by John Sanford
They ate at the Savarin counter, and afterward, with time to spare, they stood before the train-gates, and Dan said, “Want to talk some more, Mary?”
“An odd thing about a bathing-suit,” she said. “A great deal of you shows, but it’s meant to show, and you hardly ever think about it. It’s only in street-clothes that you’re always pulling at your skirts, and it’s because you wear them to hide in. On the beach that day, though, the first thing I thought of was covering myself, and I turned over on my side to keep my suit from bagging. That was a mistake, and he knew it, and when he came over and said something about what a nice day it was, he really meant ‘You gave yourself away.’ If he’d said that, he’d’ve been right: a woman who doesn’t care a damn for a man won’t even know he’s looking at her; if she does care, she won’t want him to see her till she’s ready to be seen. I did give myself away: I as good as offered him what I was trying to conceal. We talked, but only about this and that, and we shared a couple of sandwiches, and we smoked some of his cheroots (he called them), and then we went into the water for our last dip of the day. It was late, almost six, and the lifeboat had long been on the beach, and the tide had changed, and we had to wade far out before our feet left bottom. There was no one within fifty yards of us, and we swam about for a while, always very close yet never quite touching, but in the end, hanging onto the lifeboat-buoy, we did touch. His arm brushed mine, or mine his, I don’t remember now, and it turned into a kiss that was like we were trying to kill each other with it—and maybe if we hadn’t been holding the buoy with one hand, we’d’ve done just that, kissed till we died.”
“It’s twenty after seven,” Dan said.
At track-level, the subway cold seemed to sink bone-deep. There were few passengers for the seven-thirty, a five-car accommodation fresh from the Long Island yards and wearing stoles of slush. Dan put Mary’s bag under a seat in an alcove and sat with her until traintime, but when the cars began to move, he was still aboard.
“Go on,” he said.
“I don’t know how long we were out there,” the girl said, “and I don’t know whether we kissed each other once or a hundred times, and I don’t know what we said or even whether we spoke at all. I only know that all the time I felt as if I were freezing, but the cold didn’t seem to come from the water or the air: it seemed to come from inside, as though I knew even then that this was where it all would end…. But for God’s sake, Dan, why am I telling you all this?”
“You know why,” he said. “Keep telling it.”
“We were the last ones to leave the beach, and we must’ve been among the last in the bath-houses, and I remember standing at the little window and staring out over an ocean that moved so slowly it made me think it was tired, like a child after a long day, and I was tired too, so tired that I shook, and I remember the little yellow buoy rolling on the water—and then I had to turn, because I knew that he was there behind me, and he came in and closed the door, and he took my suit off and dried me. I let him do that. I just stood there and let him do it. And then he took his own suit off, and he spread out all the towels, and we lay down, and he made love to me, and I made love to him. On the floor, my first time was, and I’ll always remember that I could hear the sound of the surf on the sand. I don’t know why, but I’ll always remember that.” She paused, and this time she was not urged to continue, and for a while she gazed through the window at shapes blurred by diagonals of snow-water on the pane. “He had a car that he’d borrowed for the week-end, and when we left the shore, he drove inland along Rumson Road. We had very little to say, I remember, almost nothing, and I wondered why he didn’t take me home, and finally I asked him to, but he said it was too early to end the evening (for me, the evening had long been over, and much more than the evening), and he stopped somewhere, and for a time we sat and listened to the sounds you hear only at night, and from a long way off we watched the Navesink flash—and then we were doing what we’d done before, not on the floor now but in the grass, and it was different in every other way as well. He wasn’t making love any more; he was emptying himself, and I was simply something that happened to lie between him and the ground. Maybe I was the ground, I don’t know, but I do know this—that when he was all through emptying himself into me, I was empty too.”
“Matawan!” the conductor said. “Red Bank the next!”
