Before My Life Began

by Jay Neugeboren

  Susan lifts her head. “Susan,” she says. “Susan. In my presence kindly use my name.”

  “Come on,” Lucius says. “Come on and ‘fess up, hey, Aaron. Didn’t it bother you just a little, knowing he plowed your fields before you got there?”

  “Gentlemen,” Susan says. “Proceed as if I were absent. Please. Frankly, I love it.”

  Lucius reaches up, touches a ceiling beam. “Remember how I teased you ‘cause of your fingers, how you could put in all the cripple studs, and me, the strength and size I got, I’d put in jack studs. Jack studs and cripple studs, we got ’em all, Aaron, you and me.”

  “Aaron Levin is not the possessive type,” Susan declares. She makes a V with her hands, rests her chin in the V, stares at Lucius. “Jealousy is the illusion of possession, so saith Aaron Levin. Didn’t he ever teach you that?”

  “And you believe it—that he never be jealous of sharing your body once upon a time with that other man?”

  “Never never never never never. And I quote. Lear. Again: to see feelingly—that is the aim of life. The end.”

  “Oh man, you too good, Aaron. Like always. You just too good to be true. I mean, I see guys around used to know Louise, I still feel something twitch inside, and you got to remember all I was able to endure down there with Carrie. And you know what? Louise, she be happy I feel that way. A woman need that, Aaron. A woman like to be pursued, see—like you to crave her—”

  “Shh,” Susan says. “Everybody quiet now. Listen. I’m having an idea. Shh. Maybe after you get married, Lucius, you could wait a while and then get divorced. Then Aaron and I could get divorced. Then we could all switch around, like in Couples. Then maybe—”

  “Hey, hey,” Lucius says. “Don’t you be tempting me with shit like that. Louise, she take a rolling pin to you, she hear you talk that kind of stuff.” He turns to Aaron and his manner is suddenly sober, good-natured. “Come on, hey—don’t you want to celebrate just a little? All the hard times gone by for us, friend. Joseph and his brothers, they be embracing all over the place, happy for us too, see? Moses, they even gonna let him into that promised land now, no matter he kill some son of a bitch. That’s the way my heart’s feeling today. The Lord been good to me, give me life, so I want to be good to the people I love, see? Anything’s possible, Aaron, if you just open your heart. C’mon—”

  “Heresy,” Susan says. “Lucius heresy. Rewriting texts. Emendations. Taking God’s name in vain, and the man claims to believe—”

  “Oh I do, I do, and He be forgiving me when I get fancy ‘cause He loves me, don’t you see? The way He loves us all. And when one of us love somebody else, there be a little bit of the Lord in us—when you love somebody truly it makes everything else all right.”

  “Disappear,” Susan says. “Lucius believes that love makes the world disappear, that evil is the absence of love, that when a man loves a woman and a woman loves a man it is our imitation of God, and that nothing else on earth matters except that love.” She grins. “Doesn’t he make religion sound wonderfully romantic, sweetheart?”

  “What God loves, see,” Lucius says, “is that we got so much to celebrate we be celebrating Him too: we got me getting married and Louise and Jen graduating and Susan in her big play. So come on, brother. Ain’t you got something too?”

  “Yes, but for now I think we should all go. We’ll celebrate when we’ll be fit to remember what we did.”

  “That’s true too,” Lucius says. He cups his hand around Aaron’s ear. “Love you like a brother, Aaron. That be love too, see. She left that out—a man’s love for his brother. Only problem is, for most of us, it don’t start the sap flowing the way the other love does—don’t move in us like His spirit moves—”

  Susan stands, leans on Aaron. “What?” she asks. “I heard you. What is it? Don’t tease. Come on—what do you have to celebrate?”

  “I’ve decided to register for two art courses at the university. It’s the real reason I was there today—”

  Susan moves away. Neither she nor Lucius says anything and in the silence Aaron feels suddenly small and awkward, as if he is a little boy asking permission to do something. Have they heard what he said? Do they care?

  “I was picking up registration forms before I went to the gym,” he offers. “If things go well I’m thinking of enrolling full-time in the fall.”

