by Janet Capron
“Where’s your daddy?”
I turned back to the window.
“He called, missus,” Josephine said. “He’s running behind.”
Maggie looked at her slim gold watch. She tossed her head. “Well, that figures,” she said.
She went over to me, reached out to touch my face. I pulled away as if I had been stung and moved closer to the window.
“I’m sorry, honey,” my mother said. “You know he means well. He just can’t help it.”
The doorbell rang. Everyone turned to face the sound as if they were expecting the enemy. The bell rang again, three rapid sets of ding-dongs. The two women and I sank back. It was Grandma then. Bridget ran out from the kitchen, taking mincing steps as if she were hobbled, and pulled open the door. She half curtsied in an eager dumb show of fear. A tiny woman wearing long blond hair swept up in combs shuffled through the door. She was bowed under the weight of a silver fur. Bridget stood with her arms outstretched at the old woman’s back, ready to receive the coat.
“Good evening,” Grandmother said.
“Good evening,” Bridget said, as she scooped up Maggie’s abandoned sheared beaver from where it had fallen on the stairs and threw it on top of the undulating mink.
My grandmother’s eyes were the color of ice on a lake. She turned and peered into the living room. “Don’t you people believe in electricity?”
The room was dark. Josephine hurried around it, first turning on the running lights along the bookshelves and then a three-way standing lamp in one corner. The old woman smiled without showing her teeth.
“Good, I’m glad everyone is here. We won’t be late for dinner. Mr. Abram is in his study, I take it?”
“Yes, madame,” Josephine said.
“Well, I’m sorry that I missed Rayfield. Such an attractive man. You will tell him how sorry I am, won’t you, Maggie, the next time you speak to him?”
“He hasn’t been here, Mother,” Maggie said.
“Oh?” the old lady asked without surprise. “I had understood that he was visiting Janet today.”
“Well, he stood her up,” Maggie said. She went to put her arm around me and I pulled away.
“Perhaps he will turn up yet. Bridget, kindly tell Anna that there will be one more for dinner and set another place.”
“No, Bridget,” Maggie said, walking over to the maid and retrieving her coat, which she hung in the closet behind them. “That won’t be necessary. I don’t want him here drunk.”
“Maggie, must you continually contradict me and confuse the servants? Set another place, Bridget. That will be all. I don’t want to be disturbed until dinner.” The old woman disappeared into her room. They heard her door slam.
Bridget pulled a large, polished oak hanger from out of the hall closet and very gingerly folded the big coat around it. “Will you need anything, Mrs. Margaret?” she asked my mother.
“Yes, Bridget, some ice. I need a drink.”
Bridget nodded and left for the kitchen.
Maggie turned back to the living room, where she went over to the television and switched it off. “Josephine, what did you do all afternoon, just hang around waiting for the bastard?”
“Hush, hush, missus. Don’t talk like that in front of the child, even if it is the God’s truth.”
Maggie pulled off the little hat with one hand as she rubbed her hair around impatiently with the other. “It was better when he was in Korea. Janet shouldn’t be subjected to this,” she said, sitting down abruptly on a white loveseat against the wall, which ordinarily was never used, and patting an empty space next her.
“Come here, Janet, come sit,” she said.
I shook my head. I couldn’t bear to let anyone see me like this. Everybody’s parents in my second grade class were divorced—well, practically everybody—but the other kids’ fathers made a big fuss about their visitation rights. Sometimes, someone might not even be able to attend a birthday party because that was the father’s day. I knew how it was supposed to go.
Bridget appeared again, framed in the large entrance to the living room. She was carrying an ice bucket in both hands. “They’ve announced Mr. Rayfield on the house phone. They want to know if he’s expected.”
Maggie looked at her watch again. “It’s after five. He’s got a hell of a nerve.”
“What should I say?” Bridget asked.
Josephine took the ice bucket and set it on a shelf with interior running lights, next to the empty fireplace. “Tell him to send him up. Better late than never.”
