Homeland

by John Jakes

  He gave her a fierce look. She stroked his hand, speaking softly. “Tell me the rest.”

  He described the death of the man who fell from the roof. His increasing resentment of Ilsa because of the blame he felt she placed on him. Blame for the death; blame for the loss of their son and their nephew. Estella listened attentively, now and again murmuring a word or two, English or Spanish, he couldn’t be sure. He sat there under the three electric bulbs and he poured out words, thoughts, feelings, he’d never shared with anyone.

  At the end, exhausted, he slumped in the chair.

  “A remarkable story, Joseph. I heard many fine things in it. I think you understand now, if you have not understood before, who was in the wrong when your son left, and your nephew. It isn’t my place to give you advice. Nevertheless I shall, because I learned the habit from the nuns who taught me as a girl. They were fine women, but inclined to bossiness.” She smiled.

  “Repair the damage with your wife the moment you return home. Repair it with your son and your nephew as well.”

  “It’s too late, the boys are gone.”

  “No, as long as they are alive somewhere, you have the opportunity. Find it. Seize it, or you’ll never again be a whole man, you’ll keep hunting another war, another reason to leave your wife, your home, your calling, and underneath it all, your remorse.”

  He stared at his veined hands. He looked at the mirror of himself and saw mistakes, and folly, and hated the image, but she forced him to confront it … the night’s confession had forced it. His eyes explored and silently adored her face.

  She laid the fan aside and sat calmly, accepting the scrutiny. There was a powerful, silent current surging between them. An understanding of a physical hunger for each other, an awareness of their isolation in the privacy of a hotel room in the middle of the night. Somehow, inexplicably, Joe felt he’d already taken her, known her intimately.

  It wasn’t enough:

  “I want to love you, Estella. There, in the bed.”

  “I want it too, Joseph. But we will not.”

  “You refuse me?”

  “It breaks my heart but, yes—tonight I refuse you.”

  “What if I should insist?”

  “Joseph, don’t pretend. You aren’t that kind of man. Furthermore, you can’t make the rules for everything.”

  He reached for his singlet on the floor beside the empty barrel glass. “Then I’d best get out of here.”

  “Yes, I think so. It’s almost five.”

  When he was dressed, she held his arm and walked him to the door. She touched him with her body, her mouth scant inches from his, still breathing out that fascinating exotic mixture of scents. “I want to give you my own confession before you go. If you weren’t married, I would take you to that bed this instant. I’d love you very hard, a long time.”

  Her red mouth came up, warm and sweet, in a protracted kiss of parting. His heart beat like thunder.

  “You are a good man, Joe Crown. We’ll not see each other again.”

  In the hall he took a few steps, then turned back for another kiss. The key clicked on her side of the closed door. Dragging his blue frock coat on the carpet behind him, he walked away.

  Next morning he presented a note to the clerk at the rotunda desk. “This is for your guest Señorita Rivera.”

  “Rivera, Rivera.” The man riffled some cards; “General, I’m afraid she’s departed. For Key West, she said.”

  “Have you a forwarding address?”

  “She left none, I’m sorry. You might ask her brother.”

  But he wouldn’t. She knew, he thought, profoundly sad and grateful. She knew last night that together, we were in danger. She saved us from ourselves, and lifelong shame.

  But that was not the only way she saved me.

  95

  Elstree

  IN THE DARKEST HOURS of that same early Sunday morning, hundreds of miles away in New York City, Elstree stretched his legs in a plush armchair. The chair was one of several good pieces he’d bought when he moved Rose from Eighteenth Street and set her up in a better flat.

  Red and yellow electric signs on Sixth Avenue tinted the wallpaper between patches of shadow. He heard her taffeta skirts rustling. Once he’d thought it a sensual sound. Not tonight. And she couldn’t break herself of certain old habits. Buying cheap perfume was one. The odor sickened him.

  An elevated locomotive hooted somewhere to the north, coming downtown. The shadow of her gloved hand appeared on the wall, moving toward the switch.

  “Don’t turn it on. You’ve given me a monstrous headache.”

