Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea

by Richard Bausch

  Marshall and Alice were alone, then. They got into the car, and she turned the ignition, crying softly.

  “It’s okay,” he told her.

  “I know. I just—those people—how could they say those horrible things in front of their children?” She sniffled. “Think about those people at home—the ones who were doing all the yelling and shouting and throwing things. They all love their families, don’t they? They’re all hard-working and loyal and good workers and religious, too, I’ll bet. They teach their kids to be kind and considerate and loyal and mannerly, and they teach them this—this poison, too. I don’t get it. I don’t get it.”

  He said, “I don’t get it, either.” But it was reflexive, and he was ashamed of it.

  She drove to the apartment house. It only took five minutes. When she stopped the car, she leaned across the seat and hugged him. “Well,” she said, “kind of a tough date.”

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She seemed about to cry again. “I love you.”

  He said the words back. He was beginning to think they might be true. The fact was, he rather admired her after today. “Do you want to come in for a while?” he said.

  “I think I’m already in trouble.”

  “Your father won’t be mad at Minnie, will he?”

  “He’s mad at me. I’m sure he’ll think I got her involved, though you know it was really the other way around.”

  “I’m glad she’s okay,” Marshall said.

  “I was going to suggest that I go to church with you in the morning, but I think I better stay home and take care of things with Minnie.” She leaned over and kissed him again. “’Bye, baby.”

  He stood on the sidewalk and watched the car pull out of sight at the end of the road. In the lighted window of the apartment, his mother stood. He went in and up the stairs, and she had opened the front door and come out on the landing.

  “I was so worried.”

  “Is Mr. Atwater here?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course. Where were you?”

  “In Maryland. We went to a crab joint.”

  He made his way past her and into the apartment. Atwater was seated in front of a TV tray with a bowl of ice cream, watching Have Gun, Will Travel. “Where the hell have you been, boy? You had your mother in a state.”

  Chapter 12

  Sunday after Mass, he spoke to Alice on the phone. Minnie was no better, but she was stable. Alice had spent the morning with her, and there were other visitors, mostly members of Minnie’s congregation. She didn’t really have any family. “I’m her family,” Alice said and started to cry.

  “Do you want me to come over there?” he asked.

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be here,” she said. “Call me at home, later?”

  He took the Lark and drove into Washington, to the school. At least partly, he wanted to check on Mr. D’Allessandro, having spent much of the night seeing his image, beset and vaguely aghast, mixed with the images of crowded rooms, a man walking on his hands, mobs of angry people and police. He was restless, and sick at heart: The violent hatred of the crowd—the weirdly automatic quality of it, as though the rage had been some social function long devoid of its actual purpose or meaning, a ceremony of empty faith practiced by people whose minds had stopped there, without questions or doubts or an idea of anything beyond it—all this had worked in his soul, undermining his earlier enthusiasm for what he had been through with the others.

  Loretta was going to spend the afternoon watching football with Clark Atwater.

  So he drove into town alone.

  Mr. D’Allessandro usually did paperwork at the school on Sundays—Marshall had come in on other Sundays to record commercials for the Spanish radio show—but today the broadcasting school was closed. The night-school library was open, and he waited around for a little while, hoping D’Allessandro might show up. There was also the thought of Natalie, which he tried to suppress. Finally, he made his way east, the mile or so down New Hampshire Avenue, to the big old Victorian house where Albert Waple kept his small apartment. Loretta had a deep horror of imposing on people, and had taught her son that it was rude to call on someone without warning, so he stopped at the corner phone booth and called.

  Albert seemed relieved to hear his voice. “Yes, of course. Please stop by. I talked to Alice earlier.”