“But, Josie,” Maggie said, sounding very young to me then, “do you think it’s wise?”
“Janet has been waiting all day. Better she see it than blame you,” Josephine spoke matter-of-factly.
“But I don’t care!” I said. “I don’t really.” Tears flew out of my eyes like flecks of spit from an angry mouth. “Tell him to go to hell.”
“Shame on you. He’ll hear you all the way in the elevator,” my nurse said.
The bell rang. Josephine was there before Bridget could arrive.
“At last,” she said as she pulled it open, “at last. Come in.”
But the tall young man, still in his thirties, stood outside, his wrinkled raincoat hanging off him as if he had not been able to make up his mind whether or not to wear it.
“Are you sure, Josie?” His mouth dropped in that self-deprecating smile. “I thought I might be too late to be welcome.”
“You’re always welcome, Mr. Ray,” Josephine said. “Now in, in.” She shooed him past her as if she were corralling a truant rooster back into the yard.
“Hello, Daddy,” I said, and went over to meet him.
He scooped me up and began to stagger. Together we fell onto the carpeted stairs, adjacent to the door, where he continued to hold me, burying his head in my hair. “Oh, baby, baby, you OK?”
I ran my hand across his chin.
He pulled his face. “Seems like it’s growing,” he said. His skin was pale and fine underneath the stubble. His green eyes were dull and misted over as if his mind were traveling great distances without him, hovering over the refracted lights of the city outside the living room window. He had a high forehead framed by a mass of dark hair, which he combed straight back, but which now fell forward in looping waves over his heavy eyebrows. He began to run his hand through it, but then abandoned the gesture, as if he had been distracted, this time by the front door that Josephine had just closed behind him. Something or someone on the other side of it grabbed his attention. The white turtleneck (the kind he always wore; he had an aversion to ties), which was still tucked into his pleated pants, may have been clean earlier that day. Now it advertised his afternoon. Vague brown spots, possibly spilled coffee, covered the front of it. I watched my mother screw her face up in disgust.
She got up from the white sofa and marched over on her high heels to where my father sat on the stairs. “Why did you have to do this today? Why? Just one day you could’ve laid off it. For Janet’s sake. You know the problems I’ve been having with her. She’s totally withdrawn. The teachers say she won’t respond. She mopes around the apartment. Is it always going to be like this with you, Rayfield? Is this what I have to look forward to? What gives you the right to turn your back on her when she needs you?”
I broke in, yelling, “Stop it, stop it!”
I stood up in front of him, facing my mother, to protect him.
Then he reached up and took my hand and turned me around. Our eyes, the same slanted green ones, met. “Maybe I should leave, princess. I’m a mess. I’m sorry.” He put his elbows on his knees and covered his face.
I continued to look at him, memorizing his hairline, the grooves on the sides of his square mouth, the way his eyebrows arched, the Adam’s apple. He was the handsomest man that I had ever seen and I did not know when I would see him again.
“OK, go,” I said, without moving, the hot penthouse air ringing in my ears.
“That’s not very kind,�
�� Josephine said. The big nurse took my father by his other hand, pulling him to his feet. “Have some black coffee first.”
Maggie pushed past her ex-husband. “Well, I can’t stand it. I’m going upstairs. Josie, don’t leave Janet alone with him.”
“Not to worry, missus,” Josephine said. “We’ll have a little black coffee. Janet, kiss your father. Tell him how much you love him, how much you missed him. Go on, now.”
I shook my head. Pride, the price we sometimes pay for survival, had suddenly taken over. ‘It’s not my turn anymore, it’s his,’ was all I could think about. ‘I held my end up for a long time, but now it’s his turn.’ He moved a few steps until he could just reach out and touch my small shoulders covered in velvet. Cautiously at first, he began to massage them with his palms. I could smell his stale whiskey breath as he leaned over and kissed me gently on the cheek.