  “Well, I’m so sorry about that. I’m so damn sorry. What am I supposed to do?” She was half defiance, half tears.

  “Rose, please shut up a minute and let me think.”

  “Who are you to order me like that?” Her tone was weaker than her words. She sank down on the creaking bed. Removed her suede gloves and then her hat, a little straw adorned with artificial violets, a satin ribbon bow, a spotted veil. Beside her lay one of the new-style flat purses, called pocketbooks. She always wanted to look smart and she always failed, because taste was not something she’d been taught as a child and thus carried through life unconsciously, like physical grace.

  Julie had taste. Everyone in his circle had it. De rigueur. Consider the clothes he’d chosen for an evening less than fully formal. Patent leather button shoes in the low-cut summer style. Linen spats and clocked socks. Midnight blue dinner jacket with matching silk bow tie; a white piqué waistcoat. Everything was conservative, smart, and expensive.

  They’d returned in a hack from a very late supper at Delmonico’s. Rose was back at Tony Pastor’s on Fourteenth Street, third from the top of the bill. “Rose French, the International Soubrette.” He’d seen her too often and had come to hate her third-rate voice. Her looks had besotted him for a while, but he couldn’t explain how that cheap allure had persisted so long. He supposed it was because he was sometimes a fool over women far beneath him in all respects except sexual appetite; and hers was gluttonous.

  The elevated shunted by, light from its cars flying over walls and ceiling. Elstree felt a patter of cinders in his hair. He reached behind him and slammed the window. “Christ, this place is dirty all the time.”

  “Who rented it? Not I, Billy.”

  “God damn it, don’t call me Billy.” He rapped the ferrule of his stick on the floor. The stick was fashionable malacca, with a heavy, crooked handle.

  Giving him a wary look, she untied the laces of her fingertip cape and laid it aside. Elstree stroked the stick, back and forth, with a circle of thumb and index finger. “Let’s discuss this little surprise you’ve sprung on me, Rose. How do I know it’s mine?”

  “You damn well better know, I haven’t been with nobody—anybody else. And sometimes you aren’t too careful.”

  The stick flashed up, an accusing pointer. “We. I am not the only one culpable. If indeed there’s really any culpability here.”

  “You try to make me feel low with those words I can’t understand.”

  “Culpability. Responsibility. Is that clear enough for your dim little brain?”

  “You listen to me, you bastard. There is plenty of culpability here. Feel my belly.”

  “Don’t be disgusting.” He was enraged. He wanted an heir, but not from a tramp. He fought an impulse to strangle the wretched creature; punish her for presenting him with this hateful irony.

  Rose was pouting. “You like to feel me well enough before we fuck.” She snatched off her bonnet and threw it on top of the cape. “I’m telling you, Bill, this is real. I know because I went through it once before.”

  “Who was it, that greasy bucket of lard Dresser?”

  “No, someone else, it doesn’t matter. And don’t call my friends names.”

  Elstree sighed. “Well, I shouldn’t be surprised by this. Before I sent you the flowers the first time, I suspected you weren’t exactly the virgin lily of the variety stage. B
ut that’s what I grew to like—a certain well-used quality. Your repertoire of tricks. Much more interesting than your repertoire of songs.” He sang a few words of “Maryland, My Maryland” in an off-key falsetto.

  “Christ, you’re cruel.”

  He laughed and smoothed his hair. In the hot glare from the electric signs, a stone on his finger ring flashed. “Once, as I recall, you said you liked cruelty at certain times.”

  “I said a lot of things, once. So did you.”

  Elstree rapped the ferrule again. In the flat below, someone yelled a complaint. “All right, what is it you want?”

  “I want help. You got me in a fix. I’ll have to give up my career for a good long time.”

  “Your career. That’s hardly a loss, especially to audiences. I’ll pay whatever it costs to get rid of it. But I won’t pay a penny more.”

  “What—what if I won’t do that?”

  In a reasonable voice, he said, “If I’m the father, it’s my choice. I don’t want the little beggar.”

