Letty Fox (60 page)

“Yes.”

“He says he doesn't like the women down there”; Luke shook his head. “Poor girls,” very intimately, he went on; “no free women there at all, slaves in marriage, slaves outside marriage.”

“I know, it's the same here.”

Luke took no notice of me. He went on eating his chicken and looking at his plate intimately. He murmured, “And then the outcast—women; the pariahs; you know—” he did not say the word, “and even some of the wives—stupid, slovenly, go about in dressing gowns with their hair in wisps—fah! slovenly. And the gutters— smell, you know.”

I said I was never there in the South, but I had heard. Luke continued quietly, “But a good climate, it's very healthy; the children ought to be healthy. The Negroes love children; the Spaniards too; all native peoples.”

Luke Adams had a wife with wispy hair and with one stringy child and I was embarrassed, but not he; he was not referring to his family. He murmured instead that this Spaniard with the guitar had adopted a ten-year-old boy that he had found hanging round the Union Hall, a Spanish boy whose parents had died in a bus accident. He slept sometimes at one place, sometimes at another, sometimes in the Union Hall. Now, he slept with the Spaniard, Antonio, and his brother; and they had no place but a curtained-off place in their shop, where they were not supposed to sleep, but which they used for their living.

“So,” said Luke Adams, “I took him, of course. But now Elsie doesn't want him. I don't blame her. He's noisy—of course; can't settle down. I thought—Perse and Solander might take him. Or perhaps they know a place in the country, he needs the country. Thin, nervous—”

He chewed at the last chicken bone, and his tooth-lack showed as his long, dark lips curled in a confident smile.

“Thought they might be glad—there's a bed here.” He had become quite cheerful.

“I don't know,” I said, much displeased. So the saffron and the phlox were for that.

“Perhaps your mother would have room—no boys—perhaps she likes boys,” he ventured, with much simplicity.

“My mother—doesn't care for strangers.”

“No, no,” he grumbled. Then he became angry.

“I took him to Cassell's, and they said they had no room. When I went to stay at Mark Handel's he took me all round the damn town looking for someone to put me up. I could have slept with little Mark—his son, that is. I said I'd take the boy.”

“Where was Elsie, your wife?”

“She was—” he waved his hand, and after thinking, said deeply, seductively, “In the country, we have a little place, good for children. Children need air. And I thought Leon—that's the boy—but naturally, she had enough on her hands.”

“Where are you staying, then?”

“I was at the Union Square Hotel,” he said resentfully, “and they gave me a little room, like a box without a window. Jesus!” He looked at me.

“Then Leon—the boy—I left him with Ethel Brown, a woman I know in Brooklyn. I met her at the meeting—a meeting I was at—she has a heart as big as a whale,” and he repeated, staring reproachfully at me, “big as a whale!”

“Luke!”

He looked up quickly, with a smile, “Yes?”

“Luke!” But I shook my head.

He smiled eagerly.

“What is it, Letty?”

“We're guests, girls of my age, we have no homes. If this or that were my home, you could have ten of your adopted children there,” and low, I added, “and not even adopted.”

“Letty!” he cried, “come here. I would kiss you, but if I did—” and he did so. I broke away. “So you'll take him here or down there for a few days? It's only till we get a decent place for the poor kid.”

He had begun to walk and had reached the wall. I came to him against the cream wall and held my face up to him; he laid his long, dark lips against mine, and this was the first time that ever I was really kissed. A spark flew between us and I became a woman of fire. I felt the shape of my limbs from within; they were dark, round, pouring downwards with the blood. I trembled. I thought at the same time, Can I learn from him to kiss like that? But this is it, I thought; oh, the rest—poor men—

“A little girl,” he said, with a wondering voice, “just a little girl.”

He stood against the wall, himself trembling. I kissed him beside the mouth. He said, gutturally soft, “You're wonderful, Letty, you're a wonderful girl.”

It came so mechanically from him that I thought, This is the thing he says, and I simply echoed him, “You're wonderful to me, Luke.”

“Letty, Letty,” and in a deeper voice, “Letty!”

