The Longer The Fall

by Aviva Gat

  “Everything good?” he asked standing at her doorstep. She nodded, realizing they never introduced themselves to each other.

  “I’m Madeline, by the way,” she said. “So you know the next time we run into each other.”

  “Hunter,” he responded. “If you’re interested, we can run into each other on Friday. My bro is performing at the Cat Club. Been there?”

  Madeline shook her head. She’d never been to the Cat Club, but she’d walked by. There was always loud music, usually rap, and a line around the block. “Your bro?” she commented with a smile.

  “Yeah, my little brother. He raps. The next Tupac if you ask any deaf person.” Hunter responded. “I promise he’s not so bad.”

  Madeline agreed. That Friday, Hunter met her at the stoop in front of the flowers he had planted weeks ago and were then blooming, and he walked her to the Cat Club. They listened to his little brother rap, it wasn’t as terrible as Madeline expected, and she enjoyed the company. She only felt a little uncomfortable that her skin was several shades lighter than everyone else’s in the club, but everyone Hunter introduced her to was friendly and welcoming. No one seemed to pay her skin tone any mind.

  Afterwards they went out to eat, Hunter paid, even when Madeline insisted they split the bill. She didn’t feel right, letting this man who worked two jobs pay for her when she was going to one of the country’s most expensive universities without a penny of financial aid. “I would never in a million years let you pay,” he once said to her later on. “I was raised to be a gentleman, and that means holding doors, paying and doing right by my woman.” His woman, she quickly became. Her friends didn’t understand it. When they were busy chasing the Wall Street type, she was going with Hunter to visit his friends’ ‘street art’, which to another person’s eye could look like graffiti. She went with him to underground poetry readings and ate the fried hush puppies Hunter’s mom would make and he would bring to her.

  Hunter wasn’t educated like she was, but he was knowledgeable. He had grown up in Harlem, just blocks away from the university. He knew someone like him would never study there. Someone like him meaning the oldest of four boys being raised by a single mother in a two-bedroom apartment for which every month his mother fought for the rent. His mother was a cleaning lady, who trekked down to the Upper East Side daily, cleaning multiple apartments for people who lived in buildings with doormen and carpets out front. Her hands were always peeling from the cleaning materials, but it was honest work. Sometimes she’d come home with something one of her customers wanted to throw away—barely worn clothing (that Hunter and his brothers would never wear. Just think how badly they would get made fun of!), kitchen utensils which didn’t match the apartments’ décor, or even old computers or electronics that his mother would lug on the subway feeling like she had just won the lottery.

  Hunter got his first job when he was 14. He started working for Smith and Son’s Landscaping, cutting grass and pulling weeds wherever the company was hired. The company’s owner, Bill Smith, took a liking to Hunter, as none of his actual sons were ever so dedicated, and soon taught him about planting trees, pruning bushes and turning a mess of greenery into something beautiful. Hunter used to work mornings before school and quickly became responsible for the shrubbery in front of some of the very same apartments his mother cleaned. When he graduated high school, he got a second job as a deliveryman. At first he worked for a pizza place down on the Upper East Side. But soon he was notified that customers didn’t feel comfortable when a black man came to deliver their pizza. They preferred a white person come, especially when they had to open their doors and hand over money. So Hunter got a new job, delivering for P’s Diner, only above 120th street. In fact, he usually didn’t deliver to the Columbia dorms because his boss understood that some of the privileged university students might take offense and stop ordering. He usually made deliveries only in the neighborhood, except on rare occasions when he was the only deliveryman available. He worked hard to help his mom pay rent, so she only needed to clean one or two apartments a day.

  In his free time, he would read. He figured out how to use the New York Public Library to get any book he wanted. He loved Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes, but also read other classics from Mark Twain, George Orwell or Charles Dickens. He tried introducing his siblings to reading, but none were interested. One was busy dreaming about his rap career, while another didn’t seem to be busy with anything at all. The youngest had gotten stuck in the crossfire between a gang fight and had been killed when he was 12.

  Like Madeline, Hunter was also someone focused on his ambitions. He was also someone who believed he was going somewhere in life. But that somewhere was very different for Hunter, as was his path to success. Instead of reaching the top through private school, an expensive education, and associations with networking clubs meant to breed success, Hunter had to claw his way up through obstacles and his community who didn’t understand him. They didn’t understand why he read books by white authors. They didn’t understand why he worked for a white man like Bill Smith. They didn’t understand why he tried to follow a legal and political system that was built to suppress them. But Hunter understood things differently. Where he was going, he also needed to be a part of the system. The system that needed to be changed from the inside out.

  Chapter 16

  The love story of Madeline and Hunter was thrilling as any young love is. The two of them fell hard and deep together, despite their differences. While Madeline was finishing her senior year at Columbia and figuring out what to do next, Hunter was working hard at his two jobs and volunteering at a local youth center to mentor young children. They welcomed each other into their different worlds.

