by Ed Ifkovic
His mooncalf eyes got wide. “You remember that?” A long pause. “Of course. Yes, Annika.”
“Well, I’ve seen you around a bit. Not only with your girlfriend but also at the bar at the inn with Evan Street…”
He looked scared. “That’s right—I saw you. That wasn’t pretty. The shoving. The punching.” A crooked grin. “Not my best moment.”
“No one looks good fighting.”
He kept grinning. “It only feels good.” Then a heartbeat. “But it didn’t even feel good, I’m afraid.”
“Your girlfriend Annika is very protective…”
That same thin, sweet smile, broken at the edge. “Yeah, I guess. Right now she’s searching the town for me as we speak.” Sadness in his voice, a tired man.
“I understand your mother is Clorinda Roberts Tyler, the famous evangelist. I’m afraid I don’t follow—”
He broke in. “Yeah, the messenger of God.” Said too quickly, sarcastically, but immediately he looked sheepish. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound so…so sharp. My mother is a good woman, a savior of souls for Jesus.” But the sarcasm returned. “I’m the heir apparent to that celestial throne.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.”
“People tell me when to be happy. It’s an emotion I have trouble inventing for myself.” He looked toward the door.
“When you were sketching a second ago, you looked happy. For a moment. A short one. A spark of life in you. Your face was animated.”
That surprised him. “You saw all that? Well, that’s because I lose myself there.” He tapped the pencil on the pad. “I forget everything else.”
“Then you’re a real artist.”
A pause. “Well, thank you, but I don’t think so.”
“But I sense no one believes that about you…probably few people.”
A long pause. “Do you believe in predestination, Miss Ferber? A life charted eons ago in heaven by a resolute and infallible God? My mother and stepfather have built a kingdom that mimics a dark heaven like that. My mother, when she preaches, goes to that heaven—and lives are changed for the better. I understand that. I truly believe it. And it’s all right, that life—that spiritual life—except that my mother insists God has chosen me as her successor. Me, the prodigal son, the mischief-maker growing up in Maplewood who ran away to California but has come back home, haggard maybe, who doesn’t want…” He stopped. “Like my mother, I talk too much…or not at all. This is the way I talk to myself. I’m sorry—I don’t know why I just said all that…I tell strangers…”
“I’m not a stranger. We have met.”
A crooked smile. “I know, I know. But I knew you before we met. You’re in The Royal Family. I mean, you’re real famous.”
“So, I gather, is your mother.” I smiled. “You know, you don’t have to do what people tell you to do.”
He chuckled. “That’s easy for you to say. During my wandering days, my hobo journeys, my stays in one-hoss-town jails, my mother was busy planning my life, filling in the blanks in my biography. The legend of the boy preacher grew in my absence. As a boy, I got on that stage—I preached. The boy Jesus at the temple. She knew all along I’d crawl back home. She even chose a bride for me.”
“Annika?”
He nodded. “She even talks like my mother, Annika does. When she preaches, she becomes my mother.”
“And you’re to marry her?”
“I suppose so. This fall. I actually do like her.” He squinted at his own troubled words.
“Dak, I like a lot of people but I’d never marry them.”
He laughed. “You don’t have Clorinda Roberts Tyler as your mother.”
“No, I have a mother who has devoted her life to keeping me unmarried.”
“That seems unfair…to you.”
“After a while it became the life I wanted myself.”
“And you believe that?”
That gave me pause. This quiet, unassuming man, so faint of voice, had me trembling in the small café. How had that happened?
Slowly, almost sadly, “I have to. Now.”
“Well, maybe that’s my life. A marriage this fall to Annika and years to follow in which I come to convince myself that it’s what I wanted all along. Just call me Dakota Cotton Mather Roberts.”
We lapsed into silence, paradoxically both comfortable and disconcerting. I empathized with this smart young man, though I sensed the rawness of his spoken feelings could be contagious—one of those souls who gives you pause. A mirror that reveals the darkness we want hidden. A Sorrows of Young Werther temperament, a little world-weary, housed now in a lost generation. Sitting there, eyes on him, I understood him. Yes, truly. I knew so little about him—a collection of moments watching him react to folks around him—and yet I knew him. I liked him. Here was a decent man. But I quaked because everything about him suggested doom and disaster. I couldn’t shake my worry.
