When the car was out of sight, Stanton turned to him. “The champ is signing to defend the title in July.”
“Champ of what?” Wilfred looked up from his list.
“Heavyweight boxing champ.”
“Oh? What’s his name?”
“God damn, man, everybody knows that.”
“I never did follow boxing.” He spoke humbly.
“Didn’t huh?”
“Never did.”
Stanton shook his head.
A convertible, driven by a young girl in curlers, passed before them. It was a New York. Wilfred turned to Stanton. “If the President gets them bills through, Stanton, it’ll mean more taxes.”
“Bills? What did he buy?” Stanton leaned forward eagerly.
“He didn’t buy nothing. A bill’s when—” He stopped. Stanton’s face was blank as mud.
In the next hour, seventeen New Yorks went by. Although he did not jot them down, Wilfred did keep aimless track of the number when they were running thick. Seventeen in a row was quite high.
The eighteenth car turned slowly into sight from a side street. It was a Model A Ford, driven by a man wearing a Stetson hat and a fancy cowboy shirt. High on the radiator, bolted by small reflectors of red glass, Wilfred saw the New Mexico plate, and checked it off. A movie star, he thought without the old thrill, a western hero come out this way to visit the grave of his great-grandfather, whose daughter, newly married, went West in a covered wagon.
Stanton, who had stolen a glance at the car from over his newspaper, was just about to say they had never seen New Mexico, when Wilfred crumbled his list, tossed it off the edge of the porch, and hobbled into the darkness of the house.
Aggie
AFTER ELEANOR had shipped the children to summer camp, she needed some place away from Charles, their house, her good and bad memories, a place to think it all out. Neva’s home in Chicago had been the best place to go. It covered her tracks perfectly since Charles, despite their arguments, had no real idea she was contemplating divorce and if Eleanor decided to give her marriage another chance, he would only know that one summer she had visited Neva, his sister.
Eleanor supposed the legal name of her charge against her husband would be neglect. Charles, a doctor, spent too much time in his office and at the hospital. In words, that did not seem like much. But Eleanor had not gotten married thirteen years before to eat the remaining dinners of her life alone with her children, like some baby-sitting spinster aunt. So after the children had left for Maine, she told Charles she wanted to go to Chicago to visit some old college friends and Neva.
Neva’s husband, Teddy, was a Methodist preacher. But Neva should have been the preacher; she was the sterner of the two. She would not allow anyone to play popular music in her house, or dance, or smoke. In the vestibule, there was a red, printed No Smoking sign like those found in movie houses. Once a visiting bishop had ignored the sign. Neva, without fear or even hesitation, had asked him to extinguish his pipe.
Even so it was a good place for Eleanor to be—because of Aggie, Neva’s housekeeper. Aggie was especially nice to her, as if she knew what Eleanor was trying to decide and wanted to do what she could to help her make the right decision.
“Now, can I bring you something from the market, Missus Dunford?” Aggie was adjusting the pins in her old black hat. “Some pop maybe?”
Eleanor raised her eyes from her knitting, but her fingers kept working. She was doing a lot of knitting that summer. “Don’t bother yourself, Aggie.”
“Ain’t no bother, Missus Dunford. I can’t think of nothing I’d rather do.” She was built more like a man than a woman. Her shoulders were broad and square. She had hardly any waist at all. Her black face was long. But her eyes were soft and happy. They were woman’s eyes and they were brown.
Eleanor shrugged. “All right. Soda or ice cream, please.”
“Good.”
After she had left, Eleanor went onto the porch. It was hot. The tar in the street was bubbling. When cars went by, gravel pinged against their fenders. The sun was one hand above the houses across the street when Aggie came striding from the market. In one hand, she carried a stuffed, red plastic shopping bag; under her other arm, was a green, speckled watermelon. “I got pop. Ice cream would-a melted. How you feeling?”
“All right, I guess.” Eleanor got up and followed Aggie inside.