  Madeline brought him to her events for the College Republican National Club. Hunter hadn’t been much interested in politics at the time, but he came to support Madeline and often found himself at the center of debates with Madeline and her friends. The college republicans enjoyed having Hunter there, he brought new perspectives, challenged them, and helped them finetune their debate talking points. He himself also discovered his own ability for oratory and often planned his own tactics for upcoming CRNC debates.

  Hunter also brought Madeline to the local youth center, where she helped elementary school children with their homework and tried to instill in them dreams that they never could have come up with on their own. “Do your math homework, and you could become a doctor or an astronaut!” she would say to children who had never before been told that they could aspire to such professions. When kids called Hunter for help when they got in trouble, Madeline would sometimes come along, hugging the boys who moments before thought they were too old for mothering but soon realized they needed it. Madeline would never forget one time a 16-year-old girl had called Hunter and asked to speak with Madeline. She had been raped and found out she was pregnant. Not knowing who else to call, she figured the white lady would know what to do. Madeline took her to a Planned Parenthood for an abortion and then to a Tasti D-Lite for ice cream. Madeline had felt honored that the girl had trusted her enough to let her help.

  They loved crossing over into each other’s worlds, but even more than that, they loved being alone together. They could spend hours talking about their aspirations—Madeline was going to be a politician, the first female president if she dared to dream. She wanted to help women advance, with fair pay, control over their bodies, and less fear of sexual harassment when thriving in a man’s world. In fact, she hated that it was a man’s world and she hoped she could change that too. “You don’t sound like a republican,” Hunter would tell her. “Fiscally, I am,” she’d respond and then she would talk about how she believed in smaller government and less involvement in people’s lives. “Libertarianism,” she called it.

  Hunter also had dreams. He wanted to be a community organizer in Harlem and help turn around the neighborhood. He wanted it to be a place where everyone felt safe and 16-year-old girls didn’t get raped on their way h
ome from school because the boys were also busy doing productive things, having jobs and supporting their families.

  Of course their relationship was more than just about dreams. When Hunter touched Madeline, she felt shock waves move through her body. Just his fingertips on the small of her back could make her tremble. When he kissed her, with his thick lips, she wanted to melt inside him. His arms, strong from hours of landscaping work six days a week, made her feel small and protected in a way no one else had. There was a fire between them that was hard to put out. Madeline wanted to always be touching him, whether holding his hand, brushing their knees or wrapped around each other in bed, it was never enough.

  Unfortunately, their touch was not always a welcomed sight in public. While their peers said they accepted Madeline’s and Hunter’s relationship, their eyes said differently. When Hunter held Madeline’s hand at university functions, eyes often drifted and stuck at their intertwined fingers instead of focusing on the couple’s faces during conversations. At the community center, girls and women tsked their teeth when Hunter snuck a kiss on Madeline’s cheek. The couple tried to ignore these instances. Other people didn’t matter, they didn’t understand their love. They were primitive in their beliefs and one day in the future, skin color and background wouldn’t matter. People would see others for their brains, their personality, not their skin tone. It was only a matter of time.

  When Madeline graduated, Hunter attended all the ceremonies and sat politely with Madeline’s parents while she walked across the stage to receive her diploma. He took pictures of her and her parents and posed in pictures with Madeline in her teal cap and gown. When the weekend of festivities was over, Madeline’s mother hugged Hunter and then pulled Madeline close and whispered in her ear, “It’s time to grow up now, honey. You’re entering the real world now.” Madeline thanked her mother for the advice and said goodbye to her parents who drove back to their estate in upstate New York.

  At that time, Madeline had already received a job offer from a top management consulting firm in New York. The offices were in Midtown, quite a trek from her apartment near Columbia. When her lease ended, she moved downtown into a three-bedroom apartment with two new friends she had met at events for the New York Young Republican National Federation. They were like her, young, ambitious and politically motivated to pave the way for women.

  Hunter stayed living in Harlem with his mother and brothers. They needed him up there, about 100 blocks up from Madeline’s new place. He couldn’t move downtown, it was too far from his jobs and the community center where he worked. How could he change Harlem if he lived in Midtown? Even so, the couple made it work. They spent hours on the Subway going back and forth, sometimes even meeting halfway on the Upper East Side, despite the looks they got from elderly couples walking their poodles passed their door manned apartments and French cafes. They still welcomed each other into their different worlds. Hunter sometimes came down to midtown to meet Madeline and her colleagues for happy hours where they spent $10 on fancy cocktails and called that a deal. Hunter would hold a single beer the entire evening and smile as Madeline’s colleagues joked about the synergies they created for clients and complained about the limitations of analyzing data in Excel. On weekends Madeline traveled up to Harlem to visit the community center and listen to Hunter’s brother’s new rap tracks, while holding herself back from correcting his grammar. She tried to stay updated on the kids’ lives, remembering to ask about their parents, siblings and the drama they were having with friends. She only occasionally confused the stories of two different kids, who would chalk her confusion up to “White girl” brain, which they believed made it harder for her to understand their world.