A voice screeched from outside the café. “Dakota, for heaven’s sake.”
Annika, arms cradling a stack of leaflets, barged into the café, nearly spilling the sheets onto the tiled floor. “Why do you wander away? You’re supposed to help me hand out the flyers.” Her words ran together. “Your mother is frantic. She almost called the constable. She threatened to dredge a river for your body.” She laughed at her own unfunny exaggeration.
Dak glanced at me, then at Annika. “She knows I put in a couple afternoons at the theater.” He turned back toward me. “Frank Resnick, the stage manager, hired me to do some handyman work. They didn’t really need me but he insisted I be there. I mean, he insisted. I welcomed the job…”
“You don’t need money.” Annika spoke over his words.
“It’s not for the money. It’s…you know, different. All day at the Assembly of God makes me restless.”
“So you need to hammer nails into boards?”
Dak’s eyes got wide, alert. “Well, yeah.”
“Let’s go.”
He stood and addressed me. “Goodbye, Miss Ferber.” A slight, boyish wave in my direction.
Annika looked at me for the first time. “We meet again.” There was nothing pleasant about her brittle tone. Suddenly, she rushed to my table and thrust one of the flyers into my hand. She scurried back to Dak and tugged at his sleeve. They walked out of the café, Annika muttering something into his ear.
From the kitchen, unseen, Mamie Trout spoke to herself. “That lass needs a truck of Bibles to bury her sins.”
I scanned the flyer, not the flimsy throwaway paper I expected but thick, creamy stationery, rife with Biblical quotation and admonishment. An invitation to Wednesday afternoon’s twilight service at the Assembly of God, Clorinda Roberts Tyler, preacher. Do you have a soul that needs saving? Is the wrath of God Almighty at your doorstep? Then, to my amazement, this unexpected line: If you think New Jersey is paradise, you’re in for a big surprise.
***
Back at the Jefferson Village Inn, George sat alone in the lobby, his face buried in Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad. He pointed to the volume. “I thought it was written about your venturing into New Jersey, Edna.” Then, closing the book, he manufactured a fatherly tone. “Just where have you been, young lady? Gallivanting around town with riffraff.”
“No,” I countered, “I assumed you already gathered all the suspect denizens of this town.”
He put the book on the table. “Edna, have you been snooping into peoples’ lives?”
“Of course.” I slid into a chair opposite him.
He stared over my shoulder, his eyeglasses slipping down his nose. “Anyway, I have news. I have good news. I have bad news.”
“Oh God, George, I think I need a nap before I hear this.”
“No, you don’t.” He shrugged his shoulders and tilted his head to the side. “Bea called. She’s driving up
tonight, so we can have dinner together. She’s spending the night.”
“Now for the good news?”
“Very funny, Edna. The other news is that she’s asked Evan Street to join us for dinner.”
I squirmed. “Good heavens. Why? Was that necessary? A meager acquaintance with that lout is enough to last a lifetime.”
“Well, he’s Bea’s good friend’s son. Obligations, et cetera, et cetera. He called to thank her, I guess. He’s good-looking and he’s a sweet talker…”
I held up my hand. “Enough. Bea’s weaknesses mirror yours, dear George.”
“But men have province where women and angels fear to tread.”
I grunted. “Tell that to Bea.”
A little tiresome, the bizarre liaisons of some of my friends. Back to the now-disappeared years of the Algonquin Round Table, George—like Dorothy Parker and her dipsomaniac husband—gleefully fell into what I believe the French term a mariage blanc. Not surprisingly, the French would have a name for this errant social lapse. To be sure, they invented dalliance and misalliance, as well as the ingesting of snails. Of course. George dearly loved Bea, as she loved him—and they happily entertained on their farm in Pennsylvania. But each sought romance—let me be euphemistic for the moment—outside the orthodox license of wedlock, George pursuing the pitiful, monosyllabic chorus girls of Broadway, all tinsel and rhinestone—and recently Hollywood, if I could believe the awful scandal with Mary Astor—and Bea entertaining the bronzed stage-door johnnies with the lascivious wink and the deep empty pockets. Prettiness was the coin of the realm. For both of them.
