Table Money

by Jimmy Breslin

  “How are you?” she said, brightly.

  “Anxious.”

  “Then I hope you get what you want.”

  “I was in Syracuse before this. Two and a half years ago. Too bad I didn’t keep going.”

  “I feel the same way. But I stopped to get married.”

  “Then why you coming on back?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “You got hassles at home?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s what I had, too. Hassle with my stepfather. He was beating on my mother.”

  Dolores didn’t answer.

  “We live in Poughkeepsie. The lawyer told me no jury ever would convict me. He sure was wrong. They put my ass under the jail.”

  Dolores didn’t know how to continue the conversation and sat in silence. “Mr. Dixon?” A man with sparse light hair and heavy jowls, and a large smile, held out his hand. Dixon stood up and the man clapped him on the back heartily and they walked out of the room. Another door opened and a woman with short dark hair and round glasses perched on her nose stood at it and said, “You must be Dolores Morrison. Come in.”

  Inside, the woman sat on a couch and motioned to Dolores to sit with her. “I’m Susan Bradley. I’m in the university grants office. Your record certainly is good. How did you happen to hear about the program?”

  “On television first. Then I saw the paper.”

  “Then you know about the Smith program?”

  “I read about it.”

  “Have you applied?”

  “No. For the interview, I would have had to drive all the way up there. That might sound silly to you, but my mother is taking care of the baby and I can’t take any more advantage of her right now than I am. It would just be too much.”

  “I certainly don’t think it’s silly. I had someone to take care of mine, but I can imagine what it would be if I had to rely on my mother.” She rolled her eyes. “No, strike that. I can’t imagine what it would be like. My mother? I can’t possibly imagine.”

  “Well, I’ve got my mother.”

  “Let me tell you why I wish you’d look into the Smith program. The emphasis here is so much on males. They would prefer a man who plays what they consider a minor sport to the most brilliant woman you can find. As for a major sport, well, they don’t need grants. They get scholarships pretty quickly. Would you believe me? I’m the only woman in this office. When I mention a woman to them, all they do is smile. For someone like you, for the day care alone, Smith is worth trying for.”

  “Don’t you have day care?”

  “Oh, we have it for faculty members. I’m sure it could be included for you. But I have to tell you, our grants are just so male oriented.”

  “But you specify the pre-med. That isn’t exclusively men.”

  “Someday it won’t be. Give people like us another ten years. But for this program, all they’re thinking of is men. Who else could have the strength to take on a massive thing like this after they already have started in life? Why, only a man. That’s how they think around here. Now the medical school up there adjoins our campus. It’s separate. It’s part of the state system. But we work together on some projects. With our engineering school, for one. There you go. Mostly men. And then we place our undergraduates in summer lab jobs at the medical school that do help in getting a person admitted. The man who runs the grants programs can’t see anything in his mind except a deserving young man.”

  “I’m still going to try.”

  “I hope you have other options.”

  “I don’t have much time to think of them.”

  “Look. It’s terrific that you want to try. Better yet if you ever make it. But there are so many things that you can do with your life. I just want you to keep that in mind. What happens here isn’t the end of your life.”

  “I guess not. And I’m going to get what I want.” Suddenly, all the doubt and guilt had been replaced by a fierce need to resist even the gentlest suggestion that she was unable to compete.

  “I must say, you’ve made it this far, haven’t you?”

  “On my first try.”

  “I still want you to try Smith. It’s all women, and I think the atmosphere would be much more supportive. You could do as well in pre-med at Smith as you could here. I know how hard it is going to be for me to sell a woman pre-med.”

  “Does Smith have the summer lab jobs that you have?”

  “Oh, I guess they have something. They don’t have the medical school adjoining their campus the way we do. I don’t think so, anyway.”

  “And you have the lab jobs and all that?”

  “We do get them, yes.”

  “That’s all I need to know.”

  “I certainly admire your spirit. I just want to point out that the emphasis is so much on men.”

