A Tender Thing

by Emily Neuberger

  “Yes, that’s right.” He whispered in her ear, “It’s sweet.”

  “The music.”

  Charles didn’t reply, but she felt him turn his head and rest his chin on her temple. It was intimate and wonderful, warm. She held him closer, feeling not a romantic connection but a profound one; she wrapped her arms around his slender waist and felt closer to him than she had to anyone in a long time.

  “I could fall asleep like this,” she whispered.

  Charles bent to her ear. His whisper was hot and ticklish, and it took a second before she realized what he’d said.

  “People are staring.”

  She looked around the bar. The spotlight blinded her for a moment; she blinked and saw an orange impression. The bass player glanced away when she caught his gaze, his expression closing like a door. The woman she’d seen chewing earlier stared, her mouth tight. Eleanor thought of ways to ease the situation, came up with none.

  “What do they think?”

  “Who knows?” Charles said. “Some might think you’re a slut. Or maybe you’re innocent, and I’m a rapist. Others think you should leave me for someone else, you’ve got enough. You could be a brat trying to upset Daddy. The point is, none of them buy we’re in love.”

  “Well, we aren’t.”

  “Baby, any of this crowd saw you holding a white guy like that, they’d get all misty.”

  Eleanor didn’t like standing in the middle of the room; there was a lot of emotion running through her, and she couldn’t get a grasp on it. She pushed Charles away. Her stomach was sour, jumpy.

  “You said yourself you felt like Molly,” he said. “And still they don’t believe in us. They fill it in with something wrong, dirty.”

  Eleanor looked around again; she met the shaggy-haired man’s gaze, bleary with drink. Her eyes burned, maybe from the smoke; she hid her face on Charles’s shoulder.

  “I want to go home.” Eleanor went to the table and sat down to finish her gin.

  He sat closer to her this time, nursing his whiskey. “I do love the music here. Let’s just listen.”

  She began to feel warm, the sides of the room growing fuzzy. The music lulled her, rocked her like she was a child, or at least that’s what she wanted it to do—she could not concentrate. She felt eyes on her like fingers scraping down her spine.

  She said, “Charles, I’m tired.”

  Charles looked at her. “Are you afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Did you pick this place because we’d be treated like this here?”

  Charles looked at her, hurt touching his eyes. “I picked this place because we could come together. Here, they stare. Eleanor, other places, it’s worse.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “I’ll walk you.”

  The idea of his walking her to the bathroom was far too intimate; it would egg on their audience. “You’d better not.”

  * * *

  The ladies’ was disgusting: paper littered the floor, a tampon floated in red water, and the mirror was so spotted with an unknown substance that she had to turn her head a few times to find an open space to reapply her lipstick.

  She pushed open the door, ready to go home. The shaggy-haired man was in the hallway. She kept her head down. Somehow, she walked right into him.

  “Pardon.”

  He caught her by the arms. “That’s all right, baby.”

  She stiffened; he didn’t let go.

  He stared a beat too long, eyes narrowed in a kind of smile. When he didn’t look away, Eleanor thought he must be very drunk, until he dug in his nails.

  “What are you doing with him? Don’t know how you stomach it.”

  “Leave me alone. My boyfriend is waiting.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “He is.”

  “How much?”

  She flushed. “You’ve got it wrong.”

  He pushed her against the wall. The bricks were freezing.

  “I’ll be your boyfriend tonight.” The man leaned forward and covered her mouth with his; she tasted beer and dankness from cigarettes. Eleanor squealed and smacked him on the back. His mouth was limp and wet, and it traced down her neck, leaving behind the beer smell.

  “Stop it.”

  He pulled back without removing his hands. Eleanor slumped against the wall. Her heart pounded, and she waited for it to be over. The man kneaded her breast in his hand. In a fleeting rush, she realized that this was a situation unlike any she’d been in before. He was not just grabbing a feel; he wasn’t going to stop. An instinct flared up, her pulse speeding to a race.

  “Let me go.” Her voice was weak coming out, and she didn’t recognize it. “Get off.”

  He pinched her thigh, then her ass. “You’re fat for a whore.”

  “Get off me!”

  He reached between her legs, moving up until he grabbed her in his hand. She froze. He smiled at her and raised his eyebrows in an expression of smug amusement. Eleanor felt a wave of hate so powerful that it infused her veins, then her muscles. She snapped her teeth toward his face. He jerked back. She managed a wrenching movement that dislodged his grip, then raised her knee and shoved against his groin. He crumpled.

  “You fucking bitch!”

  She ran.

  Charles was already halfway down the stairs. “Eleanor! I heard shouting—are you all right?”

  “We’re leaving. Now.”

  * * *

  Charles did not stop apologizing until they reached her hotel.

  “I know you didn’t mean for it to happen,” she said, her voice tight. “Just almost, right?”

  “No!”

  They pulled up to her hotel. Charles paid the fare. The cabbie kept the car idling on the curb, watching.

  “Thank you,” she called out. “I’m fine!”

