The Cosmopolitans (19 page)

Crevelle inhaled, posed, and then released gratefully into her smoke.

“I'd fall in love with you myself,” Bette lit her own. “If I were a man.”

The two watched each other smoke. Something they never would have done as girls. It was forbidden, and they weren't the kind.
Strange
to realize now, of course. Especially since Bette had made love without marriage
and Crevelle had not. Only Bette knew this was true. Crevelle pretended it was false. It was the first time Bette realized that she had had illicit sex while refusing to touch a cigarette.
This is what being near family does
, she thought.
Unearths forgotten facts
.

They listened to the rain, the horns, the wheels, the sky.

“You missed your mother's funeral,” Crevelle said. “The grave had been dug too narrow. The coffin would not go in. The gravediggers pushed and pulled, turning it in every direction. They even used a pick and crowbar.”

“My brother?”

“I don't recall if he did much about it. Not the type, you know. Well, perhaps you don't know what he's like.”

“Was he smoking?”

“Does he smoke? I wasn't aware.”

Bette had always hoped that her brother would someday do the right thing. But so far he had not, since she had never heard a word of apology.

“Crevelle,” Bette flicked the ash. “You understand the ways of love far better than I. You know that once Hortense betrays him, she will never come back here. She will leave him destroyed, forever, never wanting to face the consequences of her actions on another human being. That is why she
must
betray him.”

Crevelle actually laughed. “How can an old maid know that?”

“Her father,” Bette answered, quieted by rage. “Your husband.”

Crevelle, newly relaxed, was shocked at Bette's audacity.
The timing was so abrupt, she couldn't even react with appropriate outrage. There had been no chance to build.

“I was dangerous to Frederick.” Bette spoke matter-of-factly, as if discussing how the coffeepot worked.

“Why?”

“I was dangerous because he had violated me. I became a witness to his darker self. And so, he shunned me. He did it because he, himself, had been cruel.”

Crevelle winced, knowing she should seethe instead.

“This we must instill in Hortense. She will be proud to have destroyed another person. She'll carry it all her life like a crown, that she had a choice.”
Like Tide or All
.

“My husband did no such thing,” Crevelle recovered the required outrage.

Bette watched her. This woman would rather lie than save her daughter.

Crevelle turned away abruptly, and then from her new vantage point spotted the ancient photograph of Frederick on Bette's side table. It took her aback. This was a picture of her husband that she had never seen. The idea that it presided over another woman's life, these many years, brought Crevelle to her senses. Bette would never be swayed by argument. Conversation was pointless.

“You are insane,” Crevelle confirmed, putting out the cigarette. She was fed up now. The newness of these surroundings had been replaced by her innate sense of superiority. “Tragically, I am dependent on you, since Hortense will not open the door of her apartment. This is, after all, your swamp. So you know its
brutal rules and understand how to save my daughter from your own brand of slime.”

“I do know how to save your daughter.”

“All right then. No more niceties. I am willing to pay a lot of money to have Hortense returned.”

This was how Crevelle regained her confidence. She had money and Bette did not. Nothing would ever change that. Crevelle boldly surveyed the dingy set of rooms where her cousin sewed and read. Listened to the record player. The pathos of that miserable life.

“All right,” Bette said. “Pay it to her, then.”

“To support
his
pleasures?”

“No, no. I know this man. He is good.”

There it was, the truth. Earl was good. Bette knew this to be supremely true. The cruelty he was exhibiting was a temporary insanity. Bette had come to understand that it was the humiliation of having been robbed by that young thug who had pretended to like him that had driven Earl to this desperate place. The shunning by Leon, the loving wish for Frank. She understood what had happened. The exclusion from his true field, the stage. The pain of his family's prejudices. There was so much working against Earl, but she had mercy. It could all be healed. It could all be faced and healed. After all, the truth was that Bette had faith. She believed in him.

“Her advantages,” Bette was sure, “will become a greater and greater insult in his life. So, send her money, Crevelle. Flood her with it.” Bette sat back, reflecting on this new strategy. She believed that it would work. “It will bring him shame.”

“He has that much character?”

“Yes.”

“And you have even less than I thought.” Crevelle was pleased with herself now. She had the situation under control. Obviously Bette was a half-wit. She was quickly ready to use her worst instincts on Crevelle's behalf, and she didn't even want cash. Bette's lack of taste for money could work to Crevelle's advantage. Yes, that was the key, after all. Crevelle now finally came to understand the situation with some clarity. She realized that Bette still loved Frederick so much that she wanted to save his daughter. Well, whatever delusion was motivating the shrew, Crevelle would get her girl returned. Then she would put an end to this relationship forever. No one in the family would ever speak Bette's name again.

