Between the two of them, Howard never had a chance.
They were married early in January and they honeymooned in New York. Rose didn’t want to go to New York at all but Howard insisted, so she decided it would be best to give in to him. They arrived at Grand Central Station and took a taxi to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Their suite at the Waldorf was on the thirty-fifth floor, and from the window you could see all the way uptown to Harlem, Howard said, if you looked close enough. Their first night in the city they went to dinner at Luchow’s. The next morning, after several hours of walking, Rose formed her impression of the city.
She hated it.
The women were strange-looking and they wore too much makeup and the men walked too fast and looked down their noses at her and everyone knew she was from out of town and took advantage of her whenever she walked into a shop to ask the price of anything. And worst of all, the city was cold. The thermometer read close to the zero mark and sharp winds cut up the wide streets, stinging her eyes.
That night Howard wanted to go to the theater but Rose said that she didn’t feel up to it. Instead they had supper sent up to their hotel room and went to bed early. Howard seemed nervous and Rose was too unhappy to sleep. They lay side by side in bed, staring up, neither of them moving for fear they would disturb the other.
The next morning Howard had a business appointment for lunch.
“Take your time,” Rose said. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
“You ought to go out. Buy things. That’s what women do on their honeymoon.”
“Not this woman,” Rose said.
“What will you do here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll write a letter to your mother.”
“You said goodbye to Mother day before yesterday. What have you got to tell her?”
“How much I love New York. I could fill pages about that.”
Howard kissed her lightly on the forehead, “Suit yourself, baby.”
Rose nodded. “Haven’t you noticed? I usually do.”
A few hours later she found herself on Fifth Avenue. What drove her finally from the suite was the fact that there was no one to write to. There was Howard’s mother, of course, and there was Dickens back at the office, but they didn’t really care. Not that much, anyway. Not enough. The thought that there was no one, not one person anywhere on the entire face of the earth, that gave a sufficient damn about her sent her onto the street.
Rose wandered through the cold on Fifth Avenue, gazing in shop windows. Nothing intrigued her. She ought to buy something, she realized, but what? Maybe Howard wanted a wallet. But then, he already had a wallet, not to mention half a drawer full of others at home. Or shirts. He had shirts, though. Stacks of them. What, then? What? She was trying to make her mind up one way or another when she saw him.
With Dolly Salinger.
They were hurrying across the sidewalk toward an empty cab, laughing very hard. Rose watched them a moment. They made a handsome couple; there was no use in trying to deny it. He held the door open for her while she got in; then he followed her, closing the door. The cab drove up Fifth Avenue. How typical it was of Howard, Rose realized, to worry about whether she would be happy while he was out with another woman.
Embarrassingly close to tears, Rose returned to the hotel.
Howard returned after four, smiling. They embraced and she held him very tightly for the longest time. She asked how his appointment had gone and he answered that it went as well as could be expected and all the while they chatted Rose wondered whether to tell him or not. The question stayed in her mind through dinner and the theater and after when they returned to the hotel. Finally, when they were getting ready for bed, she asked him a question.
“Do you remember Dolly Salinger?”
“Certainly. Why?”
“No reason. I just saw someone today who looked a lot like her and I wondered whatever became of her. After she got married, I mean.”
“She came east, I think. Boston, maybe.”
“Well, then, it could have been her that I saw. Boston isn’t that far away.”
“I doubt it,” Howard said.
“Oh, I doubt it, too,” Rose agreed. And for the while she let it rest.
But the next afternoon, when Howard remembered another business appointment, she had to go on with it. They were in the suite, Rose sitting in a chair by the window, Howard standing by the closet door, selecting a necktie.
“You certainly have a lot of appointments.”
“Not so many, really.”
“I didn’t know you knew that many people here.”
“This is just my second time. I know two people.”
“Both named Dolly?”
Howard found a tie to his liking and inserted it beneath his collar.
“Yesterday—”
“I know. We were getting into a taxi. I saw you too. So you see, New York really isn’t much bigger than West Ridge.”
“How can you do it? How can you be so calm about it?”
Howard finished knotting his tie. “At the risk of seeming trite, I’d just like to say that it isn’t what you think.”
“It isn’t, huh?”
“Scout’s honor, Rosie.”
“You’re just good friends, is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Is she the reason we came here?”
“Good God, of course not.”
“Just because I know, that doesn’t change your plans or anything?”
“This is the last time. She’s got to be back in Boston by tonight.”
“One final roll in the hay, is that it?”
“Don’t talk like that. I told you, it isn’t what you think.”
“Does her husband know, since it’s all so pure and upright?”
“No. He wouldn’t understand.”
“You expect me to?”
“No, Rosie.”
“This is all just too damn sophisticated for me, Howard. If you think I’m gonna straighten your tie, you’re wrong.”
“I’ll be back for dinner. We’re just going for a drink and then I’ll put her on the train. I’d let you come along but you’d probably be bored.”
Rose stood by the window, staring down at Park Avenue. “Howard, don’t go. You’re making me do this but I forbid you, Howard.”
