by Philip Roth
“Well,” said Lloyd, “they’ve got a big colored problem down there, and I don’t envy them.”
“It isn’t Negroes, Uncle Lloyd. You people think everything is Negroes—and how many Negroes do you actually know? Really know, to talk to?”
“Wait a minute,” said Roy. “I knew one who I used to talk to a lot, Ellie, down at Britannia. He was a darn smart guy too. I had a lot of respect for him.”
“Well,” said Ellie, “I know a girl who dates a Negro.”
“You do?” said Alice.
“Yes, I do, Aunt Alice. But you know what my father said? She’s probably a Red. Well, the laugh is on him, actually. Because as a matter of fact she happened to have voted for President Eisenhower, which isn’t exactly very communistic of her, do you think?”
“She goes out on dates with him, Eleanor? In public?” said Alice.
“Well, actually she met him at a party—and he took her home. But right on the street, and in a perfectly ordinary way, and color didn’t make a bit of difference … That’s what she said. And I believe her.”
“But did she kiss him?” Roy asked.
“Roy!” said his mother.
“What are you getting excited about? I’m just asking a question. I’m just making a point.”
“Well, that is some point,” his mother said.
Roy went right on. “I’m only saying it’s one thing to be friends and so on, which I am completely in favor of and have done myself, as I just mentioned. But to be very frank, Ellie, about this girl, well, I think very frankly intersex and so on is a whole other issue.”
Ellie turned haughty. “Well, I didn’t ask her about sex, Roy. That’s her business, really.”
“I believe,” said Alice Bassart sternly, “that there is a child standing here with two very clean e-a-r-s.”
“Well, all I’m saying is that every time something terrible happens everybody blames the Negroes,” said Ellie, “and I refuse to listen to that kind of prejudice any more. That’s all. From anyone.”
“But what about all that violence, Eleanor?” Lloyd Bassart asked. “There’s an awful lot of violence down there, you said so yourself.”
“But that’s not the fault of Negroes!”
“Who then?” asked Alice. “They do most of it, don’t they?”
“Actually,” said Ellie, “more than anyone else, it’s actually the dope addicts—who are really very sick people who need help. Jail is not the answer, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Dope addicts?” said Lloyd. “You mean dope fiends, Eleanor?”
“—are on the street?” asked Alice.
“Dopey!” Edward was grinning. “Dopey, Mommy!” he said to Lucy.
Ellie threw her head back, and the mane of hair shimmered. “Dopey! Wait’ll I tell Skip. Oh, how delicious. Dopey!” she said, rushing to Edward and lifting him up. “And Grumpy. Right?”
“Uh-huh,” he said. He put a hand out to touch the collar of her coat.
“And who else?” asked Ellie, jiggling him in her arms. “Sneezy?”
“Sneezy!” he cried.
“Lucy,” said Ellie, “he’s wonderful. He’s fab, really. Hey, let’s go!” She lowered Edward to the floor, but he kept hold of one of her hands.
“Let’s go,” the child said.
Roy said, “You want to come later, Lucy? After you see them? I could pick you up.”
She said, “I’ll be at my grandparents’.”
Alice said, “You’re coming later, Lloyd?”
“Right, right.”
Out the door they went, Edward tugging on the coat of his newly discovered relative. “And Bashful.”
“Bashful! Little Bashful! How could I forget Little Bashful? He’s just like you.”
“And Doc too.”
“Doc too!” said Ellie. “Oh, Edward what a little fellow you are. I can’t even believe you exist, and here you are!”
“And the bad stepmother.”
“Oh, yes, her. ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall’—” and the door closed.
