“Why does Kane want to call it off?” Mrs. D’Allessandro said.
“It’s a long story. But it has nothing to do with Natalie.”
“The date’s set. We put an ad in the paper. We’ve already got orders for the bleeding tickets. He won’t call it off, surely.”
“It’s not up to him now, anyway, is it?”
“But if he said he’s calling it off—what in bleeding hell does that mean, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’re depending on you,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She shook her head as if she couldn’t believe her own words. Then she sighed. “Oh, God, I hate it here.”
Released from her, he went down into the basement to look for Albert. There were three students from the night school standing at the Coke machine, and one was seated in a booth smoking a cigarette. They were apparently on a break in the middle of an exam, because they were talking about the questions, all of which had to do with ancient Greece. The downstairs door was open. Outside, in that little, cold, concrete space, surrounded by a tall wrought-iron fence and a cement wall, amid scraps of paper and soaked pieces of cardboard and the smell of garbage, Albert stood, hands deep in his pockets, head turned upward, gaze set skyward, past the sheer, towering shapes of the buildings rising into the starry dark. Albert blew breath, like smoke, then looked at his friend. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Marshall said.
“Was that you in the hallway?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought so. Thought I heard your voice. Mrs. D’Allessandro, too?”
“Yes.”
“She seemed upset. Her voice.”
“Well,” Marshall said, “that’s her problem.”
Albert looked at him and smiled, then took a step toward the wall, stretched his arms up and breathed a deep sigh that sounded like a sigh of satisfaction. Then he put his hands in his pockets and turned to his friend again.
“What’re you doing out here, Albert?”
“Minnie’s gone home.”
Marshall stepped close. “She—died?”
“No,” Albert told him. “Went home. Today. This afternoon. Not three hours ago. She got up out of bed, dressed herself, and went home. Alice couldn’t get ahold of you, so she called me.”
Marshall stared at him.
Albert breathed another slow, deep, satisfied sigh. “I was just standing here thinking about how good it is to be alive, Walter.”
Chapter 17
Alice’s father wanted to celebrate Minnie’s return. In what Alice described as the new, expansive mood of gratitude that had taken possession of him, he had conceived of the idea of a dinner in Minnie’s honor, at which Minnie would, of course, not have to lift a finger, or give one order, and to which she could invite anyone she chose. Minnie said she wanted Alice, any members of her congregation who could come, Diane, Stephen, and young Walter Marshall. Diane and Stephen had gone south, and were traveling in Alabama with some members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. When she was given this information, she left things up to Alice. She was only doing it, she said, to satisfy Mr. Kane. “In other words,” Alice told Marshall over the telephone, “she’s accepting my dad’s peace offer.”
“It’s a miracle,” said Marshall.
“I’ve asked Mitch Brightman, too,” She said. “He’s known Minnie a long time. And I want you and your mother, of course, and her friend, if he insists.”
“They’re going to be married,” Marshall told her. “I don’t think there’s any way to avoid it.”
“The marriage, or him coming to the dinner?”
“Both.”
“They really are going to get married?”
“Yes, they really are, Alice.”
“Poor boy.”
He said nothing.
“I’m asking Albert and Emma, too.”
“Do you think that’s the best idea? I mean—with Emma—”
“Albert doesn’t think she’ll come.”
“And if she does?”
“She’s a polite Southern girl.”
Alice had been alone in the room when Minnie came to herself. That was the way she put it when she told him about it. Minnie came to herself. Opened her eyes and looked at Alice, sitting there by the bed, holding her hand. It was growing dark at the windows, the afternoon visiting hours were ending. There were people walking along the hallway outside the room. Minnie looked over Alice’s shoulder at the commotion, and Alice realized that this was a new development, this interest in what was going on outside the room. “Girl,” Minnie said to her.
“Yes, Minnie.”
“What you crying fuh?”
She squeezed Minnie’s hand, but couldn’t bring herself to speak.
“What time is it gittin’ to be?”
“It’s almost five,” Alice told her.
“Well,” Minnie said, “stop crying, na.” And then she worked her way to a sitting position in the bed, reached over, and pulled the IV tape off the back of her hand. Alice, fearing that she might harm herself, stepped away from the bed and began to call for a nurse or a doctor. Minnie moved in the bed, brought her amazingly smooth, muscular, rounded legs over the side and stood, the IV still dangling from her arm, the apparatus rocking slightly with the pull of it. “Git somebody,” Minnie said. “Go on, child. I’m fixing to go home, na.”
Alice told Marshall that she ran down the corridor of that hospital, so excited and happy that she forgot where she was. “God knows what sort of a bizarre spectacle I made, running and yelling for somebody like that, so happy and scared at the same time. I mean a part of me thought maybe she was—you know—delirious or something. The last mirage, you know, before dying. I thought she might be dying. Or part of me did. I was afraid to think anything at all, really. But there she was, so big, pulling at the IV thing and demanding that I get somebody because it was time she went home. And yes, I think it is a miracle. I think I’m going to start going to church with you.”