“Look at me!”
Rose turned.
“In the taxi,” Howard said, his voice growing louder, “when I told her you’d seen us, Dolly, she predicted that. She said you’d forbid me. And she said I’d never disobey.” Howard slapped his gloves into his open palm. “She said I liked being ordered around. I got very irritated. I almost lost my temper right there in the taxi. Because it’s so untrue. I’m really sick of people—women, I’m talking about now—telling me what to do. I’m the man in the family, Rosie. And if I want to go out that door, I’ll go out that door. Mother thinks she can order me around and so do you and so did Dolly. Well, if I want to see Dolly off on the Boston train I will and if I want to stay here and order Room Service to bring me a double portion of Jell-O I will and if I want to do anything else then by God this once I’m gonna do it.”
Rose hurried to him, took his hand. “Howard, will ya listen to me a minute? You remember? That first night in Cleveland? What I said? That I never had much? I was lying. I never had anything, Howard. Not really one thing ever in my life. I’ve got you now. But if you go out that door, I won’t want you quite so much. Nothing will ever be the same again, Howard.”
“You don’t think that’s a little melodramatic?”
“I warned you, Howard. Always remember that.”
Rose watched as he moved to the door and out. She stood very still, and when it did not reopen Rose ran to the mirror and hated her face for a while. Then she stepped back, raised her skirt above her knees and whispered, “My legs are better, my legs are better,” until, in spite of all she could do, the tears came.
After two hours of walking alone thro
ugh the streets of Manhattan, Howard came back. He stood in the doorway of the darkened suite and said, “I didn’t see her off, Rosie. Honest, I just walked.” Then his hand flicked on the light.
“Turn it off,” Rose commanded.
Howard obeyed. “What is all this?”
Naked, Rose advanced on him. With terrible efficiency, she got him out of his clothes. When he was naked, she put her arms around his waist. Together they fell back onto the bed. Through it all, Rose never said a word.
Nine months later to the day, her son was born.
When Howard came to the hospital later that day, he kissed her on the cheek and sat on the foot of the bed. “What do you think of William?” Howard asked.
“For what?”
“His name.”
“Not for my boy. Anyway, he’s already got a name. Last night it came to me. Branch. His name is Branch.”
“Are you kidding, Rosie?”
“Do I look like it?”
“But what kind of a name is that?”
“Strong, Howard. You know what that means, don’t you? A branch from a tree. Strong.”
“But William was my father’s name.”
“Your mother’s named Flora. You wanna call him Flora?”
“Listen, Rosie—”
“It’s settled.”
“Branch William maybe? Would that be all right?”
Rose relented. “Branch William would be fine.”
When the boy was ten months old he contracted pneumonia. For sixty hours Rose sat by his bed, never sleeping. The doctor came several times and Howard hired a full-time nurse, but Rose never left his side.
“For God’s sake, Rosie, get some sleep. You’ll kill yourself if you don’t watch it.” This was the second day.
Rose stared at the boy.
Howard took her hand.
She jerked free.
“The nurse is right here.”
Rose reached out and touched the boy’s fevered skin.
“Get some sleep. Please. Come to bed.”
“I can’t.”
“Why can’t you?”
“If I leave him, he might die. But he won’t. Not so long as I stay right here.”
Rose stayed right there. Then, halfway through the sixty-first hour, the fever broke.
“See?” Rose said, staring triumphantly up at her husband. “See? I told you.”
He was her baby; there was never any doubt about that. As he began to grow she let his hair remain uncut, long and curly. She dressed him in elegant clothes, making sure that he was always immaculately clean. “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” Howard said time and again. Not that it did much good.
Branch was a verbal child. He spoke sentences by the time he was two, and he knew all the letters of the alphabet by sight. Whenever company came over Rose would get out his blocks and he would say the letters in order while Rose beamed. Branch was thin and his appetite was poor and he cried a lot. But other than that he was fine.
Flora spoiled him terribly, worse than Rose almost, and Miss Dickens would stop by from the office after work with presents several times a week. Howard endured it until one spring Saturday when Branch was almost four.
Howard awoke that morning with a particularly bad hangover and at breakfast he yelled at the maid, a nervous young Negro girl who burst into tears on the spot. Shortly afterward Branch ran in. He was dressed in perfectly pressed short pants and a clean white shirt and his hair seemed to Howard to be longer and curlier than usual. “Hi, fella,” Howard said.
Branch paused for just a moment, then ran out of the room and upstairs.
Howard got up from the table and went into the foyer. “Hey, Rose,” he shouted. “Come on down here.”
While he waited for her to appear, Howard paced.
“What is it?” She stood halfway up the stairs, dressed, as usual, in green.
“Let’s talk.”
“What about?”
“Our son. Oh, pardon me.” Howard bowed low. “I mean your son.”
“If you can’t hold your liquor, don’t take it out on the rest of us.”
“I’ve had it with the kid,” Howard said then.
