Emma sat in the kitchen, not moving, her hand holding a pastrami sandwich, her mouth full, afraid to chew.
“Darling, what I would like to hear you say is that you don’t want to go ahead with this. I would like to hear you say that you’ve given up this whole thing and that you don’t care about it any more and that you don’t want to have this job in a musical.”
Emma dropped the sandwich. She was so shocked that she tried to gasp with her mouth full, and only succeeded in choking. The kitchen was quickly filled with gasping, coughing, wheezing, dropping of books, and other signs of her imminent demise.
Mrs. Sheridan and Willie came running. “It’s Emma, she’s choking to death!” yelled Willie.
“Look!” he yelled again. “She’s turning dark!”
Emma was pushing everybody away, arms flailing. She knew that, although it sounded bad, she was just about to catch her breath. The wheezes died down and she began to breathe again.
“My heavens, darling, what happened?” asked Mrs. Sheridan.
“She was choking, Mama,” said Willie.
“Willie!” gasped Emma. “Willie has a job in a musical?”
Too late they heard, as one, the door to the study slam. Mr. Sheridan was already in the kitchen.
“What do you mean, Willie has a job? What is all this yelling about?” He looked like a tornado.
They were too stunned to speak.
“Well, what is it? Don’t just stare at me like a bunch of fish. What are you talking about?”
Mrs. Sheridan burst out laughing. “Well, the cat’s out of the bag now!” She slapped her hand down on the counter. “It’s really funny!”
“What’s funny?”
“I’d like to know too,” said Emma.
“Emma almost choked to death,” said Willie.
“And that’s funny?” asked Mr. Sheridan.
“We have a big surprise for you,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “Come into the living room. Willie has something to tell you.”
She led him away. Willie whispered, “Emma, listen, could you help me?” He was shaking.
“With what?” Emma felt bleary-eyed after her fit.
“I got this job in a Broadway musical. It don’t interfere with school. When he hits the ceiling, could you—would you talk good about me?”
Emma stared at him. He had a job in a musical? How good was this kid? “How did you get it?”
“Willie, come in here,” called Mrs. Sheridan.
“I walked up on the stage and I danced and they took me.”
This kid has guts, thought Emma, before she realized she was thinking about her brother.
“Would you help me, Emma?” His eyes were pleading as he turned to go toward the living room.
“Come on, Willie!”
Willie walked out of the kitchen. Emma sat, picking remnants of pastrami and coleslaw off her book. She slammed the book shut. “How can you get any work done in this family?” she asked the air. She thumped into the living room.
Her father and mother were seated on the couch. Willie was sitting across from them in one of the two armchairs. Emma hovered a bit at the edges of the room, until she finally chose an impartial straight chair against the wall.
“Willie has something to tell us!” said Mrs. Sheridan brightly.
“Mom!” said Willie in an agonized voice.
“Tell what happened this afternoon, dear,” said Mrs. Sheridan, unperturbed. She was holding on to Mr. Sheridan’s arm. Mr. Sheridan looked fairly sleepy and exceedingly grumpy.
Willie swallowed. “I went to the Winter Garden Theater, where Dipsey was in rehearsals—”
“You did what?” Mr. Sheridan sat up straight, untangling himself from his wife and putting a hand on each knee.
Willie swallowed again. “I went over to the Winter Garden Theater—”
“And just where is this Winter Garden?”
“Broadway and Fiftieth.” Willie said this so low he could barely be heard.
“You mean to tell me that you went all the way from your school—I presume you went to school, did you not?”
Willie nodded, petrified.
“You went all the way from your school to Fiftieth and Broadway, even after having been told that you were not to go across town by yourself, were not, in fact, to go anywhere but school and then straight home?” Willie nodded again.
Emma looked at Willie’s legs. He was shaking so hard he seemed to be dancing with his knees.
“In other words, you performed an act of deliberate disobedience?”
