“The human willpower,” Dr. Pincus had said on the drive down. “I don’t think we’ll ever understand it. Bones were broken, nerves, muscles, tendons torn apart in both legs. According to the book there is no way he could ever do what he is doing.” He glanced at me, his eyes twinkling. “I’ll never believe anything anymore. Not even the nursery rhymes. Humpty Dumpty can be put together again. Only he has to do it himself.”
Then the car stalled on the way back and I had to walk the last quarter-mile to the cabin. They were naked on the floor. She was on her back, her massive white breasts thrusting upward like twin mountains while she held her legs apart and back against her belly with her hands under her knees. He was poised over her, supported by his arms, hands flat against the floor, his legs straight out behind him. She groaned with pleasure as he slammed into her again and again until he collapsed in orgasm, coming to rest against her Junoesque body.
She stroked him gently, speaking almost as if he were a child. “That vass very gut. Ven ve are finished, your legs vill be ass strong ass your pick.”
I tried to close the door quietly before they could see me, but he looked up just at the last moment. I finished closing the door and sat down on the small porch. About ten minutes later, he came out, walking with the help of his two canes, and sank into a chair next to mine.
We didn’t speak for a long while. Then he finally spoke. “I suppose you wonder what we were doing?”
“I know what you were doing. Fucking.”
He laughed. “That’s right. But what else?”
“What else could it be?” I asked sarcastically. “Fucking is fucking.”
“It’s part of my rehabilitation,” he said.
“Oh, sure,” I said, skeptically. “But your cock was never broken—only your legs.”
“It’s a kind of push-ups.”
“I could see that.”
“Really. It’s a way of exerting pressure on the legs.”
I couldn’t help it. I began to laugh. “The pleasure was just incidental?”
He grinned. “You know me. I never could resist a little pussy.”
“That wasn’t a little pussy,” I said. “That was a lot. Even for you.”
He laughed and reached for my hand. Then he was serious. “I’ll send her away if you want.”
“No,” I said. “There’s just one change I’m going to make.”
“What’s that?”
“If you have to exercise, you’re going to do it with me. I’ve been too easy on you. Always on top so that you wouldn’t strain yourself. Now you can go back to work and I’ll lie back and enjoy it.”
October 10, 1937
He’s walking. When he’s tired, with one cane. But he’s walking. Today I took Dr. Pincus and Ulla to the train. The doctor was so impressed with her that he was taking her back to Washington to work in his office. He didn’t know it, but with the kind of physical therapy she was ready to give his patients he would have to become the busiest orthopedist in the country.
When I got back to the cabin, Daniel was sitting on the porch, a drink in his hand, puffing on a cigar. A bottle of whiskey and another glass were on the table next to him. He poured some for me. “We did it.”
“You did it,” I said, holding the glass toward him. We touched glasses and drank. “Now what do we do?”
“First, I’m going out to California to see my son. Then I got to get me a job.”
“Going back with Murray?”
He shook his head, black anger flashing in his eyes. “He can go fuck himself.”
“Lewis?”
“Not as long as Murray is with him.”
“You can still talk to my Uncle Tom.”
“You know better than that. I’ll find something. Maybe even start my own union.”
“Your own union? In what industry? It seems to me that everything is covered now.”
“Not everything,” he answered. “I’ve been thinking that the union members themselves need some kind of protection against their leaders.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “A union within a union.”
He laughed. “Who knows? It might come down to that. When I see the things done to the union members by their leadership, I begin to wonder exactly for whose benefit the whole thing is run. But I’m in no hurry. There’s time for that. I’ve got to get around more. There’s still lots I have to learn.”
“And what about me?” I asked. “What am I supposed to be doing while you’re doing all this?”
He refilled his glass. “You have your job with your uncle.”
“I left that,” I said. “I can’t go crawling back to him now. You know that.”
“Well, you don’t need the money anyway. You have money of your own.”
“You’re not answering my question, and you know it.” I was getting angry. “I’m not talking about a job, I’m talking about you and me.”
He didn’t answer.
“You know I want to marry you.”
He still didn’t answer.
“I’m two months pregnant. Dr. Pincus confirmed it.”
The glass shattered in his hand. Angrily, he flung it away from him, the whiskey and the blood from his fingers spattering against the wooden rail. His voice was thick. “No, godammit! You’re not going to do that to me. All you women are alike. You think your cunts can nail a man down. Tess did that to me and fucked up my life. I’m not going to let it happen again.” He got to his feet and went to the door. “You get yourself an abortion or do whatever the hell you want. It’s your baby, not mine.”
The door slammed behind him, and I heard the crash as he stumbled and fell. I opened the door and looked down at him stretched out on the floor. He turned his head, and his eyes stared up at me angrily.
“Fuck you!” I said, and closed the door on him. It was the first time there was no one there to pick him up when he fell.