  The man gave her another look and then drove away.

  Eleanor kicked a piece of ice on the sidewalk. Charles, maybe trying to win her favor, kicked it back like a child playing soccer. “Did that serve your fancy, Charles? You got to tutor me for the night. Am I going to be a good actress now?”

  “I told you I didn’t mean for it to happen.” His mouth was tight. “But don’t you see—if I’d gotten to you, if we brawled . . . who do you think the barkeep would think attacked you? Me, or him?”

  “You would know.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Charles—did you . . . did you hit a woman? In a bar?”

  He swore under his breath.

  “Charles.”

  “How can you even ask me that?”

  “I saw the article.”

  “You know me. That’s what you think of me?” He looked sickened. Eleanor couldn’t respond, already recognizing that she’d been wrong. Connor had tricked her, somehow, and she’d fallen right into it. Charles’s eyes were wide, pained. “You think I beat the shit out of some old bird?”

  Eleanor took a breath. “I don’t think you—meant to. But I need you to tell me.”

  He took her arms in his hands. “You shouldn’t have to ask.”

  A streetlamp cast his shadow long and slender on the sidewalk. Eleanor wanted to be better, wanted not to care. She waited for him to speak. Cars passed them, but Charles did not seem to notice. He swore again. She broke apart from him and wrapped her arms around herself.

  “You know Gwen and I sing in clubs sometimes.” He faced away, one hand cupping the back of his neck. “There was one, Benny’s. They had a popular jazz combo. Even whites came out.”

  His voice was quiet, but it was a still night and she didn’t struggle to hear.

  “By the end of the night it could get rowdy.” He saw her look and explained. “Bar fights. Stupid men, drunk off their asses, who’d throw a punch for no good reason.”<
br />
  “Is that what happened to you?”

  “I don’t slug anyone without a reason.” Charles turned. The lamp cast shadows over his face so his eyes and mouth were dark voids. Eleanor still felt his glare and was ashamed for having asked the question. She wanted all this to stop. She wanted to extract this entire conversation from the air until their friendship was untouched by it. “I don’t slug anyone, for that matter.

  “The white folks called the cops one night,” he said. “Some girl screamed that a ‘darkie’ grabbed her breast and they raided the place. If there wasn’t a fight before, there was when the cops arrived.

  “It was madness. Cops shoving their way through. Cuffing fellas who hadn’t thrown a punch. Lou, our bass player, got hit with a nightstick.

  “I wanted to get us out of there, but it was a riot. I got a arm around Gwen and shoved my way through the crowd. At one point, someone grabbed me, and I didn’t think. I swung my elbow back, to get them off.”

  Charles bent his head in his hands. “She was an old white woman who liked music. She’d been sitting with Gwen and tried to follow us out. God knows what she was doing all the way up in Harlem, but there she was. And I broke her nose.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I spent the night in jail. Cops beat the living shit out of me. The woman came up the next day. She told them someone swung a door open on her nose. I don’t know why she did it. She told them to let me out. I went home, but couldn’t walk for days. I thought that was the end of it.” He met her eyes. “But even you don’t trust me.”

  Eleanor looked down at the concrete.

  “I thought that maybe, maybe you were starting to get it.”

  “Charles. I’m sorry.”

  “No shit.” He paused, considering his next words. “You think I’ve been keen on you this whole time?” Charles had clenched his fists at his sides. “I have to explain every damn thing to you, from stage directions to entrances. I took you to that bar tonight because you didn’t even understand what the musical was about. You think the theater is some glamorous fairyland.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I haven’t been in the business my whole life—”

  Charles continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “But I’m your friend, and I stood by you when Harry made you cry. You even criticized me for not being a pure enough artist. ‘It’s just a paycheck to you.’ Screw you, Eleanor. Maybe I can’t put my blind trust into this bullshit. And this is why. Some friend you are.”

  Eleanor took her face in her hands. She wanted to cry but felt like if she did, she would lose control, and that would be the wrong move here. It hit her on two sides: everyone who had once loved her now hated her, but if she pled for sympathy, she would be worse. This was her problem to solve, alone. She gathered her breath and approached him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He kept his hands at his sides. “Well?”

  “I understand.”

  “What do you understand, Eleanor?”

  “That it’s hard! That Molly had a real decision to make. That love isn’t enough.”

  “Their lives would be a battle every single day.”

  “I couldn’t handle one night, and I wasn’t even really out with you.”

  “You saw how people treated us. Imagine if we married. Imagine trying to buy a house. Imagine enrolling our child in a school.”

  Eleanor wanted to crumple to the ground.

  “Don’s show is good,” Charles said, his voice going tender. “I’m the first man to say. Sometimes I still don’t understand how a white man could write something like this. But it’s too pleasant, too happily-ever-after. That’s not the way it’s going to be.”

  Eleanor watched car beams sweep the salty winter streets, then pass. “Maybe Don wants it to be that way.”

