The Man Who Cried I Am (26 page)

Then came Mildred.

One night, soon after he began with the
Century
, he had some people to his apartment for drinks before going out to dinner. He did not really know his date; he had only met her the week before. Mildred—he had glanced at her twice, pleasantly surprised that he would not be the only Negro in the dinner party. She came with a natty young man who said he was in television. During dinner Max's date said she was coming down with a cold and Max sent her home in a cab. The signals had not been coming right, anyway. The party returned to his apartment where Max noticed Mildred (and Charley, he thought) in a corner. A few minutes later Charley (?) rose and, making his words and attitude nonchalant, bid everyone good night. When the people who'd brought Mildred and—
was
his name Charley?—rose with those familiar overtures to departure and saw Mildred still sitting, they asked Max to see that she got home all right. Max put on a somber, responsible face as he assured them he would. When he had closed the door after them, he turned to Mildred. “Drink?”

“Yes, of course.” She was tall. She had “blow” hair, processed hair. Her eyes were a deep brown and her skin was the color of loam freshly turned in spring. She went to the kitchen with him and for lack of anything else to say (Mildred sent and received signals), Max said, “Can I kiss you?”

She had been leaning on the refrigerator, fingers in her hair. “Sure,” she said, “if I can kiss you too.”

He stroked her face after the kiss. Then they returned to the living room and played a record, “Night in Tunisia.” They drank in silence listening to it. (That had been the hard bop period.) Then he had said, “Stay.” In their situation the word had but one meaning. There was a whole list of words, a complete dictionary, for making love, or wanting to.

“No, you come home with me,” she countered. He had not known then that Mildred was strict with herself about making love with her diaphragm; that was why she left it at home. Conditioned. Determined. No one was knocking her up. Quickly, Max changed shirts, seized his toothbrush, and they left, arm in arm at three in the morning.

There was a cat in her apartment and also many paintings of Greek male nudes. Mildred had put on
Wozzeck
while she made drinks. After, without a word, she pulled down the sheets on the bed and slipped into the bathroom. Max undressed slowly. God was good to him. Thank you, God, for seeing that I don't go without when I need it. Thank you, Man. Mildred came slowly through the bedroom door, her hair down, her diaphanous gown drifting about her. She sat at the side of the bed. “In the morning,” she said, “we must be very quiet. [Charley?] will be ringing downstairs.” Laughing softly she moved the telephone from the side of the bed and, unwinding the extension cord, took it to the outer room. “He'll call if I don't answer the door. I put the phone out there because if I don't answer that he'll kick the door in. I don't want you to hear me lie to him. I may have to lie to you one day.”

She had been confident that there would be more than one night. At the foot of the bed that night the cat had yawned, blinked and snuggled close to Max's feet. “Daisy likes you,” Mildred said. “That's a good sign. She doesn't like just anybody.”

Mildred was a poet and worked as a salesgirl at Lord & Taylor's in Junior Misses. So she left in the morning, chic, neat, appearing unviolated, unloved, and ready for more. Only her eyes were somewhat streaked with red. She wore a burnt orange coat and scarf (Max remembered) and had pleaded with Max not to forget to feed Daisy before he left. Please.

There had been one bad moment between them. Mildred had slipped from the game. “Why don't we get married?” she asked one night after they had been seeing each other for several months.

A good thing at an end, or was it? Before he could answer she said, “I'm sorry. It's just tonight. It's my birthday. I'm twenty-nine years old. I want to be married and have children. This being a swinging chick and all is birdturd. Tonight, just now, it bothered me, this thing we have, Max.”

Max grabbed the straw. “Why didn't you tell me it was your birthday? We could have—”

“I know, I know, one of those special screwing parties with great martinis and champagne at dinner. I don't want anything special. Unless you're it.” In the background was
Wozzeck
again; it was her favorite record, that and
Madame Butterfly
. Mildred continued. “Lillian died and you're not going to have anyone die on you again, not anyone you're in love with, so you're not going to fall in love, right?” She knocked her ice cubes together in the glass and stared out over the rim at Max.

“So I'll give you a quarter for your two-bit analysis, okay, Mil?”

