They left the city and entered the suburbs; the trees snapped by at the roadside and muffled the rushing wind. They had a chance to talk without shouting.
“I can’t see your face, but I bet you like driving.”
“Yes, I do.” It was a squeal. Then she became more serious. “Whenever I get upset about something, I get in the car and leave it behind.”
“What upsets you?” It was an important question; the answer would help him to formulate plans.
She held back her laughter. “Oh, well, just any old trauma.”
He did not know what she meant, but responded quickly, attempting to disarm her. “Don’t use such big words, college girl.”
“Okay, man.” She tried to imitate him, knew she had not succeeded, and laughed at her attempt. He laughed too.
No tires but theirs buzzed against the pavement; no cars passed them, wavelike. Their motor alone echoed against the wall of trees. Then he was thrown forward as she braked and turned off the highway. After a few minutes, gravel popped and pelted the fenders. Finally she stopped, and cut off the motor. For a moment there was nothing, and then, as his ears became accustomed to the stillness, he realized she had stopped on the shore of a small pond.
“Where the hell’d you bring me?” He whispered so as not to disturb the quiet.
“My place.”
“You own it?” He could not believe this.
“Only by payments of love and time.”
At first he did not understand what she meant. Finally he realized she was saying that she liked to come there often.
“Would you like to throw some rocks into my pond?” Before he could answer, her door opened and she was crunching gravel, her steps as rapid as a running child, around to his side. “Come on.” She opened his door, took his hand and helped him out.
She guided him forward ten steps. “Don’t move from that spot or you’ll get your shoes wet. Here.” She thrust some rocks into his hand. “Now, listen.” She grunted and after a few seconds, over the lapping, a splash came from the distant water. “Now it’s your turn.”
He had never learned to throw very well and his stone did not take as long to fall as had hers.
When they had lobbed all their stones, she whispered, “Don’t move and you’ll be able to feel the moon kiss your skin.”
Ludlow did not understand any of this, but still, it enchanted him. He wished she would move closer so he might kiss her, but she remained always at least ten feet from him, and, not knowing the terrain, he was afraid to move. He did not want to find himself knee-deep in cold water. He laughed at the idea.
She was annoyed, hurt. “What’s funny?”
He decided to tell her, certain that even if he angered her, she would still drive him home. “I’m thinking if I knew where the hell we was, and if I was sure I wouldn’t end up taking a cold bath, I’d come over and kiss you, because…” he started to laugh, “because, baby, you sure ain’t making no moves toward me!”
She laughed too, then a lid clamped down on her laughter. The gravel rustled and he smelled perfume. “Here I am.”
He put his arms around her and kissed her, measuring her body by feeling it against his own. She came to his nose and was thin, except for her breasts, which, bound by a tight, high bra, were large. Her shoulders were broad, bony and square; her waist was thin enough to encircle with his hands. “Well, well, well….”
By the way she kissed, hungry and tight-lipped at the same time, he knew she was ready—knew, if he simply wanted to have a white girl, he could push her down on the sharp, small stones underfoot and make love to her. But then she would be ashamed of herself and he would never meet her again—and he wanted very much to meet her again, wanted to know her. He had never in his life met anyone like her. He kissed her a few more times, stroked her breasts once, then gently pushed her away.
She was breathing deeply, evenly. He put his fingers to her face, found her mouth small and slightly open, stunned. Her forehead was broad, her jaw square, her chin pointed.
“Come on, baby, you better take me home.” He spoke to her in much the way he would have spoken to a child.
“All right,” she whispered, trancelike.
She drove slower now. The air was moist, slightly warm. There were more cars. “Where you live?”
She told him the address, in the Fifties on the East side. “I can walk to work.”
“You got a roommate or something?” He realized she would know he was collecting information to find out whose bed they would eventually use, but he also wanted to know about her, about her life.
“No.”
He shook his head. “No date, no roommate. You got any friends?”
“Just a few.”
“Well, how the hell you ever meet a fuck-up like Myron?” He shifted toward her.
“The other girl was a friend of mine in college.”
In all she had said, in the way she spoke, in her precise, whispering voice, there was a quality of resignation, almost of doom. He could not have named it, but he recognized it. “Get off this highway and stop somewhere.” It was an order. He wanted her full attention.
She took the next exit, drove along winding, pitted streets and finally parked. When she killed the motor, there was a radio, probably in someone’s bedroom, playing classical music. Directly above him in a rustling tree, two birds twittered.
“What the hell kind of life you been leading?”
She said nothing for a long while. Then only one word: “Lonely.”
He moved closer to her, and, twisting toward her, rested his right elbow on the steering wheel. “Well, no more.” She did not move. “You hear me? Not no more. Them days is gone.” He reached out, took her chin between his thumb and index finger, turned her face toward him and kissed her.
She put a hand on his cheek, but still did not speak.
