Nobody's Family is Going to Change (18 page)

Oh, God, thought Emma, it's choke-up time. Now we're going to hear how sad his life was and how wonderful ours is and how wonderful he is as a father.

“The money he earned went to feed himself and his younger brother. His father appeared every now and then and stole whatever this boy could manage to save after the room rent and some food. This man standing before you went to the library every day and he read. This man made straight A's in school. He graduated from high school. This man worked while he went through City College, while he went through law school. This man has worked every day of his life since he was nine years old. This man was spit on every day of his life in one way or the other for being black.” Mr. Sheridan seemed to lose control of himself. He sputtered. “I was treated like an animal.” The words seemed to rip from his mouth, hurting him as they came through. “What you can't understand, you two kids who have always been clean and fed, is that I
felt
like an animal.”

Emma's sympathy careened toward her father. She had felt like an animal, sometimes at school like a strange animal and always, upon looking in the mirror, like a fat animal. She had never thought of her father as
feeling
anything and she searched his face for signs of more.

She watched him shake himself and get control. He resumed his speech.

“This man meets and rescues, yes, rescues, this woman, your mother, from a life of hardship and pain, heart-break and sorrow because she was the daughter of a”—he sneered the word, looking straight at Willie—“dancer. This so-called dancer was a man who didn't want to work for a living. I supported this so-called dancer for the rest of his life, until he died a broken-down drunk.” He paused to let this sink in.

“This man you see in front of you is now in middle age. This man fought to get his brother out of a slum, this man fought to rescue his wife from insecurity, this man is fighting today to keep all three of you living here in a clean place, going to private schools, wearing nice clothes, having a nice warm home to come back to at night with a good hot meal at the end of the day.” He stopped and looked at them all.

“This man is not going to stop doing this. This man is not going to let anyone else stop him from doing this.” He pointed to Willie. “This boy is going to continue to go to school, to come home to a nice home, to grow up straight with nobody laughing at him and calling him names. He will go to college. He will have a profession which is worthy of the name ‘profession.' Nobody is going to stop me from seeing that this boy gets what he deserves in this world.” He stopped and looked at Willie a long time.

“Son,” he said finally. “We do not understand each other
very well at this moment, but in the future I know that will change. I want you to listen to what I have to tell you now.”

Willie's eyes were huge. Mr. Sheridan regarded him steadily.

“You will do what I say now, even though you don't agree with it and even though you don't understand it, because you will have faith that I can see further into your future than you can. You will continue to go to school and you will stop all this ridiculous talk about musicals. I will straighten out this situation you've gotten yourself into. By tomorrow it will be all over. There is to be no recurrence of this, do you understand?”

Willie stared, his mouth hanging open. Mr. Sheridan turned and walked heavily out of the room.

Swell, thought Emma. She had a vision of her father wearing the headdress of a gypsy fortune-teller and looking further into their futures than they could, into Willie's future, anyway. He hadn't mentioned any future for her. She didn't have a future.

“Don't feel too badly, Willie,” purred Mrs. Sheridan.

Looking at Willie, Emma could see that it was not a question of feeling badly. It was not a question of feeling at all. Willie was totally defeated. He was a limp doll. He didn't sit in the chair, he hung in it, his head rolled to one side as though he didn't have the strength or the amount of caring it took to hold it up. He looked as though he would never care about anything in the whole world again.

“You mustn't be so sad about it,” Mrs. Sheridan went
on. “You'll understand when you're older, and perhaps not that much older either. Perhaps when you're fifteen or sixteen you'll be old enough and your father will feel differently, it's not as though this were the only job in a musical you'll ever be offered.”

Something about this last remark created a change in Willie. He sat up straight. “I'm going to do it,” he said. He stood up. “I don't care what you say, I'm going to do it!”

He ran toward the front door. Mrs. Sheridan gasped. He ran out into the hall.

Only Emma realized what was happening. She ran after him. She grabbed him just as the elevator door was opening.