“Dear George, I do hope Bea isn’t involved with this annoying lad.”
“We don’t discuss dalliance, just household expenses.” He locked eyes with me. “Ah, Edna, you and I don’t want to have these conversations.”
“Thank God.”
So that night the four of us sat down at dinner at the Marlborough House, three of us spectators to a young man’s stupendous gluttony and unfettered chatter. I kept trying to catch George’s eye, which he avoided because he knew exactly what my censorious look conveyed. He looked unhappy, constantly pushing his glasses up his nose, twitching, bobbing his head, examining the silverware for dried food and poisonous bacteria, and slowly sipping lemonade. Bea, to be sure, ignored her husband’s aberrant behavior and seemed surprised to see me sitting there, though of course my presence in Maplewood was the reason we were all assembled in that lovely room. I suppose she read my obvious dislike of Evan, but she smiled at Evan’s blatant flattery and his dipping and swaying in her direction, the tall man’s calculated movements reaching his intended audience. Admittedly too good-looking for a mortal man, this pathetic Adonis doubtless assumed his easy birthright from childhood. He obviously never had to learn humility or suffer insecurity or doubt—the way the rest of us did. Thus I should have pitied him, but his sweeping attention to a fluttery Bea grated on my nerves. I’m not used to being witness or captive to kindergarten behavior.
Bea was a presentable woman, an adjective I use with great care. In certain lights she would be attractive, the slightly plump Manhattan socialite with the well-tailored summer dress, the discreet ruby earrings and necklace, and the Vivian Leigh hairdo that made her look as though she were one step ahead of marauding Yankee troops approaching Atlanta. Signaling to the waiter for a second martini, she ignored the mumbled hiss from her teetotaler husband.
Evan was thanking her for calling Cheryl Crawford. “I don’t know why I’m having trouble getting parts.”
“Perhaps because you project an image of not needing one,” I offered.
He squirmed. “Meaning?”
“Directors, on Broadway and in Hollywood, tend to be fearful of unwarranted cockiness.”
“I’m not cocky.” An edge to his voice.
“I mean no offense. I’m just saying…”
Bea broke in. “Edna, look at him. Handsome and smart, the matinee idol, a natural.”
“A heartthrob, indeed.” My robotic voice suggested an epitaph.
Bea hurled a sidelong glance my way, her eyes flashing anger, and she shook her head.
George spoke up. “Young man, why did you leave Hollywood? I would have thought you’d be in demand out there.”
“George, be nice.” From Bea.
“I am. Bea, not every syllable from my mouth is ironic.”
I smiled. “The other ones, I guess, just register disbelief.”
Evan sat back, sated from the copious meal and his third martini. His eyes gleamed like shiny marbles. A sloppy grin covered his face. “I’m going back there. To Hollywood. I just thought I’d try my luck back on Broadway, where I started. Hollywood…I didn’t give it a chance.”
“Maplewood is hardly Forty-second Street,” George noted.
“Hey, it’s summer, and I happen to know people here.” He sat up and glanced around the room. He slurred his words. “I have reasons for coming here.” He narrowed his eyes. “Reasons.”
“Who you do know here?” Bea asked.
“Dakota Roberts,” he said slowly. “Not really a friend, but…yeah…I suppose a friend. You know, his mother’s one holier-than-thou preacher.”
“How do you know him?” I asked.
“Hollywood.” The word was stretched out, each syllable clipped.
“You were arguing with Dak the other night at the inn.”
That stopped him. “I know. We put on a show for you. I regret that, Miss Ferber. Entertainment for your dinner. He thought I was flirting with Annika, his girl. Silliest thing. A little too much to drink, him and me. It got…physical. But we’re buddies. From Hollywood days.”
“How so?” From George.
Evan suddenly looked uncomfortable, fiddling with the napkin, balling it up. “I bumped into him out there a few years ago. I was doing bit parts in some Universal movies, nothing big, and he was working scenery on a back lot. As it turned out, we boarded in the same rooming house. So he became a drinking buddy, sometimes. A few games of pool. He’s a wanderer, somehow ended up in L.A. We were two guys who didn’t know a lot of people, you know, bumping into…you know…” He clicked his tongue. “Unlikely friends, the two of us, but when you’re alone in a strange land…you know…Not my sort of buddy, really…but…but then he drifted back East. Nothing good happened to him in Hollywood. I remembered he told me he was raised in Maplewood, so when I got the job here, I looked him up.” He shrugged his shoulders. “No big deal. He’s a little too…soft for me.”