“He came to see me a few times during the summer, but he’d never call for me at home: I’d have to meet him at the station. He’d take me to the door late at night (often I could see my father through the screen, reading or just waiting up for me), but he’d never go inside, and never once did he show any interest in my people or anything else about me—where I’d gone to school, what I’d studied, who my friends were, what I did for a living. He wasn’t the kind to ask questions, perfectly natural questions, and once I knew that, I stopped myself from making perfectly natural statements, and we went along from day to day, without depth and without history. It took me a long while to understand why he held back like that, but once I did, I saw what had always been obvious: he kept his questions to himself because he didn’t want to be bound by the answers. to his way of thinking, a question took something out of a person that hadn’t been offered, and in some odd way the taking would’ve bound him. It never seemed to occur to him that no question he could ever ask would’ve taken more than he’d taken that day in the bath-house—and that hadn’t been binding at all. It would’ve been binding to come into my home, to meet my people and my friends, but it wasn’t binding to come into me. I don’t mean he was obligated for that. If there was any obligation, I was just as deeply in debt to him, but there was no obligation, and the end of the summer could’ve been the end of us—the end of the first day, even, if he’d wanted it that way. For some reason, though, he didn’t, and he gave me that key because he probably knew he’d have more emptiness to empty out, and I took it because there was always a hope that something like that first time would come back. It never did. I tried everything I knew, but it never did.”
“Red Bank!” the conductor said. “Little Silver the next!”
The station was dim, and the streets were dark, and most of the homes on either hand had their eyes closed for the night. Mary led the way up a side-road along a wavering path scooped from the snow, and when she reached a small brick house, she cut across its buried lawn toward the porch. The vanes of a shutter were open, and a ladder of light lay against a stripped maple in the angle of the stoop, and the tree seemed to be drawn on the sky. A downcast of wind flavored the air with wood-smoke, and Dan thought of another house on another road, but for once the image was faint, as if it had begun to fade. He knocked clogs of snow from his shoes and followed Mary through the door.
In the kitchen, a man sat on a tilted chair, his feet cocked above the mica blister of a stove. “Hello, baby,” he said to Mary. “I wasn’t looking for you till tomorrow.”
“The weather spoiled the week-end,” she said. “Pop, this is a friend of mine, Dan Johnson.”
“Glad to know you, Mr. Homer,” Dan said.
The man’s look was a search. “Me too,” he said, and letting his chair down on all fours, he rose. “I’ll be hitting the feathers.”
“I was just going to hot Dan up some coffee,” Mary said. “Stick around.”
“Been sopping heat for a couple hours now,” the man said. “G’night, baby. Glad to met you, Johnson. Waited a long time for you to get up enough nerve to come in out of the dark.”
Dan watched the man go and turned back to Mary with a smile, saying, “I’d hate to be J. Carlos Hill anywhere, but particularly in Red Bank.”
Mary moved a stove-lid and let some fingers of fire pick at a coffeepot, “Sit,” she said, and when the coffee was ready, she filled two crockery mugs and set them on the table.“You take it barefoot?”
He said, “Barefoot, -headed, -handed, and- assed—any way at all, just so it’s coffee, and I’m smoking a cigarette. You know, I never can decide
whether I drink coffee because I like to smoke afterward, or whether I smoke because I like to drink coffee before. It’s a little complicated. Lots of things are.”
“Yes,” the girl said.
* * *
Dan found the Homer family at the kitchen-table when he went downstairs for breakfast. “Good morning, Mary,” he said. “Good morning, Mr. Homer.”
“Name is Ed,” the man said. “Set here between me and the Mrs. Mom, this boy answers to Dan Johnson.”
“How do? “Mrs. Homer said.
“My son Gene,” Ed said. “For Eugene.”
“Glad to know you,” Dan said.
“Same,” Gene said.
“He married a foreigner. My daughter-in-law Flora.”
“Florencia,” the woman said, “but you may speak me as Flora. I have naturalized.”
“I like Florencia, though,” Dan said.
She turned to her husband. “A good boy,” she said. “Is not?”
“Is,” Gene said.
“And the baby is Mary,” Ed said. “Called after an aunt that we expected she’d leave us a mint of money, and she didn’t even send regards. Eat, boy, eat.”
Mary laughed, saying, “He thought you were somebody else last night.”
