Sons (49 page)

“I’d come to your house and break down the door.”

“But I wouldn’t let you in.”

“If I’d already broken down the door...”

“Yes, but I’d call the police.”

“And get me sent to jail?”

“Why should I care? If you don’t love me...”

“I love to touch you,” I said. “Mmmm, where are those sweet buttons?”

“Will, please”

“I’m sorry.”

“You make me feel very cheap sometimes.”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“You’re... you’re the first person I’ve ever done this with, you know, I’m not some... some damn old prostitute you picked up on Eighth Avenue.”

“I know you’re not.”

“I’m only seventeen.”

“I know.”

“You might try remembering that.”

“I will.”

“The same age as Juliet.”

“Juliet Schwartz?”

“Sure, Juliet Schwartz.”

“Now
what are you going to do? Start crying?”

“Over you? Fat chance,” she said, and burst into tears.

“Juliet was only fourteen,” I said, and handed her a corner of the sheet. “Here. And besides, you’ll be eighteen next month.”

“That makes me some kind of hag, I guess.”

“No, it makes you a beautiful young lady.”

“Yeah, crap,” she said, and wiped her eyes on the sheet, and then reached for my khaki handkerchief on the night table, and noisily blew her nose. “I’m not a fool, you know,” she said. “My father’s a lawyer, you know.”

“I know he is.”

“I can get very mean if I want to.”

“Dolores, I can’t imagine a mean bone in your...”

“I
hate
that name.”

“But I love it.”

“But you don’t love
me!”

“Do you want me to say I do?”

“Yes.”

“I love you,” I said.

“What?”

“I love you.”

“No, you don’t,” she said. “You’re only telling me that now because you’re afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of what I said. About statutory rape.”

“When did you say
that?”

“I didn’t, but I had it all ready. I was going to say, ‘There’re only two things I have to say to you, Lieutenant Tyler,’ and then you’d say, ‘Yes, and what are those two things?’ and I’d say, ‘Statutory rape.’ But it didn’t come out that way because you got me so angry. Do you really love me, Will?”

“I adore you.”

“Yes, I adore you, too. Can you get a pass this weekend?”

“I doubt it.”

“Can you get tickets for
The Class Menagerie?”

“Why? What’s...”

“For Friday night?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Daddy left for Los Angeles yesterday to negotiate another one of his panty deals, and Mother’s leaving for Easthampton Thursday. I thought we could spend the whole weekend together...”

“Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

“Because if you wouldn’t admit you loved me, I was going to jump in the river.”

“I’ll get the pass, and I’ll get the tickets.”

It was easier to get off the base for the weekend than it was to get tickets to the play. But I managed both, and arranged with Dolores to meet her at the apartment at seven o’clock that Friday night. The bell rang at six-thirty. When I opened the door, I was surprised to find her standing there wearing a plaid skirt, loafers, and a white blouse, hardly appropriate attire for dinner and the theater afterward. She came into the apartment trembling and apologetic, telling me we couldn’t possibly go out, explaining that she would have called me if the apartment’s telephone hadn’t been disconnected for the summer, but she
knew
I was waiting for her, and so she’d caught a taxi, and it was
still
downstairs, and she’d run out of the house without her bag, could we please go back to Sutton Place at once?

In the taxicab, she explained that she had heard sounds coming from her brother’s room the night before, and had thought at first he was up late recording. But when she’d gone in to him, she’d found him sitting in the center of the bed staring at the opposite wall, mumbling what had sounded like gibberish at first, Tupelo Lass, Thundermug, Utah Man, Hell’s Wench, not understanding until her brother said the words King’s Ransom, which she recognized as the name of his airplane, and realizing all at once that he was reciting a partial roll call of the B-24s that had flown low over the Ploesti oil fields on the day he’d lost his eye. When he saw her in the room, he told her that his eye socket was bleeding and begged her to get him something to stop the blood, and she had sat on the edge of his bed, and taken his hand, and convinced him that he was home and safe, talking gently and quietly to him until he drifted off to sleep again. Today, he had seemed completely calm, had in fact gone for a walk in the park this afternoon, leaving his important project for the first time in months. But he had returned just as she was getting ready to dress, and when she greeted him at the door, he said to her, “Shave your head,” and went directly to his room where he turned on the radio full blast, in time for the six o’clock news. She was terribly worried now, feeling certain she should not have left him alone.

