Ladies In The Parlor (19 page)

“And by God, I’ve done good in this world—I’ve done favors for every bum I ever knew who was white, and a hell of a lot who weren’t—Mother Rosenbloom can tell you—and so can Everlan. I started from scratch, I did —nobody was too mean for me to know—and when Harris got to be a lawyer and went in a corporation office, and I’d begun to feel my way in politics in my ward, and knew that I had it sewed up tight as a poorhouse shroud, I said to Jack, ‘You and me are a great combination, a Mick and a Yid—but you’ve got to give some of your time to people—you’ve got to get up in court and defend bums and thieves and murderers—for you and me’s going places… I’ll make you the first Jew president— Now read your books at home and don’t mention them—when you see Biddy Flaherty, you must talk to her about her kid’s bellyache from eating the green apples—and things like that—and be kind to everybody you see, for they’ve all got tongues, and they can all be sharp no matter how dull their heads are.’ “

“I think you’re grand,” Leora said with conviction.

“None of that now—give me liquor.”

She quickly poured him another glass.

“I’m not so wonderful—but I never had any fear—the man without fear can step from cloud to cloud and play handball with the stars—that is—if he can reach them.”

In wonder she asked, “Why are you here— You could get all the beautiful women in the world.”

“That’s simple—these are my people—they’re all I’ve ever known. Mother’s got better judgment than the governor—and more brains—if she were a man she’d be President—”

He smiled sardonically, “You’re too young to know that all life’s a whorehouse—the difference is only that it’s not as public as this.” He pointed toward the door.

“There’s more blackmail out there and less charm. A girl in a house like this never double-crosses a man until she takes a notion to reform. Anything may be done to a fellow in a house, but that’s as far as it goes—besides, it’s all I know… all I’ve ever known—and the more I see of life, it’s all I ever want to know. I know what to expect when I stay where I belong, and the only thing that makes me proud is that the people who kicked me around when I was a kid now take orders from me. The whole business of living’s a long disease—and I’d like to know what the hell more any man can have than a girl like you in bed—and when we have our little hour all we do is make brats for future undertakers and tombstone makers…”

He stopped talking, half rose, and looked in the direction of the liquor. Leora poured a drink for him. He drank it rapidly and sank again on the pillow. “I’ve never talked to anybody like this before,” he said. “That’s why I’m for you—damn a woman you can’t talk to.”

The rain rattled heavily on the roof. The windows shook with the wind and were turned yellow by the lightning.

Water splashed more heavily.

The lightning came in long, jagged and vivid flashes.

He became incoherent for a moment, and then said firmly, “I had a dream last night, Leora. I walked through a street the color of slate pencils, and the rain fell in silver drops as long as an old woman’s dream. I went up to the Masonic Temple Building and I said to myself, ‘I’m going to kill all the damned people inside.’ So I crushed it in my fingers and shook it like a cat would a mouse—it was awful, the twisted iron girders and the broken brick and mortar. I suddenly felt sorry and I stooped down to pick up all the hurt people who fell out of the building. They didn’t look like grown-ups any more, but just children—and suddenly I grew so tall I couldn’t stoop low enough to touch them . . . so I left them all lying in the street and went out to find a sack of star dust—then I was arrested for murder.

“When I stood up to get my sentence, the judge looked at me with daggers in his eyes. ‘He had no mercy,’ ‘he said, ‘neither have I.’

“The first thing I knew a fellow about thirty, with a long cloak and a Van Dyke beard and sad eyes and curly red hair, stood by me...and he said to the judge, with a voice like music,

I told him I was weak as a rained-on bee—

I told him I was lost—He said, ‘Lean on me.’

“‘And who are you?’ asked the judge.

“‘My name is Christ—I came a long distance. I live in the mountains behind the moon. I beseech you not to hang this man—he already has imagination, and that is punishment enough.’

“Another man pointed to the red-headed man and said, ‘This is the justest man that ever the sun shone on.’

“And the judge said, ‘Get the hell out of here, all of you—this is a court of law. Take your justice to the mountains behind the moon.’