October 15, 1937
I had my abortion today. The doctor wouldn’t tell me whether it was a boy or a girl. It’s raining in Chicago. I haven’t heard from Daniel. I don’t know why I can’t stop crying. The doctor says he’s coming back to give me a shot so I can sleep.
***
There were few entries in the diary after that date. She began a new diary the next year, but after the first few entries that too seemed to have been given up, and there were no further diaries for the following years. Neither was there any further mention of my father.
Christina stared down into the red wine in her glass. “I wonder if she ever saw him again afterward.”
“I don’t think so.” I put the diaries back into the box we had brought from the warehouse. “When were your parents married?”
“Nineteen forty-five. After the war. My father was a colonel in Eisenhower’s headquarters in London. He met my mother there when she was working in the office of procurement. They were married when they came back to the States. I was born the next year. And yours?”
“Nineteen fifty-six. Ten years after my father founded CALL. It took him almost nine years to start the union he talked about to your mother.”
“What was he doing those nine years?” she asked.
“I don’t really know,” I said. “But then, I never knew anything about him. We never talked much.”
“You talk to him now,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
“I feel it.” She sipped at the wine. “Sometimes you are a completely different person, and when I look at you I don’t see you at all. I see someone else.”
I looked at my watch. It was past two in the morning. “I think we’d better get some sleep.”
“I’m restless. Want to share a joint first?”
I hesitated.
“Just a few tokes,” she said. “It will calm me down.”
“Okay.”
I walked outside onto the veranda while she went for the chocolate sticks. It was a blue velvet night, a warm salt breeze coming in from the ocean. I str
etched out on the lounge.
She sat down on the lounge at my feet. I lit the chocolate stick while she sipped at her glass of wine, took a few tokes and passed it to her. She hit it pretty good—long deep tokes, filling her lungs and holding it, then slowly exhaling the residual smoke.
I took another few tokes, and my head began to spin out. I gave it back to her. “I think I’ve had it.”
She smiled. “You have to get used to it.”
“I don’t know whether I could afford it.”
She laughed and dragged on the chocolate stick again. She looked down at me. “Where do you go from here, Jonathan?”
I put my arms under my head and rested back against my hands. “I was thinking about going home. But now, I don’t know.”
“Did you find what you were looking for here?”
“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” I said. “That is, if I’m looking for anything at all.”
“Your father,” she said.
“He’s dead. Too late for that now.”
She dragged on the chocolate stick again. “You know better than that.”
I took the cigarette from her fingers. This time I really took it down. The top of my head came off. My tongue went all fuzzy. “Let’s not talk about him anymore. Okay?”
“Okay. What do we talk about, then?”
“Being rich. What’s it like?”
“I don’t know any other way.”
“Your husband? Was he rich too?”
“Yes.”
“And your father?”
“Yes.”
“You were born batting a thousand.”
She thought for a moment. “I suppose you could put it that way.”
“Why did you get divorced?”
“The truth?”
I nodded. “That’s why I asked.”
“He was guilty rich. I wasn’t.”
I laughed.
“Not funny,” she said. “He didn’t know how to relax and enjoy it. He was always uptight.”
“So you got divorced. How long ago?”
“Last year.”
“Better now?”
She shrugged. “In some ways. At least he’s not always looking down his nose at me. Putting me down because I don’t make any contribution to society by not working. The way I look at it, at least I’m not taking a job away from someone who needs it.”
“Can’t argue with that point of view.” I hit the chocolate stick again and passed it back to her. “My whole head is spinning. I’ve never had a buzz like this.”
“Feel good?”
“The best.”
“Then enjoy it.” She leaned over and kissed me. Her mouth was warm. I pressed her tightly against me. After a moment, she raised her head and looked at me. “I want you to stay with me for a while, Jonathan. Will you?”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“As long as you can. I need you.”
I went deep into those familiar eyes. “It’s almost incest. It’s my father you want, not me.”
“There’s nothing wrong in that. You are your father just as much as I am my mother. You said we were playing catch-up. At the time I didn’t know what you meant. Now I do. We have to finish out the game.”
I didn’t speak.
“Have you ever been in love, Jonathan?”
I thought for a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“Neither have I,” she said. “But I know it’s there somewhere. My mother found it with your father. Maybe we can find it together.”
This time I went all the way into her eyes. And suddenly I wasn’t myself any longer. I opened my arms and she came into them, her head pressed against my chest. Slowly I stroked her long, soft hair. “I think we’ve already found it, Christina.” I turned her face up to me. “But it’s not ours. It never will be ours. You know that.”
“I know it,” she said softly, her eyes filling with tears. “But it doesn’t matter whose it is. As long as we can feel it.”
Book Three
Another Day
Chapter 1
“You’re a fucking crook, Big Dan.”
Daniel laughed easily as he refilled his glass from the bourbon bottle in front of him. He looked at the other of the two men sitting opposite him. “What do you think, Tony?”