  “Hey, hey—!” Lucius says. “Hey! After all them years, that takes courage, man. That be the biggest news of all, cause it’s new. We didn’t know that before, did we?”

  “You’re right,” Susan says, and she wobbles her head from side to side, to clear it. “But now. But now. Why now? I mean, why now? Why now, fair Aaron?”

  She blows Aaron a kiss from the palm of her hand, then turns her eyes to Lucius.

  “Oh come on, lady,” Lucius says. “That all you can say, you get news like that from him? That all you can say, he gonna do what you and me been wanting him to, what he been dreaming about since who knows when, what I been praying for—?”

  “I saw snow on the ground this morning,” Aaron states. “Out there. The meadow was covered with it. It was very beautiful.”

  “Yeah,” Lucius says. “Saw your tire tracks. Figured. Saw the new wood piled up. Jack studs and cripple studs, I think. Trusses and tie beams. Toe-nails and tie rails. Footings and furrings. Lucius and Aaron. Looks like we gonna be in business again, by and by, only I can’t figure out what we be doing this time.”

  “A surprise.”

  “For me?” Susan asks.

  “For us.”

  “I work here too, you know.” Susan touches a stack of books, on the sideboard. “Susan’s tutoring center. Upward bound. I didn’t need to go down to Mississippi to help the poor colored folk. I can do that right here in the house my husband built for me. Never leave my family that way. This is the house that Aaron built. See, then, how good he is to me? See what a gift he brought home—a big, tall, handsome disadvantaged colored boy of our very own! That’s Aaron for you—my faithful, thoughtful Jewish husband.”

  “Easy now,” Lucius says to Susan. “Maybe that husband be right. Maybe we best be getting on home. Both of us. Maybe we best let him drive.”

  “God, but those smothering Jewish mothers train them well, don’t they? Nice Jewish boys, ever eager to please, to win the smiles and love of women who—who know how to hold out on them, yes? Would one of them ever come home empty-handed?”

  “Sorry,” Lucius says to Aaron, his eyes sad and bloodshot. “I guess I started something I can’t finish. We just thinking on having a little good time, me and Susan, is all.”

  “But Aaron didn’t have a Jewish mother like that, did he?” Susan says. “He had a whole fucking orphanage full of Jewish mothers, you see, except that the mothers were all little boys. Little boys he could please by being the best little boy of all. Little boys he—”

  “Don’t mock me,” Aaron says, grabbing her arm. “I won’t permit it.”

  “Hey, lay off, mister,” she says, pulling away. “You don’t own me.”

  “You can come too,” he says to Lucius. “If you want.”

  “Only you got to relax more, man,” Lucius says. “She has a point. That’s what I been hoping. To see you relax some the way you do when you at work, when you get that rhythm going. I be telling you to relax, though, ever since we meet, us and Nicky, you being so god-awful serious all the time. Oh you be a good man, Aaron Levin, only you want to play more, like the good woman says.”

  “He relaxes by working,” Susan says. “Another Jewish Calvinist. He relaxes by locking his studio door. By dwelling in dark rooms. By hiding. By following his wife around.”

  “You came out here to work, didn’t you?” Lucius says. “All that new wood—you were planning to work today, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t let us get in your way then. We put the shit away while you work, get some air. Sober up.”

  “It’s too late,” Aaron says. “Light’s almost
gone. I was going to work outdoors. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “Oh Aaron,” Lucius says, and when he does his voice is natural, full of affection. “We just came out here to unwind some, is all. All them pressures, hey—hard day practicing. Stuff. Classes. Louise. I get behind in my courses, Louise she have my ass on the carpet. Only I got me some good stuff, Acapulco gold, from this guy hangs around the team, best stuff I get in a long time, and I just up to my ears in Louise—”

  “Up to your fillings,” Susan says.

  “That too. And Susan, she beat from all her stuff, and we say, what the hell, we entitled sometimes. Don’t mean to offend, brother. You go work a while, give us ten-fifteen minutes, the stuff wear off. Then we all be friends again, okay?” Lucius shivers. Aaron says nothing. “You still my friend, Aaron?”