Lucy watched through the window as her husband and his cousin decided which car to use, the Hudson or the new Plymouth convertible that belonged to Ellie’s mother. While the debate went on, Alice Bassart stood on the front walk, holding Edward’s hand and stepping first in one direction, then in the other. Roy said, “You want to get there alive, Mother, or not?” Ellie pointed at the Hudson and said something Lucy couldn’t hear, but that made Roy laugh. “Oh, yeah? That’s what you think,” he called. “Come on, Roy,” said Ellie, standing with the door of the Plymouth ajar, “live a little.” “Live? In a product of Chrysler Motors?” cried Roy. “Are you kidding?” “Come on, Aunt Alice, come on, Ed,” called Ellie, and Roy said, “Hey, it’s not just your life, Mother—that there is the heir to my estate,” and Alice said, “Roy, now stop this minute being silly!” “Well, okay,” he said, “here goes nothing,” and all finally piled into the Sowerby car. Edward climbed in back with his grandmother, and Roy slid in beside Ellie.
Lucy was about to move from the window when the front curb-side door opened and Roy ran around back of the car to the driver’s door. At the rear of the car he slipped and fell. “Ow!” He got up, and was brushing the snow from his trouser cuffs, when he looked up and saw Lucy in the window. He waved a hand at her; she did not wave back. He cupped both hands to his mouth: “Want to come … in half an hour?”
Inside the car Ellie was sliding away from the steering wheel.
“Lucy? Want me to—?”
She shook her head.
Then he did not seem to know what to do. She did not move. Would he decide not to go, after all? Would he remember what his uncle was? Would he take Edward from the car and come back with him into the house—of his own free will?
Ellie’s window rolled down. “Roy! We’re all freezing to death in here.”
Roy shrugged his shoulders—then suddenly he threw Lucy a kiss and climbed in behind the wheel.
Instantly the horn went off. Ellie put her hands up over her ears. Two tries, and the motor turned over; puff after puff of fumes blackened the snow back of the car. Alice Bassart rolled the window up on her side, then rolled it down so that Edward could shove his little red mitten through. Lucy raised her hand. The horn went off again, and then the car jerked away from the curb and started up toward The Grove. The last thing she saw was a red flash as Roy, for some reason of his own, hit the brakes.
Ellie apparently was pleading with her father to give her the car to take back to Chicago; it was supposedly her mother’s, only Irene had driven it less than two hundred miles in four months, which Ellie said was ridiculous. “And he’ll probably give it to her, too,” said Lloyd, as Lucy came away from the window. “Not that I begrudge him that he can. I didn’t go into education so as to own a fleet of automobiles in my old age. I went in for the satisfactions of training young people to meet the challenges of life, and I think you will understand, Lucy, that cars have nothing whatsoever to do with it. However, very frankly, my opinion is that Julian ought not to indulge that girl any more than he has already. I have nothing against any race, creed or color, but between the two of us, I’ll tell you who I think it was who was out with a Negro. I think it was Eleanor.”
“I thought it was her friend,” she said, pulling on her galoshes; Ellie had shown up in heels, as though it were July.
“Well, that may well be, Lucy. I don’t like the sound of that person, for such a young person. Not at all. But it was one of them who that colored boy walked home, you can be sure of that. I know young people when they talk. I have been around them all my life. It is always ‘a friend of mine’ when the one they are speaking of is themselves. Eleanor was always over-pampered because of her beauty, and now Julian is going to have to reap the harvest of that beautiful daughter he was always going on about. Letting a girl of twenty-two live off in the middle of a city like Chicago, without proper supervision, with wild influences all around her, that is something of which
I am heartily skeptical, to say the least. Especially someone as boy-crazy as Eleanor has always been. I will tell you my personal opinion, Lucy, for whatever it is worth. Eleanor is riding for a fall, and a bad one too, given the kind of things I heard her saying here this afternoon. But,” he said, showing her the palms of his hands, “I am keeping my nose out of it, and I have advised Alice—”
She was no longer listening. She had done a stupid thing; she saw that now. To let Roy go off by himself, to let him confront his uncle this first time without her at his side—how foolish, how dangerous!
It occurred to her to tell her father-in-law, then and there, that she was pregnant.
No, tell them all.