“The same thing.”
Daniel laughed again. He finished his drink in one swallow and got to his feet. He towered over the table, a shock of his iron-gray hair tumbling over his forehead. “I guess the meeting is over.”
“Wait a minute,” the first man said quickly. “I didn’t say that. Sit down. We can talk it over.”
Daniel looked at him for a moment, then nodded. Slowly he sank back into his seat and refilled his glass. “Okay. Talk.”
“You’re asking too much,” the man said.
“Too much what? Money? That’s nothing compared with what I can do for you. I can make you respectable.”
“We are respectable,” the man said stubbornly.
Daniel fixed him with a look. “But for how long? As long as you sit in the shadows. The minute you come out, they’re going to take after you.
“I look at it very simply. Dave Beck is going to fall. Logically, Jimmy, you’re the next international president of the Teamsters. But will you be? Suppose Meany doesn’t like it? You can’t jump from the AFL to the CIO, because they’re all together now. You’re fucked. You have no place to go.”
He turned to the other man. “That goes for you too, Tony. John L. is not going to appoint you president of the UMW when he steps down. Tom Kennedy gets first crack. He’s been around longer. But you can get executive V.P., and with a guy like Kennedy that’s even better. You’re still safe in the shadows, and it will be time for you to make your move when Kennedy goes.”
“You got it all figured out,” Jimmy Hoffa said.
“I’ve been around a long time,” Daniel answered.
Tony Boyle laughed. “So why ain’t you rich?”
“I was in no hurry,” Daniel said, smiling. “I was waiting for you guys to grow up.”
“You know I couldn’t get Lewis to go along with a dime-a-member assessment for CALL,” Tony said.
“I know that,” Daniel said. “But the individual locals can do it if they want. You can see to that. It’s the same thing.”
“The old man’ll go through the roof,” Tony said. “He hates your guts after what you’ve said about him.”
“What else is new?” Daniel said, smiling. “Meany, Beck, Reuther—none of ’em like me any better. They’re all members of the same club. They’ve been after my ass for years, but I’m still around.”
Boyle shook his head in wonder. “I don’t know how you do it. You haven’t that many members—maybe forty, fifty thousand.”
Daniel smiled. “Closer to a hundred thousand. But the numbers don’t matter. They’re all small unions. Independents. Which the big boys never bothered with because there wasn’t enough in it for them. But they add up to something nobody else has got.”
“What’s that?” Hoffa asked.
“Balance of power. We’ve never had any trouble, any scandals. Nobody’s made off with any money.”
“There wasn’t enough there for anybody to take,” Boyle said, laughing.
“Maybe,” Daniel said. “But the fact remains. The public trusts us. We’re the only labor group they approve of, and we have the surveys to prove that. And I speak for them.”
“The Teamsters won’t go for the deal either,” Hoffa said.
“Local 299 will,” Daniel said. “It’s your local, and they do what you tell them. Two hundred thousand members is enough to start the ball rolling. In time they’ll all come in.”
“Okay, so we know what you’re getting. What do we get?”
“Help and advice,” Daniel said. “You’re both young and ambitious men. I can help you achieve your ambitions. I can protect you against everything except yourselves.”
“Talking to any other un
ions?” Hoffa asked.
“I plan to,” Daniel said. “You two are the first.”
“Why us?”
“Because you both are in businesses that are vital to the country’s existence.”
The two men were silent for a moment. Then Boyle looked at Daniel. “Can we think about it?”
Daniel nodded. “Of course.”
“What do you do if we don’t go along with you?”
“There are other men, just as young and just as ambitious, in other locals of the same union.”
“That’s blackmail,” Hoffa said, without rancor.
“That’s right.” Daniel nodded agreeably.
“Do we have a week?” Boyle asked.
“You have a week,” Daniel said.
They shook hands, and Daniel watched them leave the bar together. Through the open window he could see them go to their separate cars. When the cars had gone, he looked down at his glass. He wondered if they knew just how desperate he really was. Ten years he had struggled to build up his power base, and in one stroke last year it had all been wiped out. The AFL-CIO merger had put it away. And now bit by bit, the individual unions he had signed up were drifting away. There was enough left in the treasury to carry them another month or two. Then it would all be over. The past twenty years down the drain. The dreams, the hopes, the ideals shattered beyond repair.
He rose wearily to his feet. “Put it on the tab, Joe,” he said to the bartender on the way out. “And add ten bucks for yourself.”
“Thanks, Big Dan,” the bartender called after him.
He blinked as he went into the sunlight of the street, waited a moment until the traffic cleared, then cut across to the two-story office building. He looked up at the spotted aluminum letters over the building entrance. CALL. They were clouded and pitted by time. He made a mental note to have the janitor polish the letters.
He went into the building, bypassing the big general office on the ground floor and going up a back stairway that led directly to his private office.
Memories of Another Day Page 36