“Alice,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I love you.”
“Listen,” he said.
“Walter?”
“Nothing. I—I love you, too.”
He saw her at work on Tuesday, and they went to lunch together. She was as bright as the sun-glorious, fall-crisp day, full of plans. Stephen was going from Alabama to Chicago in the middle of the week, with Reg and Ollie and Diane, to join Dr. King. There was a lot of excitement about it. They had offered to stop in Arlington, for Minnie’s party, but Minnie wouldn’t hear of anyone putting off such an honor merely to celebrate the fact that she had been wrong about her time. That was how she put it, Alice said, sitting in the window of the sandwich shop, eating a big submarine sandwich and watching the people hurry by on the sunny walk outside.
“And Walter—the best thing,” she went on. “My father’s not going to call off the Mitch Brightman deal, at the school. It can go ahead as planned.”
He couldn’t refrain from expressing some relief over this, and even so he felt as if he were lying to her, using her. “Alice,” he said.
She interrupted him. “Mitchell came to see Minnie, you know, in the hospital.”
He hadn’t known.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she said.
He took a bite of his sandwich. Outside, a couple walked by, arm in arm. They looked utterly natural and comfortable together. “Alice,” he said.
“What?”
Looking into her clear eyes, her happiness, he thought of the distant future, and took another bite of the sandwich. Somewhere in the unimaginable distance, there were men his age tramping through jungles, more of them all the time.
“What?” she said again, smiling. “I’ve got food on my lips, right?” She put a napkin to her mouth.
“No,” he said.
“Well, what, then?”
He hesitated. The words were there to tell her. He could back d
own slowly, gradually:
Alice, maybe we ought to think about seeing other people now and then. Just to be sure of ourselves.
No.
Alice, I’m in love with Natalie Bowman. I think.
“Walter?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I don’t know anything. My mother’s getting married.”
She reached across and took him by one wrist. “You told me.”
“I hate it,” he said. “It’s depressing.”
“That horrible little man.”
He nodded.
“What’ll we do?”
“There’s nothing we can do.”
She thought a moment. “Surely she doesn’t love him. Actually, I can tell a thing like that. I’ve got a sixth sense or something. I mean it. I can sense it. I can always tell when the people I’m with—if they love each other. Married couples, and people going together. My father brings them over and they’re not in the room five minutes and I know. There are signs, of course. But I think it’s a sixth sense with me. I’m sure she doesn’t love him.”
He kept his eyes from hers.
“Don’t you think?” she said.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it to me.”
“Well, what’s she doing it for?”
He shrugged. “You got me.”
Again, she considered, holding the sandwich to her mouth, looking out the window. “God,” she said at last.
They walked back to work, and she held his hand, kissed him at the elevator, and again while they were in the elevator. Anyone who saw them would have said that they were what they seemed to be—a young couple in love, in thrall to each other. He observed all the public forms of affection with her, and when she had gone her way he was sick with himself, walking down the long corridor to the mailroom, nothing resolved, nothing changed.
He worked the hours of the afternoon in a sort of torpor, going from one task to another without thought, speaking only when spoken to. And at the end of the day, she came down to meet him. They walked out together, arm in arm. Lovers.
“I think your mother just doesn’t want to be alone,” she said. “You’ll be leaving and she doesn’t like the idea of being by herself. It’s understandable.”
Autumn was in full blazing color in the streets of the city. They took the bus across the river into Arlington, and when her stop came, she asked if he wanted to come home with her for a time.
“I’ve got so much schoolwork to do,” he said.
“Okay,” she said simply. She kissed him, then made her way to the doorway. The bus slowed, and she stepped down, was out, the bus pulling away, rushing away from the rising dust and grit of the curb. She was small in the distance, walking toward her street, a young woman strolling in the failing sun of a fall day crossed with flying leaves and deep shadows.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last confession. I failed to do what you asked me to do in my last confession, Father. I’m the one who got engaged to the two women?
Oh, yes. How could I forget?
Well, I couldn’t tell the first one, Father. And she still thinks we’re in love.
Well, she would.
I don’t know how to do it, Father.
You say, We’re not getting married. Those words, son. Politely, gently, evenly, honestly. We’re not getting married. Like that.
I’ll—I’ll try.
You do more than try, son. You do.
Yes, Father. I’m confused, though—it’s because I like her so much that I don’t want to hurt her.
What have you said to the—uh—the second one?
She knows.
She knows about the first one?
Yes, Father. But I didn’t tell her. I was going to, and she already knew.
The plot thickens.
Father?
No, never mind me, son. Hold on a minute. Aha. Uh—I take it the second one is none too happy with you.
Yes, Father.