Mrs. Sheridan said, “Let him tell the story.”
Mr. Sheridan obviously didn’t take to the idea, but he went along with it. “What did you do there?”
Something’s missing, thought Emma, something important.
“I went in the theater. It was dark. I sat in one of the back rows.”
“Speak up. You can’t be heard!” said Mr. Sheridan.
Emma mentally finished his sentence, “You can’t be heard in the courtroom,” and realized, suddenly, what was missing. Of course! Here was a prosecutor in the form of her father, here was a suspected criminal in Willie, here was even a judge in the shape of her mother, but where was the defense lawyer? Willie had no one defending him!
“I sat in one of the back rows. These men were talking down front, and they were saying some boys were going to audition with Dipsey.”
“Oh, they did, did they? And I suppose you thought you’d show them what you could do with some fancy stepping, right?” Mr. Sheridan was sneering.
“Objection!” said Emma. Every head turned in her direction. “Prosecutor is badgering the witness.”
Her father looked as though the chair had spoken. “What is this? What do we have to hear from this one for? Isn’t one rotten apple enough?”
“Pay no attention, dear,” said Mrs. Sheridan, grabbing his arm again and making him lean back on the couch. “Come on, Willie, tell us about it. Don’t be afraid.”
“Dipsey came out and he did the number I’ve been practicing—”
“Oh-ho! So you’ve been working up a number, have you? Well, fine, that’s just fine. You don’t pay a damned bit of attention to what your father says, do you?”
“Let him tell it, dear.”
Willie was so rattled he kept bobbing up and down in his chair like a swimmer coming up for air. “This kid comes out and dances with Dipsey—”
“Fine. So they have somebody. Why didn’t you come home?”
“This kid was terrible, Dad!” This was the first display of temper on Willie’s part.
“So what! Let his family worry about what happens to him in ten years. You get your ass home after school!”
“Objection!” said Emma. “The District Attorney is leading the witness.”
“Leading him where?” asked Mr. Sheridan.
“Home from school,” said Emma.
“Leading the witness doesn’t mean that. When you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’d better keep your mouth shut!”
“May I remind the District Attorney that if he would question the witness fairly, he might find out what he was talking about.”
“Get her out of here!” Mr. Sheridan stood up. Mrs. Sheridan grabbed at his arm.
“Sit down, William. I want Willie to tell you what happened.”
Willie looked queasily at Emma. He wasn’t sure what she was talking about, so he wasn’t sure if she was on his side or not.
“What is this nonsense?” Mr. Sheridan looked at his wife in desperation. “Can’t you handle these kids any better than this? One of them running all over town all the time, and the other one running off at the mouth!”
Emma’s mind was racing ahead. How could she prepare a case for the defense when she hadn’t heard the whole story? Before she knew it, she was on her feet. “May it please the court, I would like a few minutes to confer with my client.”
“That does it!” said Mr. Sheridan, standing again. “What in the name
of God is going on here?”
“I am simply begging the indulgence of the court for a few minutes of time to confer with my client on matters pertinent to this case.”
“It takes your breath away,” said Mr. Sheridan. He sat down, muttering, “If I’d ever talked to my father that way, he’d have slit my throat.”
Emma ignored him. She marched over to Willie, who thought she was going to beat him up. She grabbed his arm. “Into the kitchen a minute,” she said. He went with her.
“Now, I’m going to try to help you,” she whispered. “But you have to tell me the truth.”
“This is the truth,” said Willie.
“What is the truth? What happened?”
“I went in there like I said. This nutsy kid comes out and does the number real bad. I mean, Emma, it was bad. So, next time Dipsey starts, I know some other kid is going to run out, because it’s the same music, so I run up on the stage instead, even before Dipsey knows I’m there, and I do the number with him!”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you had been practicing something?”
“He would have stopped it, you know that. What a dumb question.”
“Is that why you didn’t tell anyone your whereabouts on the afternoon in question?”
