The Cosmopolitans (23 page)

Shaken at how unshaken he felt, Earl both strode and staggered out of the rehearsal room. He had some decisions to make. And his eyes refocused on the hall filled with waiting actors, all far more willing than he to submit to the idiocy and therefore far more deserving of the roles. He saw another black face and realized that this lucky guy was coming in to read for Joe, and Earl hoped in his heart that the man would get the part. It was only then that Earl realized that the fellow actor in question was Frankie, up for the same role.

“Frank,” Earl called out.

Frank got a pained look on his face. But such a distinctly different kind of pain than the last time Earl had seen him that he knew Lynette had showed her dad Earl's letter. It was all out in the open now, and Frank should know better than to still be so angry. Turned off, perhaps. Even disgusted, but certainly not as naive as he once was, and probably relieved that it didn't “work out” between Earl and his daughter.

“Hey,” Frank said, looking up from his book. “You reading for Joe?”

“Yeah,” Earl said. “But I sabotaged it. So,” he laughed sarcastically. “I guess the part is yours.”

Frank looked around at the sea of white faces. “Hope so.” Then he put on his Stepin Fetchit face. “Once you dead, ain't no mo' chance.”

They laughed. It was going to be okay.

“I don't know, Frank. Is it worth it to shuck and jive for the rest of our days? I'm having doubts.”

“My point of view is clear,” Frank offered, temporarily shutting his book, but keeping the page with his finger, ready to return as soon as he finished having his say. “I'm an actor. Regardless of the role, my job is to bring it as much dimension and humanity as I can. If I want different kinds of parts to be written, I have to be prepared to write them, and I am not prepared to do that. It's not my calling. My calling is to bring words to life. And I believe that part of the history of the black man is that we are exceptional at bringing meaning to nonsense. Do it every day. So, that's how I look at it. That's my job.”

“Okay, well said.”

“Okay.” Frank was done. He wasn't going to be rude to Earl, but he wasn't going to be friendly neither. No cozy warm hugs and kisses by the fire. Just business.

Earl got the message. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Frank went back to reading his book.
Giovanni's Room
by James Baldwin.

Earl had heard of that one. He expected to read it sometime soon.

Chapter 23

I
n the past, the
home
and
office
had always been separate spheres for Bette. Home mattered and work did not. Now there was no home, and work was going to be the means toward getting hers back. They'd merged into a single ongoing stream of thought. She realized how much more one could accomplish when the entire day was committed to it. How much more one could plan and take care of details. Dividing the day into two separate arenas of feeling just wasn't that productive after all.

Riding home on the bus, trying to keep all her strategies straight was dizzying. The details of her plan had accumulated with such depth and precision that they superseded her ability to store them in her mind. She took out a pencil and started making notes on the inside cover of the paperback book she had been carrying around but hadn't yet had a chance to read.
Giovanni's Room
by James Baldwin. It looked good, but who had the time? At first she just jotted down key words, components
of the larger scheme. Soon though, she was pulling them into a kind of picture that she then realized was the prototype for a chart or map. When she got home, she took out four pieces of stationery and scotch-taped them together into the size of a placard or subway advertising panel and carefully, in clear block letters, wrote out her guidepost for action. When done, Bette tacked it up to her living room wall for study and inspiration, but, fearing that Hortense might potentially appear to beg two tablespoons of cream for her marshmallow cake, she decided instead to tape the sheet carefully to her window shade and then roll it up, like a treasure map or the plans to assassinate Hitler. All she had to do was pull the string and the shade would spin closed, concealing her meticulous call to action. This also made it easily accessible, available to be revealed with one tug, to be consulted whenever necessary. From then on, at the end of each day, Bette would pull down her window shade, unveil the Plan, and parade the war room, reviewing the list and checking off completed tasks with those pencils that she now pilfered from work and kept sharpened on her kitchen table.

THE PLAN

              
1.
  
Bring the power of Tibbs Advertising to my cause. Do this by being brilliant, and then let the others take credit for my ideas
.

CHECK!

              
2.
  
Keep Earl living in this building so that he must see me, so that we can talk
.

CHECK!

              
3.
  
Create a humiliating job opportunity for Earl and that hamster that will let him see what she is really made of
—
how much she wants him to compromise his beliefs
.

CHECK!

              
4.
  
Offer
her
this job
.

Hearing Hortense's footsteps padding down the hall, Bette conveniently rolled up her window shade, feeling like an Allied general analyzing the beachfronts of occupied France. Carefully, Bette placed her ear at the door and listened. Hortense and Earl were arguing. Clearly it had started on the street and carried all the way up the stairs. Good.