  “That guy I met outside doesn’t sound like he’s had so much of an advantage on me. Where he’s coming from.”

  She smiled. “You’re wrong. That’s what you’re up against. He’s a male. He’s been in prison. The men at school will get all puffed up. Save a convict for the world. That’s their idea of what a scholarship like this should be. God forbid a woman with a baby would be involved. My advice to you is to go out of here today and try Smith. I even know the person up there in charge of the program. I’d be happy to call her for you. She understands the situation here.”

  “Why did you even bother calling me in?” Dolores said.

  “So I could talk to you and hopefully direct you to someplace that would work out. I’m just saying it’s all so male dominated here. A black male ahead of a woman. It all comes out of the war.” She laughed sarcastically. “That’s the only way I could think of helping you. If you had something to do with Vietnam.”

  13

  ON SATURDAY NIGHT, SHE was in front of the television set for the night, but then her mother said she felt too tired to go out and Dolores got dressed and went with Virginia to the Midway movie on Queens Boulevard. After it, they walked down to the Wine Gallery on Austin Street, which was packed with young people. “Great!” Virginia said, and Dolores answered, “There isn’t one person in there who isn’t still in school.” Virginia said, “Well, that makes it all right for you, and I’m with you, so then it’s all right for me, too.” Dolores shook her head. “Well, I’m going in,” Virginia said; in answer, Dolores placed a hand against her back and pushed her in the direction of the packed bar. “I’ll take a cab home,” Virginia said.

  Dolores walked up to the candy store alongside the subway stop at Queens Boulevard; the Sunday News first edition was in stacks and she took one across to the T-Bone Diner, which is a Greek rebellion against public health. She ordered coffee and grilled cheese and opened the paper, whose headline across the bottom of page three said: MEDAL OF HONOR HOLDUP MAN KILLED IN DETROIT IN SHOOTOUT. Her eyes moved across the type swiftly.

  DETROIT—Army Sgt. Dwight W. Johnson, 22, the holder of the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism in Vietnam in 1968, was killed while he was attempting to hold up a food market here tonight. The store manager shot Johnson four times during a scuffle. Johnson was dead on arrival at Ford Hospital. According to police, Johnson came into the store at 11:40 P.M. and asked the manager for cigarettes. Johnson offered a bill for the cigarettes. When the manager opened the cash register to make change, police say Johnson pushed the manager aside. The manager, who was licensed to carry a weapon, shot Johnson three times in the chest and once in the cheek. Police searching Johnson’s body found papers showing that he won the Medal of Honor. A relative of Johnson’s summoned to the hospital stated that Johnson had gone out unarmed and was attempting to get someone to shoot him.

  “What did you do with Virginia?” Her mother watched a Lucy rerun.

  “Nothing.”

  “Where is she, then?”

  “Stopped to see somebody. She’ll come home in a cab.”

  “And you left me sitting here like this all night?”

  “You told me you
weren’t going out.”

  “Makes no difference. I spent half my life waiting up for you before you were married. I’m not going to do it now.”

  “I was all ready to stay home. You were the one who said you weren’t going out.”

  “All I know is that I sat up like this once for you. Now you got me sitting here with another baby.”

  “How can you say that?”

  Dolores was walking out of the room when her mother said, “Sometimes I think.”

  Dolores said nothing.

  “Sometimes I think that maybe you and Owney didn’t try all that much.”

  Dolores sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the baby. She was certain that her mother knew about the story in the paper. Of course. The television news. And now, from nowhere, from the silence of a listless living room, there came a sudden threat: she felt positive that there would be a push to get her to return to Owney. She began to tremble.

  At seven-thirty on Sunday morning, bringing the baby into the kitchen, she found her mother gone. “She went to early Mass, St. Pancras,” her aunt said. “Virginia’s still asleep. What time you keep her out till?”

  Dolores said, “I hope, all night.”