“My where-a-who?”
“Is that why you didn’t tell anyone where you were going when you went to the theater?”
“Sure. He wouldn’t have let me!” Willie began to doubt that Emma was sane.
“After you did your dance, what happened?”
“I got the job!” said Willie, breaking into an enormous grin.
“And you want, naturally, to be able to do it.”
She was definitely insane, Willie concluded. Of course he wanted the job.
“Will you have to leave school?”
“Listen, in there. Stop getting your stories straight. I don’t have all night, and I have to get up early.” Mr. Sheridan sounded a bit more jovial.
Willie shook his head. “Rehearsals are after school, and I’ll be out for the summer before the show starts.” Emma took him back into the living room and sat him down on his chair.
“May it please the court,” said Emma, standing in the middle of the room and facing her father and mother. “I would like to plead a mistrial on the basis of the fact that in this case the complainant, Mr. William Sheridan, Sr., happens also to be the District Attorney.”
“Listen, smart-ass.” Mr. Sheridan pointed a finger at her. “You think you know so much. I’ll have you in contempt of court in three minutes.”
“—and is also the judge. My client, William Sheridan, Jr., has, therefore, no possibility of a fair trial.”
“But you have a very good possibility of getting your ass whacked,” said Mr. Sheridan. “Now, sit down and shut up.”
“I’ll stand.”
“All right, Willie. Since you have a loyal sister who seems to feel your rights to a fair trial are being prejudiced, I will begin again, calmly, to try to find out what you did on the afternoon of the second; that is, today.” Willie had his thumb in his mouth, having fled back into his youth.
“Sit up,” said Emma. “Make a more pleasing appearance for the jury.” Willie looked around for the jury.
“Finish your story, Willie,” said his father.
“I watched this boy dance with Dipsey and he was real bad. He couldn’t do it half as good as I could. So when Dipsey come to start again, I went up on the stage and did it with him.”
“Son, you must have practiced this many times. You must therefore have disobeyed me many times. Did you not know that you were being bad?”
“Objection. My client could not be honest about this situation because he would have been incarcerated.”
“Emma, get out of the way!” Mr. Sheridan bellowed.
“Willie, dear, what your father wants to know is whether you knew you were being disobedient. Did you, dear?”
“My client takes the Fifth Amendment,” said Emma quickly.
“Will you tell your daughter to shut up?” asked Mr. Sheridan patiently.
“Emma, please, wait a minute until we are finished with Willie.”
Emma didn’t even hear her mother, so lost was she in her courtroom activities. All she heard was a sort of buzz running through the crowd filling the courtroom at Foley Square, in the middle of which she stood in a Bella Abzug hat.
“This boy is innocent until proven guilty by due process!” she fired back at her father.
“I knew I was bad, but I had to do it!” said Willie.
Emma hit her forehead with her hand. “Shut up, you nincompoop! How can I defend you when you insist on hanging yourself? May it please the court, I request a recess.”
“Well now, son, if you knew you were bad, why did you do it?”
“Objection! Counsel is intimidating the witness!”
“I had to because I had to get that job,” said Willie.
“Job?” Mr. Sheridan looked thoroughly confused.
“I got it, Daddy! I got the job!” Willie was grinning again.
“Don’t volunteer information!” said Emma, clearly at the end of her tether.
“Let me get this straight. You say, son, that you have a job?”
“Yeah!” Willie was beaming. “I got a job in a musical!”
“You do, really?” asked Emma.
“He really does!” said Mrs. Sheridan, smiling, to Mr. Sheridan.
“Where is that Dipsey?” Mr. Sheridan got up. “He’ll never see the light of day when I get through with him!”
“Dipsey didn’t do it!” said Willie loudly. “I did! I did it all by myself!”
“Stop saying that,” said Emma. “You could plead undue influence.”