The climax of
Wozzeck
, the child's scream, came between them.

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that,” she said.

“I'm sorry too.”

Yes, to hell with all of it except Mildred.

Max borrowed Ricketts' Coupe de Ville and Mildred brought a turkey just in case and even though, which meant, she translated as they rushed northward on the Taconic Parkway en route to the Catskills, that if he didn't get anything hunting, they'd have the turkey. And if he did, it being Thanksgiving, they'd still have it because she wasn't going to clean and cook anything he might be lucky enough to shoot. He hadn't told her that Ricketts' cabin had food in the freezer and on the shelves and that Ricketts had called his caretaker and told him to get the house in shape for company. Ricketts used the place for relaxation and business too, the latter being meetings with precinct captains of New York's Finest, and current bosses of the Cosa Nostra.

In the mountains the skies became clear; far-off stars and planets gleamed sharply in a sky lighted by cold moonlight. “This car is too much,” Mildred murmured about the Cadillac. Max grunted. He tried to match the tone of her voice to something she'd said to him—“You're too much,” or “It's too much”—he forgot. Something as sensual. Americans made their cars like women, for luxury, and sleek and powerful, with points all over and long buttock-smooth lines. Think of America and you think of cars and Hollywood; one in charge of the national debt, the other overseeing the national libido. They turned off the main road and onto a smaller one topped with macadam; a dirt road followed, then an access road. Max pulled up before a low, wide cabin. White smoke curled slowly from the chimney and sought the stars. It looked cozy. “Here's where we have our orgy, Mil.”

She said nothing getting out of the car, but at the door she paused, pecked him on the lips and answered, “Yes, the first one in eight weeks.” He had not thought her words ominous then nor of the kiss as the kiss of farewell. The look she had given him after their first kiss, just inside the door, still clutching bags, also had no meaning. Then.

He rose just before dawn, drank the leftover coffee with a sandwich, slipped a couple of shells into the double-barreled shotgun and stepped out on the porch. He felt deliciously tired, sated. Mildred slept, curled softly on her side of the bed. Max pulled hard on his first cigarette then closed the gun with a dull, steely snap. Putting the safety on, he stepped to the ground and mashed the cigarette underfoot. He walked slowly down the road, now pushing the safety off; he might catch a bird at the edge of the road. The gray mist of day was giving way to the lightening morning. Birds whickered through the air, sparrows. A steady, biting wind snaked around the mountains and stalked stiffly up the road. Max pulled up his coat collar and blinked his eyes to clear them of the water brought to them by the wind. He thought he saw something down the road, a brown blur, a rough triangular shape. He hoisted the gun almost chest high and moved off the road, through a slight path; he would come from the wood onto the road at the spot where he thought he had seen the pheasant. He walked swiftly, the dried twigs clutching at his clothing. He approached the road fast, crashing through the brush, his finger curled around the outside trigger. When be had gained the road he found nothing. He lowered the gun and stood motionless, watching the vapor of his breath rise from his mouth and evaporate. Bastard, he thought, and everybody felt sorry for the birds.

I ought to marry Mildred, he thought, proceeding down the road. I ought to. He glanced about him. The sunshine was climbing through the mountain valleys now, laying down straight golden fingers, reflecting light from the brooding, dark-green acres of spruce and pine, warming the naked maples, teasing the great, twisted oaks. Come out, come out wherever you are … Max thought. She was all for him, Mildred. Whatever he did was all right, whenever he wanted to. That was important to a man. She understood. The cliché again. Well, all right. Let it be. Max held his face to the sun and glinted against its brassy glare. Good, feels good. Thanksgiving Day. Alone in the woods. Fine babe waiting in bed. Nice.

