NIGHTS IN THE GARDENS OF BROOKLYN (43 page)

“But you know something?” she said to Robin as they pushed through the piles of heaped-up leaves on Genesee Street on their way home. “I think the whole thing is a pain in the neck.”

“This is only the beginning, folks!” Robin shouted at her. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

“I’d rather be left alone.”

“Then you shouldn’t have written all that. Who forced you to do it? Nobody twisted your arm. When you make your bed you have to lie in it.”

“That’s a cliché. You don’t even know what a cliché
is
.”

But it did make her uneasy in the days that followed, being stopped at her father’s service station or in front of Dohrmeyer’s Meat Market by total strangers who wanted her to pose with them for pictures, or sign things, or tell them what she would be when she grew up: was it really all her fault for writing in Robin’s diaries? Claudine became more irritable as the demands on her got worse, and finally she took it out on Robin, mainly because instead of sympathizing he kept giving her more clichés.

“If it hadn’t been for you and your Uncle Burgie and all those old diaries, I never would have gotten into all this trouble.”

Robin was very hurt. He said she was ungrateful and bratty, and
he wasn’t going to play with her any more. In fact he wasn’t even going to talk to her. She could hang out with her new fair-weather friends instead.

In the middle of all this a group of strangers checked in the Al-Rae Motel up the street from Mr. Crouse’s Mobil station and fanned out from there like a bunch of G-Men after a kidnaper—as if everyone in Phoenix didn’t know what they were up to even before they had unpacked their bags. There were four of them, three men and a young woman researcher. They were all employed by a big picture magazine—the bearded Hungarian, weighted down with leather tote bags, was a photographer, the cynical young man with pockmarks was a writer, and the man who spoke in a whisper (as though, Claudine thought, he was ashamed of his own voice) was a consulting child psychologist.

The girl researcher, who was pretty, with a big wide mouth and an Irish grin, turned up everyplace you could think of, the photographer trotting along after, muttering in Hungarian and measuring the air with his light meter. They walked right into the school as if they owned it—you could see them through the seventh-grade window—and took millions of pictures. Then they went off in their rented Ford to the F. Crouse Mobil station, and the next day, which was Saturday, they were prowling around Robin’s huts, even trying to climb into his treehouse. Claudine was afraid that Robin would think she had tipped them off (actually, they must have studied up on the huts in her book) and would get twice as sore. But he was keeping to his promise not to talk to her.

The other two, the pock-marked writer always grinning skeptically, as though he didn’t even believe that the world was round, and the whispering psychologist, were much less in evidence. For a while Claudine didn’t even know where they were, and it wasn’t until they came to her house and sat down in the parlor with Aunt Lily that she got wind of what they were up to.

Aunt Lily thought Claudine had gone to the movies with Robin to see a Charlton Heston movie about God, so it was easy to sneak in through the kitchen pantry and listen. The child psychologist was doing most of the talking, in his tiny baby voice, and Aunt Lily, all dolled up with coral earrings and toilet water and her silk scarf, was sitting on the edge of her chair ready to
fall off, listening so hard her earrings were practically standing on end.

“Surely it is obvious to a woman of your intelligence, Miss Crouse,” the child psychologist was whispering, “that you have been responsible for the upbringing of one of the most remarkable children of modern times. That is, assuming that Claudine did all of the writing of the book herself.”

“Why did you add that?”

From her vantage post Claudine could not see the psychologist, but she was in line with Aunt Lily’s bust, rising and falling very fast, and with the pock-marked writer, grinning like an absolute fiend.

“Because in all of my years of experience, both in the clinic and in the field, I have never encountered such a combination of insight and steadfastness in one so young.”

“You have to remember, Dr. Fibbage (that was what the name sounded like to Claudine), she has been very ingrown. She’s had only one real friend, and no one but me to turn to for books and ideas.”

The writer broke in, “Miss Crouse, I must say that it is your ideas and your sensitivity that I find in
Claudine’s Book
.”