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s spoiled, he’s bad-mannered and he’s just about to blossom into the biggest sissy in the whole state of Ohio.”
“Shut up,” Rose said.
“Why doesn’t he play ball or something?”
“So he can grow up to be Babe Ruth? Thanks.”
“Other kids play ball.”
“What is this ball business? Since when are you such a fan?”
“I just don’t like the way he’s acting.”
“Branch,” Rose called. “Come here, baby.” A moment later he was standing alongside her on the stairs. “Do you want to play catch with your father?”
“No,” Branch said.
“But you’d like it,” Howard said. “Come on. Give it a try. Just for a little, Branch. Out in the back yard. We’ll quit whenever you want to.”
Branch looked up at Rose.
“Humor your father,” she told him. “He’s having a hard day.”
“I’ll play for a little,” Branch said.
But there wasn’t a ball in the house. Howard looked in all the closets and in the basement and up in the attic and the best he could do was an aged tennis net, gray and moldering.
“Some athlete,” Rose said when he told her.
“I’ll drive uptown and buy one,” Howard said. “You want to come along, Branch? We’ll have fun.”
“No,” Branch said.
“It’ll only take a second,” Howard said, and he hurried to the garage.
It took close to half an hour. Branch was painting a picture when Howard found him. “O.K., fella,” he said. “All set.”
“I’m doing a pitcher now, Daddy.”
“That can wait.”
“So can you,” Rose said suddenly, coming up behind him.
Howard waited.
Finally they moved out onto the back lawn. Rose stayed on the porch, watching them. Howard moved a few steps away from his son. “Now I’m going to toss it to you, fella. And you catch it. Here she goes.”
He lofted the ball gently into the air. Branch watched it. It bounced off his stomach onto the grass.
“That’s pretty good, fella. Shows you’re not afraid of it. But you’re supposed to catch it with your hands. Like this.” Howard cupped his palms together in demonstration.
Branch shook his head. “That would hurt.”
“No, it wouldn’t. I promise you. Just toss it to me and I’ll show you.” Branch picked up the ball and threw it at Howard. Howard caught it. “See, fella? It doesn’t hurt a bit. That was some toss. You’ve got a good arm. Now you catch it this time.” He lofted the ball toward his son. Branch turned his head as the ball dropped to the ground a few feet to his left. “Bad toss on my part,” Howard said. “Give it here. I’ll do it again.” He was starting to sweat and his head ached slightly.
Branch threw the ball toward his father. Howard picked the ball up and tossed it gently back toward his son. The ball struck the boy in the chest.
“Now, you could have caught that one, fella. You’re just not trying.”
“I must be careful of my hands. So I can paint. Mamma tells me to.”
“Well, I’m telling you to do something now. So you do it.”
“Have you had enough?” Rose called from the porch.
“We just started,” Howard yelled back. “We’re having a wonderful time.” Howard retrieved the ball and tossed it to Branch. Branch half turned, and the ball missed him. “Now come on, fella. Try.”
“I don’t want to play anymore,” Branch said.
“You hear that, Howard? He wants to quit.”
“We just started!” There was a crazy tone in his voice and Rose must have heard it too, because after a pause she called out to her son.
“Play with him a little more, Branch. Just a little
more.”
Howard walked over to Branch and put an arm around his shoulder. “You’re going to learn this now,” he said. “You’re not leaving till you learn to cup your hands. A baby can do it. You can do it.” His headache was worse now, the pain moving down, camping close behind his eyes. “Cup your hands.” Branch did as he was told. Howard dropped the ball into the hands from a foot above. “Now, did that hurt? Tell me the truth.”
“No.”
“All right, then. Catch it this time.” He threw the ball harder than he meant to and it struck Branch on the knuckles.
“That hurt, Daddy.”
“No, it didn’t. Now throw the ball back here.”
“But it hurt.”
“Dammit, it didn’t. Quit being such a baby and throw me the ball.”
“Howard ...” It was Rose calling from the porch.
Branch threw the ball back to his father. Howard dropped it. Perhaps the sun had suddenly blinded him or perhaps he had been staring at the shadow of his wife on the porch. At any rate he dropped it.
And then the lawn was loud with Rose’s laughter. “You’re some teacher, yes, you are.”
“Shut up.”
The laughter grew louder and suddenly Branch joined in and then blindly, with all his might, Howard threw the ball toward the sound.
The ball crashed against Branch’s temple.
Branch screamed and fell.
Howard rushed toward him, tears in his eyes, kneeling beside the writhing body of the boy. He reached out to touch him, but the body rolled away and Howard was about to reach out again when Rose was on him.
“Lush,” she said. “Lush!” Cradling Branch in her arms, she carried him away.
Howard stayed where he was, embracing the grass where his son had fallen.
Branch began dreaming of a black prince.
For weeks on end he would wake in the middle of the night, the dreams vivid in his mind. They were all more or less the same. He was always bound up, either with belts or chains or cords of fire. Nothing could save him. Not this time. But then, always at the last second, a figure would appear.
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