe me, Roger, he’ll come back——”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE THEATRE
TWILIGHT began, and the long, endless day was through and passing, as all things pass. Lola stood at the window and looked at the sky over the roofs of the brownstone houses, and watched its blue fade into yellow and pink, and the yellow and pink blossomed and waned, like a flower quick to live and quick to die. Roger quietly joined her, and standing next to her, watched what she watched and perhaps saw what she saw. He wondered why the sparrows chose to live in the city. They love it or maybe don’t know how to live anywhere else, Lola said, and Roger said that the city was beautiful; he thought so. Lola remembered the pastor in the Presbyterian Church in Hagertown, the only brick church in Hagertown, except for the Catholic Church, which was built of granite blocks and was much grander than any of the others; and Lola remembered how at least once a year he gave his sermon on the sparrow which falls to earth not unnoticed by the eye of God, and how she had formed the image, with her to this day, of the eye of God being like an enormous beam-light, sweeping back and forth with X-ray vision, and catching every dead leaf as well as every sparrow, but wondering now and again what He did with his comprehensive vision. Did it help the sparrow, who lived and fought and sang and sailed on the air, and then died one day, as all things must? Or did eternity come to dead leaves and sparrows as well? Was He watching Gregg wherever Gregg was, and relishing the fact that so strong and firm an unbeliever fled like a hunted animal, or was He impartial in such contests between those who believed and those who didn’t? In his sermon, Lola remembered, the pastor liked to dwell on the infinite compassion and mercy of this all-seeing One, but Lola recalled that even as a child she didn’t think too much of his merciful qualities. When Mrs. Antonini, whose husband worked in the cannery, ran wailing into Dr. Fremont’s office, her two-year-old child in her arms, turning blue from a bone it had swallowed, and when the child died there in front of Lola’s eyes, the doctor out on his calls, Lola had certain definite feelings on the subject of mercy; and now she remembered considering the question, looking at the dead baby while her mother tried to comfort Mrs. Antonini. Try not to fathom His mercy, the pastor had said, and Lola remembered her roommate at nursing school, four months pregnant and aborting herself—whereupon Lola delivered the dead embryo. How wonderful you were, her room-mate said later, how wonderful and calm and cool, Lola. Oh, you are wonderful, Lola. And now Roger observed, “They seem to fall, but they don’t—and if they die up in the air, Mother, do they float down or fall down?” She didn’t answer. “Do they? Float down or fall down? Do they?” “Why, I never thought of that, Roger,” she said. “I never thought of that at all.” And he said, “It’s funny, I think about it.”
She went into the kitchen then, because supper would come, as three meals a day came and children had to be fed, and she was looking in the icebox when the telephone rang. She ran to it, knowing that this time, finally, at long last, Gregg was calling; but it was Feldberger, and he said:
“Lola—hang on! Take it easy now. They’ve located Gregg.”
“What?”
“I told you to take it easy:”
“Then he’s all right—he’s alive?”
“Of course he’s alive. And he’s all right.”
“But where is he? Where is he? Sam, tell me! Is he all right? Did they hurt him?”
Feldberger said, “Now, look, Lola—take it easy. Just listen to me for a moment. They didn’t take Gregg—not yet. But they know where he is. He’s in the Elizabeth Theatre on the corner of 43rd Street. They know he’s there, inside, but they don’t know where, and they won’t take a chance on stopping the show and putting the house lights on. The place is pretty full—a new picture just opened there—and they got all kinds of damnfool notions about Gregg being armed.”
“But he’s not armed. I swear to you, Sam, he has no gun, and he wouldn’t carry a gun if he could get one. I know Gregg. My God, Sam, don’t I know Gregg?”
“Of course you do, baby. Of course you do.”
“And I tell you he’s not armed.”
“Lola, I believe you. But they don’t. They’ve got every exit staked out, but they won’t move in on him. They’ll wait until he leaves to take him. Now they know where he is, they can afford to wait. This is very quiet, Lola. Nobody inside the place or outside of it knows what’s happening and nothing has leaked so far. But I’m afraid——”
“That they’ll shoot him down, kill him!”