Claudine was fascinated by the expression that stole over her aunt’s face. It was exactly like that of Aunt Lily’s fat friend Marie Klemfuss when someone tried to tempt her off her crash diet with a slice of angel-food cake—a mixture of fear, greed and calculation.

“Well,” her aunt said slowly, “if Mr. Knowles believed me when he first decided to publish it, I don’t see why I should have to explain any further.”

“Mr. Knowles couldn’t have known you as we do.”

Aunt Lily turned red, and the writer, Mr. Craft, added hastily, “I’m not suggesting that you would ever deceive anyone. But in addition to being an intellectual, you are a very modest person. Obviously you would be reluctant to confirm the extent of your influence on little Claudine.”

Little Claudine! All of a sudden she felt like throwing up. She tiptoed backward, pulled open the screen door soundlessly, and bolted off down the street. When she got to the Waleses she went right on into the kitchen without knocking and almost bumped
into Robin, who was running his thumb around the inside edge of a jar of Skippy peanut butter.

“Don’t tell me you’re not going to speak to me,” Claudine said breathlessly, taking advantage of the fact that Robin’s mouth was stuck with peanut butter. “If you heard what I just did, you’d want advice too.”

He listened quite impassively to her description of Aunt Lily and the two visitors, and even turned down the volume of his transistor. But when she reached the part where Aunt Lily got the hungry look in her eye, Robin held up his hand.

“Just a sec.” He twisted the dial to a roar. “And now the one you’ve asked for, the Madmen singing the number-one hit of the week, ‘Weeping and Wailing.’ ”

Robin turned off the radio and said, very practically, “It’s all clear to me. Those people are out to make trouble for you. They’ll hound you worse than the Beatles.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“They’re just zeroing in on you now—I heard all about the technique on Long John’s program. First they interview your friends, then your enemies, and then your family. By the time they get to you, they know all about you and you feel like they’ve been reading your mail or listening to you talk in your sleep. Well, that’s the way the ball bounces, Claudie.”

“You and your expressions. They’ll be after you too, watch and see.”

“They were already. Where do you think they came before they got to your house?”

Claudine stared. “What did you tell them?”

“Nothing special.” Robin was very casual. “I told them I got the diaries from Uncle Burgie for decoration for the huts. I told them I never knew what you did with them. I told them you had a good imagination, almost as good as mine.”

“Thanks.”

“They asked me about your aunt. I said she was the smartest lady in Phoenix, smarter than all our teachers put together, starting with Miss Bidwell.”

“That wouldn’t take much.” Claudine thought for a moment. “Got any crackers?”

“Just Ritz.”

“I like them.” She dug deep into the box he offered her. “I can tell you’ve got an idea.”

Robin nodded. “As long as everybody thinks you did the book all by yourself, they’ll be after you. People like that Mr. Fibbage—”

“Dr. Fibbage.”

“What’s the diff? He’ll hang around studying you like you were in a bottle. And they’ll keep on pointing at you wherever you go. When you get to high school all the teachers will say, Well, Miss Crouse, I should think anyone who could write a whole book could do better than eighty-two on a simple test. And if you want to go to college—”

Claudine shuddered. “I could change my name, though.”

“They’re on to you. You think Jackie Kennedy could change her name?”

Claudine listened intently. Robin had a crazy imagination, but he was very smart when it came to practical matters. Smarter, in fact, than her own father, the only other person in the world with whom she might have consulted about this thing. Her father would be of no help at all. He meant well, when he was around, but he had never been able to bring himself to say anything to her about the book (as if it was dirty), so this was a decision she would have to make by herself. Ever since the business about the book had come out, Mr. Crouse had taken to looking at his daughter peculiarly; and now that it had gotten out of hand, he seemed positively frightened of her, as though he had fathered a witch.

Claudine walked home slowly. By the time she got there, the pockmarked writer and Dr. Fibbage were standing on the porch saying goodbye to Aunt Lily, who was clenching her hands tightly together, as if she held something between them, like a little bird, that she was afraid would fly away.

“Well, well, well,” whispered Dr. Fibbage, “and here is Claudine. Just the very person I’d like to see.”

