“Joe had a gun?” The amazement showed in her voice.
He was suddenly silent. Then he looked at her shrewdly. “What if he did?” he asked defensively. “He was only trying to protect me.”
“Did you say that in your deposition?” she asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Is that why your attorneys want you to go away? So that you don’t have to answer questions?”
“What difference does it make?” he asked. “It’s about time someone showed my father that he can’t run the world.”
“You were willing to let that cheap thug pull a gun on your father?” Her voice filled with a strange loathing. “You’re really sick.”
“You’re jealous!” he screamed suddenly. “You were always jealous of my friendship with Joe from the moment I first met him! Because he’s a real man, that’s why.”
“He’s a cheap gangster who does nothing but terrorize and threaten people weaker than he is. And if you were a real man, you wouldn’t need friends like that!”
He started toward her, raising his hand.
“Don’t!” she said sharply, picking up the telephone. “If you’re going anywhere, you better go upstairs and pack because I’m going to call your father right now and tell him you’re here.”
He stood there for a moment as she began to dial. Then he started for the door; suddenly, he stopped, bending almost in two, clutching at his stomach. “I’m going to be sick!” he said in a small, frightened voice.
She put down the telephone and went toward him. He began to retch, dry, hard, gasping breaths. She put an arm around his shoulders and he leaned weakly against her as she steered him into the guest washroom off the foyer. He began to vomit into the toilet bowl.
“You’ve got to help me,” he said weakly, between gasps.
“I am helping you,” she said quietly. “Can’t you see that if I let you destroy your father you’re destroying yourself? If you weren’t his son, who do you think would even give a damn whether you lived or died?”
“I’ve got to get away,” he said. He began to wring his hands. “I don’t know how I’ll manage if anything happens to Joe.”
“You can go if you want to,” she said calmly. “But if you do, you’ll do it without me and the children. And when you come back, we won’t be here.”
Hardeman Manor seemed strangely dark and deserted as she drove up the long winding driveway to the front door. Even the light in the entranceway was off as she stopped the car under the stone-pillared car portals. She turned off the engine and got out.
The moonlight cast a pale shadow as she walked up the steps to the doorway. She pressed the bell. From deep within the house, she heard an answering sound. It echoed in the still night.
She waited quietly. After a moment when there was no answer, she pressed the doorbell again. Still no answer.
She pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it. The match flared briefly in the dark, illuminating her face in the curtained glass window of the door. Then it went out, leaving only the glowing tip of the cigarette shining back at her.
She went down the steps again and looked up at the house. It was dark and quiet, not a light behind any of the front windows. Slowly she began to walk around to the side of the house, her high heels crunching and sinking into the gravel of the driveway. It was the only sound in the night.
She turned the corner of the building and saw the light glowing from a room on the second floor. She knew the room. The small sitting room next to Loren’s bedroom where he would have his morning coffee while he read the papers and the mail.
She hesitated a moment, looking up at it. The light meant that he was home, but now that she knew it there was a peculiar reluctance to see him. Then she bent down quickly, scooped up a small handful of gravel and threw it up against the window. It rattled strangely in the night and fell with scraping sounds down the sides.
A moment later, the French windows opened and he stood there, silhouetted, the light of the room against his back. He stood there silently, looking down into the night.
From her angle he looked even taller and larger than she remembered and it was a moment before she realized that he could not see her because she was standing in the shadows. She felt her heart begin to pound inside her. “Oh, God!” she thought wildly, suddenly wanting to run and hide. “What will I ever say to him?”
His voice echoed in the night. “Who is it?”
Somehow the strength in the sound of him moved her out, where the pale moonlight shone on her face. Suddenly she giggled, a feeling of light-headed ridiculousness overcame her. “Romeo, oh Romeo,” she called. “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”
He was silent for a moment, looking at her, then he laughed. “Wait there, I’ll be right down.” He took a half step back, then vaulted over the low windowsill.
“Loren!” she screamed, as he hurtled down. He hit the ground and sank half to his knees, his hands breaking his fall. He was straightening up by the time she got to him.
He grinned at her, brushing his hands off against his trousers like a small boy. “How’s that for a Douglas Fairbanks?”
She stood very still, looking up into his face. “You’re crazy! You might have been killed!”
His eyes went from her up to the window and then back to her. A rueful tone came into his voice. “You know, you’re right.” Then he laughed again. “But it was something I wanted to do ever since I built the house and I never had the excuse.” He began to rub his hands together.
“Here, let me see.” She took his hands and looked at them. They were scratched and dirty. “You’re hurt,” she said.
“It’s nothing.” He took her by the arm and began to walk her around to the front of the house. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
“How?” she asked. “I rang the bell twice. No one answered.”
“The servants aren’t all back yet,” he said. “And the butler left after dinner.”
They walked up the steps to the front door. “Then how are we going to get in?” she asked.
“Easy,” he said. He turned the knob and the door swung open. “It isn’t locked.” He switched on the lights as they went into the house.