  “Of course I’m your friend.”

  “Love you like a brother, no matter what. You know that?”

  Aaron nods, watches tears slide down Lucius’s cheeks.

  “Don’t,” Susan says, her hand on Lucius’s hand. “I’m too dizzy. Please? I can’t take all the damned feelings! Turn them off. For me, all right? Everything is just spinning too much. Goddamned wine.”

  “What did Paul know?” Aaron asks.

  “Too much. That man was no good, Aaron—evil through and through. I thought so first time I saw him, knew his game the minute I looked in his eyes.”

  “Double agent,” Susan says.

  “Lay off,” Lucius says.

  “Double trouble,” Susan says. “Susan and Paul. Paul and Debbie. Debbie and Lucius. Lucius and Susan. Susan and Aaron. Aaron and Lucius.”

  “Cool it,” Lucius says. He turns to Aaron. “Sorry, man. She’ll be okay as soon as the stuff wears off. You go out there and work, like you wanted. You too pissed at us, all the time just standing there, glaring. We a sorry sight, for sure. You don’t get out of here, give us some space, somebody gonna get hurt by and by.”

  “He certainly works hard,” Susan says. “But he has no ambition, you see. That is what you must pay close attention to. That is why he might be a double agent too, see?”

  “Cool it, lady,” Lucius says.

  Aaron glances at Lucius, recalls the photo he saw while on campus, in the student newspaper, of a black man lying in bed, sheets rolled across his hips, blood splattered everywhere. “BLACK PANTHER SHOT IN HIDEOUT.” Who ratted on him? Are the black students who say their brothers are being killed in their sleep and not, as the police claim, in shootouts, correct? Is it true that the Movement is full of blacks being paid by the government to bore holes, to bring everything down? Are the guns sold to the dead men sold to them by the same men who then go and tip off the F.B.I.?

  “Why is it,” Susan is saying, “that Aaron Levin works and works, yet wants to stay close to home, safe forever within the little world he’s built? Why does a man with such talents, such natural leadership abilities, spurn leadership itself? People would follow him. People do follow him. Lucius followed him. I followed him. Carl and Larry follow him. Nicky followed him.”

  “I followed him—”

  Jennifer’s voice comes to him at the exact instant her hands are across his eyes.

  “Guess who—?”

  Before her question is out, he has whirled and whacked her on the shoulder, knocked her against the stove.

  “Get out. I want all three of you out of here. Do you hear me or do you hear me? Now you move, and move fast!”

  Jennifer clutches her shoulder, forces back tears.

  “You hurt me!”

  “Damned right. And I can do worse.”

  “Uh-oh,” Susan says to Lucius. “Now children, do you recall that temper I told you about—the temper that can kill?”

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Having a good time,” Jennifer says, her eyes defiant. “Or at least I was until you got here.”

  “Answer my question without being fresh. What are you doing here?”

  “She rode chaperone,” Susan says.

  Aaron looks at Jennifer’s eyes, realizes that she is stoned too.

  “I said to move. Do you hear me? Get your butts out of here. Fast.”

  “The king hath spoken,” Susan says, and she curtsies. Aaron raises his hand, as if to strike her. She lifts her face toward him, smiles. “Please do. We won’t mind. I mean, we’re into all kinds of shit, aren’t we, Lucius? To hell with the superego, right?”

  “You shut your mouth and do what the man says. He may not own you, but he’s as close as you can get. Let’s move on out, hey—”

  Jennifer leans down, tries to kiss Lucius’s cheek. Aaron grabs her arm. Lucius grins and Aaron is astonished suddenly by how much of the man’s face seems to be taken up by teeth. He is confused, frightened, furious. He looks at Susan, imagines her talking with him later when they are alone, telling him that his problem is ever the same—he continues to idealize women too much, to believe that in their love lies his salvation—and he finds himself asking why it is that he has often, in his mind, made himself jealous by imagining Susan’s past—her years with Paul, with other men—but never her future. If he had already imagined the scene he is now living in, would he be less furious, less frightened, less confused?