“As we left the courtroom, I could hear them pounding the nails in the gallows, and one guard yelled out, ‘Make that rope bigger and stronger, you can’t break this fellow’s neck with an inch rope—he’s a politician.’

“‘We don’t give a damn what he is, we’ll pop his neck like a bottle of champagne,’ another guard yelled. ‘He’s not satisfied to bump one man. He took a building full of people anxious to earn an honest living, and he sprawled them out on the street like a lot of dead butterflies. . .

“All the way to the gallows the people hissed at me—they were the same people I couldn’t pick up because I’d grown so tall—I stumbled as I looked up and saw the rope—and then I woke up”

Footsteps were heard.

“It’s Mother, seeing that everything is all right,” said Leora.

“What a woman,” the judge said. “Her brain’s as big as her body. Whenever I’m stuck about what to do in the Capitol, I go to her. She’s the way people should be in this world—hard as a rock and soft as a baby—you should have seen her twenty years ago—just as smart as now—born smart. She just knew and never had to learn.”

“Where did Mother come from?” Leora asked with assumed innocence.

The judge’s hand moved up and down her body before he answered softly, “That’s not for little girls to know. Mother’s always been here, protecting us poor men from the rain and the cold. I think she came from a cloud hundreds of years ago. She was the greatest friend I had when everything was dark as the back of a Nigger’s ear—I was a young fellow then, and just as sure as God put worms in big apples I’d be the President of the United States by now if it hadn’t happened—they got the goods on me, and I had to step behind the curtains—to play back of the scenes—

“Mother was big time even then—when I had to right-about-face and shift my whole career, she said to me, —’You’re the biggest man in the state—pull the strings, you’ll get more fun out of it’

“But anyhow—they were voting on liquor as they always are in this God-damned country, but this time the legislature had the vote. I packed it with men to make it even anyhow. I thought I had the brewers and the distillers eating out of my hand, and two hundred thousand on the side—we’d polled the whole business, when one of the members died down state, and I had to hurry there and get another one in we could control, and by God he balked, and I began to work on him in the Vaner Hotel—he was a hick who wouldn’t stay put—so he tipped the other side off and they dictaphoned the room. It was a new thing then; we hushed it all up by letting them win—but I was never allowed to come out in the open again. So I picked on Harris—and now I sit back and watch him get the glory, when I could have held high office and do all that I’m doing anyhow.”

Leora move uneasily. She had never felt the same before.

The politician’s white silk shirt was open at the throat. His expensive scarf was loose. He looked upward with half-closed eyes. His mouth was closed tight. A dent was on each side of his jaw. His face might have been chiseled out of marble.

Leora leaned over, her breasts pressed firmly against him. She who was without his terrifying strength wanted to protect him, to hold him in her arms forever.

She could hear his heart beat as she snuggled closely to him. Then suddenly she kissed him passionately again and again.

She then removed her clothes and lay quiet, expectant, beside him.

His touch burned her body.

She half swooned under his embrace.

Moments of wild delirium followed. Every particle of her body responded in ecstatic rhythm.

When all was over, she held him close for a long time, forgetful of everything. Not a word was spoken. Soon she heard his regular deep breathing.

Resting on her elbow, she gazed at him, then snapped the small light by the bed, and laid contentedly beside him.

Her mind and heart in turmoil, she remained long without moving. The awakening had been so tremendous, she was still bewildered. She had never dreamed that such a thing were possible, and here she lay, her body still on fire, and ready to cross the world for one man.

The thought came that she might be with child. She hoped it were correct—she would have it no matter what happened. To have a child by him—at last she realized how her mother felt about children. Surely her mother had never been so deeply stirred.

She hoped that he would always love her. The thought of another man, at any price, made her shudder. She wanted to sing, to laugh, to cry.

She covered him gently and resumed her pleasant revery.

If she had a child, and it was a boy—she would call it Brandon—and if it were a girl—she thought of different names. If the judge would not let her have it, she would run away until after it was born—then let Sally have it and come back to him. She wanted the baby and she wanted him.

The rain continued to rattle on the roof, softly, then harder and harder, like the professor’s hands going rapidly over the piano keys.

She would write to Dr. Farway in the morning. It had been so long since she had seen him—nearly two years.