“To me you are so wonderful, Luke; I've always thought about you.”

“You're sweet, Letty, you're sweet.”

“You're a great man, you're different from all other men, everyone knows—everyone feels it—you are a man. What we mean by a man.”

He broke away with a sob.

“Don't go,” I muttered.

“I must go.”

“Don't go.”

We embraced again, nearer the door. He had, strangely, collected his hat, his books, but not his satchel. Luke looked down at me, and put his hand on the roots of my hair on the forehead. He cried fervently, “I could give you everything—everything in my life. I want to tell you so much. If only I could talk to you. I want to love you, Letty, I want to—” he muttered and muttered, words deep and obscene.

“Why don't you, Luke?” I said, quite drunk with him. We were at the door. He had jammed on his hat and slightly opened the door. He looked round at me with wild, black eyes, his hair flying. He looked as if he had just come out of a street fight. He smiled and bent toward me, “The boy—is it all right? Can you really take him? Persuade them. I can't face them—now. I'll be back, after dinner.”

“I'll ask them, but for how long?”

Luke said carelessly, “Oh, a few days—till I get the ticket back— to where I got him from, southwest, a—place—here he'd be all right. Good company. Good food. A clean place to sleep. You've no idea what a difference that makes. Nice boy.”

“I understood he was a regular little hobo—”

“Just had no opportunity, he'll be all right. Just tell Solander. Well, I'll tell him—but you,” he leaned forward mysteriously, “you break the ground.”

He sauntered over and rang the elevator bell. I went out. He tangled with me again, his eyes maddened, “I want to love you, Letty, I want to love you.”

“Will you come and see me at my own place?”

“Where's that?”

The elevator had come to the floor, and he scribbled the address in a small breastpocket notebook.

“I'll get round there sometime,” he said, smiling.

As the lift was going down, Persia and Solander came up the stairs. They had seen Luke Adams in the lift, and they found me as I was then standing, leaning against the wall, inside the door which was on the latch.

“What's the matter with you?” said Solander. “You look mussed up; you look tousled.”

“No; Luke was here, and he's coming back after dinner.”

Persia let out a cry, “I thought he was coming for dinner,” and in an ill temper, went into the kitchen. When we entered the dining room, the bottle of whisky was standing on the table, with the plates, glasses, and the rest of it, and Solander said irritably, “What? He ate, and you had drinks?”

“Can't I hide anything from you, Papa? Oh, that Sherlock.”

“Well, you look queer, and here are the remains—now you clean the place up. It looks like an illicit love affair,” he said, looking me in the eyes.

I laughed, but I was frightened when I saw my appearance in the mirror.

Luke would be very angry with me when he heard the result of the night's negotiations. They refused to take the orphan boy, Leon, into their home. Solander said, “This is just the anteroom to my keeping him forever. Everyone knows our Luke. Nothing doing.”

I went home early, in a fit of passion, like nothing I had felt before; I was madly in love with Luke Adams. A hopeless affair it was, for he was forty, newly married after a wanton life, and with a young child; he had settled down at last. But I now knew I had never even known what love was before; and I say now, a Lovelace he is, no doubt, but this is the only man I ever met that I really loved fatally.

I did not escape a homily. My father went out with me, and I was glad of that. I was not now used to walking about the streets at night without a man by my side. But my father took me to a cafeteria, brought two coffees to our table, and told me he thought I was getting into loose ways and I must look to myself. As to Luke Adams, he was a married man and a well-known libertine. What could he offer me? I looked at my father with exasperation. This kind of man, the loyal one, does not understand that a woman does not need to be offered something—for my poor father supposed I wanted a home, an income. And as to the married state in which Luke found himself, I scarcely thought Solander had the right to comment upon that. I kept silent; but my father continued, I must find a job and settle down to work. He would give me no more money to waste.

“What can Luke offer you?” he asked irritably. “I see you're going to turn into a bum, unless I spank you.”

I laughed blackly. What could he offer me? Marijuana; but you can't explain that to Solander.

Papa refused to go home with me, and I bussed drearily all the way home. I tossed about at night, thinking over my sins—but after a short time there came back this flame, the love between Luke and me.