  When her mother came in from church, she was carrying the Long Island Sunday Press, which was delivered to the house. Her mother did not have the Daily News.

  “You didn’t get the papers?” Dolores said.

  Her mother shook her head.

  “Want me to bring them?”

  “No,” her mother said, “there’s nothing in there that I want to see today.”

  Later in the morning Dolores deliberately walked to church on the opposite side of Myrtle Avenue from the candy store, and she glanced at it with apprehension that turned into alarm as Prine, the owner, suddenly called to her from the doorway. Dolores waved a hand and tried to keep going! Prine walked rapidly across the street toward her.

  “I just want to tell you one thing,” he said.

  Dolores sighed. “Go ahead.”

  “That you have some mother. She was in the store before. Just coming from church. Those two brothers from the Veterans Post were in here and they said something smart. Your mother took them on. I haven’t seen anybody go after somebody like that in a long time.”

  “What did they open their mouths for?” Dolores said.

  “Exactly what your mother said. She told them, well, I don’t want to tell you what she told them.”

  “She did?” Dolores asked.

  “She sure did.”

  “She told them what they should do?”

  “You know it.”

  “Then she must have told them to go fuck themselves.”

  “That happens to be exactly what she said,” Prine said. “And I thought you should know it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Prine.”

  She walked another two blocks and she was almost at church when she stopped at the outdoor phone booth in front of the Victorian House.

  Owney’s mother saw the story first and tried to put the paper away, but her nervousness attracted Owney’s attention and he waited until his mother finally put the paper down and then he grabbed it and sat at the kitchen table with the coffee cup in his hand as he read the story.

  He put the coffee down and got up and went to the refrigerator. He was looking out the window at the cemetery headstones and spires in the chill morning and his hand was on the cold cans of beer in the top of the refrigerator and then the phone rang.

  At one-thirty, Dolores Morrison and Owney Morrison stepped into a smoky ground-floor room in Park Slope. A gray-haired woman with her coat on leaned over and said, “This is the first time you come here?”

  “Yes,” Owney said.

  “Where do you usually go?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Oh.” She was elated. She waved. In front of the room, a man nodded to the woman. “It’s first time ever!” she said, pointing at Owney. The woman looked at Dolores. “You, too?” Dolores nodded. “Her, too!” Somebody clapped and the man immediately held his hands out for silence. “Ah. Here we let people decide for themselves whether they want to be recognized or not.” Owney and Dolores sat in silence. The man looked over the crowd of people who sat on folded chairs and drank coffee out of containers and smoked cigarettes. “Would any new people like to introduce themselves?” he said. Dolores’s hand tensed and she was about to touch Owney. Then she stilled herself. But right away, she was disappointed that he had ignored the chance. A man in a red sweater stood up. “I’m Eddie and I’m an alcoholic,” he said.

  “Hi, Eddie,” the people in the room called out.

  “Care to say anything?” the leader said.

  “Yeah. You know what I did for Christmas? I lost my house for Christmas. That was my present to my wife and kids. I lost my house. You know something else? I hadda look at the newspaper this morning to see that it was almost April. That’s all I got to say. I’m banged up. Yes, sir, banged out. I’m just going to sit here and listen, if you don’t mind.”

  “You do whatever makes you comfortable,” the leader said.

  In the seat next to Owney was a thin man whose face needed shaving. He reached into a leather pouch and took out a roll of thread and a shiny needle.

  Owney whispered to Dolores, “Is he actually going to knit?”

  “Crochet,” Dolores said.

  Now, on the side of the room, a short, light-skinned black with a trim mustache and an easy voice began talking. “I have to tell you about a gig I had. Took me to China. I went spinning all through China. I looked at the Great Wall and I told myself, I don’t like this at all. What do I need with something like this—all these Chinks build a wall I don’t care about? But I knew I could make it all right if I got myself back to the hotel and got a hold of that bottle of brandy I had stashed there.” He sat down.

  The leader pointed to a man who had thin red hair. “I’m Don and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Don.”