The apartment was still when we got there.

Dolores turned on the hall light. “Douglas?” she called.

There was no answer.

“Douglas?” she called again.

He was sitting in the living room near the piano, a blurred huddled shape in the velvet-covered easy chair, the carpet at his feet strewn with newspapers and magazines, the recorder resting on the piano top beside him. “Is that you?” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “Listen to this,” he said, and suddenly snapped on the recorder, and turned to us with his unwavering Cyclops gaze as the spool began to unwind.

Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea, the recorded voice said, the WPB has estimated today that the war cost us only $7,400,000,000 a month in the year nineteen hundred and forty-four, but the question we now ask and will continue to ask is what does that have to do with the price of fish, when glass eyes are going for a dollar a dozen? Perhaps you’d like to answer
that
one for us, Mr. Truman, while raising the American flag in Berlin, the same flag that was flying over Washington when we declared war, and telling everybody there that if we can put this tremendous machine of ours, which has made victory possible, to work for peace, we can look forward to the greatest age in the history of mankind, in which case why have they stolen my eye and refuse to return it though I’ve mailed countless petitions, give me back my eye you sons of bitches, they’re buying soap in panic all over America, do they hope to wash away our sins, do they hope to wash away the blood, they’ve been warned there’s no shortage, is it true that the Nazis made Jews out of soap, why are we hoarding, do you know that General Minami says, and I quote in Japanese, I always quote, I have the facts right here at my fingertips, don’t try to con
me,
pal, I know you’re putting it to my sister, Japan, I quote, Japan will be ready to talk peace only when the whole of East Asia is freed from Anglo-American colonial exploitation and when Japan and other nations in the world are assured of a peaceful life based on justice and equality, so where’s my just and equal eye, did you look under the sofa, Lolly, do you remember once when I touched you in the tub and you began to cry, does
he
touch you, that prick, the Japanese have refused our ultimatum, I told you they would, listen to this, So far as the Imperial Government of Japan is concerned it will take no notice, of
what
I ask Premier Suziuki, no notice of
what,
of yellow men being bombed, of eyeless bombardiers sighting, dropping sticks and stones will break my bones and Lolly has no tits, who’s this William Z. Foster who was named chairman of the national board and Party, if there’s going to be one, why weren’t we invited, I’ll bring my cup and pencils, you can shove dimes up my ass and watch me dance the polka, the FBI has tracked down half a million draft dodgers, who would have dreamt, love, that so many Americans had no heart for this beautiful war, did you know that Henry Ford said today just before his eighty-second birthday that the nation and the world, I quote, are on the eve of a prosperity and standard of living that was never before considered possible, but ask old Hank what he was doing back in the summer of 1920 in Dearborn, Michigan, ask him how come, love, ask him should Jews buy his automobiles today, love, why not if they’ll soon be buying the ones the Nazis make, I’m so damn tired, folks, we’re running a little late, folks, the Japanese’ll never surrender, they know I haven’t got a chance with just one eye, oh Jesus Lolly my eye is bleeding again, oh Jesus Lolly save me, love, help me, love, save me (and then suddenly his real voice erupted over the litany coming from the recorder, his real voice burst into the room high and strident, Help, he screamed), Lolly save me help me save me (Help, oh Jesus, help!), and I remembered what Michael Mallory had confided to me so earnestly outside this building on the bank of the river, that he’d kept waiting for the war to catch up to him, kept waiting for the world’s idiocy to overtake him at last (Help, Douglas Prine kept screaming over the sound of the recorder).