“Would you like to see
us
, Claudine?” asked Mr. Craft, grinning at her as if he were about to eat her. The way he put it, she would be chicken if she said no. “I’ll buy you a soda downtown if it’s all right with your aunt.”

“If Claudine would like to go …” Aunt Lily said faintly.

“Sure I would.” Before anyone could say another word, she was leading the way to their shiny rented car. “I’ll be back soon, Aunt Lily.”

“We won’t keep her long.”

“A very unusual woman, your aunt,” the psychologist whispered to her from the back seat, and peered at her intently.

“That’s for sure,” Claudine said.

“You’re not so very usual yourself,” Mr. Craft remarked as he headed the car down to Main Street. “Muscling in on my racket like that. I got enough trouble with the competition without having to fend off eleven-year-old kids.”

“I’m almost twelve.”

“Big deal.”

“Say, Mr. Craft,” she asked, “do you like writing?”

“It beats working, I’ll tell you that. But then I’m not famous. Just well known. How about you?”

“Oh, I got bored with it by the time I finished up the diaries. I don’t think I’ll do any more.”

“What makes you say that?” the doctor demanded eagerly.

“I just told you. It’s boring. Besides, I got sick of my aunt nagging at me to fill up all those diaries.”

“You what?” All of a sudden Dr. Fibbage was panting like a dog in the summer sun. “You mean your aunt knew about the book while you were writing it?”

“Hey,” Claudine said to Mr. Craft, “stop here, at O’Molony’s Pharmacy. They’ve got the best ice cream, with the little chunks in it, not the Softi-Freeze stuff.”

“Wait a minute,” Dr. Fibbage whispered at the top of his lungs as they stood in front of the drugstore. “You haven’t answered my question yet.”

“Can I have my sundae? Then we can talk some more.”

In the booth, after she had ordered a Phoenix Monster Sundae, Claudine said to Dr. Fibbage, “Why did you get so shook up when I told you my aunt knew about the book?”

“Because it was supposed to have been as much of a surprise to her as it was to the rest of us, later on.”

“Oh, she’s just modest. You said yourself she’s very unusual.
The fact is, she thought up the whole thing, practically. Mr. Craft, he careful, you’re spilling coffee on your tie.”

“My hands are shaky. That’s what too much writing does,” the writer said to her. “I thought I heard you say the book was your aunt’s and not yours. Isn’t that silly of me;”

“Well, if you’ll promise not to tell anybody… I mean, I promised my aunt I wouldn’t tell anybody. But I don’t think it’s fair for me to keep getting all the credit and have people buying me sundaes and taking my picture and everything, when actually most of the good stuff in the book is Aunt Lily’s. She loves to make believe. It was her idea right from the start, except she was afraid people would make fun of her, so she decided to put everything in my name.”

She looked across the table at the child psychologist. “Dr. Fibbage,” she said, “you look like you just saw a ghost. Did I say something wrong?”

He reached out uneasily to pat her hand. “I’m unused to such honesty from someone so young.”

“Claudine is a red-blooded American girl, that’s why,” Mr. Craft said heartily. “Here you thought you could watch Emily Dickinson grow up under your microscope, Fibbage, and instead you found yourself buying Monster Sundaes for a healthy, normal seventh-grader. Am I right or wrong, Claudine?”

“You couldn’t be more right, Mr. Craft,” Claudine replied after she had licked off her spoon. “You know something? You talk very sensibly, for a writer. I told my friend Robin Wales that writers could be as sensible as architects—that’s what he’s going to be. I’m beginning to think maybe some day I’ll be a writer after all—I mean a real one, not an imitation. Well,” she said, rising, “goodbye now, and thanks a lot for the sundae. I promised Robin I’d play with him if all the reporters and photographers would leave us alone. And I guess now they will, won’t they?”

At the front of the drugstore, Claudine turned to look back at the two men who stood at the cashier’s counter, their feet nailed to the floor, staring after her. She waved farewell to them and, whistling the “Marseillaise,” ran off down the street in search of Robin.