“Janet, darling Janet. You’re all grown up. Did you miss me?”
What I wanted to know was: Did he miss me? He had to say so first. I kept my mouth shut. My father dropped his arms and shrugged. “Josie, I’m sorry. I tried, but the kid’s too smart for her old dad. She’s through with me, too, fed up. And she’s right, she’s right. I’m going.”
He pulled me to him, clutching me like a small belonging that someone else had tried to steal away. Frightened by the abruptness of it, I let out a little scream. Grandpa Abram came to the door of his study at the far end of the apartment wearing a silk smoking jacket, his black eyeshade pushed over his forehead.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, his watery blue eyes raw and blinking without his glasses.
“Hello, Sam. It’s Rayfield here. Sorry to have missed you, just leaving.” My father pulled his dirty raincoat around him. “Janet,” he said, his hand on the brass doorknob, “I know I’m a no-good bum of an old man, but I’ll always love you. No matter what. Remember, darling, love is just like a rubber band. You can stretch it, but it never breaks.”
Then he was gone, the thick metal door thudding shut behind him. I ran, pulling it open with both hands. “Daddy, I’ll wait. I’ll wait.”
He looked at me as if I were a stranger, or as if he had forgotten why he was there.
“That’s my pet, that’s my Janet,” he finally said, just as the elevator arrived. He slipped past me behind Jake, the operator, turning inside where he continued to wave and smile that doleful smile until Jake heaved the car door shut.
The Visit
Michael and I stood not particularly close together behind the wall-sized picture window of the Traveling Medicine Show. Michael was gazing out on the early birds spruced up in their ties and jackets and high heels and makeup as they headed south.
It was an early Friday morning, still hours before what would be the last day of my second week at Evelyn’s. We were speeding to the point where everything is hushed and time quits, gives up, stops shoving you. The hard white crystals melting in the brain had catapulted us headlong into a Faustian dream where we hovered beyond mortality. We had escaped hunger, thirst, exhaustion, anxiety, frustration, sadness of all kinds. I felt cool and shameless, as numb as ancient sand blowing in the desert wind. Freed from the struggle. The contrast between us inside and them outside further heightened our already exalted state. We were dimensions away from the solemn taxpaying lot on the other side of the dirty windowpane.
“I never get tired of watching them go to their offices.” Michael shook his head in mock disbelief. He shivered with incomprehension, hugging himself and rubbing his muscles underneath the sleeves of his black T-shirt as if he were cold. In fact, the air-conditioning was on the blink, and the day already promised to be good and hot.
We continued to look on for a while in silence, too grateful to speak. I was feeling particularly blessed because lately I had Michael all to myself. Safe inside the dark bar, dressed in blue-jean cutoffs and a child’s T-shirt stretched taut over my flattened bosom, I imagined myself to be protected forever from ordinary life, from panty hose and hairdos. My contempt was perfect; I even found it in my heart to pray for them, that alien breed trudging along in quiet desperation, their numbers increasing with the rising sun. Why had I been spared? Just lucky, I guess.
“They look like the British raja, don’t they? Everybody buttoned up, covered from head to toe, the sweat already dripping. See how everybody ignores each other and keeps their eyes glued straight ahead. Why? And they’re always in such a big hurry, no matter what time it is. I can’t figure it out,” I finally said.
“All I want to know is how come I have everything I need, and I don’t have to do what they’re doing? God, good God...” Michael shivered again. A broad, smug smile shone on his face. “Wonder what the poor people are doing today?” he said, as if watching the nine-to-fivers were the sport of kings. Then, a moment later: “Maybe I could check out Evelyn’s sometime.”
“How do you expect to do that?”
“You know, I could pretend to be a john. I’d pay, of course, what the hell, we all gotta pay sometime. I’d just like to see what it’s like, the inside of a madam’s house. And Evelyn sounds interesting.”