“He didn’t look happy to see you.” I watched him closely.
“I don’t think he’s happy to see anyone. That Annika’s got him chained to the cross. I’ll tell you…at first he was surprised I showed up, seemed all right with it, but I’m…well…always the one people want to be with.” He half-bowed, and I hoped he was as ironic as George usually is—but I doubted it.
“That night in the lounge you were with a small, short stocky man, harsh-looking, a man…”
“Gus Schnelling. Christ, that rabble-rouser. Yeah, well, he was in Hollywood with us, too. The three misfits. Three drinking buddies. Dak hated him. I mean…they barely talked.” A chuckle. “I don’t much like him myself—a bulldog. In your face, nasty. But he was the electrician who kept getting fired. He’s got this new woman…”
“Meaka?”
He squinted. “Miss Ferber, you know everything.”
“I like to.”
“Meaka Snow. Aryan priestess. I don’t know where he found her, but he’s turned her into this…this firebrand. Hard as nails, let me tell you. I mean, Gus has got weird politics, but she’s bonkers. I bumped into him by chance in New York—he was looking for a job in the theater district—and stupidly I mentioned this job in Maplewood. ” A grin. “I talk too much, and I was sorry the minute I opened my mouth. So he needed a job and ended up here. I don’t like it
—I like to keep my distance from him. I don’t want him around.”
The lines sounded rehearsed, his words spaced out, precise. Why? I wondered.
“Gus scares me,” I announced. “He looks like he’s always sporting for a fight. The two of them, actually. Meaka has that penetrating stare.”
Evan laughed. “Gus scares everyone. He scares me. And she’s like a machine, hammering at you. Girls should be pretty—and quiet. She’s always…on you. The reason Gus came to New York—maybe that’s where he met Meaka, I don’t know—was because of the rally last year at Madison Square Garden.”
Confused, I leaned in. “Rally?”
“They’re Nazis, Miss Ferber. Crazy as can be, handing out leaflets on street corners. Hitlerites. Last year the Pro-America Rally in February—on Washington’s birthday, no less. The German Bund. Achtung on Broadway. Like unformed storm troopers.”
I froze. “My God!”
“My God!” George echoed me.
“I mean, he’s okay with a couple beers in him. But I think he’d slit your throat if you crossed him.” He laughed. “I’m joking. C’mon, folks. You all look so serious.” Another pause. “He’s proud that he’s met this Fritz Kuhn, the high Bund muck-a-muck. The guy waves those swastikas at you. But, hey—Gus’ll go away sooner or later.”
That made no sense to me. Chilled, I recalled the much-publicized rally at Madison Square Garden with over twenty-thousand Bund members roaring and clapping. German flags. Swastikas. Kuhn mocking “President Frank D. Rosenfeld” and his “Jew Deal.” I shivered. The news accounts had sickened me.
“I can’t imagine Dak was happy to see him in Maplewood.” I looked from Bea to George. “Gus is a menace. And Dak strikes me as a sensitive, troubled…”
“Gus hates him.” Evan enjoyed sharing that information. “Dak hates him more.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Gus just shows up here and somebody somehow hires him. Suddenly he greets me on the sidewalk. I’m not happy, let me tell you. But when Dak saw him, sparks flew. First me—then Gus.” He smirked. “All his nightmares coming true. They had words during set construction. Dak was carrying a backdrop and Gus stood in his way, arms folded over his chest. It was great to watch. In Hollywood they stopped talking to each other. So Gus cursed Dak out, everyone froze, and Frank comes running, defending Dak. Gus yelled—he’s a weakling and a sissy. Pitiful. Gotta have people save him. Frank spotted me standing there laughing at it all. You know, I can size up any guy’s weakness. Almighty Gus, Hitler youth himself. That’s his weakness—blind faith in authority. It comes in handy, you know, my sizing folks up. Dak is weak and Gus thinks he’s strong. I got both their numbers. It gives you an edge over folks.”