TEASE

F
or many years I have told a story on myself, the point of which was, I supposed, that as a young man I was a good-natured fool. Now, however, if I regard what happened not as a joke on me but as a revelation of what we are all capable of, I remember something very different. It is as though my young protagonist were no longer the self I cherish with such wry and amused fondness, but had become instead a stranger—a wild and predatory stranger. But here is the story as I used to tell it:

When I was twenty-one a college classmate and I got temporary jobs in the Panama Canal Zone, jobs that seemed glamorous beforehand but turned out to be drab and routine. Only the after-hours night life was fun, and even that palled after a few weeks.

One night we decided to change our luck by crossing the Isthmus and spending the night, and our money, in Colón instead of in Panama City. Not that the program there would be any different. Rum-and-Cokes while we watched the jugglers, the tango teams and the imported strippers, and tried without real hope to make the B-girls, hired to separate tourists, sailors and other fools from their wallets without yielding up anything more than a smile or a dance. It made no more sense than going, say, from Brooklyn to Newark in search of novelty. But at least the décor, the faces and the bodies would be different.

So we went off on the Toonerville railroad that joggled us across the thin strip of jungle separating one ocean from another. We bought round-trip tickets, to make sure that we’d get back, but for the rest of it we decided to leave things to chance.

“Let’s make a pact,” I proposed to Tommy. He was the kind who could appear calmly sober all evening, and then amaze
people who didn’t know him by passing out with his face on the table top, or slipping slowly to the floor. “We’ll take along twenty bucks apiece and go as far as we can on it. Agreed?”

He understood me. We were already weary of those coldblooded whorehouses—the Villa Amor, Las Tres Palmas and the rest—where, although you could drink at your leisure and dance with the girls beforehand, you were rousted unceremoniously from their cubicles in order that they might hurry down and hustle up the next customer. We were tired too of the streetwalkers. It was true that they were not supervised and hence were more human: They led you languidly, even at dawn, into the rabbit warrens where they lived and fornicated, down endless ramshackle open corridors teetering above the littered courtyards alive with scrawny squawking chickens, past room after doorless room, one with an Indian mother vacantly suckling an infant, another with a pipe-smoking toothless grandfather opening a mango with fingers gnarled like roots, a third and fourth with a nude couple snoring as they slept or scratching themselves as they quarreled above a wailing phonograph, until finally you reached the girl’s own room, her very own because she earned it by flinging herself down on her back on the pallet, yanking her print dress up over her naked belly and giggling as she beckoned to you with her brown hand. Yes, they were all too human, but if they complimented you on your manliness, they could give you no faith in your personal charm.

For that we had turned to the B-girls. The Americans resident in the Zone had promptly discovered, as such people always know such things, that Tommy and I were not even candidate members of the colony but were only transients, and therefore they protected their daughters from us, with perfect justification, as if they knew that our motives were the worst. Those waxen-looking girls living lonesomely in the tropics—of whom we were told by a bartender (citing no authority) that they were pale because they menstruated twice a month—were as unappealing to us adventures as, say, pygmy women to explorers on safari. They were safer than they knew.

And so we had taken up the game of trying to conquer Latin night-club hostesses who, although they were hired to please, had
no slightest intention of allowing themselves to be conquered, no matter how much money, energy and charm you invested in them. Practiced in capturing your interest on the dance floor or at the little tables across which they leaned to display their shadowed charms, they sensed precisely how many drinks of colored water they could con you into buying them, at a dollar a shot, before your patience or your funds ran out, or before the last floor show faded away late in the night. These professional persuaders were more firmly determined to avoid genuine intimacy, we had learned at some cost, than the most carefully nurtured Yankee maidens. But the more we—unlike the tourist suckers—knew of their determination, the more we were tempted to overcome it, not by buying them but by winning them. That was why Tommy understood at once what rules I was proposing for the old game we had tacitly agreed to play in new surroundings.

When the train pulled in, we strolled about and had a leisurely dinner. Before it was fairly dark we were pub-crawling.

I cannot recall anything about the first places we went to. One drink at each sufficed to convince us that they were no different from those of Panama City. The one we finally settled at, though, remains fixed in my mind, because it was there that I encountered Isabel.