Jacky had said foolish things to him and been turned down by him, on account of her youth, perhaps. Many other women had had him and lost him. I hoped I would enjoy him. For the first time I was really in love. As to his wife—she had the leavings of many women and who could believe that Casanova would be faithful? Who worried about her?

All through the night I was kept awake by the fire in my veins and the kisses I had given Luke. Morning could not come too soon. I made up my mind to look for a job the next day, for in idleness I could not live. The life I enjoyed at that time was too fierce. Besides, it was clear I needed a place to myself. I was nearly eighteen, and was more than mature; I even began to feel weary of the wandering life; oddly enough, a young woman in her parents' home feels a wayfarer, a stray, even while she is glad of the services given to her.

Luke Adams telephoned me the next morning at my mother's house, to ask if my mother would be willing to take in the orphan Leon. I said she would not, but I would do my best to place him that very day. We had thousands of relatives and friends. He was very cheerful, and his self-deprecating, sweet baritone made everything between us seem a sign of intimacy. He said he must see me soon, and always with the doubt in his voice, as if, on a moral issue, I might lose him. He might experience qualms. As for me, I felt none.

His wife had come from the Jersey flats, an easygoing consummately arrogant small-town daughter, a greasy-chopped slob, with unwashed hair and a continual smile. I had held her child on my knees when he was a fat good-natured baby. Now, starved and filthy, neglected and put upon, he was a wretched, peaked lad, a gutter urchin. He slept in filthy shirts, and his mother dressed in rags, but always with the same calm air; she believed herself to be a queen among women. I had no feelings of shame toward her, nor had any of his women, I suppose, but not till now had real rage filled me about Elsie Adams.

Before, we had laughed at her and deplored her housekeeping; only now did this bitterness gnaw at me. He was mine. That was his fatal charm, he gave himself at once to a woman; he was always hers.

The next day he telephoned me again about Leon, and now, in his troubled voice, said he'd like to see me, when would I be alone in the house; and I thought he wanted to avoid Jacky, for he was certainly the “L.A.” of her summer letter. I gave him a time; but just before the hour, my mother whisked me away. The next day I made an appointment (he telephoned again) and this time it was my father who took me out for cocktails.

I had been paying visits all over town, and through Dora Morgan had heard of a woman, Susannah Ford, married to a second husband, with a boy, eight, who had a house in Jane Street, and an extra bed. She was a “real radical” as they said, and would certainly take in an adoptee of Luke Adams, for the glory of it, and because she was always a friend of men. She had some money and threw it about, to husbands, radicals; and wasted it in parties. I went to see Susannah Ford, let her know of our family's connection with Luke Adams. She agreed to take the boy. I almost ran out of her house in Jane Street to telephone to my dear one. I could hear him throw his hat on the floor and tramp on it, in his glee, “Three cheers for you,” and then the strolling, teasing tone, “Mrs. Fix-it, eh?”

“I can always fix it, Luke.”

“Oh, yes, you are a fixer,” and with his interest picking up, he asked for the address and circumstances of the woman in Jane Street. He would take the boy there that night. I said, “Susannah's got an eight-year-old boy, and he's a louse. ‘Little School Barn'; he's got a gilt-edged certificate he got last June that he can make zebras in striped wax; he's a piece of cheese.”

Luke trilled his trullmaker into the phone,

“Don't be acid, Letty; you're a real cat; I never knew.”

I had so much to disturb me that I could not sleep. My father's scoldings upset me. He was unnaturally good to me, not, I am sure, because he had been like me, but just because he had not been like me. He did not want to distort a nature so different from his own. When he reprimanded me I thought about it far into the night and knew I needed a guide, and that I should follow his advice. I am not immoral. I suffer too much from what I do, and from the smears of others, to be that. I am not hard, crass. I am soft-hearted, foolish, willful, even, in a way, too moral; I suffer very much from the imagined consequences of my acts. Very often nothing at all happens; all my sweats and tears have been for nothing. Then, indeed, I feel like a fool. No one knows what I go through.