He smiled and turned front again. “Okay, now let’s go to Harlem and get some eggs and grits.”
4
THEY HAD BREAKFAST in a restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue, the jukebox, even at the start of the day, blaring mostly rhythm-and-blues or Inez Cunningham, but sometimes something by Hardie or Ludlow. From the kitchen came the smells of greens, black-eyed peas and pork. Near the front window ribs sizzled on the barbeque rack. The local numbers man held court there, and often, while they ate, the door opened, footsteps crossed to the booth behind them, a number would be whispered, and money would jingle on the wooden table.
Ragan came to hear him that night and every night for weeks after and most times they would drive until morning, always talking, unburdening themselves. She told him about the succession of army camps in which she had grown up, the constant moving, the sad, abrupt endings to friendships just begun; she told him about the loneliness. He spoke of his marriage and why he thought it had not worked and about the long, sometimes exciting years, afterward. He had never before thought of himself as having been lonely, but realized now, with wonder, that was what he had been. He considered himself lucky to have discovered he had been lonely only after he was no longer lonely.
When finally they made love, in her apartment with Inez Cunningham singing for them on the phonograph, and the early morning sun’s heat baking them, it came without planning or preparation. They had driven there for breakfast before she had to go to work, had slumped full-bellied on the sofa to talk. Then next, they were naked, their arms tightly around each other.
One day, in the middle of August, he pushed himself far inside her, grabbed her shoulders, sighed, and surprising himself, told her he loved her. She said she had loved him for months but had been afraid to tell him.
* * *
—
IT WAS late September now and getting colder. When they drove, the air hinted at winter and, along the highways around the city, was heavy with the smoke of smoldering leave
s. They still made love with the window open, but now under a light blanket.
She grabbed him tightly, then sighed. “Oh, my.”
“What’s the matter?” His arms were around her waist, his leg between hers.
“In about three hours I have to go to work.” Her lips brushed, then kissed his shoulder.
“Well, you know, you’ll just have to up and marry me. Then you won’t have to work, just have babies.”
“I guess I’ll have to do that.” Her kiss made his ear pop. “I love you, Ludlow.”
“I love you too, baby.” He did not like the way these words came from him. He had never wanted anything he had ever said to sound as sincere, but still these words always seemed empty to him, as if the words themselves reared up to remind him of all the insincere and selfish things he had ever done.
Her nose was cold; she pressed it against his chest. “I want to make a confession.” She was not too serious.
“Go on.” He smiled. “Who was he?”
“No one, Ludlow. Never.” The idea of her making love to anyone else made her very serious.
“Okay.” He patted her back, ran his hand over a protruding shoulder blade.
“I came to see you five times before I spoke to you.”
“When?”
“The night we drove to my pond.” She sounded insecure now. “You remember that night, don’t you?”
“Sure I do.”
“Well, I came five times and each time I promised myself I’d talk to you, but I never did.”
“Why not?” He had never understood when women confessed such things to him. They always seemed to mean absolutely nothing to him, but so much to them.
“I was afraid of you.”
“Afraid of a little old blind man?”
He felt her head nodding. “Because I really did like you and I wanted you so much to like me. Not many people did, you know.” This did not upset her particularly; there was nothing more than resignation in her whispering voice.
“Now you got lots of friends.”
“I know. It’s wonderful.” She paused, rolling away from him a few inches. It seemed a mile. A breeze cooled the sweat on his stomach. “We haven’t talked much about the world, Ludlow…and what I’m going to say now may seem crazy. I know it’s mystical! But I think Negroes know how I feel about you.”
“Sure they do. They see you with me all the time.” He reached out, found her head and ruffled her hair, cut almost as short as a boy’s.
“No, Ludlow, you don’t understand.” She turned onto her stomach, crawled closer, and on top of him, her voice coming down now. “I mean, Negroes who don’t know you, or even me. I mean, like the janitor where I work is a Negro and whenever he sees me he just beams. He never looked at me before I met you. It’s like he knows I love you and he’s glad for me. That sounds really silly, doesn’t it.”
“No it don’t, baby.” Speaking at first to reassure her, he realized it was certainly possible. Perhaps Negroes could see in her face that she had somehow chosen to cast her lot with them. “Could be true, Ragan.”
“I know it’s true!” For an instant she was quite excited, then her head fell onto his chest. “I’d better get some sleep.”
He did not want to sleep; he wanted to make love to her, and moved his hand across the small of her back.
“What’re you doing?” She knew perfectly well, and did not have to wait for an answer. “Ludlow, don’t now. If I don’t get these few hours I’ll fall asleep on my desk.” She wiggled her buttocks.
Finally she slid full on top of him, and kissed him furiously. After a few moments, he rolled her over. But before they could make love, he had to stop and reach for the small tin on the bed table.