“Really, Michael, you’re playing with me.”
“Nope. No, I am not.”
“But you don’t look like any john I ever saw. You’d never pass. Then she’d think we had some kind of conspiracy going, like we were casing the joint, planning to rip her off or something.”
“All righty, let’s see...I know, I could pose as your friend. How about that? Come over at the end of your shift. You’d introduce us. How about that, pretty clever, huh?”
“But honestly, you gotta believe me, there’s nothing to see down there. It’s the dreariest little setup.”
He turned his back to the window and walked over to his long table, where he sat down, put his feet up on the neighboring chair, pulled open the Village Voice, gave it a snap and disappeared behind it.
“OK, OK,” I said, following him.
I pushed the paper down below his face. He looked up then. There was a shady little smile playing on his lips.
“OK, I’d be delighted to introduce you to Evelyn. But, of course, she’s gonna assume you’re my pimp. Even if I tell her otherwise. And madams vie for ascendancy over pimps—did you know that? Well, they’re sort of competitors, aren’t they?”
“Since when do pimps wear moccasins with holes in ’em? I’m a mighty lousy pimp then,” he said.
At seven P.M. sharp the doorbell at Evelyn’s rang. I was shocked, overwhelmed. In cities, lives stretch out linearly. We show bits and pieces of ourselves, like shards of different-colored glitter on a string. Our friends very often have no use for one another. Work and home rarely intersect. Our past is discarded, detached like empty boxcars. We live in discrete worlds that we imagine are mutually exclusive. When two of these seemingly incompatible worlds combine, it feels as though two broken parts of the self were coming together.
I went to the door. Michael’s black hair was clean and pulled back in a ponytail. His blue jeans were the newest pair he owned, and he was wearing my favorite scarlet corduroy shirt, the one that threw his pale blue eyes in relief.
“Michael, meet Evelyn,” I said, leading him straight into the living room.
Evelyn kept her seat on the sofa. She was wearing skintight toreador pants, a half-unbuttoned black cotton shirt, and red high heels. The cleavage poured out; her long brown hair hung against her smooth white skin.
Michael approached and she put out her hand. I thought for a minute he was going to kiss it, but he shook it. Then he sat down in the armchair where the johns ordinarily sat.
“Janet likes it here,” he said.
“She’s a very good worker. Too bad business has been so slow,” Evelyn said.
Even though it was true, the reason she made a point of saying business was slow was because she wanted to back me up. If Michael were my pimp, it would figure I told him business was really slow so I could keep some extra for myself. She was assum
ing like a good whore I had lied, and this assumption was based on the original wrong one that he was my pimp. In other words, Evelyn was acting in some other scene entirely.
Meanwhile, Michael had assumed I never told Evelyn I was new at this, because that’s the way he would have handled my situation. He thought an admission of inexperience was the kind of tenderfoot confession that would automatically be exploited. When he told Evelyn I liked it here, he put the emphasis on “here,” as if there were other whorehouses to compare it with.
They were both wary and streetwise, and they were trying to look out for me, each in his or her way.
Sitting back in the armchair, Michael said he was comfortable. I realized I had never seen him sit with his feet on the floor before—come to think of it, I had never seen him in anything as bourgeois as an upholstered chair either. It was like letting in the outdoor cat for the first time and watching it make a beeline for the fire, where it curls up familiarly on the softest cushion.
Michael looked around at the brown-laminated living room. He nodded. “To the point.”
Evelyn offered him a drink.
“I drink rum,” he said apologetically.
“Not a problem,” Evelyn said, all of a sudden eager to please (no different from the rest of us poor fools as far as I could tell). She took coy little steps in her red high heels over to the small bookshelf-turned-bar, and it occurred to me that I was getting a first-time look at a whole other side of her. Evelyn the lady: no slang, no curses, no acid wisdom. As she mixed our drinks, she spoke deliberately and with an arch politeness. Not even the johns got this treatment.