Well, you see. I—ah. You have to take care of these things—some of these things on your own. You’re really talking about something that has to do with manners. And—and honor. I guess. There’s no sin here. At least not yet. You—that is, if you haven’t had relations. You haven’t had relations, have you?
No, Father.
Son, I can’t help asking about the families of these two young women—
I’ve only met the first one’s father.
I see.
They’re both older than I am, Father.
Who? The parents—I’d think the parents—
No, Father. My—the fiancées.
The—the young ladies.
Yes, Father.
And how much older are they?
The first one’s more than four years older and the second one’s seven years older.
The one you think you want to marry is seven years—
Yes, Father.
She hasn’t been married before?
No, Father.
I suppose that’s good. Well—aha. Now, are there any sins you want to confess?
I lied all week, Father.
I see, yes.
I had impure thoughts. Several times.
Did you indulge in them?
I tried not to.
Anything else?
I let my first—the first one—fiancée—I let her kiss me, until I got aroused.
Do you mean to keep from letting that happen again?
Yes, Father.
Because I don’t see why you bring this in here if you’re just going to let that sort of thing go on. If this girl—this woman is not the woman you intend to marry, you have to avoid these occasions of sin.
Yes, Father.
Anything else?
No, Father.
Well, thank heaven for that.
In the apartment that evening, Clark Atwater dozed in front of the television set while Loretta drank tea, sitting at the end of the couch with a TV tray in front of her. Marshall kept to his room, mostly, coming through only to take the plate he’d had toast on back into the kitchen. Loretta smiled at him, passing through. Clark Atwater snored and made little sighing sounds, and the television rattled on—a movie about a couple separated during the war who are changed by it and come back together as different people. Marshall had seen the movie before; they each assume, to great comic effect, that the other is the same quiet, unassuming, timid person of the days before they were separated. He went into his room and tried to pray, and finally he lay in the dark, hearing his mother and Atwater moving around in the living room. He had drifted off, was lost for a time, and then he came to himself, sat upright, peering wide-eyed and dazed into the dark. There had been the sound of a scuffle in the other room. Or had it been a sound at all? He listened. Silence.
But then as he lay back down, he heard it again—a rattle and shiver, something thudding to the floor. He got up, pulled the blanket around himself, and opened the bedroom door. “Mom?” he called.
Nothing.
“Hello?”
A faint suspirance, like a breath—someone whispering. He stepped back into the room, dropped the blanket, and reached for his pants. He was certain he could hear it now, an urgent sibilance, a hissing. He got the pants on and started out, down the hall.
“Walter.” His mother’s voice, distressed, tearful. “Go back to bed.”
“Mom?” he said, heading toward the living room.
“No,” she said. “Please. Go back to bed.”
He stopped.
“Do you hear me, son? Go back to bed.”
“Are you all right?” he said. “Who’s there?”
Atwater’s voice came. “Who the hell do you think is here?”
“What’re you doing?”
“Nothing,” his mother said. “Please, Walter. I’m saying good night to Clark, and we got to teasing.”
But he could hear that she had been crying.
“Mom,” he said, “are you all right?”
&
nbsp; “I’m fine. Please go to bed.”
He went to the end of the hall, and looked into the room where she was, but it was too dark to see much. Her face turned to him from an angle of the couch, and she said, “Please, Walter. Leave me alone.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He had not been able to make out where Atwater was. He went slowly back to his room, stood in his doorway, and looked back down the hall. “I’m not sleeping,” he said.
“Well, go to sleep,” came Atwater’s voice.
“No, sir,” Marshall said. “Not until you leave.”
More whispering. Then his mother’s voice. “Good night, son.”
He couldn’t sleep. He lay listening for the sounds, and the silence grew rickety with buried noises; perhaps he imagined more whispering. Nights when he was much younger, he had heard music in the whir and rush of the world outside his window, and he had understood that it was not really music at all, but something supplied by the nerves of his inner ear.
Daylight woke him, morning streaming in the window. His mother was in the shower. He made coffee for her, put the dishes away that had been stacked in the drainer next to the sink. She came into the kitchen wearing her bathrobe, smelling of the fragrances she used, her hair still wet. “I got a late start,” she said.
He kissed her cheek, then moved past her to use the bathroom himself. As she turned from him, he saw a dark place on the ridge of her left eyebrow. “What’s that?” he said.
“What—this? Oh, nothing.”
“No, wait,” he said, taking her by the shoulders.
“It’s nothing, son—really. Clark and I were teasing around, you know—”
“It’s a bruise.”
“It’s nothing. Go take your shower.”
“He hit you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We were playing. It was an accident.” She moved to the refrigerator and opened it. “Do you want some eggs for breakfast?”
“No,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Better hurry, you’ll be late for work.”
He paused a moment longer. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ve got school tonight, right?” She reached into the refrigerator and brought out a grapefruit. “Clark wants to go see Goldfinger.”
“I’ve got school,” he said.
Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea Page 33