Neva was in the kitchen eating the last of the old watermelon. She ate at least one huge piece each day. As she broke off the pink chunks with a fork, she mopped her brow with a napkin. She perspired a good deal and the hair which framed her dark brown face was always crinkly. “You get everything, Aggie? I’m sorry I couldn’t go with you. Must-a been blistering.” She pressed the napkin to her temple.
“It was all right, Missus B. I’d rather have it hot than cold.” She set the shopping bag on a table and began unpacking it. The soda was near the top and she handed it to Eleanor, who went to the refrigerator for ice. Aggie went on talking: “Missus Collins, across the street, her sister staying with her. A nice lady. Miss Lovelace her name.”
Neva put a seed on the side of her plate. Many black seeds already floated in the pink water. “Well, we’ll have to invite them to dinner soon.”
Miss Lovelace was light-skinned. She dressed quite flamboyantly and looked out of place at Neva’s dinner table, like a yellow plastic cup amid crystal goblets. She talked a great deal, and loudly, and each time she spoke, a short embarrassed silence followed. When she laughed, it was too loud, and too long. She was too much of everything.
But Aggie obviously liked her. The next day she and Neva, who had been friends for ten years, had words about Miss Lovelace. “Lord God, that is a cheap and vulgar woman!” Neva had just come from the refrigerator with her second piece of watermelon of the day. “I thought you said she was nice, Aggie.”
“Go on, Missus B, just because some folks smoke that don’t make them Satan’s flunkies. I smokes, all your brothers and sisters smokes, Missus Dunford here smokes, even if we do got to go down to the cellar to do it. Miss Lovelace didn’t know how you felt about that.” Aggie, peeling potatoes, was sitting across from her. The brown curls looked like confetti.
“I ain’t talking about smoking.” Neva wiped her forehead.
Aggie smiled at Eleanor, who had carried her knitting into the kitchen. “What you talking about then? You don’t know nothing else about the woman.”
“If Satan came knocking at the door, I’d know him. I’d know him right out and push him into the gutter.”
“Maybe she a little loud, Missus B. But she ain’t bad. You got other loud women, church women trooping all through this house.”
“Don’t talk on my friends like that.” Neva’s temper flared.
“All right, Missus B. I don’t mean no harm. Miss Lovelace just different from the women you run with, is all.”
“I don’t run with nobody.”
“All right, Missus B.”
“All right!” Neva got up and stomped out of the kitchen.
Aggie turned to Eleanor. “You know, Missus Dunford, as close as Missus B and I been these ten years, I’m still her housekeeper. I mean, she don’t treat me like one. She don’t make me feel it, but it’s just different, that’s all. You understand?”
Eleanor nodded. “I think so. You still have to do things because you’re getting paid.”
Eleanor had not been ecstatic over Miss Lovelace, but she had not been cold. At that first and last dinner, she had been the only person who conducted more than a polite conversation with the woman. After the first five minutes, Neva ignored her. And Teddy, not the strongest willed of men, though perhaps one of the nicest, had followed his wife’s lead. During the summer then, if Eleanor saw Miss Lovelace in the market, or if she was sitting on the porch when the woman came down the street, they would exchange
greetings and news. Neva did not like it, but there was little she could do. But when Aggie started to spend more and more time with Miss Lovelace, Neva could and did become very angry and vocal. “You hear now? I forbid you to see that woman!”
“I ain’t one of yours, Missus B, and I can do what I want with my spare time.” Aggie was speaking calmly, but she might have been quite angry.
“Aggie, that woman ain’t no good. What you see in her?”
“She treats me decent, Missus B.”
“I certainly don’t treat you bad.”
“I didn’t say that, Missus B.” Eleanor could see by the look on Aggie’s face that she did not like the way this all was going. She had not thought that by gaining one friend she would lose another. For an instant, Aggie looked as if she might cry, but she held it back.
In early August, Miss Lovelace asked Eleanor if she would like to go to the amusement park with her and Aggie. Eleanor had done nothing but knit and think about her faltering marriage and whether she was going through with her divorce. She decided she would try to get away from herself for a few hours. Because of the way Neva felt, not only about Miss Lovelace, but also about amusement parks, Aggie and Eleanor had to sneak out of the house. Eleanor felt like a fifteen-year-old meeting a boy of whom her parents did not approve.
