Slap Your Sides (7 page)

T
hat afternoon Natalia took Tommy and me for a walk around Greenwich Village. When we got to Bedford Street, she said she was going to show us the narrowest house in New York City, built in 1873.

We stopped at 75
¹
/2, and she said, “A famous poet named Edna St. Vincent Millay lived here.”

“‘World, I cannot hold thee near enough,'” I said.

Natalia said, “Close, Jubal. It's ‘O world, I cannot hold thee close enough.' How come you know that poem?”

“Someone I know knows it.”

“Darie Daniel, his girlfriend,” Tommy said.

“She doesn't know she's my girlfriend,” I said.

“Maybe you ought to tell her.”

“You're a fine one to talk, Natalia,” I said.

Tommy said, “I remember a Millay poem we studied when I went to Friends school. It was called ‘Conscientious Objector.' ‘I shall die, but that is all I shall do for Death.'”

“Another line goes, ‘I am not on his payroll,'” Natalia said. “She wasn't talking about this war, though.”

“How do you know?” Tommy asked.

“Because I know. She hates the Nazis! Have you ever
heard of a village in Czechoslovakia called Lidice?”

Tommy shook his head.

“Of course not! Our schools don't teach one damn thing about what's happening to the Jews!” She sounded like Aunt Lizzie.

“What happened in Lidice?” Tommy asked her.

“The Nazis killed every single man and fifty-two women—the rest were shipped off to concentration camps!”

“I didn't know that,” Tommy said.

“How could you? That's why the Writers' War Board asked Edna St. Vincent Millay to write a poem about it. It's called ‘The Murder of Lidice.' I know because one of our tenants is on that board. We were invited to a reading of the poem.” Natalia never looked at Tommy when she talked to him. Every time Tommy looked at her, she got red. She hadn't lost any weight since Christmas, but she seemed more grown up. She'd stopped saying “Damnation!” and she hadn't yet told me one dirty joke.

When we reached Sheridan Square, she said, “I know something your girlfriend would like, Jubal.”

She led us into a drugstore that sold handmade greeting cards. There was one with a picture of the house on Bedford Street.

“Send her this,” Natalia said.

I turned it over. It had a quote from one of Millay's poems.

You can say that again, I thought. I would have sent it to Daria if it hadn't had that verse on it. But I shelled out two cents for it anyway. It would be a good souvenir of the trip.

When we arrived back at 57 Charles Street, we could hear from the hall a discussion between Lizzie and Mike, not meant for our ears.

“Why did she ever marry him, anyway?” Mike was saying. “She could have done a lot better than that.”

“I might have married him myself. You should have seen Efram back in those days!”

“Thanks a lot, sweetheart! What was I? Chopped liver?”

“You were my mental giant, darling. If you marry a mental giant, your marriage has a better chance of lasting than if you marry Handsome Harry.”

“Their marriage isn't in trouble because of Efram. It's Bud.”

Natalia shouted, “Hello! We're home and we can hear you!”

“I'm not saying anything I wouldn't say to Bud's face,” Mike said as we walked into the living room. Shakespeare's blue eyes narrowed, and his black tail flagged. He leaped from Mike's lap and ran off with his ruff up.

“But tonight is not the night to say
anything
to Bud's face! It's my sister's birthday,” Lizzie said.

I changed the subject. “We saw the Millay house.”

“I bet that gave you a thrill,” Mike said. His paintings were all around the room. Lizzie called him a “social realist.” He painted coal miners with blackened faces and red eyes, tenement life, factory workers, all grim scenes.

Dad said Mike was a card-carrying Communist, that he could afford to be because he'd come from a rich family. The town house Dad had led me to believe would be filled with loose living was a disappointment that way. It was red brick, well kept, its brass railing and door-knobs gleaming. Whoever else was in residence there didn't show themselves or make noise.

 

Before we went out that night, Tommy showed me what Bud wanted him to illustrate.

 

THE POWER OF WORDS

Mental illness seems to be a disgrace when we describe it with the old ignorant words. Why not use “patient” instead of “inmate”? How about “mental hospital” instead of “insane asylum”? Over 600,000 Americans are now hospitalized because of mental illness. Most of them are receiving pitifully inadequate treatment and care. We can start to change things by changing our vocabulary when we speak of them.

 

“What can you draw to go with that?” I asked Tommy.

“Maybe a bird flying.”

“Or a flock of them.”

“Something changing,” Tommy said. “What's changing?”

“Draw Dad.”

“Jubal, the Comedian,” Tommy said.