He had spent two hours more in the field, he remembered, and then, returning to the cabin through the brush, just beneath him, suddenly, twisting and running like the head of a gigantic serpent, the designs on its back like those on a reptile, the hen burst cover with a dangerous sound of her wings. Max, still recoiling from the snake image, hesitated a moment, but then as the pheasant fled through a break in the brush and flew up against a small patch of open sky, Max fired, and before the echo of the first shot caught the hillsides, he let loose the other, tracking the bird down its sudden plummet to the ground, and he heard the pellets hit—thrrepp!—and saw feathers burst clear in the sky. The bird's falling was now straight down. The hen was still warm when Max picked it up. He broke open the gun and plucked the shells from the hot, smoking barrels. He lit a cigarette, then stood dry-plucking the hen. When that was finished, he took out his skinning knife and cut its throat to let the blood drain. Then, slipping the point of his knife just beneath the breastbone, he sliced open the stomach and shook out the contents. He'd give the bird to Ricketts, a thank-you gift.

Mildred was waiting for him, backing away from the pheasant. He laughed at her and went to get drinks while she fixed the turkey. There had been two days more of the orgy, but they would have others, he thought, driving back to the city. He really had thought that. But over coffee she had told him. Charley (?) was back in the picture. Eight weeks between dates and no phone calls, what did Max expect? And she knew Max well enough, she had said, to know that even if he promised to do better, to consider, even, the ultimate in the American affair, marriage, she didn't know; he had demonstrated a fierce selfishness and it left nothing for her. Charley (?) would marry her, give her all the things she'd never even think about if she were Max's wife. She'd accept. That's all there was to it; she'd made up her mind. She had not wanted to ruin the weekend by saying anything before now. It had been her turn to be selfish. And during this, Max sipped his coffee and thought foolishly of the bird downstairs in the car. Then, blinking, he glanced around the room, at Daisy, the paintings of the Greek nudes, the shelf of records with
Wozzeck
and
Madame Butterfly
set apart, and knew he was going to miss Mildred. This was what the look and kiss in the cabin was all about; this was what the complaint about the eight weeks was about. It was all about Goodbye, Max. He said the proper things when he rose to go, and kissed her and stroked her behind. She walked him to the door. And closed it softly behind him.

He had not known what he felt then. His tongue had lain silently in his mouth, a little dry perhaps, but it had not been stuck. He whistled tunelessly driving to Ricketts' home. The Cadillac purred beneath him, prowling its way uptown. Who else had gone like that? They all went differently. Some drifted, some fled, or he drifted or fled. It was all motion, these affairs, energy, and the ones he enjoyed most were those that took the least mental toll. Goodbye, Mildred. Do you ever laugh when you call out, “Charley”?

Or
was
it Charley?

A soft rain was falling, months later. He was walking with Kermit Shea to Shea's midtown apartment. They had had dinner and Shea had drunk a lot and become glum. The wet streets reflected store lights and the headlights of the slowly moving traffic. At Lexington Avenue they paused on the curb, waiting for the light to change. When it did, it caught a small, white sports car. Laughter trickled out of the car and Max, standing on the curb, just about to step down and proceed across the street, looked down into the car and saw Mildred, a filmy kerchief bound to her head, her white teeth flashing in the darkness, the whites of her eyes rolling up and widening. For just a moment. Max nodded and his mouth formed up to a smile and he stepped down, passed in front of the car and gained the opposite curb. A few paces down the walk he heard the traffic move, heard the sharp deep roar of the sports car, then he turned around. Old Mildred. Go, baby.

“How's Regina?” Max asked. He could ask that now. Max and Shea had already gone through a scene when Shea, laughing of course, had wanted to know how Max had come to know her and Max lied because he knew Shea wanted him to, to make it all right for him to be involved with Regina, to even be in love with her.

“She's all right,” Shea said quietly, handing out drinks. But when he sat down, he said, “Max, I haven't seen her in a while.”

Regina's pulled her number on him, Max thought. That Christmas bit. “Oh,” Max said. “I didn't know. I haven't spoken to her.”

Max stared into his drink. When he looked up, he saw Shea dabbing at his eyes. Was the bastard
crying?
“Well,” Max said, cheerfully, “you're holding up all right?”

Shea nodded, gulped his drink and poured another. He took out his handkerchief and blew onto it. “I was having some problems,” he said.

Max nodded. Don't go on, man. I don't want to hear it. Yet he knew that was precisely why Shea had asked him to have dinner with him.