  It was a sunny, chilly afternoon, with high, sculpted canyons of white, white cloud in a sky that seemed a darker blue somehow. A beautiful day, yet all the streets seemed deserted. The trees lining Albert’s street threw shadows on the road’s surface, on the cracked, weed-sprung sidewalk, the grass. There were some yellow leaves in the trees, now, and a few scattered traces of the burnished colors of autumn. But the houses looked stained by soot and coal dust, and in this light their dirtiness seemed somehow exaggerated, like a kind of insistence. There was no wind. The air smelled of coal and car exhaust. Albert’s apartment was one of three in the house, and there were separate doors opening onto the porch; his was the right-hand door. Marshall rang the bell, and his friend came and peered out through the window. His thin face was badly swollen and discolored on the one side. He opened the door, smiling, and stepped back. “What a nice thing. I’m so happy you thought of us.”

  Emma was seated on the small sofa, holding a saucer with a steaming cup of tea on it. An Andy Williams album was playing on the hi-fi. “Hello,” Emma said over the strains of “The Days of Wine and Roses.”

  Albert said, “Emma took the bus in. She’s getting to be quite the navigator.”

  She smiled. “Alice isn’t with you?”

  “No.”

  “That was such a wonderful party.”

  Albert pointed to his face and then shook his head, frowning. “So,” he said. “What brings you into town?”

  Marshall explained that he’d come to the school.

  “Albert never seems to go to the school unless he’s got a class,” Emma said.

  “I go there sometimes,” Albert said quietly. He really did look bad. The skin around his puffy, violet-and yellow-shaded eye was a sick, pale hue. He touched the place gingerly, and offered Marshall some tea. They sat quietly for a few moments. Marshall gazed at the pictures on the walls of Albert’s parents, of nieces and nephews, the porch of a house Albert said was in Montgomery County, Maryland. He talked of watching thunderstorms from that porch, and being able to step straight off it onto drifted snow in the big storm of 1958. The apartment was furnished rather sparsely, and there were books everywhere, lining the stairs which went nowhere (they had obviously once led up to bedrooms in this house), stacked on the small end tables and the desk against the left wall, in piles next to the bed in the other room, which was visible through the opening into the book-lined hallway. There were even books on the kitchen table, the counter, tucked into the cabinets meant for dishes. Marshall let his eyes take all this in, sitting in the straight-backed chair opposite them on the couch, and then Emma began talking about Mr. D’Allessandro’s plans to save the school. The record played: the pleasant, light baritone voice and violins, a chorus of female singers. Pouring the tea, Albert seemed sad and a little irritable.

  “We’re having a regular English afternoon, aren’t we?” Emma said. “All we need is crumpets. I love the little sound of the cups clinking against the saucers. It’s so—civilized, somehow. In my family, we have tea like this every day.”

  “My mother drinks tea,” Marshall said. “She puts cordials in it sometimes.”

  “I’ve never had it with cordials. Is it good that way?”

  “I only had it once. It’s okay, I guess.”

  “But your mother likes it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she drinks a lot of tea.”

  “That would be my guess,” Albert said with the slightest trace of sarcasm. Then he patted Emma’s shoulder.

  “Albert’s been acting kind of depressed the last few days,” she said. “I think he’s worried about the school. He�
�s so negative about everything lately.”

  “I don’t know what good it is to worry about the school,” Albert said to Marshall. “You’re not interested in radio anymore, and I’m beginning to see that I’m not really cut out for it. And God only knows what some of the others—did you hear Ricky Dalmas’s commercial about getting something you didn’t want for Christmas?”

  “See how negative?” Emma said.

  “I’m being truthful with myself.”

  Emma addressed Marshall. “I think Albert has a very soothing voice and I think he’s perfect for the radio. What about you, Walter?”

  “Someone told me I had a voice for radio,” Marshall said. He thought of Clark Atwater. “I don’t know, though.”

  “I’m asking what you think of Albert’s voice.”

  “Oh. I—I think he’d be fine.” Marshall was unable to muster more enthusiasm with Albert’s dour, myopic gaze on him.

  “He’d be more than fine.” Emma set her cup down on the saucer she held. The motion was so confident that it would have been difficult to convince an onlooker that she was blind. The cup made a decided clink, and she sat back, satisfied.