  Rose paced to the bay window and back to the bed. “Bill, I can’t do it. The first time, I lost it natural, after seven weeks. But I’d already found one of those men with dirty nails and no diploma. Turned out I didn’t need his help. Then last year a friend of mine, a dancer in the line at Tony’s, she went to his place out on the marsh at Throgs Neck to get rid of one. She bled to death.” She rubbed her arms in an agitated way. “Not me. Not me.”

  Elstree took out a small cigar; scraped a match on his shoe. In the spurt of light, his face looked calm; ordinary except for the monocle in his right eye. It seemed to be a hole in his skull; an open furnace door with a raging fire inside. He blew on the match. The fire went out.

  At the last moment, distracted by anger, he didn’t light the cigar. He tossed the smoking match on a throw rug near his chair. “You and your friend must have picked the wrong man.”

  “Doesn’t matter, I won’t do it. I’ll have the baby, and I want five thousand—no, I want ten—till I get my figure back, and my career.”

  “Lying on your back and spreading your legs is your real career, Rose. That’s the career for which all women were intended.”

  “I’ve met sons of bitches, but you’re the worst.”

  Elstree stood up and reached into his trouser pocket for a money clip, silver with a small diamond set in. The clip carried hundred dollar bills only. He dropped two on the bed.

  “That’s for expenses. Get rid of it, get on with your life, and don’t bother me again.”

  “That’s it? You just dismiss me?”

  “I’d like to part cordially, but it’s up to you.”

  “Bill, you may be able to fob off whores and society girls this way, but you can’t do it to me. I’ll raise hell.”

  He felt heat in his face. “You had better not.”

  “Fuck you, I will, I’ll get lawyers, I’ll make noise, I’ll smear your name everywhere. I’ll go out to Long Island and find your pure little wife and—”

  He hit her a slashing blow with the malacca stick. She staggered back, striking her knee against the bedpost. He dropped the stick and pushed her onto the bed.

  He jumped on her, pinning her right hand with his left while he punched her face. His ring tore her cheek. He knelt hard on her and hit her again. Hit her, hit her …

  Finally, he stopped. Blood smeared her cheeks and drooled out of her nose. He’d loosened two of her lower teeth. He disliked having to put her down this way, it was messy and upsetting, with no thrill in it. Somehow, women always drove him to something like this at the end of a relationship.

  She rolled from side to side, crying and moaning softly. He retrieved his stick and top hat and snapped on the ceiling light. At the mirror, he saw he’d gotten her blood on his fine white scarf, a lovely piece of Chinese silk. The scarf was ruined.

  Angry, he whipped it from around his neck and used it to clean his knuckles. Then, reasonably presentable again, he threw the scarf on the carpet.

  He looked at Rose on the bed, snot and blood running down her chin, hateful eyes following him as he moved. She lay on her side, like a child curling up to protect itself from an abusive parent. What an idiot he’d been to entangle himself with her.

  Still, she was such a pathetic sight, it inspired a certain pity. He took out the diamond studded clip and dropped another hundred beside the first two. Her lips peeled back over her teeth in a way that reminded him of a cornered cat.

  “Goodbye, Rose. Don’t ever try to see me again.”

  He pivoted, reached out with the stick and used the ferrule to flick off the lights.

  He walked quickly down two flights and into Sixth Avenue, deserted at this hour near dawn. Under the elevated trestle, manholes trickled steam into the glow of the electric signs. He stopped by a trash barrel, drew the apartment key from his waistcoat and disposed of it.

  He walked with his cane resting on his shoulder. A great dray piled with fragrant cabbages rolled by. He waved and called a greeting to the driver. At a cross street he saw a faint graying above rows of East River tenements. He must find a hack to his club. Breakfast service began at half past six.

  He imagined the taste of an omelet; a grilled small steak, crisp fried potatoes; the double-shot eye-opener. He’d enjoy himself, just as he was enjoying himself in the cool bracing air of morning. The eastern sky was turning from gray to soft coral, but the north-south streets were still dark. He began to whistle.