“This will all be over by tomorrow afternoon,” said Mr. Sheridan. “I’ll get in touch with whoever is producing this musical and tell him that a mistake has been made.” He stood over Willie. “A very big mistake,” he said slowly.
“Under the Constitution,” said Emma, clearing her throat, “he has a right to the pursuit of happiness.”
“I’ll constitution you right out of this room,” said Mr. Sheridan, looking steadily at Emma. Then he said, “Sit down, Emma.”
It was the way he said it. Emma herself couldn’t figure out how he had said it, how anybody could say anything that would make her sit down instantly, but whatever he had done, it worked. She sat down.
There was a change in everyone. Everyone waited for Mr. Sheridan to speak. Willie stopped wiggling his feet and sat still, looking up timorously at his father.
“I want to speak frankly to you people. I want to pretend, and to have you pretend, for the moment, that I am not a father and a husband, that I am just a man.” He looked around at them. He took a stance that Emma recognized as the one he took when addressing the jury (the one and only time she had even seen him in a courtroom), one hand resting on his hip, the other gesturing with his glasses.
“What kind of man is this in front of you? Let me tell you a little bit about him.” He rocked back on his heels, then forward again. “He grew up on the toughest street in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He worked from the time he was nine years old, but he didn’t bring his money home to his mother because he didn’t have any mother at home. He didn’t have any father at home either.”
Oh, God, thought Emma, it’s choke-up time. Now we’re going to hear how sad his life was and how wonderful ours is and how wonderful he is as a father.
“The money he earned went to feed himself and his younger brother. His father appeared every now and then and stole whatever this boy could manage to save after the room rent and some food. This man standing before you went to the library every day and he read. This man made straight A’s in school. He graduated from high school. This man worked while he went through City College, while he went through law school. This man has worked every day of his life since he was nine years old. This man was spit on every day of his life in one way or the other for being black.” M
r. Sheridan seemed to lose control of himself. He sputtered. “I was treated like an animal.” The words seemed to rip from his mouth, hurting him as they came through. “What you can’t understand, you two kids who have always been clean and fed, is that I felt like an animal.”
Emma’s sympathy careened toward her father. She had felt like an animal, sometimes at school like a strange animal and always, upon looking in the mirror, like a fat animal. She had never thought of her father as feeling anything and she searched his face for signs of more.
She watched him shake himself and get control. He resumed his speech.
“This man meets and rescues, yes, rescues, this woman, your mother, from a life of hardship and pain, heartbreak and sorrow because she was the daughter of a”—he sneered the word, looking straight at Willie—“dancer. This so-called dancer was a man who didn’t want to work for a living. I supported this so-called dancer for the rest of his life, until he died a broken-down drunk.” He paused to let this sink in.
“This man you see in front of you is now in middle age. This man fought to get his brother out of a slum, this man fought to rescue his wife from insecurity, this man is fighting today to keep all three of you living here in a clean place, going to private schools, wearing nice clothes, having a nice warm home to come back to at night with a good hot meal at the end of the day.” He stopped and looked at them all.
“This man is not going to stop doing this. This man is not going to let anyone else stop him from doing this.” He pointed to Willie. “This boy is going to continue to go to school, to come home to a nice home, to grow up straight with nobody laughing at him and calling him names. He will go to college. He will have a profession which is worthy of the name ‘profession.’ Nobody is going to stop me from seeing that this boy gets what he deserves in this world.” He stopped and looked at Willie a long time.
“Son,” he said finally. “We do not understand each other very well at this moment, but in the future I know that will change. I want you to listen to what I have to tell you now.”
Willie’s eyes were huge. Mr. Sheridan regarded him steadily.
“You will do what I say now, even though you don’t agree with it and even though you don’t understand it, because you will have faith that I can see further into your future than you can. You will continue to go to school and you will stop all this ridiculous talk about musicals. I will straighten out this situation you’ve gotten yourself into. By tomorrow it will be all over. There is to be no recurrence of this, do you understand?”
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