“We're going to hear a lot of longhair music,” Bud leaned down to say to me, “so prepare yourself.”

“I like
this
opera,” I said. “It's Mozart's
Don Giovanni
.”

“Good for you, little brother.”

I could almost hear Daria's voice singing out:
Calma, calma il tuo tormento.

Asti was in the Village, on East 12th Street. We'd walked to it from Mike and Lizzie's, on Charles Street. Daria would have thought she'd died and gone to heaven there. It was filled with the sounds of opera. While you ate dinner, everyone sang around you: waiters serving you, bartenders, other customers; even Mike let go during
Aïda.

The first thing I noticed was that there weren't a lot of servicemen there. I could see only two sailors at one big table, and an Army lieutenant at another. I was glad of that. I wondered if Bud ever paid attention to things like that when he was away from the hospital, if he was
ever uncomfortable in places where there were a lot of men in uniform.

He hadn't worn the old coat he'd had on that afternoon. He wore a tweed jacket with a flannel shirt and knit tie. He had a fresh haircut and shave he said he got free at a barbers' school on the Bowery. I heard Mike mutter, “Trust
you
to take a free ride,” but Bud didn't hear him.

Lizzie looked more glamorous than ever with her blond hair wrapped behind her head, a black dress cut low, a string of pearls around her neck. And Lizzie had talked my mother into accepting one of her suits, a black silk that looked great with this white silk blouse that Lizzie said was a present from Einstein, Marx, and Shakespeare. I was glad Dad wasn't there to throw his hands up at that idea.

Bud had been right: Mike had the right restaurant. Although Natalia had glommed onto Tommy on the walk there, and then sat beside him at the big round table we occupied, Tommy didn't have to talk much. Everyone was singing. Bud was forking down spaghetti like someone straight off a desert island, grabbing the Chianti bottle by the neck now and again to offer some to everyone, drinking faster than any of the others. I'd never seen Bud drink anything but an occasional beer. And neither Bud nor Tommy smoked in front of Mom.

Both Mike and Lizzie were trying not to react to Bud. The few digs at Bud that Mike made weren't loud enough for Bud to hear. And Mike liked to sing, too.

After a few hours waiters carried in a huge cake singing “Happy Birthday, Dear Winnie,” and champagne corks popped.

Mike tried to get Mom to have a glass of champagne, but she wanted “just ginger ale, thank you.” Lizzie reminded her how Dad always said when in Rome do as the Romans do. Mom might just as well have been in Rome for all the familiarity she had with a New York City restaurant. She looked smaller, somehow, and a little lost. Lizzie's toast to Mom was too long and too mushy.

I was allowed one glass of champagne, which I gulped down. I wanted Natalia to stand back-to-back with me, to see if I wasn't finally as tall as she was, or taller.

“Not now.” Bud stopped me from getting up with his hand on my wrist.

“Bud, how's Hope?” Lizzie asked.

“She's okay. You'll see. She works too hard, and there aren't enough recipes that use beans. That's what she's got the most of down there. They have beans for every meal.”

I was expecting some sarcasm from Mike about hungry G.I.'s somewhere who'd give their eyeteeth for beans, but he was busy singing something from
Carmen
along with the others.

When Tommy went to the men's, I followed him in and said, “I
know
I'm taller than Natalia now. I'm as tall as Daria, too!”

“I know you've got a buzz on,” Tommy said.

“Me? On one glass of champagne.”

“Yeah, you, little brother.”

“I'd like it if you and Bud wouldn't call me that anymore.”

“Okay.”

“Are you making the announcement tonight about going 1AO?”

“No, and don't you.”

“Why? Uncle Mike and Aunt Lizzie will be glad to hear it.”

“That's why. I don't care what they'd be glad to hear. I'm not going to put Bud in a bad light, as though I made a great decision and he didn't.”

I said, “But you believe he really
didn't
, don't you, Tommy?”

“You're tight, Jubal. Let's talk about it tomorrow.”

“Tight.”
I scoffed at the idea. “On one teensy tiny glass of the bubbly?” We walked out.

There was a woman photographer going from table to table, wanting to sell pictures she'd take of guests.

“Over here!” Mike shouted at her. He behaved like a big shot, tipping her five dollars, ordering copies for everyone at the table.

I was missing Daria. I couldn't wait to ask her if she knew that Edna St. Vincent Millay had written a poem called “Conscientious Objector.” If she didn't, I doubted that I'd tell her it wasn't about
this
war.

