“He’d be there with me, Dad. I could make money!”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“He says I could make two or three hundred dollars.”
“I don’t want to hear any more about it.”
“I’d give you the money, Dad.”
Mr. Sheridan put down his fork. He looked right into Willie’s eyes.
“He doesn’t mean anything bad, William.”
Mr. Sheridan put his napkin on the table. He leaned back, staring at Willie as though he’d never seen him before. “Just what kind of a guy do you think I am? Look at me, son. What kind of a man you think your father is? You think I’d send you out to work at seven years old and take the money?”
“No, sir.” Willie was examining his belt buckle.
“You think I’d send a child out to work so I could live off him? You don’t think much of me, do you?”
“William, he’s not thinking anything like that.”
“I think it’s time we found out what he’s thinking. He’s making plans right and left and—”
Mr. Sheridan was interrupted by Martha’s entrance. She passed hot rolls and they all shut up while she was in the room. This always irritated Emma. Martha probably heard every word in the kitchen, so why couldn’t they just keep talking? They sat, instead, in phony silence, each in turn saying “No, thank you,” until it was Emma’s turn and she took three. Nobody noticed.
“I think what Willie wants to do in life should be given some consideration,” said Mrs. Sheridan gently. Willie’s eyes were wild with hope.
“Wants to do in life? That’s absurd. He’s seven years old.” Mr. Sheridan turned to Willie. “You want to work? If you want to work, why don’t you sell newspapers?”
“Or swimming pools,” said Emma.
Everyone looked at her in astonishment. “There’s a lot of money to be made selling pools. I read it in the Sunday paper.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” said Mrs. Sheridan absently. They all turned away again. She ate another roll.
“Just what is it you want to do?” asked Mr. Sheridan.
“I want to be a dancer.” Willie was so quiet and scared they could hardly hear him.
“Son.” Mr. Sheridan pushed back his chair, crossed his legs, and lit a cigar. “I want to tell you something and I want you to listen. There are many jobs in this world and some are good, decent jobs for good, decent men to have. Others are jobs that aren’t even to be thought about. Now, these people who spend their lives running around a stage are just trash. You don’t want to be trash, do you?”
Mrs. Sheridan looked outraged. “William! My father wasn’t—
“I’m not talking about your father. Your father came along there in the Depression where a black man couldn’t get a decent job. Singing and dancing were all they let him do. Everything’s entirely different now. What do you think I work myself to death for? My kid’s got every chance in the world. He doesn’t have to run around dancing, making a fool of himself, laughing and scratching to make honkies laugh. He’s got the whole world ahead of him. He’s going to a private school. He’s going to college. He doesn’t need to do the kinds of things your father did.”
“But he wants to. He’s like my father. He’s just like Dipsey when Dipsey was small. Don’t you think that what he wants to do ought to be given some consideration?”
“He’s seven years old, woman. He doesn’t know his left ear from his right. What does what he want got to do with it? Four years ago he wanted to be a rabbit.”
“That’s different!” Willie looked angry. “I know now what I want. And I’m going to get it, too!”
“You shut up, Willie. You don’t talk like that to your father, not now, not ever, do you talk to me like that. You understand? You’ve got other people to consider besides yourself. You’ve got to think of all the people who have bled and died so other people don’t look at you and see nothing but a minstrel show. You want to take all that and throw it in their faces and say, ‘Look at me, yassur, boss, you right, I ain’t good for nothing but singing and dancing and picking cotton’?”
“William, really!”
“I think that’s true,” said Emma. Nobody had asked her and nobody paid any attention to her. She ate another roll.
“I don’t care about them!” Willie jumped up. “I only care about one thing.” He started running. “I’m going to do it, too!” His voice came back at them from down the hall.
Mr. Sheridan blew a large puff of smoke. His big face looked more like a walrus than ever.
“He doesn’t know anything about all that.” Mrs. Sheridan was looking at her husband with something like pity.
“How much that Dipsey been coming round here?”
“If you’re finished, Emma, you may be excused.” Mrs. Sheridan smiled at Emma.
“There’s chocolate mousse,” said Emma.
“He coming round here every day?” Mr. Sheridan blew more smoke.
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “He’s given Willie a few lessons, that’s all. He’s just trying to help.”
“Well, tell him to stop coming round.” More smoke.
“I can’t do that. It would break Willie’s heart.”
“He’s giving the child ideas. Can’t you see that? We don’t need him round here filling the kid full of fancy thoughts.” Mr. Sheridan was puffing so hard there were clouds of smoke all over the dining room.
“Look, William. I can see your point about summer stock. I think he’s too young for that too, but I don’t see why he has to cut out dancing altogether, and I don’t agree with you about people in show business being trash. I should think you’d think about my father being in show business for forty years before you say anything like that.”
“You do, huh.” Mr. Sheridan rolled his cigar in his mouth in a way that made Emma think of gangster movies. “Well, I’ll tell you something, woman. This is my son I’m talking to. Don’t you think a man knows a little bit more about what to say to his son than you do? Seeing as how I’m a man and he’s going to be a man? I know what’s right for my son, so don’t you worry your head about this.” He got up and moved toward the living room.