So the solution came to her, and it was perfect: she would tell them all. She would join them at the Sowerbys’, and to Julian, Irene, Ellie, Alice, Lloyd, Roy and Edward, she would make her announcement. To the news of a new child, the family, all gathered together, would have no choice but to be enthusiastic … Yes, yes. She could see Eleanor, clapping her hands together, calling for champagne. And everyone raising his glass in a toast, as everyone had four years before at the party for Roy’s future—“To Linda Sue!” and so, whatever uncertainty Roy might feel if she were to make the announcement to him alone, whatever his defiance if it seemed to him that she and his father were ganging up—well, any such response would be swept away in the general mood of celebration.
Yes, yes, this was what she would have to do:
First she would go to Daddy Will’s. Wait fifteen minutes, then telephone the Sowerbys—and, yes, ask Ellie to pick her up. In the car, oh, of course, confide first in Ellie. “Ellie?” “What?” “Roy and I are going to have another baby. You’re the first to know.” “Oh, Lucy, fab!” Then she would tell them all—with Ellie at her side saying all the while, “Isn’t that marvelous? Isn’t that just divine?” In honor of the occasion, Irene Sowerby would doubtless ask them all to stay on for supper. Then she would telephone Daddy Will. She would ask her mother and Mr. Muller, and her grandparents too, to come to the Sowerbys’ after supper; she had wonderful news to tell them. And then everyone would know. There would be chatter and high spirits, fun and noise, and Roy’s anxiety upon hearing that he was to be a father again would be nothing to the sense he would have of pride and hope and expectation.
And she would tell them, too, that they were hoping for a girl—that that was Roy’s preference—that he himself had already settled on a name—that it was the name he had always wanted, for the little girl he had always wanted. If all toasted Linda Sue together, then there would be no confusion afterward as to whose idea it was to have the little girl in the first place. Afterward there could be no accusations, no recriminations … The Sowerbys had a tape recorder in their new stereo unit; if only she could somehow get them to turn it on—to tape-record the festivities. Then it would forever be on record, how everyone had been absolutely thrilled by the prospect of Linda Sue. “To our daughter, I hope,” Roy would say, and it would be on record.
But maybe that was going too far … though maybe it wasn’t at all. Had she not seen the limits to which people would go to deny the truth? Had she not seen how people would tell lies, make accusations, do anything to avoid their duties and obligations? If only she’d had a tape recorder with her the night Roy spoke of his desire to have a little girl … But surely he would not deny that? How could he? Why should he? He was perhaps slower than she in coming to maturity, but he really wasn’t a liar by nature. Nor was he a cheat, or a scoundrel, or a gambler, or a philanderer, or a drunk. He was, under everything, a sweet and kind soul … and she loved him.
She loved Roy? She could not deceive herself into thinking that she always had—or ever had, really. But that Sunday afternoon, with four harrowing years of marriage behind them, she believed that she might actually be in love. Not with the Roy he had been, of course, but with the new Roy he had become. Because that was who had been addressing her in the kitchen: a Roy no longer childish and irresponsible, a Roy no longer pretending. Could that be? Had he changed? Had he become a good man?
Her husband was a good man?
She was married to a good man?
The father of Edward, the father-to-be of Linda Sue, was a good man?
Oh, she could love him, at last: she had made him a good man.
It was over! He was no longer fighting the marriage, and no one else was fighting it either. That was the meaning of Ellie’s visit—the Sowerbys had capitulated! Sending Ellie around to invite everybody to the house was nothing less than their admission that Lucy had been right, and they had been wrong. Julian Sowerby was admitting to defeat. With all his money and lawyers and treacherous, deceitful ways, Julian was waving the white flag!
The misery she had undergone that previous spring, the misery she had undergone when she had been pregnant with Edward, all the heartache and humiliation—it was over. This time she would be pregnant as a woman is supposed to be. Her belly would grow round, and her breasts full, and her skin would become smooth and shiny, and none of this would cause her to feel fear and disgust and dismay. She would delight this time in what was happening. It would be spring, then summer … and the picture she had was of a woman in a white lace nightgown, and long hair—it was herself—and she is in bed, and her little daughter is in the bed beside her, and a man sits in a chair, smiling at the two of them. He holds in his one hand flowers he has brought for the infant, and in the other, flowers he has brought for her. The man is Roy. He watches the child feeding, and it fills him with tenderness and pride. He is a good man.