“I sure as hell-fire did,” Ed said.
The family remained at table while Dan had his meal, and when he accepted a third cup of coffee, Mrs. Homer said, “He’s a good doer. I like a good doer.”
“Mary told me you were a mason, Ed,” Dan said.
“Up to ’29. Then I got to be a bricklayer again. Gene here, he was a carpenter before and after. No comedown in his line.”
“I came down,” Gene said. “It got lonesome up in them foreclosures.”
“For a while, there,” Ed said, “I was Homer & Son, Contractors.”
“We contracted,” Gene said. “We shrunk to nothing.”
“Built this house, Gene and me. Built the whole row, in fact, and sold all but this one. Nobody’d take it account of the woven bond I bricked it with. Looked like it was folding up, people said. Shows you what they know. I copied the bond off of a house I seen down to Hancock’s Bridge, and that ain’t folded in two hundred years. People just don’t know.”
“It’ll fold some day,” Gene said, “and they’ll say, ‘See? Lousy bricklaying.’”
“Things ever get good again,” Ed said, “I’ll go back in business as Homer & Family. I’ll be bricklayer, and Gene’ll be carpenter, and if we can only find a plumber, we’ll be set for life. It’s the damn plumbers get the gravy. If we had one in the family, we’d coin money. You ain’t a plumber, by any chance, are you, Johnson?”
Mary said, “Everyone who calls on me gets treated to the plumber-joke. If you don’t laugh, you don’t get to call again.”
“I’m laughing heartily,” Dan said. “I like it here.”
* * *
The snowfall had stopped, and the wind was a rag wiping off the sky. Mary and Dan had taken a long walk that ended at the station, and a moment came that was very still: the wind had died, and no voices reached them.
“Will you come again, Dan?”
“Yes, but not soon.”
“Whenever, only please come.”
“I’ll come, Mary. Be sure of it.”
From Little Silver, a train barked at Red Bank.
MONDAY: MORNING, NOON, AND NIGHT
“Hello, Pete.”
“Hello, kid. Have a nice trip?”
Dan stared. “How’d you know I took one?” he said.
“You told me,” Peterson said.
“I told you? When?”
“You said you were going crazy. You went, didn’t you?”
Dan grinned, saying, “For a minute, I thought you saw….”
“Thought I saw what?”
“Nothing, Pete—but I did go crazy.”
* * *
“Is this Harlem 8800?” Dan said.
[“Yes.”]
“I’d like to talk to Mr. Powell.”
[“Mr. Powell is in the Teachers’ Library. I’ll connect you.”]
“Library? May I speak to Mr. Powell, please?”
[“This is Mr. Powell.”]
“The Mr. Powell?”
[“No, just a Mr. Powell.”]
“I’m calling the one-and-only Mr. Powell.”
[“Well, you got the nothing-but Mr. Powell.”]
“Mr. Nothing-but, this is an admirer.”
[“Start admiring, boy.”]
“Mom says can you have supper with us tonight.”
[“Inform the lady Mr. Powell is available.”]
“Half-past six. Okay, Master of Arts?”
[“Does Mom know this is the hungry Mr. Powell?”]
“When I left this morning, she was making a chocolate cake.”
* * *
“Take this home with you, Tootsie,” Mrs. Johnson said.
“What’s in it, Mom?” Tootsie said.
“The other half of the cake.”
Dan walked Tootsie to the car-line. “Well, good night, partner, he said. “Keep pitching English at them little eight-balls.”
“Somebody ought to pitch it at the ofays,” Tootsie said. “That’s another way of wiping out slavery.”
“See Julie lately?”
“Couple of months ago. He’s all locked up in that novel of his.”
“He ever show you any of it?”
“The beginning, and he didn’t like what I said, so that was the end. Who’s this Jack Hill?”
“A booky-book guy I introduced him to. Why?”
“Julie’s kind of hipped on him. Thinks he’s got something, maybe.”
“He’ll find out different,” Dan said.
“Funny,” Tootsie said. “Julie talking love, but only getting hate in his book.”