“Don’t you want any dessert?”
“No. I’ll take my coffee in the living room.”
They heard the rustle of the newspaper as he unfolded it. Martha came in and put the chocolate mousse in front of Mrs. Sheridan. “Only two of us, I guess, Martha. You might take this to Willie and see if he’ll eat a little.” She handed a bowl to Martha, who took it down the hall to Willie’s room.
Emma ate silently, watching her mother out of the corner of her eye.
Mrs. Sheridan seemed nervous, fluttery, and not altogether herself. She saw Emma looking at her.
“How was school today, dear?”
“What do you feel about women’s liberation?” Emma fired at her.
Mrs. Sheridan looked amused. “As you know, I do volunteer work for the day-care center.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“It was a rather general question. What is it you want to know?”
“Are you going to let Dad push you around like that, or are you going to fight?”
“Fight?” Mrs. Sheridan looked surprised.
“Fight for what you believe in.”
“And what is that?”
“You believe Willie ought to go to summer stock?”
“No. I don’t. He’s too young.”
“But you believe he ought to keep on dancing?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Sheridan sounded tentative, as though she were listening to herself. “Yes, I think … I don’t see anything wrong with dancing.”
“Well, he sure does.” Emma helped herself to more mousse.
“Yes, that’s true.” Mrs. Sheridan sounded far away. “Well, then. You going to fight or not?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Sheridan.
“While you’re at it, I’d like to be a lawyer
and he doesn’t like that either.”
Mrs. Sheridan looked at Emma and burst out laughing. “You’ll get over that, dear.”
“Oh, swell,” said Emma.
Mrs. Sheridan kept on laughing. Emma kept on eating. She finished off her chocolate mousse. She scraped the bowl. She sat back and looked at her mother, who was now sitting quietly, with an amused expression.
“You think I’m funny?”
“What, dear?”
“Am I funny?”
Mrs. Sheridan looked at Emma. She saw a round face trying to look brave, expecting the worst and on the verge of tears. “No, dear, of course not. Where did you ever get that idea?”
“You laughed.”
“Did I, dear? Well, yes, I guess I did. It was funny.”
“What’s funny about being a lawyer?”
“It’s not that being a lawyer is funny. It’s the idea of you as a lawyer. Why in the world would you want to do that?”
“You think I’m too stupid?” Emma found she was holding her breath.
“I just can’t imagine why you’d want to do that.”
“You do think I’m stupid.”
“Of course you’re not stupid. You get straight A’s in school. It’s the life of a lawyer. I think you’re too young to realize that the life of a lawyer is very rough. If you knew more about it, I don’t think you’d choose it. I don’t think you’d be thinking about it at all.”
“What would I choose?” Emma began to feel crafty. She felt as though she had her mother on a witness stand.
“I think you’d choose marrying a man you loved, marrying a lawyer perhaps, and raising two lovely children—”
“I’d put a bullet through my head before I’d marry a lawyer.”
“—but I can’t see you doing what a lawyer has to do, hanging around a hot courthouse, interviewing a lot of criminals. Sometimes it’s even dangerous.”
“I don’t even want to get married, much less have children.”
“Of course you do. You’re only eleven. You don’t know what you want yet.”
“I know exactly what I want.” Emma was in control now. “And I know what you want. You want me to be you! You want me to be exactly like you.” She felt triumphant. The secret was out.
“Oh, no, dear. I know you’re not like me.” There was sarcasm in her mother’s voice. “I know you’ve had a totally different life.”
Emma began to feel uncomfortable, as though she were losing in some mysterious way. She turned into a prosecuting attorney. “You said, did you not, that I should marry a lawyer and have two lovely children. That’s what you said!”
“Your life is totally unlike mine. Look at the advantages you’ve had, a nice home, a private school, your mother and father with you every evening. I played backstage in a dressing room and slept in rotten hotels with cockroaches. My mother was dead, and my father half drunk all the time. I had to take care of Dipsey, raise him when I wasn’t even raised myself. Oh, no, I see your life is different!”
Emma sat motionless, dumbfounded by guilt. Here she was, with all the things her mother never had. Why wasn’t she happy? Because she was a miserable spoiled brat who did nothing but make her mother unhappy. She resolved to change.
“I’m sorry, Mother.” She felt like a big fat nerd. She had never hated herself so much as at this moment.
“Sorry? What have you got to be sorry about?” Her mother laughed again. The laugh cut through Emma’s soul. She, Emma, was obviously laughable, a clown, a buffoon, an idiot, with her ideas about being a lawyer. Who would ever hire a fat black mess to defend them?
She had a vision of herself in a large, flowered dress and a straw hat, like somebody out of a cotton field, addressing the court.
“Your honor, may it please the court—”
“Who is that woman? Get that woman out of here. Clear the court of these people not connected with the trial.” Bang bang bang of the gavel.
“Your honor, I am the attorney for the defense”—saying this over and over as two strong bailiffs dragged her from the courtroom. Looking across at the prosecutor, who was, out of the two hundred assistant district attorneys of the borough of Manhattan, none other than her father, she saw that he was not recognizing her because to do so would be to call shame upon himself. He was laughing along with everyone else at the fat lady being dragged out of court.