Such were her thoughts as she left the Bassarts’ and walked toward Daddy Will’s. Her husband was a good man … and Julian Sowerby had been defeated … and when she was in the hospital there would be flowers … and she would let her hair grow to her waist … and if in her life she had been stone, if in her life she had been iron, well, that was all over. She could now become—herself!
Along came the wind and blew them in-negan,
Poor poor Michael Finnegan …
Herself! But what would that be like? What was she even like?—that real Lucy, who had never had a chance to be—
Singing, smiling, wondering to herself—who would she be? what ever would she be like?—she climbed the stairs to her grandfather’s house, and without even ringing the bell, pushed open the door upon disaster.
“Sit back down, Blanshard.” Daddy Will was speaking. “Please, Blanshard.”
Mr. Muller shook his head. He finished buttoning his coat and reached for the hat Willard was holding.
Upright, her arms crossed on her chest, Grandma Berta was sitting in the armchair by the fireplace. Lucy looked at her angry face, then back to the two men.
Daddy Will said, “Blanshard, tomorrow is another day,” but he relinquished the visitor’s hat.
Mr. Muller touched the older man’s shoulder, and then he walked out of the house.
Lucy said, “What is it?”
Daddy Will shook his head.
“Daddy Will, what’s happened?”
“Probably nothing, honey.” He made a smile. “How are you? Where’s Roy and Eddie?”
Grandma Berta began slowly to draw her fingers down the loose flesh of her upper arm. “Probably nothing,” she said.
“All right, Berta,” said Willard.
“Probably nothing. Just that she has decided she doesn’t feel like seeing him any more.” In her fury, she rose and walked to the window. “And that’s nothing!”
“Why won’t she see him?” asked Lucy.
Her grandmother was silent now. She was watching Blanshard Muller’s figure heading away from the house.
“Daddy Will, why did he go out like that? What’s happening?”
“Well, tell her,” said Grandma Berta.
“Nothing to tell,” said Daddy Will. Berta snorted and went off to the kitchen.
“Daddy Will—”
“There is nothing to tell!” he said.
She moved aft
er him, “Look,” but he was up the stairs and into her mother’s room; the door closed behind him.
She went into the kitchen. Now her grandmother was looking out the back window.
“I don’t understand,” said Lucy.
Grandma Berta did not speak.
“I said I don’t understand what has happened. What is going on here?”
“He’s back in jail,” said her grandmother bitterly.
She sat alone in the parlor until Daddy Will came down the stairs. She said she wanted to know the whole story.
He said, “What story?”
She said again she wished to know the whole story. And from him, now, not later from some stranger.
She had her own life to worry about, Daddy Will said. “There is no story.”
As he paced the room, she explained to him something that just possibly she had thought he might know by now: he could not spare people from the truth; he could not protect people from the ugliness of life by glossing over … She stopped. She wished to hear whatever there was to hear. If her father was in jail—
“Now who said that?”
“If he is, I want to hear it from you, Daddy Will. I don’t want to have to piece the truth together from whispering and gossip—”
There wasn’t going to be any gossip, not this time, he said. No one had been told, not even Blanshard, which was what had made it all so damn painful. Willard and Berta had decided last night that nothing was to be gained by advertising around what had happened, since, yes, something had happened. At dinner the previous evening Myra had lowered her head to the table and blurted out what she had been carrying around inside her for nearly a whole month. But why Lucy now had to be a party to it, he did not see. She had a life of her own to occupy her mind.
What was it?
“Lucy, what’s the sense?”
“Daddy Will, where he is concerned I have no illusions. I took the realistic approach to him a long time ago, if you remember. Even before others did, Daddy Will—if they ever did.”
“Well, sure they did—”
“Tell me the story.”