  “Were you scared tonight?” he asked. “That—what you felt all night, all those eyes, wondering who was going to try to do something to us—that’s what’s missing from the musical. You, Don, Harry, want the show to prove things aren’t as bad as they look. That two people could defeat the system. Eleanor, that’s not for the white man to say.”

  “Do you think it can get better?”

  “Things are changing,” he said. “But not yet, Eleanor, no. And when they do change, it will be damned tough. So Molly and Luke . . . they’re scared. But they’re not scared enough.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I hate writing romance.” Don tore another sheet of paper and threw it onto the orchestra pit floor. “It always sounds fake. All that hand touching and I-can’t-live-without-you. It’s private. When you watch it, it looks ridiculous.”

  “Perhaps because that’s not what people really do,” Eleanor said. “Gaze into each other’s eyes and that.”

  He chuckled. “I’m told they do.”

  Eleanor lounged in the first row of the theater. She loved being there with only Don. Empty, it felt like a church. It was her day off. Eleanor had planned on extra sleep, but Don had informed her she was to accompany him to the theater early in the morning so he could try out new material. They’d already been at it two hours—though Eleanor had scarcely done anything. Whenever Don looked at what he’d written, he made a disgusted face and began scratching out lyrics.

  “People don’t really do that.” She looked over the lip of the stage down into the pit. “At least, I’ve never seen it. It’s just something they do in movies. People kiss and such, but goopy stuff like playing with hair and pet names—that’s drivel.”

  He gave her an odd look. “My dear, I thought you had some experience.”

  Eleanor leaned back so he couldn’t see her. She could hardly imagine such intimacy—her relationship with Tommy had ended too early for any of that.

  “Have you ever had a pet name, Don?” She was glad he couldn’t see her.

  “Eleanor, I’m working.”

  “‘My little quarter note’? ‘My cuddly fermata’?”

  She was being cheeky at best. But she thought Don could do with some needling, and after all, he had interrupted her sleep.

  “Which rhyme rings better to your ear?” He read her two options. She told him. He made a noise in his throat.

  “How do you know pet names are real if you’ve never experienced them? They could be like fainting. In my experience, people faint far more often in fiction than in real life. Pet names could be equally overrepresented.”

  He didn’t answer. She waited several long moments, growing more nervous as each one passed, and then peeked at Don in the orchestra pit. He was engrossed in his work.

  “Lovers create their own language,” he said after a long time. “Pet names, secret jokes—like a bubble of intimacy. It’s evolutionary. The stronger the bond of the parents, the greater the chances the offspring have of surviving.”

  “Don, I had no idea you were so romantic.”

  “Luke and Molly will have only begun this stage when the musical ends.” He spoke slowly, and when Eleanor looked she saw he was reading his lyrics. “So their dialogue will still be focused on declaring their love.”

  She imagined Luke’s struggling to find a place to take Molly out. Would he pick somewhere similar to the place Charles had taken her? Would it backfire just as badly? Charles had been devastated when she was hurt; what if that night hadn’t been about learning to act but was a dress rehearsal for an entire relationship? How would Molly and Luke feel if they stepped out for one night and learned their love was impossible?

  “I don’t think it would only be about love,” Eleanor said slowly.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Molly and Luke aren’t like other couples.” Eleanor leaned her arms on the edge of the stage. “They might move faster,” she said. “They depend on that intimacy stage more than other lovers. If they don’t feel united, even to the two of them, they
’ll never stand a chance.”

  Don looked up, waiting for her to continue. Eleanor, nervous, did just that.

  “They have less in common than lovers who come from the same background,” she said. “If they loved each other, I think they would try—maybe even without knowing they’re doing it—to create a bubble around themselves. Make the relationship as strong and as real as possible before taking it out into the world.”

  “Build intimacy faster.” Though he didn’t look away from her face, she knew he had stopped seeing her and had already begun rewriting things in his head.

  “They should plan their life together,” Eleanor said. “Give them a dream.”

  “Like what? Molly is your character. You know her as well as I do.”

  What an astonishing concept. She almost held back. But he was right; she knew the answer.

  “They should plan their future. Their house. Children. They have no role models, so they have to dream it up themselves.”

  “Come down here,” Don said. “Will you help me?”

  * * *

  By evening, the stage manager delivered Eleanor sheet music to a song called “Sunday Evening.” It would come near the end of act two, right when Luke and Molly were losing faith. In it, they imagine their home together in the quiet hours at the end of the week, when they belong to each other. They dreamed not of passion but peace. She already knew the lyrics by heart. It had taken six hours, but she and Don had written a song. Well, mostly Don—he wrote until he was stumped, then looked to her for suggestions. Eleanor recognized three of her rhymes and one full line in the chorus. Her own words, paired with Don’s music. No one but Don knew she’d contributed, but she didn’t care. This felt different than her little opinions, tossed off when Don needed encouragement. This song was her idea. She’d been part of creating a new musical—not only through interpretation but through text. She ran her finger over the words on the sheet.

  The melody was simple, almost like a church hymn, but with more dissonance in the accompaniment. Don had concentrated on strings, so light the song shimmered.