“You have nothing to be sorry about.” How long had her mother been talking? “You have a good life. Your father has worked hard to give us all a good life. You have everything to look forward to and nothing to worry about.”
“Can I finish the chocolate mousse?” There was no point in dieting now.
“May I,” said Mrs. Sheridan, looking for the first time at the big bowl. “Goodness, Emma, you’ve almost eaten the entire thing. No, you may not, we must leave some for Martha. And, honey, you must diet. You don’t want to grow up to be a big fat woman, do you?”
What else? thought Emma as she got up and walked staunchly to her room.
That night on television there was a program on children’s rights. Emma became involved as never before. She took down a phone number, given out by a sixteen-year-old physics genius in spectacles. She hid the number in the pocket of her book bag.
Spring came through the window of the schoolroom and hit Willie on the head. He could hear the traffic down below, but the air that came in was sweet, a lost, bright sweetness that made him ache.
The next time he saw the teacher pause, he raised his hand to be excused.
Once in the hall, he ran. If he didn’t get to the phone fast, he’d never have time before the next class.
The phone booth was right across from the principal’s office. He sidled in and closed the door quietly.
He dialed the number. It rang four times before Dipsey answered.
“Dipsey?”
“Whoof.”
“Dipsey, it’s Willie!”
“Aw, come on, kid, I told you not to call me before noon on Fridays. You know I work at the club on Thursdays.”
“I had to. I’m sorry. I figured if I waited you’d go out soon as you woke up.”
“That’s what my agent always says.” Dipsey gave a big yawn. “What’s up, anyway?”
“Dipsey, I got to go.”
“Hey, kid, you wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me you got to hang up the phone?”
“No, I mean, I got to go to summer stock.”
“Not today, you don’t have to go. Whyn’t you and me talk about that at some reasonable hour, like, say, three in the afternoon?”
“Dipsey, this is serious. I got to do it.”
There was a pause. “I don’t know, kid.”
“I got to. I just got to!”
“I don’t know what we’re going to do about this, kid. Your daddy don’t like the idea and he can get pretty stuffy when he don’t like something.”
“You got to listen to me. I’m going to kill myself if I don’t go!”
“Hold it, kid, now wait a minute. Listen, let me get a cup of coffee. I’m not even awake. I’m hearing things.”
“I mean it. There’s nothing else I want in the whole world. I ain’t any good at anything else, Dipsey.” Willie felt his voice breaking. What a time to turn into a crybaby. He bit his lip. “I got to. I just got to do this.”
“Take it easy, kid. Where are you, anyway?”
“School.”
“What time you get out of school?”
“Three o’clock, but I can’t come over then because I’m supposed to be home right after school. Can’t I come over now, Dipsey? Please, can’t I?”
“Listen, kid, seeing me ain’t going to do anything. What good is—”
“Please, Dipsey, please, just let me come over.”
There was another, longer pause.
“Okay, kid. I may be doing the wrong thing, but I don’t know how to say no when you sound like that. You know how to get here?”
“Sure. I’ll be
right over.”
Willie forgot to say goodbye. He hung up and ran out of the booth and down the hall.
The bell was ringing loudly. People were coming out of all the doors.
Willie ran, got his books, ran down the three flights of steps, jumped past the monitor when his back was turned, then out the door and onto Park Avenue.
He ran around the corner, hoping that no teacher was looking out the window, ran across Madison, got to Fifth, and hopped on the bus just as the doors were closing.
He felt that everybody on the bus was looking at him in his blue blazer with his book bag, wondering what he was doing out of school at eleven-thirty.
A fat, crazy-looking white man in a purple tie and a green hat kept looking him up and down as though he were a tiger escaped from the zoo. Maybe he was a cop, but he didn’t look like a cop. He just looked like a crazy person. The man rolled his eyes three times, tapped his foot three times, then went back to looking Willie up and down. He wasn’t any cop. Willie moved away from him.
He got off at Sixtieth and Fifth, ran toward the Plaza Hotel. People were everywhere. The spring air was bringing them out. The sun was beginning to be hot. People were joking and laughing. The sweet air touched Willie’s face as he ran, making him glad, making him not care what happened when he got to Dipsey’s. He felt the air and he knew it would be all right. Everything would always be all right. “Yeh,” he yelled at the doorman of the Plaza, for no reason at all. The doorman laughed and waved at him.
He ran around the corner, past a garage, and there he was at Dipsey’s building.
Willie loved this building. It seemed right in the middle of everything. And there was a movie right across the street, where Dipsey could go any time he wanted!
He punched the bell that said Dipsey Bates. The buzzer sounded back. He pushed the door and went to the elevator, which was standing open.
Dipsey lived on the fifth floor. Willie punched the button and started dancing.
He danced all over the elevator, singing a song he made up on the spot.
“Five is the number, five is the place, give me five and I’ll win the race.”
He did the fastest time step he could do. “Five is lucky, I am too. Look at this, this a soft shoe.”
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