She would soon be twenty-one. For a moment she was homesick.

Then, with a full heart, her thoughts returned to the man at her side.

At last her mind quit racing. She dozed. She awoke with a start.

The judge’s arm rested heavily upon her. She tried to move it cautiously. The elbow did not bend. She touched his hand. It was still warm, but stiff. Her hand went to his heart.

It was still.

She sat erect for a moment, and rubbed her eyes. In an instant she turned on the lights.

The judge’s head was buried in the pillow. His mouth was open. His eyes stared straight upward.

Her eyes too paralyzed for tears, she fell across him for a moment in a daze, then kissed the dead mouth and choked her sobs in the pillow beside him.

Like the jab of a needle in her brain, the clock struck three. She stood erect, her hair down, her slender body, unmindful of the chilled room, uncovered except for the coat of a suit of silk pajamas.

She knelt at the bed beside him, her hands going up and down his arm.

A mist came to her eyes. She wiped them with the sheet. Hurrying to the closet, she put on the other half of the pajamas, a fur coat, and slippers.

She stood for a second in the middle of the room. A clap of thunder roared down the sky.

The windows shook as the rain fell harder against them. The wind whistled and was silenced by louder thunder. Wild flares of lightning turned yellow the water running down the windows.

She left the room quietly and went to Mother Rosenbloom. The large lady lay in a flesh-colored and beribboned nightgown. Her reading lamp, which she had forgotten to turn off, threw a light across the bed.

“What is it, Leora?” Mother asked.

“The judge is dead,” she whispered.

The bed sagged in the middle as Mother Rosenbloom sat up suddenly and exclaimed tersely, “
My God, how do you know
?”

“I felt his heart,” answered Leora.

The rain still swished against the windows.

“Wake Mr. Everlan up—but not the chauffeur yet,” said Mother Rosenbloom.

She hurried from the bed and put on a satin robe. “Let’s go to him,” she commanded.

Leora followed.

She immediately felt the judge’s heart, then his pulse. “You go ahead, Leora, open the front door—then wake Mr. Everlan.”

Leora hurried forward.

The mammoth woman took the body of the judge, pulled the legs and arms together, and threw it across her shoulder. The rain fell in cycles white as silver in the street as Leora opened the door.

With set jaws, the woman moved with her burden toward the limousine at the curb. The rain whipped upon them as Mother Rosenbloom held the corpse and Leora opened the car door.

In another second, Mother placed the body erect in the rear seat.

Shutting the car door carefully, she followed Leora into the house.

Bedraggled with rain, her thin clothing plastered to her huge body, the giant woman fell on the davenport and sobbed. Controlling herself long enough to say, “Run and wake Mr. Everlan, dear,” she sobbed again.

Then, with a mighty effort, she followed Leora.

Alice came to the door.

“Let me in, dear—something has happened.” Mother Rosenbloom stepped inside.

Shaking the sleeping man, she said in a hoarse whisper, “Judge Slattery’s dead—I have put him in your car—you must leave here without Alice—I’ll wake the chauffeur… he must not know. I’ll tell him that you and the judge wish to go to your home. You can discover he has died of heart trouble on the way.”

The chauffeur sat stiffly in his seat, while Mr. Everlan said, “The judge and I wish to go to my home, Joe.”

The car moved forward through the rainy night.

The three stood in silence.

Mother reached out her arms and drew the girl to her. “I’m so sorry for you, dear,” she said to Leora.

“Don’t mind me now—you’re dripping wet,” Leora said to Mother Rosenbloom. “Come, we must put some warm clothes on you.”

She put her fur coat over Mother Rosenbloom’s shoulders. Shivering, she followed Alice and Leora to her own room.

The girls rubbed her body with towels and put her into bed.

The clock struck four.

There came a dying rumble of thunder. The rain stopped.

The morning papers announced that Judge Slattery, famous political boss of the ______Ward, had died suddenly of heart trouble while riding with his lifelong friend, J. Whitlau Everlan, the distinguished financier.

His funeral, attended by the governor, was one of the largest ever held in the state. Rich and poor crowded about his bier for a long last look at him.