“Let me see your hands again,” she said.
He held them out toward her, palms up. Traces of blood seeped through the scratches.
“You better wash them right away. And put something on them so you don’t get infected.”
“Okay,” he said. “I have some peroxide in my bathroom.”
She followed him up the staircase into the bathroom. She turned the faucet on in the sink and took the soap from the tray. “Let me do that for you,” she said.
He held his hands under the water and she washed them gently. After a moment, she looked at them and, still not satisfied, cleaned them again with a washcloth. “Where’s the peroxide?”
He gestured to the medicine cabinet. She opened it and took out the bottle. “Hold your hands over the sink.”
He held out his hands and she poured the peroxide over them. He winced and pulled them away. “That burns.”
“Don’t be a baby,” she commanded. “Hold still.” She emptied the bottle and the liquid bubbled and sizzled over his hands. She took a clean hand towel from the rack and patted his hands gently dry. “Now, isn’t that better?”
He looked at her. “Yes.”
She felt the color rising in her cheeks. Her eyes fell. “I had to see you,” she said.
“Come,” he said, “let’s get a drink.”
She followed him downstairs into the library. He opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of Canadian whiskey and two glasses. “I can get ice if you like.”
She shook her head.
He poured the liquor into two small tumblers and gave one to her. “Cheers.”
She tasted her drink and the whiskey burned its way down her throat. He swallowed his and refilled his glass. “Sit down,” he said.
She sat down on the leather couch and awkwa
rdly straightened her skirt over her knees as he pulled a chair opposite her. She looked at him. “Junior went to the cottage in Ontario,” she said.
He didn’t speak.
“I refused to go with him,” she said.
He was still silent.
“I’m leaving him,” she said.
He hesitated a moment. “What about the children?”
“I’m taking them with me.”
“Where are you going?”
She stared at him. “I never thought about that.” There was a note of surprise in her voice. “I’ll think of someplace.”
He emptied his glass and got up, walked back to the bar and refilled it. He turned and looked back at her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“It would have happened sooner or later.”
He hesitated a moment. “I suppose so,” he said, walking back toward her. “I just didn’t want it to happen because of me.”
“I know,” she said. “But it wasn’t that reason. I think I had that straightened out in my mind. But from the moment he met Joe Warren, it began to go from bad to worse.”
He stared at her. “Joe Warren,” he said bitterly. “Everywhere I turn I hear that name.”
“Junior told me that Warren signed an assault complaint against you and the sheriff’s office was going to pick you up.”
“I know about that,” he said. “But I have some pretty good friends downtown. They sat on it.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “But don’t think that it’s over. Joe is a real bastard and he won’t give up. He’s got Junior under his thumb.”
He stared at her. “That’s the one thing I don’t understand. What the hell power has he got over Junior that makes him jump when he pulls the strings?”
“Don’t you know?” she asked, her eyes meeting his steadily.
“No.”
“Joe Warren is Junior’s boyfriend,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.
A puzzled look crossed Loren’s face. “His boyfriend?”
Suddenly the naïveté of this giant of a man, his blindness about his son, reached out and touched her. Her voice grew very gentle. “I thought you knew,” she said. “It seems as if everyone else in Detroit knows it. Ever since the day they met in the steam room at the Athletic Club.”
She could see the shock well up into his eyes as he looked at her. His hand began to tremble, spilling the whiskey over the sides of the glass. Slowly he put the glass down on a table next to him. She could see the gray winter of age etch its way into his face. Suddenly, he put his hands up to his face and hard, wracking sobs shook his body.
She was very still for a moment, then went over to him and knelt in front of his chair. She pulled his head down to her shoulder and held him tightly against her.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
Chapter Nine
It was a few minutes after seven o’clock in the evening when Melanie Walker got off the streetcar and started the four-block walk to her house. It had turned cold during the day after the rain of the morning had stopped and now the night winds blew strongly through her thin coat. She pulled it tightly around her as she turned the corner and started down the street.
“You’re late,” her mother said as she came in the door. “We already ate. You’ll have to make do with the leftovers.”
“I don’t care,” Melanie said. “I’m not really hungry.”
“We thought—” her mother began to say.
“Shut up!” her father yelled from his seat in front of the radio set in the corner of the kitchen. “Can’t you see I’m listening to ‘Amos and Andy’?”
She took off her coat and walked into the room. She hung it carefully on a hanger on the back of her door. Then she got out of her dress and slip and laid them neatly on the bed. She would iron out the wrinkles after dinner so that it would be crisp and neat for the morning. She slipped into a cotton housedress and, tying the sash around her waist, went back into the kitchen.
Her mother had laid out some cold cuts on a plate on the table together with some already browning lettuce and squashy sliced tomatoes next to a plate of bread and butter.
She looked at it. “Not liverwurst and bologna again?”
Her mother shook her head. “What did you expect? You should have been home in time for dinner.”
“I had to work late,” she said. “I was in Mr. Hardeman’s office today.”