  “Maybe I’m beginning to see that I don’t want it anymore,” Albert said.

  “But you were so excited about it when we met,” Emma said. “Broadcasting was all you wanted to talk about. And if you were really deciding against it, you wouldn’t be so sad about it now.”

  Albert shook his head, but didn’t speak.

  They were all quiet again while the record played.

  In a while it ended, and there was the little mechanical sound of the player arm automatically lifting and returning to its cradle. The quiet seemed to stretch out, a lengthening, embarrassed pause. “Do you like Andy Williams?” Emma asked.

  “Sure,” Marshall said.

  Albert got up to turn the record over.

  “I love that song, ‘I Can’t Get Used to Losing You.’ Don’t you?” Emma said.

  Albert had set the record going. He returned slowly to his place next to Emma. He kept staring at the floor, the one hand gingerly moving over the bruise on the side of his face.

  “Alice likes folk music,” Marshall said.

  “She’s not a Beatles fan?” Albert wanted to know.

  “I don’t understand what the excitement’s all about,” said Emma. “They’re not even cute.” A moment later, as if to explain, she said, “My aunt Patty described them to me.”

  “They won’t last,” Albert said to her. “Remember Fabian?”

  “Oh, I like Fabian.”

  “Well, yes—but you never hear about him now.”

  “I like him a lot. You don’t like him, Albert?”

  “I just meant he was a big teen idol, too, you know. Like Tommy Sands. Ricky Nelson and Frankie Avalon. Those guys. You don’t hear about them so much anymore. The Beatles will be like them.”

  “I don’t think the Beatles are as good as those guys,” said Emma.

  “No,” Albert said quickly. “Me, too. I don’t think they are, either.” After another awkward pause, he said, “What about Elvis?”

  “Remember when everyone was so upset because of his sideburns?” Emma sat forward as if to offer this to the room. “They’d love to go back to the sideburns now, wouldn’t they?”

  There was yet another silence.

  “More tea, Emma?”

  “Thank you, yes. It feels light.”

  Albert poured the tea.

  “It certainly is nice to have company,” Emma said. “Isn’t it, Albert?”

  “Yes, it is,” Albert said.

  Marshall wondered what they could’ve been talking about when he called. He felt the necessity to speak, and it made him dumb. His mind was a blank, with only the scrabbling for words, anything to say. “Well,” he told them, “as a matter of fact, I can’t stay very long at all.”

  “Busy man,” Emma said.

  “Are you heading back to Virginia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you could give Emma a lift.”

  “Do you want me to leave now?” Emma said. “I have everything all planned out. I’m supposed to call Aunt Patty this evening.”

  “I just thought it might be easier for you,” Albert said.

  She seemed annoyed by the consideration. “Don’t be ridiculous, Albert. I’m perfectly capable of getting home.”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t. I was only trying to save Aunt Patty the trouble.”

  “Well, you put Walter on the spot, I think. Walter, it’s perfectly all right. Aunt Patty doesn’t mind a bit. And I couldn’t bear to leave my handsome prince this early in the afternoon.”

  Albert said, “I’ll walk you out to your car.”

  “Did I say something wrong?” Emma wanted to know.

  “Don’t be silly, dear,” said Albert. “I’ll be right back.”

  Out on the porch, he said, “You believe a thing like yesterday? In Maryland, no less.”

  “How have you kept it from her?” Marshall asked him.

  “She knows. We’re just not talking about it. She’s pretending it didn’t happen. That’s why we’re drinking the tea. I have orders not to involve myself again, and she’s upset with Alice. Nothing Alice will ever know about, of course. Because that’s the way they do things in Emma’s particular little Southern family of aunts and cousins, you see. If there’s anything unpleasant, or any ill-feeling about something, well, we just won’t talk about it. And we won’t allow anybody else to talk about it.”