“No, no! Not like that. I don’t know what I’m afraid of—maybe that he’ll try to make a break for it, and if he does——”
“Sam, I’m coming right down.”
“I hoped you would say that. Got someone to leave the kids with?”
“I’ll find someone.”
He said, “All right, then. Take a cab. I’ll meet you on the corner of 44th Street—a block from the theatre—north-east corner. I’ll wait for you there.”
Roger, even Patty, had caught the excitement; and Roger seemed to know. But why did she say shoot him down, kill him? Were they going to kill his father? Roger said that it was like television, where everybody had a gun, and bang, bang—there it was. He had forgotten, perhaps out of necessity, everything else in his plunge into a world society had made for him, out of its own insane orgasm and convulsion, a world of flashing silver shadow, senseless cruelty, murder, hate and horror and breakfast foods and detergents and the whip-crack of rifle bullets and pistol bullets and good guys and bad guys, the better to grow and live fruitfully and well; and now he wanted to know how it would be with Gregg, and were they going to shoot Gregg, and would he shoot back, and where was Gregg? Was he acting in a theatre or shooting in a theatre or hiding in a theatre—his thoughts in chaos, his love for a man who was his father mixed with the lunacy of a world he had not made but inhabited with a legion of little children.
“No, no—you see, Daddy’s all right,” Lola insisted. “I must go to him, Roger, Patty—please.”
His excitement turned into fear, and Patty began to cry out of her own terror and confusion. Roger was afraid now and begged her not to go, don’t go, the tears filling his eyes and running down his cheeks. Time flashed now, and every second raced and exploded; and Lola could not argue with them, pacify them, soothe them, explain to them. She was joined to Gregg again, but the thread was so thin that it could snap in an instant—and she left the whimpering children to race across the outside hallway and ring the Schwartz’s bell. The woman answered, hostile-eyed, the dry, sour flesh frustration and desire antagonistic toward what was younger and fresher, but there were no more barriers for Lola. She blurted out the explanation, her words racing, her outstretched hands trembling. “Please—I need someone to stay with the children, to give them supper, because I don’t know when I’ll be back, please——” The pinched face relaxed, and the tiny, ungenerous blue eyes filled with the moisture of sympathy. They crossed all gulfs, and she put an arm of quick, uneasy affection around Lola’s shoulders. “Go ahead, go ahead. I’ll stay until you get back.” Then Lola ran into her apartment, threw on a coat, seized her purse and fled from the children without even good-bye or I’ll be back soon.
She ran down the steps, out of the house, and down the street to the avenue, indifferent to who might watch the house or her. She had to wait for a cab, and she pleaded
and prayed, prayed, Oh, my God, let a cab come, let a cab come. But it was only minutes before a cab came and she threw herself into it and told the driver hoarsely where to go. “If you can hurry, please—if you can hurry, because I’m late. I’m late!”
“They’re all late, lady,” he answered tiredly. “I’ll do the best I can. This ain’t no helicopter.”
“I’m in trouble, please.”
His head came around to look at her, heavy neck, round, fleshy face, eyes that considered and decided quickly. “O.K., lady, I’ll do what I can.” He plunged into the traffic with precision and skill, and Lola lay back in the seat, counting blocks and minutes.
As tense and frightened as she was, she reacted to the habit of the poor, and her eyes turned to the meter. She didn’t care; she would pledge her soul and all she had to come there five minutes earlier, but reactions persisted. She reflected that the poor pay for comfortable conveyance only in moments of urgency or tragedy. A lifetime of work had left her father with only enough money to pay for her mother’s funeral, yet she recalled vividly and painfully her bewilderment at the great, polished black car in which they rode, the comfort of it, the luxury of the interior upholstery. They went to death in genteel circumstances, but her father’s suit was frayed at the edges and the buttonholes were worn through.
Darkness, broken by many lights, filled the deep valleys of the streets as the cab came downtown. The increasing eddies of men and women laughed or frowned or smiled or looked abroad or at each other, but none of them knew about Lola Gregg or were troubled by her sorrow. The loneliness washed over her, like a cold and implacable wave rolling in on the sun-warmed beach, and inside, in that moment, she wept for all her species. Now all was in symbols, for she couldn’t think of what she approached, or cope with it in any manner plain to her.