“You should have called,” her mother said.
“I didn’t have time. Besides you know Mr. McManus doesn’t like us to bother him too much.”
McManus was their neighbor on the floor below. He was the only tenant in the house who had a telephone. He was a cop on the city police force. “We don’t bother them that much,” her mother said.
Her father erupted in a shout of laughter. Still chuckling he got out of his chair and walked over to the icebox and took out a bottle of home brew. With a practiced motion of his hand, he swept off the stopper and got the bottle in his mouth before the foam had a chance to spill over. He took a long pull, then held it down in front of his large stomach. “Those niggers are the funniest,” he belched. “Especially that Kingfish. He talked Amos into buying a new car and now Amos can’t make the first payment and he wants the dealer to take the car back and give him back his old flivver.” He began to laugh again thinking about it. “Andy got into the act to straighten it all out and now the dealer has both cars and they have nothing.”
Neither of the women laughed. He stared at them for a moment. “It’s funny, see,” he explained. “Amos bought a new car and—”
“If you think niggers are so funny then why are you so mad because they’re moving in a few blocks from us?” her mother asked.
“That’s different,” he said. “Amos and Andy are good niggers. They know their place. They ain’t trying to move into white neighborhoods. They stick with their own kind like they should.”
The women didn’t answer him; he looked over at Melanie who had just begun to butter a slice of bread. “How come you’re so late?”
“I had to work late in Mr. Hardeman’s office today,” she said. She picked at a piece of liverwurst.
Her father grinned. “At least you don’t have to worry about him trying to grab a feel of you when you walk past his desk.”
“It wasn’t that one, it was his father,” she said. She chewed at the liverwurst. It tasted mealy and flavorless.
“You mean Number One?” her father asked, curiosity in his voice. “He’s back?”
She nodded.
“Your boyfriend ain’t going to like that.”
She stared at him. “How many times do I have to tell you that Mr. Warren isn’t my boyfriend? Just because I have dinner with him once in a while don’t mean anything.”
“Okay, okay,” her father said placatingly. “So he ain’t your boyfriend. He still ain’t going to like it. He’s got Number Two under his thumb. The old man is another story. Nobody pushes him around.”
Melanie tried the bologna. It was no better. She pushed the plate away from her. “I’m not hungry,” she told her mother. “Do you have a cup of coffee?”
“How about some eggs?” her mother asked.
She shook her head. “No. Just coffee.” She looked at her father. “Did you go out for a job today?”
“What for?” her father answered. “There ain’t nothin’ around.”
“There were openings for six machinists at our place today. Over eight hundred men showed up.”
“You don’t expect me to get on line with all them rednecks, Polacks and niggers, do you? Don’t forget I was a foreman out at Chrysler.”
“Right now, you ain’t nothin’,” her mother said. “You been out of work for almost three years. If it wasn’t for Melanie’s workin’ we’d all been on the streets.”
“You stay out of this!” her father snapped angrily. He turned back to Melanie. “Besides, didn’t your boyfriend promise me the first openin’ that came alon
g?”
Melanie nodded.
“But that was for a foreman’s job,” her mother said. “None of the plants are hiring foremen. What are you going to do, wait around forever for one to come along?”
“I told you to stay out of it!” her father roared. “What do you want me to do? Come down in the world?”
“I just want you to get a job,” her mother said stubbornly.
“I’ll get a job,” her father muttered. “Just as soon as we can get rid of all those foreigners and niggers that came pilin’ up here after the war to grab the easy money.”
“They ain’t goin’ away,” her mother said. “The war’s over fifteen years now an’ they’re still here.”
“We’ll get rid of them,” her father said. “You wait and see. We’ll show them that nobody can push real Americans around.” A blast of music from the radio caught his ear. “That’s the ‘Fleischman Comedy Hour,’” he said, starting back to the radio. “Now you women talk real quiet. I don’t want to miss any of it.”
“Is there enough hot water for a bath?” Melanie asked. “I’m so tired, I think I could use one.”
“Wait a minute, I’ll see.” Her mother walked to the corner of the kitchen and put her palm on the outside of the water tank. “No.”
She knelt beside the water tank and turned on the gas heater at the same time, striking a match. Nothing happened. “The meter must have gone off again,” she said. “Do you have a quarter?”
“I’ll get one,” Melanie said. She went into the bedroom and opened her purse. She took a coin from the small pile of change she kept in it and went back into the kitchen. “Here.”
Her mother took the quarter and pulled a chair over to the sink, then climbed on it. She reached up and placed the coin in the slot in the meter and hit the meter two resounding slaps as the coin tinkled its way into it.
“You always do that,” Melanie said.
“Makes the meter give you two extra hours of gas that way,” her mother said smugly, getting down. She went back to the water heater. This time the gas went on.
She was just about to step into the tub when her mother knocked at the bathroom door. “There’s a telephone call for you from Mr. Warren on McManus’ phone downstairs.”
The Betsy (1971) Page 24