I wished she could just meet Bud. Maybe she'd be able to understand why he chose to be a CO. He looked
so happy that night, grinning, his blue eyes flashing. I think he was glad to be with family, despite all our differences: We
were
family, and we were together having a good time.

Bud nudged me and said, “If you're not going to eat the rest of your cake, I'll eat it.”

“Okay. Pour me a little champagne, please.”

“Don't get me in trouble, little brother. You've had enough.”

“What I've had enough of is being called little brother.”

Bud laughed as he reached for my plate. “Good boy! Speak up for yourself, Jubal! Always! I thought it was an affectionate moniker. I didn't know you didn't like it.” He slung his arm around my shoulder. “Jubal, I won't call you that ever again.”

“Hear that, Mom?” I said. “Bud's never going to call me little brother ever again.”

There was a hush in the restaurant as a woman in a red gown stood and sang. Bud said her name, and said she was a famous opera star.

She was singing
“Un Bel Di”
from
Madama Butterfly.
Daria sometimes sang it. She said she was singing “someday he'll come.”

I decided to whisper what I'd tried to tell Mom. “Hey, Mom, Bud's never going to call me little—” Then I looked at her, and I couldn't finish the sentence.

Mom was sitting there with tears streaming down
her face, like the man I'd seen at the soup kitchen that afternoon.

I remembered Bud saying some people had a sadness, and I wondered if Mom's was about Dad.

I
tried to explain to Daria what a Broadway musical was like, but there was no way I could do the experience justice. Even Hope jumped to her feet with most everyone in the audience, to applaud at the end of
Oklahoma!

It was Aunt Lizzie's treat. She'd purposely picked out something that didn't have anything in it about the war, or the Jews, or
anything
remotely controversial. Hope had come up from Virginia. She and Bud stayed down at the Dorothy Day shelter.

“In the same room?” Daria asked.

“Probably. They're practically married.”

“But they're
not.
”

“No, they're not.”

“Why not?” Daria said.

I told her what Bud had told Tommy and me: that there was no way to know how long the war would last, and that if Hope ever wanted to get another job, it would make it harder for her if she was married to a CO. And even if they ignored that and got married anyway, it wouldn't be easy to find a place to live together. Nearly all tourist homes near CPS camps didn't welcome guests who had anything to do with the camps. Some even put up signs saying so. It was the same with landlords who
had apartments or rooms to rent, not that Bud and Hope could afford either thing.

“Why didn't you send me a card?” Daria teased. If she hadn't said that, I might never have told her I had one for her, with me.

I pulled it out of the inside pocket of my jacket and handed it to her.

She studied it awhile, then grinned and said, “Oh, Jubal! Did you go to Edna St. Vincent Millay's house?”

“Sure. My cousin took us,” I said. “Did you know Millay wrote a poem called ‘Conscientious Objector'? It's against war.”

“That's not about this war!” Daria said the same thing Natalia had said. “This war is different!” She took the card from me and said, “I'll put this in my Bible. I'll always save it. Those lines are from one of my favorite Millay sonnets! I'll bet you didn't send it because those two lines were on it, and they were too sentimental.”

She'd made my ears red. I could feel how hot they were. I mumbled something about not wanting to spend the penny for postage.

We were on the one-thirty bus to Doylestown. Daria was wearing a green sweater that matched her eyes. I loved her hands with the long fingers she kept manicured but didn't color. The only makeup I didn't like girls wearing was nail polish. Mom never wore makeup or jewelry and used to shake her head at anyone who did. She'd softened some the past few years. She wasn't as strict. Last Christmas I'd heard her tell
Lizzie she could get used to Lizzie wearing the bright-red lipstick, but not the mascara and eyeliner, and
not
the nail polish.

Daria opened her pocketbook and took out a letter.

“Since you thought of me while you were in New York, I'll show you something that made me think of you.”

It was V-mail, with an APO return address and the name Sgt. Daniel Daniel Jr.

She said, “Before you read it, I want you to know my father thinks it's because of battle fatigue, and I think so, too.”

“Okay…can I read it now?”

She nodded.

It was written on onion-skin airmail paper.

I handed it back to her.

“Do you think it sounds like battle fatigue?” she asked me.

“I think it sounds like the truth,” I said.

“You
would
say that…. It's strange, because Dean complained about the saltwater showers he took aboard ship and then about the wormy rice and Spam wherever he is now, but it's ordinary griping, you know? He loves being a Marine!”

“He hasn't been one as long as Danny has.”