At the amusement park, they did everything, giggling like children. Miss Lovelace and Eleanor even went on the roller coaster, while Aggie waited on the ground. When they came down the ramp, Miss Lovelace suggested they all go on something quiet. “What about the Tunnel of Love?”
They bought popcorn and walked down the midway.
The Tunnel of Love was a soft ride, on water. At the very beginning it seemed they would be drenched gliding beneath a blue-lit waterfall, but at the last instant, the boat changed course and plunged them into purple darkness. Along the way were soft colored lights and scenes of weeping willows, gondoliers, fishing villages.
The small green boats held two persons each. Aggie and Miss Lovelace got in the first boat, Eleanor in the next. They passed a scene of a moonlit lagoon. The light was better now. Ahead, Miss Lovelace put her arm around Aggie’s shoulder. The housekeeper turned to the woman, shocked. Miss Lovelace raised her index finger to her lips. She bent closer to Aggie and whispered something in her ear. Then she kissed her on the mouth. Aggie did not move. They were beyond the lagoon scene and it got very dark. Eleanor hoped they did not know she had seen them. She leaned her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes. Perhaps if they looked now, they would think she had dozed off in the quiet darkness. She did not want to see them. It made her too sad.
Outside, Aggie looked at Eleanor with a worried expression, then said she had a headache and wanted to go home. Miss Lovelace looked distressed. Eleanor tried her best to be cheerful, as if nothing had happened.
The next morning after breakfast, Neva went to the hairdresser. When Aggie started the dishes, Eleanor went up to her room. Aggie came in five minutes later, twisting a dish towel in her hands. “Did you see?”
Eleanor could not look at her. She picked up an emery board and started to file her nails. “See what, dear?” One of her nails was splitting.
“Please tell me, Missus Dunford.” Her voice sounded funny and Eleanor looked up to find her eyes beginning to cloud over. “Did you see me last night?”
“Yes, Aggie.” She paused a moment, then added quickly: “Well, it wasn’t your fault. You were just frightened.”
“I’m so ashamed.” She came to the bed and sat down, her hands on her knees, staring at the floor. “But, Missus Dunford, I wasn’t really afraid.” She sounded like someone was pinching her. “Do you know I never in life been kissed before? I was always too shy and too homely. I’m forty-five years old and nobody ever wanted me.”
Eleanor, at a loss now, sighed. “Oh. Well, I don’t know what to say. I’ve never…had anything like that happen to me.”
Suddenly Aggie was almost screaming. “I ain’t evil, is I? Is I?”
Eleanor did not know what to answer. She thought about what Charles, a doctor, would have said. “No. I couldn’t really say…that.”
“Lord God, if Missus B ever found out she’d toss me into the gutter.”
There was a long silence. Finally Aggie got up slowly, painfully, and went back downstairs. Eleanor stayed in her room most of the day, thinking about her own problems.
After that, Aggie seemed to avoid her. She hardly looked at her. If Eleanor asked her for something, Aggie would tell her where to find it, nothing more.
Finally, Aggie told Neva she was leaving.
Neva put down her fork amid the floating seeds. The watermelon was sweating. “After ten years?”
“Yes, Missus B. I got to.” Aggie was standing on the other side of the table.
“Where on earth you going?”
“Miss Lovelace left for Detroit two days ago and I—”
“God Almighty!” Neva yelled.
Eleanor was standing in the doorway. She wished she could say something to Neva for Aggie.
“You leaving me for that…Well, go on then! Go on! You’ll smoke all right. Both of you will end up in Hell!” She leaped from her chair and bolted from the kitchen, pushing by Eleanor.
Aggie remained, miserable, staring at the piece of watermelon. Eleanor went to her and put a hand on her shoulder, but the housekeeper twisted away and ran up the back stairs, crying.