“All right, Cousin Bette. I will cut her off and send
you
Hortense's allowance. Feed all indulgences until the man is ashamed. But keep control of it in case your plan fails. All ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand dollars?” Bette had known they were very rich but . . .

Crevelle took advantage of the moment to make a show of looking around the apartment. “You are too frugal to be foolish. This way the darky savage cannot steal my daughter
and
her fortune.”

Bette sat back calmly, but her mind was racing. “I will do my best.” She had to make every turn bring her closer to her goal. Every tiny little thing.

Crevelle stood, gathering her belongings. Her provincial coat, hat, shoes, and bag, all the same matching navy blue. She looked at herself in the mirror, it needed a dusting.

“I'm back to the hotel awaiting your report.” She paused at the door, fully in control. Writing checks was something that she did well, and the role that enhanced her greatest strengths. Bette's hair had never known a beauty parlor, her skin had never seen a facial. She had no colorist, no tailor, her hands had never passed a manicure. Now all of that neglect lay clearly on her sagging skin and pale, limp hair. “You've aged, Cousin.” Crevelle clicked her tongue and shook her head.

“We haven't seen each other in thirty years.”

“Surely retirement approaches,” Crevelle deigned. “You must look forward to sleeping late, collecting social security, and watching the television.”

“What should I watch?” Bette asked. It had occurred to her that someday she might wish to turn the thing on.

“Oh, I prefer Milton Berle. He's quite nice.”

“Why do you like him?”

“He's funny.”

And with that, Crevelle was off.

Chapter 19

W
hen Crevelle departed, she left behind a strange silence. Bette listened to it for a while, displaced awkwardly by its lack of familiarity. There she found a whole new dimension of dread, impossible to assimilate into some kind of intimate balance. She soon understood that this was the deathly quiet of suffocation. This silence could be Bette's fate. If she did not act boldly and with command on her own behalf, she would perish and yet still live. That was the fear, that this terrible nonlife could go on forever until the end. Thus the challenge that her beloved Earl had brought into her lap, the problem that he had created for her to solve. He had made the decision—even if it was impulsive and not thought through—a decision nonetheless, to place her in this teetering position where she had no choice. He had taken away her choice.

How strange. Desperation had made him blind, perhaps, but oppression has consequences on people's emotional lives, and now he, so uncharacteristically,
had become the perpetrator, as—suddenly—he saw only himself. Just like
they
do.

Bette took in her situation. There are many different kinds of love. True, novels and cinema, the work of culture and commerce, have prepared all to believe that only two really matter: the romantic pairing of a man and woman, and the love between parent and child. Every message trumpets these as everlasting, of central importance, and beyond evaluation or reproach. But in Bette's experience, neither claim was true. Yet all forces around her repeated constantly that they were. How could it be that every amplified voice reinforced a claim that anyone with eyes could see was preposterous? Herein lay her basic problem, the cause of her separation from most people. They believed these foundations to be stone, and she saw them to be sand.

One of the many precious lessons Bette had learned from Earl was how to assess a situation. This was specific to the treatment he endured as a Negro. She saw, almost immediately, that if she evaluated people, situations, and institutions only by how they treated white people, she would have a distorted and untrue understanding of their nature. But if she listened closely to how these same powers treated
him
, she would uncover their true meaning. For how they treated
him
was the measure that counted. It was the reveal. Therefore, Bette learned that who someone really was depended not only on her personal interaction with them but on how they treated others. Refracting this information, Bette came to understand that she, herself, was also a kind of measure. A conscious person
could see the real value of romantic love between men and women or familial bonding by similarly examining how they impacted
her
. She, too, was the example of the “other,” the failure who brought into relief the flaws of the whole system. She, too, was the one who should be considered.

At this point, truthfully, it had all become very difficult to grasp. Why did Crevelle think that she
loved
Hortense? Because she was trying to reclaim her for the white race? What made Hortense think she
loved
Earl? Because she wanted to scandalize her family and create an image of herself as brave? At least Earl didn't feign love for Hortense. That was the crumb of hope.

“Love,” in these examples, was an enactment of value. It was an assertion of place in the social order. It meant everything on the outside and little within.