  “Same old Aaron,” Lucius says. “Don’t you like young folks to have fun no more, hey? Fucked up world we living in, friend. Have to take what pleasures we can, like Paul says. Never know when a body’s gonna live or die, or if somebody be around after to care. You and me, brother, we know that better than most. You and me and Nicky, sitting on Rose Morgan’s porch. How many years gone by was that, hey—?”

  “The Movement’s dead,” Aaron says.

  “Maybe yes, maybe no,” Lucius says. “Still, we got some scores to settle, got some asses we want to kick before we go. Paul wasn’t all wrong. The man made sense now and then.”

  “We’re leaving,” Aaron says.

  “I don’t want to.” Jennifer rests her hand on Lucius’s shoulder, lets her fingers drift lazily along the side of his neck. “I want to stay with Lucius and Mom. Lucius is my special friend now. He teaches me things. That’s part of the revolution, of turning things upside down, see, like Dad said. Instead of me teaching a black, a black is teaching me.”

  “You’re coming with me and you’re coming now.”

  Aaron grabs for Jennifer. She slips behind Lucius and Aaron finds that he is holding Lucius’s arm. Lucius twists away angrily.

  “Hey—lay off. You want trouble, you can get all you want right here. No shortages, man. We can finish everything, here and now, that what I you want.”

  “He’s not my father anyway,” Jennifer says. “I can do whatever I want.”

  “Freedom now, baby,” Lucius says, bloodshot eyes glaring at Aaron.

  “Freedom,” Susan says. “Freedom is a constant struggle.” She blinks. “Who said that?”

  “Made you feel real good to set me free, didn’t it?” Lucius says. “Oh yeah. Took you three years before you could do for yourself what came so easy when you did it for me—putting me in school and the rest. You don’t think I figured that out way back—that you let me live your life for you so you didn’t have to face up to why you couldn’t set your own self free? Only trouble is, hey, once you set me free, I free to be free my way, and that gonna please you less than you ever think on.” Lucius rubs his eyes. “Freedom now, friend. Freedom now. Oh yeah. Freedom got you paralyzed all to hell, don’t it, Aaron? You don’t know which way to move, whether to try to take me or not, you sober and straight and poor Lucius strung out on all the good things of this world. You coming? You gonna try to take me now?”

  Lucius laughs at Aaron, and when he does Aaron imagines the side of his hand smashing upwards against the bridge of Lucius’s nose, so that bone pushes in, penetrates brain. What enrages him most, he realizes, is being taken by surprise. But why? Doesn’t he agree with what Susan often says—that, like any good story, life is most interesting when most sur
prising, when what-happens-next is not predictable? Why, then, when he is surprised this way is he also terrified? What he wants, he knows, is to be able to stop thinking so much, to be able to get away, to be able to let his mind wander freely so that it will be able to work out of instinct, habit. Then, he thinks, he will be safe….

  Jennifer sits, lets her head drop back, swivel. Her hair, like her mother’s, is fine and wild and uncombed. The light from the ceiling catches a patch of its gold, makes it look like spun glass.

  “Didn’t have the heart to tell you,” Lucius says. “They moving back in, seems. They all back in town for a visit.” Lucius shrugs. “Hard times, man. We need to forget life the best we can sometimes, don’t you see? That’s what I was trying to tell you all this time.”

  Lucius takes Jennifer by the arm, leads her from the house. Aaron and Susan file out behind them, into the darkness, into the cool, spring air. Aaron tries to remember the snow, its feathered softness. He feels his heart pumping hard, imagines rolling balls of blood that surge forward, glide and stop, swell, roll through him as if his arteries have hand grenades inside them.

  “It’s okay, hey,” Lucius says. “Still love you, Aaron. Love you like a long-lost brother.”

  “I just wish to hell you’d fall flat on your face for once in your life,” Susan says to Aaron when they are home. “Jesus! Do you know how god-awful it feels to be married to a man who never falls apart, who’s always so damned brave and noble and good? Talk about grace under pressure. Listen. What the hell were you trying to start with Lucius—?”

  “There was no danger,” Aaron says. “Everything was under control.”

  “See what I mean?”

  She lies on their bed, a cold washcloth across her eyes.