She trudged down from her room twenty minutes later. She carried a suitcase, used so little it was still shiny in spots. Even though it was hot, she held a gray wool coat over her arm. She had changed to a new dress and wore polished shoes. Eleanor was sitting on the front porch; she had not wanted to miss her. Aggie, who obviously had not wanted to see anyone, was surprised. “I can’t help myself, Missus Dunford.”
“I know, Aggie. It’s all right.” Eleanor was looking at her own hands.
“Say good-by to the Reverend for me, will you please?”
“Of course.” She looked up now. “Aggie, I…good luck.”
“Thank you.” She stared at Eleanor for a moment, then put down her suitcase, bent, and hugged her. She did not cry.
Eleanor walked with her to the sidewalk and watched her down the street. Aggie was carrying the suitcase in her right hand, the coat over her left arm. Halfway down the block she nodded at someone on a porch, but did not slacken her pace. The farther away she got, the squarer her shoulders seemed. By the time she reached the corner, she looked quite brave. She waited for the light to change, then crossed. The light changed again and Eleanor could only see glimpses of her between the sunbright cars that sped by.
The next afternoon, Eleanor went back to her husband.
A Visit to Grandmother
CHIG KNEW SOMETHING was wrong the instant his father kissed her. He had always known his father to be the warmest of men, a man so kind that when people ventured timidly into his office, it took only a few words from him to make them relax, and even laugh. Doctor Charles Dunford cared about people.
But when he had bent to kiss the old lady’s black face, something new and almost ugly had come into his eyes: fear, uncertainty, sadness, and perhaps even hatred.
Ten days before in New York, Chig’s father had decided suddenly he wanted to go to Nashville to attend his college class reunion, twenty years out. Both Chig’s brother and sister, Peter and Connie, were packing for camp and besides were too young for such an affair. But Chig was seventeen, had nothing to do that summer, and his father asked if he would like to go along. His father had given him additional reasons: “All my running buddies got their diplomas and were snapped up by them crafty young gals, and had kids within a year—now all those kids, some of them gals, are your age.”
The reunion had lasted a week. As they packed for home, his father, in a far too offhand way, had suggested they vi
sit Chig’s grandmother. “We this close. We might as well drop in on her and my brothers.”
So, instead of going north, they had gone farther south, had just entered her house. And Chig had a suspicion now that the reunion had been only an excuse to drive south, that his father had been heading to this house all the time.
His father had never talked much about his family, with the exception of his brother, GL, who seemed part con man, part practical joker, and part Don Juan; he had spoken of GL with the kind of indulgence he would have shown a cute, but ill-behaved and potentially dangerous, five-year-old.
Chig’s father had left home when he was fifteen. When asked why, he would answer: “I wanted to go to school. They didn’t have a Negro high school at home, so I went up to Knoxville and lived with a cousin and went to school.”
They had been met at the door by Aunt Rose, GL’s wife, and ushered into the living room. The old lady had looked up from her seat by the window. Aunt Rose stood between the visitors.
The old lady eyed his father. “Rose, who that? Rose?” She squinted. She looked like a doll, made of black straw, the wrinkles in her face running in one direction like the head of a broom. Her hair was white and coarse and grew out straight from her head. Her eyes were brown—the whites, too, seemed light brown—and were hidden behind thick glasses, which remained somehow on a tiny nose. “That Hiram?” That was another of his father’s brothers. “No, it ain’t Hiram; too big for Hiram.” She turned then to Chig. “Now that man, he look like Eleanor, Charles’s wife, but Charles wouldn’t never send my grandson to see me. I never even hear from Charles.” She stopped again.
“It Charles, Mama. That who it is.” Aunt Rose, between them, led them closer. “It Charles come all the way from New York to see you, and brung little Charles with him.”
The old lady stared up at them. “Charles? Rose, that really Charles?” She turned away, and reached for a handkerchief in the pocket of her clean, ironed, flowered housecoat, and wiped her eyes. “God have mercy. Charles.” She spread her arms up to him, and he bent down and kissed her cheek. That was when Chig saw his face, grimacing. She hugged him; Chig watched the muscles in her arms as they tightened around his father’s neck. She half rose out of her chair. “How are you, son?”
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