“That's what Daddy said. Danny has battle fatigue.”

“Why couldn't it just be that he hates it, that's it's horrible?”

“Jubal, you know Danny. He wouldn't complain like that if there wasn't something wrong. He's a real Marine!”

“The something that's wrong is the
killing
, Daria. He makes that clear enough.”

“I knew I shouldn't show it to you.”

“I'm not going to say any more about it. Okay?”

“Don't tell
anyone
either. Please?”

“I won't.”

“My father didn't even want it to leave our house!”

She put the postcard and the V-mail back into her pocketbook.

“Thanks for showing it to me,” I said.

“Do you know why I did?” She didn't wait for my answer. “I showed it to you because the one thing I don't like about you is the way you defend Bud.”

I looked at her, amazed. “Did you think that letter would change my mind?”

“I think it's not fair for Danny to have to go through that when certain others get out of it…when certain others won't even volunteer to be medics!”

“We've talked about this before. I'm not going to argue with you.”

I could have. Something had been happening to me since I'd been to New York. Maybe seeing how Bud chose to live his life made me want mine to count for something. I'd also been reading back copies of
The Catholic Worker
, a pacifist newspaper published by Dorothy Day, and some pamphlets Bud had given me. I knew for sure now that when it came my turn, I wanted to witness. Bud had said not to choose 4E just because he had. Either I wouldn't stick with it, or else I'd be miserable. But I'd begun to believe it was the only way I
could
register for the draft and have any respect for myself. The more I prayed about it, the surer I was.

On the train ride home from New York I kept thinking how excited Bud was about his work at Shenandoah. It didn't even seem to bother him that
although he received a salary as a hospital attendant, it was automatically forwarded to the federal government. He didn't see a nickel of it.
That
would bother
me
. But Bud was full of praise for the new superintendent. There were plans afoot for a front-yard sign that said “Hospital,” not “Asylum.” This new man wanted all the attendants to call patients Mr. or Mrs. or Miss as a start to restoring their dignity. No more meals on the floor with drinks from the hose.

 

After Daria's voice lesson I rode Baby Boy and she rode Quinn. We went up into the Chester Hills. It was a warm May afternoon with the sun shining down on us.

When we reached Chester Park, the highest point, we got off our horses to take in the view.

“I don't mean to be hard on you, Jubal,” she said. “I shouldn't hold you responsible for what Bud does.”

“It's all right,” I said. “I'm proud of what he's doing.”

She let that go by. “I never had a knack for making friends. I was always with Danny or Dean. By the time they went off to war, it was too late.” She turned and smiled. “You're my best friend.”

“I guess you're
my
best friend, too.”

“You
guess
? Do you have a lot of friends at school?”

“I think of you sometimes as more than a friend.”

Hot face again; I wished I could quit that!

Daria didn't say anything, so I said, “Don't worry, I'm not planning to spoil things with a big pronouncement of any kind.”

She gave me one of her slanted smiles. “If you want to kiss me, come to the Catholic Armed Forces Day next Saturday. I'm in the Kissing Booth. Ten cents a kiss, Jubal.”

“No thanks.”

“Because the money goes to the war?”

“Not only that. When I kiss someone, I want her to want it as much as I do.”

She smiled up at me. “‘Come slowly—Eden!'”

“What does that mean?”

“‘Come slowly—Eden!…As the fainting bee—Reaching late his flower, Round her chamber hums.' It was written by this old maid who wrote poetry I could swoon over. She was a recluse who never left her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. I guess she took life
too
slowly.”

“What poet is that?”

“Emily Dickinson,” said Daria.

“I don't read a lot of poetry,” I said.

“You don't read
any
.” She gave my sleeve a tug. “You should, too. Don't you want to be civilized?”

“Who do I start with? Are there any good male poets?”

She hit her forehead with her palm and groaned. She said, “Did you ever hear of William Shakespeare?”

“To be or not to be,” I said. “That is the
quest tee own
.”

She continued, “William Butler Yeats? William Wordsworth? Robert Browning, John Greenleaf—”

“I know! I know! I was just kidding!”

“You weren't kidding.” She walked back to Quinn chuckling and muttering to herself,
“Are there any good male poets!”

We headed back down the hill. In the shallows, where the cattails grew, a red-winged blackbird flashed by. We came to the stretch of newly plowed, rich, red-brown fields that ran for miles before we'd reach the paddock. She let Quinn go. I saw her long brown hair blowing in the wind. I couldn't catch them. That seemed to be the problem: I couldn't catch her.