“Oh, no, you don't,” she said, holding him as he struggled.

“Leggo me! I got to go! I got to get out of here!” Willie was yelling. Emma dragged him back toward the apartment. Mrs. Sheridan was coming down the hall.

Willie was hysterical, screaming and crying at the top of his lungs. “Leggo! Leggo! You all hate me. Nobody cares what happens to me! I got to do it myself! Leggo me,
let go,
Emma!”

Mr. Sheridan appeared in the doorway. Emma was almost up to the door, dragging Willie.

“Give him to me,” said Mr. Sheridan.

“No, Emma, don't let him!” Willie was a mess, bawling, crying, and drooling.

Mr. Sheridan pulled Emma's arms away and picked Willie up like a handkerchief. He was back inside the apartment before Emma or Mrs. Sheridan moved.

Emma ran back into the apartment. Mrs. Sheridan followed and closed the door.

Willie was still screaming. He was furious and miserable, punching out at his father's face as his father held him at arm's length.

“You bastid!” Willie shouted. “You don't understand anything. You never think about nobody but yourself. I'll kill you!”

Mrs. Sheridan looked terrified. Mr. Sheridan looked angry and puzzled at the same time. He still held Willie away from him, as one would hold an angry alley cat determined to scratch.

Willie landed his fist next to Mr. Sheridan's nose. Mr. Sheridan said, “You're hysterical,” and gave Willie a slap across the face.

Willie dissolved into a bath of tears.

“Stop that!” yelled Emma. “Stop hitting him! You can go to jail for that, and besides, he's right. You never think about anybody else.” God knows, you don't think about me, she thought. God knows.

Willie fell down into a little pile next to the couch. “You never think about anybody, but just how you think they should live. You don't even know us! You don't know what we think!” Emma was livid. She didn't even know what she was saying, she was so angry.

Mr. Sheridan was looking at her in surprise.

“You just stand up here and tell us what your life was like! Who cares? You don't care what our lives are like!”

“Emma! Stop it,” Mrs. Sheridan said anxiously. “You don't know what you're saying!”

“I do too know what I'm saying! And as for you, what are you but a fink? You go right along with whatever he says, and you think everything he does is wonderful, even all his dumb talking about what kind of hard time he had as a kid. What about the hard time we have? Just because we aren't starving doesn't mean everything is great. That's what
he
thinks. We get a nice hot meal at night. Is that it? Is that all we get? Is that all life is about?”

“When you don't have it,” said Mr. Sheridan steadily, “you're damned right, that's what life is all about. You're so fat and spoiled you wouldn't know what life is about if it came up and hit you in the face!”

The word
fat
went through Emma like an ice pick. “Spoiled! That's a word you made up to make yourself feel better. What am I spoiled for? You mean because I don't think you're wonderful, because I don't wallow all over the floor after your stupid speech about your life and say, ‘Daddy, Daddy, you're wonderful.' Well, you know why, don't you? Because I've heard that damn speech five thousand times, and I'm sick of hearing it.”

“Shut up,” said Mr. Sheridan.

Emma couldn't believe the hatred she saw in his eyes. He's looking at me like that, she said to herself, that hate is for me.

Her knees began to shake and all courage deserted her. “It doesn't make any difference anyway, your speech, because
what has that got to do with us? You never even look at us!” She tried, but her voice shook and she knew she was finished. She knew the look of hatred would be forever in her mind, that nothing would ever take it away. She knew that it was all proven now, all the thoughts she'd had, all the guesses she had guessed about his hating her. It was true. He hated her.

“Shut up and go to your room,” he said, his eyes the same.

“Don't leave, Emma!” screamed Willie. “Don't leave me here!”

“I'm not going to leave my brother,” said Emma, looking at her father with the same hatred he'd given her.

A memory came over Emma, suddenly, of her father the way he had been before Willie was born. In those days he had taken her downtown with him, sometimes, way downtown to his office. He'd held her up to let her look out the big windows at the people, small as toys, and at the boats on the river. That was before he talked about nothing but
my boy
this and
my boy
that, after Willie was born.