Bette looked inside herself and knew for a fact that the love she had for Earl and he for her—the years of loyalty, the time, the confiding, the rooting for, the thinking of, and now her unfaltering faith that he could ultimately do the right thing, the acceptance of conflict, and the refusal to shun him—that all this was more powerful than the twisting and discarding that took place between blood relations. Than the deceptions that transpired between lovers. She knew that this love should be the center of novels and poems and plays, operas and such, but it couldn't be. Because then all the falsity would be exposed in comparison—to love when you are not supposed to is so much deeper than to love as instructed to do. They are two different animals. One is imposed, the other discovered. One is preordained, the other improvised. One brings reward,
the other must survive despite punishment. Really, these two opposing experiences should not be called by the same word,
love
. Perhaps in the future, poets would resolve this. Bette could only hope.

So, the stakes were clear. The goal, clear. But still to be grappled with was the painfully weird impracticality of Earl himself. Ignoring the consequences of his actions on her life would not help him reach his goal. Kindness would have been better. More effective. But he had taken the other path.
It was dumb
, she thought plainly.
D-U-M-B, dumb
. She wished, for both their sakes, that he had been more humane. But he had not. Now, he forced her to save them both herself.

One of the many painful aspects of all this was that Earl was violating his own principles. He was exploiting her lack of power. The fact was that Bette could not give Earl what was being kept from him, any of it—money, sexual attention, confidence in his future as an actor—she held none of that social sway. And so he had discarded her. That was very wrong. All along he had claimed to see what really mattered between friends. And yet here he had made a shallow choice. Love alone, Bette came to understand, would not meet this with equal measure. She too would have to look at her own palette. What access did she have? What could she actually control? How could she equalize the situation and force him to negotiate? They had to negotiate. She could not live like this.

From then on, each new day, Bette spent her mornings listening for the sounds of life from next door. As she accumulated clues, she developed each step of her plan. And then she put the plan into effect. Its development
was ongoing. And flexible. It had to be if she was to get her friend back. It would require all of her resources: creativity, bold action, fearlessness, daring. She would have to scare herself to find the strength to turn back this tide, as so many forces opposed her in her quest.

Bette's motives were sharpened dramatically by the pain of this unnatural separation, needing it to end. The sudden disappearance of all that she loved was happening for no discernible reason rooted in her own behavior, as far as she could see. It was being imposed on her in compensation for the deficiencies of the world. If Earl would just sit down with her and tell her what she had to do so that they could be friends again, no matter how bizarre, she would do it. But he wouldn't communicate. Why?

He expected her to be plunged into darkness: no friend, no one to see, to hear, to speak to, to share with. He had found a new process to engage in, clearly, and Bette was sure that its complexities created a very convenient distraction from the loss of her, but she had no such distraction. All she had was nothing. All she had was an absence that she did not deserve and could not live with. And he would not understand how strongly that motivated her to seek change. His game was overkill and that forced her to respond. If he would bring it down to human scale, she could accept a great deal of loss. But something had to make sense. There are always ways for two people to make things better. But they have to talk. Annihilation is a bad strategy, it gives the other nothing to lose.

Finally, after a week of suffering, preparation, and
long hours of internal deliberation, finally all was in place to begin her plan to bring back her real life. Her life. To bring back her friend.

Day one of the campaign started as always. Hortense went off to her class, but the audition had begun before leaving the house, Bette could hear the theatricality in her voice.

“I love you,” Hortense sang out like she was Deanna Durbin or someone more contemporary but equally false and despicable. “I left today's cash on the table.” Then, as soon as Earl's door clicked shut, Hortense snuck to Bette's apartment.

Bette had offered her a secret meeting, and the young girl had arrogantly accepted. It would never occur to her that her own cruelties would be met in kind. She expected only service from poor old Cousin Bette. This agreement reinforced Bette's suspicions that Hortense held a secret life of doubt that she hid from Earl. Just as he hid his from her. Hortense had not learned enough about the reality of her parents' marriage, their daily practice of lies and deceit. No, she ignored reality and imitated movies instead. Like Earl, she vainly assumed that only
her
heart was complex.

Bette heard the girl's footsteps approach and then the timid, secret knock. As she silently, slowly, opened the door.