  They walked out to the car. The sun had gone behind a heavy-looking gray cloud. There wasn’t anyone else in the street, but the sound of traffic came to them on the air.

  “Wonder if Minnie’s okay?”

  “Alice said she was stable—” Marshall said.

  “No, I know.”

  “I asked if she wanted me to come over there.”

  “Minnie doesn’t want anybody but Alice, and her people—you know, from the church, right now.”

  “Did Alice tell you that?”

  Albert nodded. “I offered to go there, too.”

  This was a lovely, sunny fall Sunday in the city. And now there were people out walking, bundled against the chill, and the complicated shapes of shade moved in the breezes. Albert had his long arms wrapped around himself, staring out at the street. “Wasn’t that something? In Maryland. I don’t understand why it wasn’t on the news or in the paper. I read the paper from cover to cover this morning. Nothing.”

  “Maybe it’ll be on this evening.”

  “You go along thinking life makes some kind of sense…” Albert shook his head. “Well—you talk yourself into believing there’s some progress, you know? They pass a law, and you figure it’s over now, settled.”

  “I dreamed about it all night,” said Marshall. “I felt terrible this morning. For a little while, when we were in the vans—we were singing, and I thought—it made me feel that maybe something—like we could…”

  Albert was gazing at him with his sad, too-deep-set eyes.

  “I don’t know,” Marshall said. “Change it all. We’ll make it a better country, won’t we? I mean, our children won’t—we won’t teach that to our children, will we?”

  “I saw a picture once, in a history book—one of those Life magazine–type picture books about history. It was about lynching—in the South. In this picture, Walter, you see all these people, a crowd standing around the hanged body of a colored man, some poor young man, maybe twenty years old. He’s hanged, there. Dead. Not two feet off the ground. Just enough to kill him. The rope looks like it might cut his head off, it’s that tight. And—and these people are all standing around, it’s a party—a celebration. It’s in their eyes, they’re all bright and excited. Some of them are actually laughing, and—and—there’s this little blond girl in the picture, in the middle of all these people—she’s standing close to a woman—her mother, I guess. She’s holding onto this woman’s skirt and smiling, too, this angel
ic, pretty little girl’s bright smile, right? This innocent little girl—enjoying the damn party, Walter. A Sunday picnic, and she’s perfectly happy, staring at this dead man, this hanged man. But you see that little girl and then you see that there are other children in there, too, in the happy family circle—not as blond or as pretty as that little girl, not wearing white like she is, but kids—kids. And you realize that they can’t be more than eight or nine years old—eight or nine, Walter.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment. A young boy came by, walking a big German shepherd. They watched the dog strain at the leash, the boy leaning back, holding on, being pulled along to the corner and across the street.

  “What does Emma say about it all?”

  Albert waved this away. “I can’t even bring myself to repeat what Emma has to say.” He sighed. “My head hurts.” He was shivering, standing there in the chill.

  “You better go on back inside,” Marshall told him.

  Albert started back up to the apartment, then stopped and turned. “I thought Alice was great yesterday.”

  “Yes,” Marshall said. “She was. So were you.”

  Albert seemed not to have heard this last. “You must be really proud,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Albert said, standing there with his hand up to his bruised face. “Everything’s changed.”

  Driving by the school on his way out of town, Marshall saw that Mr. D’Allessandro’s car was parked along the curb in front, so he pulled in behind it. There was a light on upstairs, where the studio was. Two young women were sitting at the big table in the little library. They had been laughing and trying to speak over each other, but they looked at him and fell silent as he came by the entrance. Then one of them called out to him, “Tell Mr. D’Allessandro we want to see him.” Her voice was somehow tauntingly childlike. He nodded, then turned and climbed the inside stairs to Mr. D’Allessandro’s office. The door was open, but no one was there. He went into the sound booth and found Mr. D’Allessandro sitting at the console with Mrs. Gordon on his lap, her arms resting lightly around his neck.