“I don't know what's wrong with you, little girl,” her father said heavily, “but you got a lot of problems. Look at her,” he said to Mrs. Sheridan. “Look at the way she's looking at me.”

Emma turned her back on him.

Willie thought she was leaving. “Emma!” he screamed.

She stood there with her back to her parents. “I'm not going anywhere. Come to my room with me.”

Willie scrambled toward her across the floor.

“Hold it,” said Mr. Sheridan. “This family is going to talk. We are going to sit right down here in this room and I don't care if it takes all night. We are going to understand what is going on here.”

“I'll tell you what's going on,” said Willie, clinging to Emma's leg, “you being a bastid, that's what's going on.”

“Stop using that word, right now!” said Mrs. Sheridan.

“Mama, go make me a pot of coffee, will you, and see if there's some ice cream in there for the kids.” Mr. Sheridan spoke gently to his wife. She hurried to the kitchen.

He sat back on the couch and put his legs up on the footstool. He looked tired. He examined the ceiling thoughtfully, then brought his gaze down slowly, very slowly, until it fastened on Willie and Emma. They watched.

“You kids sit down over there.”

“Willie,” said Emma, “you don't have to answer anything and you have the right to have a lawyer present.”

Mrs. Sheridan came back in. “I put the coffee on.” She handed a dish of ice cream to each child.

“Now that you've informed Willie of his rights,” said Mr. Sheridan to Emma, “I want to remind you that I am not arresting him. I want all four of us to sit down here and have a conversation, that's all.”

Emma and Willie ate ice cream, saying nothing, not looking at him.

“You sit down too,” he said to Mrs. Sheridan.

“Now,” he said, unbuttoning his vest, “this family seems to have quite a few misunderstandings going on here.”

Quite a word to describe hatred, thought Emma. I know hatred when I see it, and nothing he's going to say is going to make any difference.

“First of all, I gather I've been boring Emma with stories of my life.”

“Oh, she didn't mean that!” said Mrs. Sheridan.

“Oh, yes, she did.”

I'll give him that, thought Emma, he's right on that one.

“She meant it. She doesn't like hearing that her father had a hard life.”

Willie and Emma sat eating dutifully, looking down into their bowls.

“Second, she thinks her life is just as hard, maybe even harder, right, Emma?”

Emma didn't answer, didn't look up.

“And I gather my son here thinks I'm ruining his life.”

Willie said nothing, just kept eating ice cream.

He doesn't even
like
ice cream, thought Emma. He's just doing that to have something to do so he won't have to look at Dad. I told him to keep his mouth shut and he is.

She took courage from this. She decided to keep her mouth shut too. What would their father do confronted by silence? What could he do?

Unless he puts us on a rack, she thought, and tears out our toenails, there's no way he can make us talk. She decided to let him rave on.

“I gather,” he continued, “that I am regarded, by this family, as the worst excuse for a father the world has ever seen.”

Emma recognized, and noted, the lawyer's technique of exaggeration.

“I gather that you two, at least, would like to have nothing more to do with this poor excuse for a father.”

Emma realized what he was doing. He wanted to be corrected. He wanted somebody to jump up and say, “Oh, no, Daddy, we love you.”

“Oh, no, dear,” said Mrs. Sheridan, “I don't think they mean that at all.”

There she goes, the jack-in-the-box. Emma watched her mother with contempt. How could she fall for such a stupid thing? How could she constantly reassure this man that he was an okay person, when he wasn't, he wasn't at all. He didn't know what he was talking about half the time, yet up she'd pop, still agreeing with him. Could it be that she was dumb?

She'd never thought about this. She'd never thought about either of her parents being dumb or smart, but just there in some way, like the sun was there, or a rock, or the sky. Her father couldn't be that dumb, she reasoned, because he was a lawyer. But what about her mother?