Hortense quickly slid into the apartment, watching to be sure that she was not observed. Secured, the young girl gazed at her older cousin with an effective expression of empathy and pity that she had picked up in some class. Hortense thought that she, herself, was in command, as she had come to bring bad news. And,
of course, only she knew how bad the news actually was. Taking her old place in her old chair at the table, she reached for her cousin's hand and held it between both palms, in sympathy. Slowly, with care, she picked over her words.

“No matter how many times I tried to raise the subject with Earl, he simply refused to discuss it. He is not open to any reconciliation, nor negotiation. He would not even consider it. He said that you are . . . that you are . . .”

“He said that I'm what?”

“Evil.”

Earl had called her
evil
? She knew he had chosen that word deliberately, not because of any proximity to truth, but because he instinctively knew that of all the words in the lexicon this was the one that would most hurt her. It was as she had suspected. Earl had focused all his rage at her. The world's erasure was too big and overpowering. The self-satisfied racism of the theater, men who couldn't love each other fully with intelligence, white people and their endless arrogance, other Negroes who didn't understand his desires, keeping open his heart, all this had become too much to hold. And so he had decided to hate her. It was so much easier. And of course she cared, when so many around him simply did not. He could affect her.

“It's the power of suggestion,” she said to Hortense. “He is imitating your family.”

Bette became even more convinced that nothing would change this spiral until she and Earl could speak. Alone. Like last time, it was hard, but they had told each other what was true. They needed to do
that again. To remind each other of this gift between them. That is not evil. It is the opposite. That is love. Recognizing the mistake and forgiving it. Facing it. Together. That is a true friend.

“I'm sorry, Bette. I told him he was wrong.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that I am under your influence.”

Bette was reeling. He was pulling out all the stops. He was playing that bitter game, where the offender pretends that he's the one who has been hurt as a device to avoid being accountable. Certainly he'd been on the other side of that often enough to know exactly how it worked. Now she had a new level to contend with. Earl was using the enemy's tricks. She knew that she had to adjust to meet him. But in her heart, she was falling without moving.

“Are you?”

“I think we can all get along,” Hortense said. “Like a family.”

That word.
Family
. Hortense was the only person in this scenario who had one, so maybe she should know. It pained Bette through and through. Her second family was turning out to be just like her first. She was being accused of things that had never happened while someone else lied. Just as with Frederick. But the stakes were so much higher this time around. The fact was that now Bette could not pack up and move somewhere else. She could not start all over again. This was Bette's final life. Things had to be made right
now
. She would not have a third chance.

“He said,” Hortense quivered. “That you would never be friends again.”

“Did he say why?”

“No, he won't tell me why.”

That weapon of undeserved silence. It would crush her if she could not rally. How to get relief?

“And Bette, I have to tell you . . . you know how much I love you. But I have to tell you one more thing and this is very hard to say. Bette . . .” Hortense looked at the floor. “I have to tell you that we are moving.”

“Moving?”

“Yes. We've taken a place on Thirteenth Street. Earl insisted.”

“But you have no money.”

“Well,” Hortense sighed. And Bette noticed a slightly more adult air about her this time. “There is the three months free rent that they give you for signing the lease. And Earl believes that my family will come around and reinstate my allowance so that we'll be able to pay the rent by then. Fifteen dollars a week. If it wasn't for your secret generosity, we would starve.”

So Earl was counting chickens. This was important information to assimilate. He thought, somehow, this girl would elevate him into the world of
them
. That this girl would get him out of the slaughterhouse. Bette's heart broke at his desperation but recognized that hers matched it. Perhaps there was a way that Bette could earn more money so that she could help him on his way and he wouldn't be needing . . . How could Bette earn more money? This was something to bring up with Valerie. Not yet, but . . . eventually. Yes, if Bette had more money this could be a very different situation . . .

Bette knew something that Earl did not. That family would never accept a Negro. That was that. She knew
them better than he did. And all these years when she had spoken about them, well, apparently he hadn't been listening. That was sobering news as well. He thought he could
handle
them, did he? The idea that he could ever access Hortense's advantages was pure illusion. Bette wondered if every liar in Hollywood felt the same way.

As with each phase of this horror, at first Bette was shocked. Then she adjusted. The difficulty was that Earl kept adjusting as well. Every time she assimilated his next act of aggression and caught up to his new layer of cruelty, he escalated once again. He was power mad. But what he did not realize was that she could not give up. She had to make him negotiate. And he knew very well that if he moved away he could avoid ever speaking to her again. He could lie forever. And she could not let that happen.