  Suddenly he realized what the tune was. “Flowers That Bloom in the Spring, Tra-la.” One of Rose’s numbers. How appropriate. He kept whistling it as he strolled on, disappearing where the morning light didn’t reach.

  96

  Joe Junior

  THEY ATE QUIETLY, SPARINGLY, on Sunday night. Not because the food wasn’t good or plentiful. Ehling Sieberson, the crippled shingle weaver, his widowed daughter Anna, and her son Thorvold had plenty of flesh on them; Anna set a fine table. Joe Junior had discovered this repeatedly during the two months he’d lived in the attic of the small house on Rucker Hill in Everett, trading his chore work—tasks that could be done only by a man with all ten fingers—for his bed and board.

  Tonight Anna had served salt herring and thin slices of smoked local salmon; potato cakes and a steaming bowl of parsnips; her fine, crisp flatbrod; head cheese, cardamom cookies, strong coffee, and caraway-flavored akvavit. Everyone drank the strong coffee except Ehling, who downed the akvavit as if it were no more potent than well water.

  The mood was somber and their appetites smaller than usual because Joe Junior, his friend Julius Rahn, and several others were going to walk into the shingle factory in the morning, present a short list of demands to the general manager, Mr. Grover, then walk out and picket until the demands were satisfied, or they were jailed. What they planned to do was dangerous. That was why no one spoke of it, until Thorvold, age ten, brought it up. Thorvold, called Thor, was a stout boy with eyes so blue, he might have been Joe Junior’s son.

  “What time will you go in the morning?” Thor asked. Joe Junior put down his fork and smoothed his beard in a thoughtful way.

  “Why, the regular time, I suppose. Half past six. Julius will be here in a while to discuss it.”

  “Can I come down with you and watch?”

  “You may not, eat your supper,” said his mother. Anna Sieberson was a fair-faced, blue-eyed Norwegian woman, seven years older than Joe Junior. She had a broad, full bosom, strong arms, a small mouth with thin lips that spoiled her otherwise pretty face. But smallness and thinness didn’t affect the warmth of that mouth, he’d learned.

  When Ehling was in one of his rare good moods, he liked to compare his daughter to the sturdy and beautiful rhododendrons growing all around the house on the hillside. “Only strong plants can survive here. The fog, the damp, the gale winds—the rhododendron withstands them all. Anna is like that.”

  Anna’s husband, Lars Prestrude, had been a shingle weaver at the Smiley Shingle Company, one of several
such companies down on the waterfront. One night two years ago he’d fallen over in his chair just before bedtime; a heart seizure. Anna took back her maiden name after she buried Lars, using the five dollars sent by Grover at the factory. If Lars Prestrude had died as a result of an accident on the job, Grover wouldn’t have sent a penny, or even a note of condolence. By the self-protective reasoning of the bosses, to give the slightest aid or recognition to the family of a man who died as a result of a job accident would implicate the owners. The bosses in the Pacific Slope lumber and shingle industries would have none of that. It was one reason for the planned walkout.

  Now, at the table, Anna exchanged a look with Joe Junior. In his there was affection, in hers, entreaty. She said she loved him, and he knew she wanted him to propose marriage. Despite warm feelings for her, he couldn’t do it, although a part of him would have liked to settle down with her, enjoying her goodness and the ardor he’d discovered the first time she stole to his cot in the attic. Old Ehling was going deaf, couldn’t hear the cot’s pings and creaks that night, or any of the nights that followed.

  But if he settled down with Anna, he would be surrendering to the bosses, what they represented, what they did to their men—or didn’t do, in the case of the shingle weavers. He’d be turning his back on his conscience and his inner calling, whose outward manifestation, regrettably, was too often failure. Still, he had to go on.

  Thor wasn’t satisfied with his mother’s answer. He spoke again to Joe Junior. “Will there be trouble tomorrow? The police?”

  “Julius assures me the chief and his men will be on the scene by noon,” Joe Junior said. “Later, I guess, we may be visited by some of the saloon derelicts Grover hires to discipline anyone who causes trouble.”

  “Men like that, they’re the ones who killed Daniel Ivars,” Anna said. “I told you what they did to him.”