  It worked, there was no reason it wouldn’t for two people who were so in love. They tried to spend as many nights together as they could, even if for Hunter it meant getting up before dawn and commuting uptown for his early morning landscaping jobs. Madeline couldn’t stay at his place, there was no room there in the bed he shared with two brothers. When Madeline slept alone, she missed him. She missed his strong arm wrapped around her body and cupping her breasts. She missed the rhythm of his breath, which masked the sounds from the street below. She missed the feeling of his naked body pressed against hers, and the sweat they generated together, even in her apartment with a working air conditioning unit.

  For that first year after Madeline graduated, everything was perfect. Madeline got her first promotion to Senior Consultant and she became more active in the YRNF. Instead of just attending events, she became part of the committee that planned them. She became closer with the leadership of the New York chapter and was even invited to a few exclusive meetings with prominent republican leaders. During these meetings, Madeline was always outspoken and shone bright among her peers who were more likely than her to spend time listening rather than speaking out. Soon, the New York Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and elderly white-haired man who had weekly calls with the party’s leadership, knew Madeline by name and often asked her opinions on specific policies and events that were important for the party. Madeline did well in the spotlight, so well, that she was invited into the inner circle of New York’s Republican leaders. At the age of 23, she was sitting in lounges, drinking scotch and discussing line items in the federal budget with fat men in ties. They liked her ideas and began discussing her future in the party. She’d run for New York Chairman of the YRNF next year, they decided. From there, she’d move on to run for office, in the state senate or the Federal House of Representatives. These were tough goals for a Republican in New York, a mostly democratic state, but Madeline was just what the country needed to see that Republicans weren’t all just old white men.

  Hunter was proud of Madeline as her future in the Republican Party began to take shape. In the meantime, he also became more interested in politics and started reading more about the platforms of the republicans and democrats. While he had previously always felt that there was truth in the things Madeline believed, he started to find himself leaning more toward the Democratic platform, more social services, universal healthcare, and liberty for all. Didn’t Madeline believe in these things?

  “Of course I do,” she’d respond. “But I don’t believe the federal government should be responsible for them. Why should I pay higher taxes because I work harder? I’m being punished for my hard work! Why do my earnings go to people who aren’t even trying to get jobs? And if we agree that these people do need help, the government is completely inefficient in providing that help. Let’s privatize social services. Privatize all healthcare. The government should do as little as possible and let corporations be in charge. Corporations live with balanced budgets and competition, making them much more efficient. Give them the power to help people in need.”

  Hunter didn’t agree, but he kept his mouth shut. Maybe Madeline understood things he didn’t. After all, she had a degree in political science from Columbia University. Not to mention, she’d already spent years studying political issues while Hunter was just starting to learn about these things himself for the very first time.

  Sometime that second year after Madeline graduated, the New York Republican leadership invited her to a social event. At this event, they wouldn’t be discussing legislation or policy, unless of course it came up organically, which it inevitably would! They’d just be mingling in front of an open bar with fancy hors d’oeuvres and enjoying the art at the gallery venue they had chosen for the event. In attendance would be everyone who was anyone in the New York Republican circle, and even some from outside of New York. There would be senators, governors, maybe even a Bush or two would make an appearance. Madeline was told to bring a date, after all, her colleagues had heard so much about her boyfriend—a self-made, intelligent, hard-working man who was able to proudly stand next to such a powerful woman without feeling intimated. He must really be something, Madeline’s peers said, why wasn’t he a member of the YRNF? Why hadn’t they met him before? Madeline would shrug whe
n asked those questions, Hunter hadn’t been much interested in politics, other than to support her, she said, and besides he was busy working, and volunteering. Did she mention he was also starting a new degree? She didn’t mention it was a bachelor’s degree at City College of New York and he had just registered for classes. She’d let her peers imagine what type of a degree her boyfriend was pursuing and at what institution.

  She would bring him to that social event. He would do wonderfully speaking with the Republican leaders, just as he had with her friends in the College Republican National Club. Everyone would be intrigued by him, as people always were. Madeline was sure there would be nothing to worry about.

  Chapter 17

  Hunter looked great in the Brooks Brothers suit Madeline had bought for him. She had insisted on buying it as a gift, especially after everything he had done for her. Had he not paid for her when he took her out to dinner, even when she knew dinner cost him a full day of work? Had he not spent hours commuting to her Midtown apartment so he could be with her and support her when she felt stressed out about work? He was a great listener, taking time to ask questions about what upset Madeline instead of proposing solutions as most men tended to do. Madeline appreciated all his efforts and had taken him to choose a brand new suit that would be tailored perfectly for his body. Hunter hadn’t been as enthusiastic about suit shopping, but once he saw himself in the mirror, wearing that jet-black jacket over a light blue shirt with a gray tie, he lightened up about the idea. He may have even liked how he looked in it, Madeline thought, noticing how his eyes traced his own outline in the mirror.

  As he put on the suit in Madeline’s bedroom, she couldn’t help herself from watching him. She imagined herself helping him take if off at the end of the night, after he had impressed everyone she knew. She would pull loose the tie, carefully unbutton the shirt and ease him out of the fitted pants. She’d be turned on from watching him speak eloquently as he always did among her peers. She’d crave his attention after watching him nod knowingly while he listened to her peers before asking intelligent questions that often led to smiles and winks from stumped attendees.