When we drifted in the band was just finishing “Begin the Beguine,” behind a horribly grinning, lacquered male singer. As we pushed through to a ringside table they went into a fanfare, not for us but for an American stripper introduced by the singer as Pepper Mint, or something of the sort. The lights went down and the girl came out bathed in a green spot, and began to glide sinuously before us, the horizontal bands of cigarette smoke shifting in the poor light as she disturbed them with her weaving arms, hips, and legs.

She was extraordinarily good, gifted at what she was being paid to convey. In a few moments she had wriggled down to nakedness, or to very little more than high-heeled pumps. Her body was magnificent, and it was most disturbing to have that greenish torso twisting and flexing before us within arm’s reach. Tommy was breathing so hard as she skidded offstage, her dimpled buttocks winking farewell, that he could not find his voice to dismiss
the two B-girls who sidled up and slid into the empty chairs at our table.

“You like to buy us a drink, yes?”

I shrugged. “One round. We’re not rich tourists.”

The blond one, who had seated herself at my side, laughed unaffectedly. “Was too much for you, the dancer?”

“Not for me,” I protested, and sat up to examine her. She was a grinning, self-confident woman in her late twenties. Her dyed hair went well with a creamy skin the color of light coffee. She had slim, quick fingers that flicked and snapped like her eyes when she spoke, and teeth that showed irregular but very white when she smiled her oddly reckless smile.

“Isabel. I call you Toby, you look like a cat with those fat cheeks, okay?”

She had me. She was an impudent one, and maybe it was because of that that I was challenged into making her see me, and admire me, not just as a source of revenue but as a man.

Once the floor show was over we started to talk. My Spanish was impossible; her English was like a movie Mexican’s, good for a million laughs. Between laughs, and drinks, I learned that she was in fact a Mexican, or so she said, from some hopeless village near Veracruz, where she had waited on tables and earned just enough, entertaining sailors in waterfront bars, to keep from prostitution. She had beaten her way down to Panama for reasons as vaguely stated as mine, but her safari must have involved a nerve that I wasn’t even sure I possessed. Now she was selling not exactly her body but her sensuality and her whimsical appeal.

In fact, in precise proportion to the degree that she charmed me, I wanted to charm her, to impress her, to make her like me. Tommy, stimulated no doubt by the luscious memory of the stripper, was more concerned simply with making out with Luisa, a chunky and matter-of-fact woman who could be gay, as she was paid to be, only by some effort of will.

The catch, though, was that in order for Tommy to make out, he had to be charming; and in order for me to be sure that I was really a charmer, I had to make out.

So Tommy allowed Luisa to make admiring sounds as she felt his biceps, and bought her more drinks. And I, good old Toby,
bought Isabel more drinks too. The more we drank, the later it got, the more Tommy and I had invested in our endeavor. Isabel and I did not dance even once, although we had the opportunity all evening long on that crowded dance floor to press the lengths of our bodies against each other.

Why didn’t we? I didn’t want anything so easy, I didn’t want to be paid in installments, and as I looked over Isabel’s shoulder, sliding so warm and brown within her semitransparent white blouse in time to the band’s rhythm, and watched Tommy grappling doggedly with hefty Luisa, dragging her like a sack of maize across the floor already cluttered with sailors and their B-girls, I knew, as though it were written out for me like the printed prophecy that pops out at you from a penny scale, that Tommy would get nowhere, while I—well, I had a chance.

“It’s getting late,” I said to Isabel. Then, smiling with all my heart: “Let’s be serious. You know what I want. I want to go home with you tonight.”

“Toby, you sweet, you can’t do that.” She shook her head solemnly, but softened the refusal by showing me her white, white teeth.

“Don’t read me the rules.” I reached out for her forearm and took it tightly in my hand. It was almost the first time I’d touched her; I felt a shock of pleasure and was warmed to see her face turn grave. She knew that she could not just put me off. Gripping her arm until I could feel her pulse, I said, “I’m not buying any more fake drinks unless you tell me yes. I don’t want to buy you, I like you too much, you savvy? I want you to like me that way.”