Bette could make out Hortense's whining Midwestern twang, the annoying bleat like blowing through a sheep's bladder. The girl was in over her head, Bette was sure. She did not have the skills for whatever subject they were arguing over and had fallen back on her most annoying tactics left over from a childhood she had never actually outgrown. Displayed all the traits that Earl would hate: empty reasoning, repetition, lack of thoughtfulness, shallow inquiry. Children shouldn't have to solve certain kinds of problems ever, such as food, shelter, and paying the bills. If they are burdened at too young an age, they will be doomed in the future, having never known what it is to be carefree. Real children,
of course, have the right to cry, blame, or shirk until others complete the required tasks. But adults, Bette had learned, have to do everything themselves.

“Stop criticizing me,” Hortense pleaded. “I only had enough money for coffee or milk. I made a choice.”

Ah, yes
. Bette recognized the dilemma all New Yorkers face at least once in their lives, if not once a day. Having to choose between taking a bus or buying a cup of tea. These are choices that the protected never imagine exist, until the dreary morning that fate makes a personal introduction.

The idea of economic boycott had long been in the American imagination. In the thirties, Jews boycotted stores that sold German goods. Even now, a Negro minister was directing a boycott of buses in Montgomery, Alabama. The goal was to strangle them economically so they would be forced to face facts: that the other party was real and seriously needed to negotiate a change. That this wasn't a joke at all. That was the message boycotts tried to get across. Well, Bette had been looking around with her eyes a bit wider open and had decided to apply this lesson of her time. Make things tight enough for Hortense and Earl that just concessions could be wrangled. Since Hortense had no idea it was Bette who held her allowance, Bette could siphon small amounts to Hortense in the guise of generosity, knowing that it was not near enough to live on. And Bette had rightly assessed that Hortense and Earl did not have the bond that she and Earl and Anthony had had during the Depression. They would not be able to be in it together with compassion, love, and humor. Instead they would grow rancorous and bitter.
And indeed they did.

Hortense squealed, “I could only afford one, so I bought milk. What do you want from me?”

“Can't you do anything right?”

Bette flushed at the sound of Earl's voice. She missed it with all her heart. That familiarity meant everything to her. He had witnessed her entire life and she his. Without each other, there was no past. No one knew. It would be as if none of it had ever taken place. Ever. Of course he wanted his coffee. He was a grown man who gets up and does hard labor all day long. And Bette could tell from his voice that he had obviously been drinking the night before.

“Earl, do not yell at me.”

“You just make things worse.” Earl slammed the door in her face, leaving Hortense to shiver in the hallway. Bette listened to her whimper.
Interesting
, Bette thought.
That isn't right. Earl shouldn't shut her out of her own house
. This was encouraging news, as far as Bette was concerned. Earl was out of control. He was doing all kinds of terrible things to all kinds of people, not just to Bette. Things that Earl would have condemned in others. He was not of the right mind. No, not at all. This discovery was a great relief. This was a phase, a fit, or an attack of some kind. Not a permanent, dramatic change of character. Only by reminding him in every possible surreptitious way of who he really was would things be brought to a positive conclusion. Of this, Bette was sure.

Expertly preparing her facial expression and grabbing her handbag as a prop to playact
on her way to the market
, Bette opened the door and acted
surprised
to find her young cousin Hortense, weeping in the stairwell.

“My dear, dear girl,” Bette soothed. “What are you doing here? What is the matter?” She opened her arms lovingly to welcome the little rodent into her rattrap and patted down her matted gray fur.

“Earl got fired from the Lazios'.”

Bette gasped. There was a God. Finally, she was sure. He'd now proved himself three times, so there would be no more doubt. This disaster was a gift directly from Providence. And at that moment, patting the little weasel comfortingly on the back, Bette understood the real reason why God had waited so long to reveal himself to her. Why it had taken fifty years of hard living to finally receive grace. The fact was that despite her guesses to the contrary, Bette had never truly been in need before. She thought she was, but it was never this acute. She would not be able to recover if the situation wasn't transformed. She had to win. The knowledge that she was on the receiving end of Providence's gifts swelled her and propelled her forward. Bette had been prepared to fight every step of this battle for reconciliation on her own. She had never been a lucky person, after all, and had never dared to even hope that fate would step in on her side. But here was an authentic reversal of fortune. An omen, if ever there could be such a thing.

“Why?”

“He won't tell me. All I know is that it had something to do with someone at work named Leon. Someone he would never see again. I don't have any more information than that.”