  “I just got to say that they don’t want you to live. Now the whole world knows that I’m a drunk. I live in a town in Jersey and half the people there have had to help post bail when my wife didn’t have any money in the house and I got myself arrested for drunk driving or something silly like that in the middle of the night. You know? I’m not secret.”

  “I don’t think any of us are secret,” the leader said. “We keep it all anonymous to help you over any personal fears you have about coming here, but I have to tell you, in the town where you live, I don’t think there are many secrets.”

  “Course not,” the red-haired man said. “So what happens? We got a big family party for my sister’s kid. He graduates out of high school. Fine. I can take a party. Give me a glass of Tab, maybe a cup of coffee, and as many cigarettes as I can smoke. I’ll enjoy myself. I’ll be a good guy for everybody else, mostly the kid, who happens to love me.”

  “Oh, you’ve got to stand up for kids,” the leader said.

  “You know it,” the red-haired guy said. “And I did. Then what happens. I got to tell you. I sit down for the meal, right? Here’s my sister mixing a salad in the middle of the table. My own sister, right? What is she using? She got a whole great bottle of wine vinegar. She drowns the salad in it. So I hold up my hand. I know myself. One taste of wine vinegar, crying out loud, I drink the vat. So I hold up my hand. None for me. No salad with wine vinegar. What does my sister, my own sister, do? She starts making fun. In front of the whole table she tells them to look at me, that I’m afraid of wine vinegar. I got so nervous that you know what I thought of right away. My hand was starting to shake. Get something in it.”

  The leader said, “You just got to be firm. You let them know and then you let them know again and you let them know every single time if you have to.”

  “Oh, I do.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Could you imagine giving me wine vinegar? You might as well give bombs to the Germans. I’m still upset with my sister.”
/>   “You have to understand that they don’t understand.”

  “Boy. Wine vinegar. That’s all I need. I didn’t eat salad because of it. On a leaf of lettuce, I would’ve been in Detroit by morning.”

  At first, Owney had been smirking as the guy talked of evading the clutches of salad dressing. Owney could taste the salad dressing; it was far too sour for him. Suddenly, his tongue remembered the taste of a cold beer, which was sweeter than whipped cream.

  A woman who didn’t bother to give her name called out, “I’ve been sober for seventeen days.” Everybody clapped. Now the leader pointed to a young guy in the front. He was dark haired, wearing a light gray suit, and had a campus face, except for eyes that seemed to be looking for a rope on a washy deck. “Hi, I’m Jimmy and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Jimmy.”

  “I’ve been sober for three weeks now.” They all applauded. “I’m glad I came here to talk to you because I’m afraid I used to drink my whole paycheck up on the day I got it. I even had to borrow money in the bar to get home.”

  Owney’s legs moved. Dolores made a sound in her throat to tell Owney that the young guy was plagiarizing from him.

  “I lost my job and my apartment and now I’m living in a room. I’m afraid of drinking. That’s why I’m thankful I’m with you. Because I need someone to share my fear with.”

  Owney muttered, “What is this being afraid?”

  “Maybe he is,” Dolores whispered.

  “Afraid of what? The man talks like a moron. If somebody comes after your life, you can be afraid. Otherwise, forget about it.” Dolores put her hand on his arm to call his attention to the man leading the meeting, who was saying:

  “… that fear, well, we’re all afraid. People are afraid of looking at themselves. People are afraid of saying that they’re afraid. All right now. Let’s see who else. Newcomers?” He looked at Owney, who tried to sink his chin into his chest. When the man looked at Dolores, she stood up. “I’m Dolores and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Dolores!”

  “I came here because I’m afraid, too,” she said. “I think that I’ve found that you can be the strongest person on earth and then the moment you have to face a glass on a bar you become weak. I even think you can be a hero in every place in life, say in a war, and still be afraid of that glass. Afraid of leaving it alone, I mean. That’s what I’ve found out about the fear part of drinking.”