“I do.” Her tone was absolutely unfeigned. Even the fact that she didn’t look at me, but sat with lowered lids, gazing thoughtfully at my fingers on her arm, convinced me. Then, as if coming to a decision, she glanced around, checking on the waiter, who was busy at another table, checking on the
patron
, who was bawling out a bartender at the register, and finally fixed her brilliant liquid eyes on me. “You can’t go with me—but maybe I can go with you.”

“Don’t say maybe. Say for sure.”

“All right, I say sure, if you buy us a room. But don’t tell your friend.”

I was happy to promise. I even bought the next round, although it was Tommy’s turn. We were both close to being drunk, and closer to being broke, and we arose with exaggerated politeness as the girls went off together to the john. It was late, the crowd had thinned out, and the drummer saluted our gallantry with a ruffle and a spinning of one of his sticks high in the air, grinning and showing us his gold teeth as he caught it.

“Salud!”
Tommy called out, raising his drink. But to me he said, “The women are fixing to dump us.”

“How do you know?”

“Luisa’s got a bicycle parked out back. She and Isabel come to work on it, with Isabel sitting on the back fender.”

“So?”

“They got to go home the same way.”

I had to laugh. “Listen, pal,” I said, “if I get Isabel out the front door, you think you can cope with Luisa and her two-wheeler? You think you can cope?”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Tommy replied with dignity. “I’m going to give it the old college try.”

The girls were already on their way back to the table. I said hastily, “Here’s luck. And check your wallet for the train ticket—it’s a long walk back.”

We made it very clear to the waiter that our spending was over. The
patron
had no cause for complaint; he looked up from counting dollars and balboas and even mustered a greasy goodnight smile as his girls checked out. A couple of cabs were drowsing at the curb, and I hustled Isabel into the nearest one before she could change her mind. Laughing and squirming, she twisted about so that she could blow a farewell kiss to Luisa through the back window.

I had my hand on the bony shoulder of the sleepy Negro hackie, but I hesitated before pressing him on, in order that I might get one last glimpse of Tommy and Luisa. I was rewarded. While we craned our necks, Luisa emerged from the shadows of the alleyway next to the night club, whose neon sign had just been cut off. As she pushed her bike to the sidewalk, she was evidently arguing with Tommy, whose head was shrinking down like a bull’s to protect him from the rain, which was starting to
patter, then to bounce off the ground. She thrust her chunky body forward, climbed aboard and began to pedal off, with Tommy trotting along beside her.

Isabel was laughing, softly at first, and then wildly, her head back against the upholstery, her breasts shaking as she clapped her hands.
“La lluvia,”
she gasped, “the rain!”

“What about it?”

“The more it rain, the faster she go. The faster she go, the harder he run. You know something, Toby? He never gonna catch her.”

“I never thought he would.” I was torn between guilt and gloating. “Never mind them. Where should we—”

Isabel gazed at me sweetly. “I know nice hotel. Brand-new.”

“I can hardly wait.”

“But we got to stop first. Not too far. I got a girl friend—”

“Another one?”

“You silly! I meet her sometime after work. Poor. No money. In the rain …” She looked at me pleadingly.

“You’re breaking my heart.” There was nothing I could do. Besides, I was curious. “What are we going to do with her?”

“Maybe we get a sanvich.”

“It can’t be anything more than that. I blew all my dough on your phony drinks.”

“No-no, you’ll see.” She leaned forward and shot a stream of Spanish at the driver, who nodded drowsily, threw the car into gear, and released the clutch with a jerk.

We were pitched against each other. At last. Breathing in her fragrance, a mixture of some cheap lilac perfume and the friendly odor of her warm body, I pressed her to me. She smiled luxuriously and murmured something I did not catch.

“You do like me?” I asked. “Really like me?”

For answer she raised her hand and ran her fingers through my hair. She was a little weary, not so eager as I, and five or six years older, maybe more; but her answer was yes, of that I was convinced. Reassured, I bent to kiss her lips.