When he had first known her, Ragan’s shoulders had bothered him. They were too hard, the bones and joints seeming about to tear through the soft skin. They were the shoulders of a frightened child tensed for a blow it cannot avoid. One day, he had realized his own shoulders must have tensed the same way when the Warden’s assistant was about to whip him. After that, her shoulders no longer bothered him; they became important to him, for they told what her life had been and how much better he had made it. Usually, her shoulders were not tense when they finished making love. Now, lying on top of her, he cupped his hands gently around them.
She held him under the armpits. “Am I really as good as they are?”
He kissed her. “They who?”
“The Negro girls you’ve made love to. Your wife.” She had asked him this often and he could not seem to convince her that Negro women had no special natural power, that it was only a matter of an attitude.
“My ex-wife. Sure you are, baby. I don’t keep no lists anyway.”
“I’m glad I’m better. I want to make you forget everyone else.”
“You do.”
“Good. Now you have to get off me so I can go to work.” He rolled away from her. She followed him and kissed him softly. “I love you.”
He remained in bed while she took a shower, dressed, made coffee, and cooked breakfast. She brought the food and put it on the bed table. “Oh, God, let me get rid of this terrible thing.” She scurried to the bathroom and flushed the toilet.
He was sitting up when she returned. “I’m walking you to work.” He pushed down the covers, and swung his feet onto the floor.
“But you have to get some sleep.”
“I been without sleep before.” He found his undershorts and pulled them on.
“I think you should stay here, Ludlow. How’ll you get back?” She was concerned.
“I been moving all over this city for ten years…just me and my cane.” He bragged, buttoning his shirt.
She said no more about it, and said very little otherwise. They finished breakfast, stacked the dishes in the sink, and left her apartment.
“Something wrong, Ragan?” She had been too quiet, even for her.
“You’ll be hurt if I tell you.” She was speaking down toward the pavement. They were nearing the big street on which she worked. It was difficult to pick up her voice over the morning traffic.
“Maybe. You tell me anyway.”
“I didn’t want you to walk with me today.”
He stopped her. People brushed by them. “Why not?”
“I wanted to be alone, that’s all.” She was almost whining.
“You coulda told me that, baby. I told you once you could tell me everything. Ain’t nothing’ll shock me.”
“I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
All at once, he could never learn why, he was suspicious. “You sure there ain’t nothing else?” He realized his voice sounded hard.
“No. There is nothing else.” She was nervous.
He shrugged, laughed. “Well, it too late now for you to be alone. I might as well walk you all the way.”
“No!” She fairly shouted, panic coating her words. “Look, I’m late now, Ludlow. We can talk about this later. But I’d better leave you here. Bye-bye.” She squeezed his hand and released it. Her heels disappeared behind a blaring horn.
He gripped his cane so tightly his hand began to hurt. Suspicion was shrill in his head, a clarinet played by a shaky old man. She did not want him to walk her to the door of her office building because she did not want her office friends to know about him. She wanted to keep him on some side street of her life, like Negro mistresses were always kept on side streets by their lovers. She had met all his friends, Hardie, Reno, even Norman Spencer; he had met none of hers.
He knew where she worked. He would follow her, go to the receptionist and say he wanted to speak to her. He would say he was her husband. He could imagine the gasp the receptionist would make. The news would travel throughout her building in less than a minute—about nice, quiet little Ragan and her blind nigger husband. Stan
ding in the middle of the sidewalk, people rushing by him on either side, he rivaled the noise of the passing automobiles with his laughter.
But then he realized he did not want revenge; he wanted Ragan. If she did not really want him, revenge would make him feel no better. He decided to return to her place, wait for her and bring it all into the open.
He was prepared to wait until after five, but she rushed in a few minutes after noon. Before he could ready himself, she was on the floor in front of his chair, the sound of her crying muffled in his thighs. He tried to be stern, but could not and stroked her hair. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“I was so…so…cowardly this morning…and mean!” She continued to cry, but softer now.
“About what?” Perhaps she would tell him without being questioned and he would not have to reveal his suspicions.
“About your walking with me. I just left you standing there.”
“Well, why didn’t you want me to walk you?” He was stroking her neck now. Her breasts were pressed against his shins.
“Because…oh, Ludlow, don’t…because I was meeting a friend of my parents.”
It was true. He realized now that though he had thought his suspicions possible, he had not thought them true. “Well…”
She wrapped her arms around his calves and squeezed them tightly, her sobs jolting both of them. “Yesterday I got permission to come to work an hour late this morning. But this morning I still had to go to work—I mean, to the building—because I was meeting my parents’ friend in the lobby.”
He was shaking his head. She began to talk much faster now. “He’s going to France and he’ll be seeing my parents and he called me at work yesterday and asked me to meet him this morning because his plane was leaving at noon. So I said yes. But then you wanted to walk me and I got panicked he’d be there and see us and tell them and I didn’t want to tell them yet—they’re good people really, but I want to tell them myself, and gently. You understand that, don’t you?”
A Drop of Patience Page 13