Earl had slipped. He had been unable to conceal his true self, just as Bette suspected. He harmed his own plan for deception, and the question now was if Bette could muster the talent to maximize this moment of opportunity.

“Did you ask?”

“Yes, many times. But he won't explain.” Hortense lost focus again and went back to her sobs. “Cousin Bette, how can you live with someone who won't discuss anything that matters?”

“How terrible for you, dear girl,” Bette clucked, delighted. “There is nothing in this world more cruel than silence when one is owed an explanation. What are you going to do?”

“He wants me to stop taking classes.”

“How awful.”

“I know.” Hortense took this cue to add a layer of indignity that she'd long held but had no arena in which to express. “He wants me to get a job!”

“NO!” Bette shook her head.

“I can't work a job,” Hortense confirmed. “I wouldn't be any good at it.” Her outrage at this imposition burned through her pale blue eyes. “I've got to be an actress. I can't serve plates of greasy eggs.”

“But Earl is an actor and
he
had a job.”

“I know,” Hortense acknowledged, and then explained. “That's why he doesn't understand.”

Bette nodded in sympathetic recognition. “Of course you can't get a job.” She smoothed back the girl's hair, caressed her face, and then offered Hortense the advice that no one in the universe had ever thought to offer to Bette.

“Hold on to your dreams.”

Bette was never supposed to have dreams. Only others had dreams. At least that's what Earl believed. Well, he was wrong. And soon he would understand. There was nothing more sabotaging for a person who would never succeed or excel than to encourage them to hold on to delusions that would not come true. It was an act of true destruction for which the recipient would pay and pay and pay. It was a guaranteed sabotage. The opposite of love. It was an act of hate, in fact, to encourage her.

“Thank you.” Hortense looked up at Bette with the
trust
that only the most self-involved label other people's debased mirror of approval.

Bette felt that wild passion again. That thrill. The one that had come into her life on the phone with Mr. Swenson, the landlord from Thirteenth Street. Now, Bette realized that there was a reason for her life, and it was larger than being either a scapegoat or a rock. No, there was so much more there. She could be a person in her own right, whose well-being mattered. She could be the agenda setter, a protagonist. The one who wants
and
gets. She could be the instigator, the one who makes things happen and then reaps the rewards. But this transformation would only be fully realized if she, Bette, could focus enough to see how to dominate the system. Others had figured it out. The apparatus. And so could she. She could run the machine. But she had to be smarter than everyone else. Much smarter. Smarter even than her mentor, Valerie. One mistake, and Bette would be destroyed.

“Hortense, my dear,” she said with an improvised
calm. “I just now had an idea. It's a small, strange idea. It came to me like an itch or an instinct. Hard to say. But perhaps . . . oh, dare I consider that . . . perhaps this could help you.”

“You're always helping me.” Little Hortense's eyes were appropriately red now. Her nose was running and her face was swollen. Oh, Bette appreciated the routine. Hortense thought her hysterics would win her . . . what? Not having to have a job while defying the family's standards? Well, whatever made her think that would be possible, it was stupid. And even more ridiculous was Hortense's susceptibility to flattery. She thought that Bette's compliments were true. What an idiot.
People from good families crumble under the least bit of pressure
, Bette concluded.

“Well, I may be speaking out of turn, but there is a possibility . . .” Bette laid on the hesitancy. “That is to say, something has come up at work. It can't be relied on, of course, but please permit me the time to tell you all about it and ask you for some advice.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you.”
What a fool
. How could Hortense even think that Bette would want or need her advice?

Bette then carefully relayed, as if from memory, a conversation she claimed to have overheard in the office but which she entirely concocted out of air. She claimed to have
heard
that there was a vague possibility of some kind of job opening up soon. Perhaps something that might interest both Earl and Hortense.

“What kind of job?” Hortense asked with suspicion, as she definitely did not want to be a secretary like Bette, doing nothing all her life.

“Acting,” Bette mentioned, as casually as a blimp crashing into the Empire State Building.

“An acting job?” Hortense abandoned her pose of despair and took on, instantly, that of ecstatic-hysterical-female-seized-with-joy, as one would be with an aneurysm of the brain. “For
me
?”

In this moment, Bette had the experience that her opponents had long known but she had just recently come to taste: the experience of saying something false and having the other respond from their deepest place of trust. It was strangely unnerving. Apparently nothing and no one could ever be trusted. This was news, and yet she did not mourn, as its knowledge elevated her to new heights of effectiveness.