“It’s a pukey kind of love. He’s better off without it.”
“Julie talking love. My, my.”
When Dan reached home, his mother said. “How’re the streets?”
“Pretty slick,” he said. “Worried about your old man?”
“I don’t like him to drive this late.”
“He could hack with one hand if he had two wheels in hell.”
“That’s a fine boy, that Tootsie.”
“Finer than fine,” Dan said. “The finest.”
“His people must be very proud of him.”
“They are. Almost as proud as you are of me.”
“Don’t you think I’m proud of you, Dan?”
“Well, you haven’t got much reason to be.”
“Since when’ve I needed a reason?”
“If you think of one, let me know: I need it.”
“Would you get angry if I asked you a question?”
“Depends,” he said. “If it’s too personal, I might knock you around a little.”
“Where were you Saturday night?”
“As you very well know, I was out.”
“You don’t stay out all night very often.”
“That’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Well, never mind,” the woman said.
“Not so proud now, eh?”
“You don’t have to account to me any more. I won’t ask you again.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t answer. Exactly what do you want to know? Exactly, now.”
“Where were you?”
“In the town of Red Bank, New Jersey. Next.”
“With whom?”
“A girl by the name of Mary Homer.”
“What kind of girl?”
“You’ll see for yourself some day. Anything else?”
The woman smiled. “No,” she said. “That’s all I wanted to find out.”
The door slammed open and slammed shut. “Quit kissing my wife!” the hack-driver said.
WHERE YOU BEEN KEEPING YOURSELF, KID?
Dan stood at his office-window, looking out at the billows of linen in the blueing of the sky. It was a cold spring afternoon.
Dan turned to find Jack Hill in the doorway. “Do as you like,” he said.
Hill took the seat behind the desk. “Why haven’t I heard from you?” he said. “I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what? Not getting jobs for people?”
“If you want the truth, I didn’t feel like seeing you.”
“That’s what I came out of my way to find out. Why not?”
“You know why not. You’re a smart boy.”
“What’s Mary got to do with our friendship?”
“Jesus Christ, Jack!”
“Don’t J. C. me. That doesn’t tell me a thing.”
“What do you want to be told?”
“Why you’re sore at me,” Hill said.
“I’m sore because of what you did to Mary.”
“You have no right to be. If I’ve done anything to Mary, I’ve done it to Mary, not to you. I want to know what I’ve done to you—outside of doing you a favor, I mean.”
“Keep on doing favors like that, and people won’t like you. Some don’t right now.”
“Meaning who—you and Mary?”
“Me,” Dan said. “I don’t speak for her.”
“I’m waiting for you to speak for yourself.”
“A guy can like a girl today, and tomorrow she can make his scalp crawl,” Dan said. “Nobody’s to blame for that: sometimes that’s how it goes. But there are other ways of breaking the news than kicking the girl downstairs.”
“There’s no other way,” Hill said. “No matter how you put it, you’re still kicking a girl downstairs. Grow up, kid.”
“I’m growing, Jack, growing all the time.”
“You’ll thank me some day,” Hill said, and he left.
WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND, KID?
He stood at the same window during another afternoon, a milder one a little later in the spring and fresher and more fragrant than other afternoons of the year, and the soft air seemed newer, as following a rain or in some always-shaded place in a wood. Below him, on the walks and in the streets, people passed in currents that went with the four winds, and many faces loomed from the vagueness of distance, came briefly clear, and were gone, and trains carrying blurred faces went by, and cars and cabs with faces in their gloom, and he thought [Would you find among them the one face you sought, or had you sighted long only to miss your aim? had it ever been within range of your eyes, visible but unseen, or had it been just around a corner or momentarily hidden by a scarf, a hat, another face, a head turned to glance at nothing? Had it been both near and far, and might you have reached up and touched it had you known?]. He watched himself enact the gesture, almost in expectation of making the imagined the real by putting the fancy in motion, but his hand struck the window-glass, and he let it fall. It came to rest against a directory lying on the sill, and idly he made the page-edges drone. [Julia Davis, you thought.]