He was taken to Bellevue Hospital the next day and committed on July 31 to Four Winds in Katonah.

I kissed Rosie.

I kissed her while inside the band played “Avalon” and Allen Garrett sat passed out at the table with his head cushioned on his folded arms, “I found my love in Avalon, beside the bay,” both of us huddled in the shadowed alleyway in the angle where the speakeasy’s kitchen and dining room joined, steam puffing from a vent onto the stifling August night, the aroma of roasting beef, “I left my love in Avalon, and sailed away,” her mouth opening, the taste of alcohol, and my hand sliding into and under the low corsage of her while dress, “You shouldn’t,” she said, and pressed herself to me.

I kissed her because when I’d been dancing with her earlier in the evening, she had pushed tight against me and I had felt myself growing hard and had wanted to hold her closer still, and was embarrassed even though everyone on the floor was dancing that way, I did not know what to do, I did not know what to think. I kissed her because I knew with certainty there was nothing beneath the white tulle but an underslip and knickers of the flimsiest stuff, kissed her because she had said to me the moment Allen passed out, “Let’s get some air, Bert.” I kissed her because she was dark and slender and wore rouge on her wide mouth and laughed very loud when anyone told a dirty joke and smoked cigarettes and drank far too much gin. I kissed Rosie because she was the complete and total opposite of Nancy my wife, whom I loved.

I kissed her, too, because grudges die hard, and I was still harboring a grudge against Allen Garrett.

I had found a job at last in June, but that had been entirely by accident, and every time I got to thinking about the close call I’d had, I started hating Allen all over again. I had asked Oscar for two additional loans of a hundred dollars each, which he had readily sent, together with the assurance that he would continue helping me for as long as I needed it. But the new loans put me three hundred dollars in the hole to my brother-in-law, and I didn’t like such a huge debt hanging over my head like a half-chopped tree. I had just about given up hope when I went out to the Circle Mill to apply for work as a loader. The job paid five dollars less a week than I’d been earning at Ramsey-Warner, but that turned out to be academic, anyway, because it had been filled by the time I got out to Joliet. I didn’t know what to do. I hated going home to face Nancy, I actually hated the thought of going home. I walked across the Circle yard breathing in all the familiar scents of a paper mill, hearing all the familiar sounds, and thinking maybe I should take Nancy and head back to Wisconsin, I could always get a job in the woods there, always make a decent enough living to support her that way. I guess I’d been walking with my head bent, hands in my pockets, and I only chanced to look up as I started out the main gate, and saw three fellows in suits like my own, standing on line outside a covered staircase that ran up the side of one of the buildings, its galvanized metal roof reflecting sunlight. I walked over to the line and asked the fellow on the end of it what was going on, and he told me they were hiring salesmen, and I said, Oh, and was ready to leave again, when I thought Well, why
not
a salesman, you’ve already considered cleaning out toilet bowls, haven’t you? and I got on the end of the line.

The man who interviewed me was named Gerald Hawkes, and he asked me six questions in rapid succession and then stared at me in silence.

Q: Have you ever sold paper products before?

A: No.

Q: Have you ever sold anything before?

A: No.

Q: Have you ever worked for a paper company before?

A: Yes.

Q: Which one?

A: Ramsey-Warner.

O: Why did you leave?

A: I wasn’t earning enough money.

Q: How much would you like to earn

A: Fifty dollars a week.

Gerald Hawkes blinked at me. He stroked his mustache. He fingered his stickpin. He got up and walked around his desk and came over to my chair and circled the chair and studied me, my suit, my shoes, my shirt, my tie, and then went back to his desk and sat again in the big leather swivel chair behind it, and fingered his stickpin and stroked his mustache.

“We’ll pay you ten dollars a week,” he said. “Plus commissions. You won’t be earning much in commissions at the start, but then neither will we be earning much in sales. When you’ve learned the territory, you should start making a lot more than the fifty you’re asking.”

“Will I have to travel?”

“Why, what’ve you got against traveling?”

“Nothing.”