The Paper Dragon (33 page)

"No, that's okay."

"You don't want to talk to him?"

"Well, I want to get some lunch, Mom…"

"Anyway, he's busy. You know how he gets when he's taking one of those things apart."

"Sure. Well, give him my love, anyway."

"I will."

"Have you heard from Julie, Mom?"

"Last week. I told you. I got a letter last week."

"I meant
since
."

"No."

"I'll have to write to her. I owe her a letter."

"Do you know who died?"

"Who?"

"Do you remember Mr. Danucci, he was a housepainter? He always used to chase you kids off the stoop?"

"Sure, I remember him."

"He died Monday."

"What of?"

"In his bed."

"Oh."

"Well, he was an old man. You remember him, don't you?"

"Sure, I remember him."

"Well, he died."

"That's too bad. Well, listen, Mom, I'd better go get some lunch."

"Yes, call me when the trial is over."

"I will."

"Good."

"Give my love to Papa."

"Yes. Goodbye, son."

"Goodbye, Mom."

"Goodbye."

"Hello, Amy?"

"Daddy? Is that you?"

"Yes, sweetheart, how are you?"

"Fine. Why didn't you call Monday night?"

"I got in too late."

"The reason I didn't say to call Tuesday was because we were going on a trip to Philadelphia, to see all that independence craparoo, and I didn't know what time we'd be getting back. So I figured Wednesday would be safe around noon when we have our lunch period."

"Why'd you call, Amy?"

"Did you see the paper?"

"No. Which paper? What do you mean?"

"About Mother."

"No."

"It said she caused another disturbance in a night club."

"Oh?"

"Daddy?"

"Yes?"

"It didn't come right out and say she was drunk, but it made it pretty clear."

"Where'd you get a New York paper?"

"A girl in tenth showed it to me. A friend of mine."

"Some friend."

"She didn't mean any harm."

"Well."

"Daddy?"

"Yes?"

"Will you call her?"

"Why should I?"

"If she's going around getting drunk…"

"No, Amy."

"Please? For me?"

"I'm sorry."

"Daddy, I'll be home Friday, the Christmas vacation starts Friday, that's the sixteenth, and I don't even know if she's picking me up. She hasn't written in weeks. Could you call and ask her?"

"Ask her what?"

"If she'll be at the station. She /s my mother, you know."

"I know that, Amy."

"And I'm worried."

"About what? She's perfectly capable—"

"About her falling down drunk in some damn night club, if you want to know.
Can't
you call her, Daddy?"

"I'm sorry, Amy."

"I tried to reach her three times last week, but I couldn't get an answer. Nobody even
answers
. Daddy,
please
call, won't you?"

"Amy…"

"Please."

"Amy?"

"What?"

"Amy… don't cry."

"I'm not crying."

"Please, honey."

"I'm… not, Daddy."

"I'll call her. Only please don't…"

"Daddy, you don't have to. I know you really…"

"Now stop crying, Amy. Please."

"I'm sorry, Daddy."

"Amy?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine."

"I'll call her."

"Thank you."

"How's… how's everything there at the school?"

"Fine."

"Everything okay?"

"Yes. I got an eight on a Latin test — that's eighty, you know. And we…"

"Yes, I know."

"… won a soccer game against St. Agnes."

"Honey, what time will you be coming in? On Friday, I mean."

"Well, we usually get to Penn Station at about six."

"Would you like me to meet you?"

"Oh,
could
you, Daddy? I'd love it. Hey, I bought something very nice for you in New Hope."

"I'll be there. Six o'clock Friday, Penn Station."

"Daddy, if the train's late…"

"I'll wait, don't worry. I miss you, Amy."

"Yes."

"Well…"

"You'll call Mother, too, won't you?"

"Sure, honey."

"Thank you."

"I'd better say goodbye now. I've got some people waiting."

"Daddy?"

"Yes?"

"I love you."

"Who's this?"

"Sidney."

"Who?"

"Sidney. Your son."

"Oh, Sidney,
Sidney!
I thought you said
Shirley.
"

"No, I said Sidney."

"I was wondering how a Shirley could have such a deep voice."

"Yes, well, it's me, Pop."

"What's the matter? You're not coming?"

"No, I'll be there."

"Good. I found some nice things for you, Sidney."

"Oh. Fine."

"I'll show you tomorrow, when I see you."

"Okay. Fine."

"You're coming, aren't you?"

"Yes, certainly. I said I was. Have I ever missed a Thursday."

"Well, I know you have a trial."

"No. I'll be there, don't worry."

"Six o'clock?"

"Six o'clock."

"Some nice things, Sidney."

"What is it? I have a headache."

"I just talked to Amy, and—"

"What does she want this time?"

"Apparently she saw an item about you in—"

"That's true, I was drunk."

"Christie.

"Anything else?"

"Nothing except she was concerned enough to call you three times last week…"

"I haven't been home."

"… and then finally call me in desperation. Now look, Christie, your life is your life…"

"Here it comes."

"… and I don't give a damn
what
you do with it…"

"But
our
daughter is
our
daughter."

"Yes."

"I am fully aware of my responsibility to Amy."

"Then why haven't you written to her?"

"I wrote to her last Tuesday."

"She said she hasn't heard from you in weeks."

"She's lying."

"Amy doesn't lie."

"That's true, I forgot that Amy is a paragon who doesn't lie, cheat, steal, swear, smoke, screw, or—"

"Christie…"

"Christie…"

"Christie, you've…"

"Christie, you've…"

"Christie, you've got a twelve-year-old…"

"… twelve-year-old…"

"… daughter two hundred miles away from home…"

"… away from…"

"Damn you, Christie,
cut it out
!"

"Jonah?"

"What?"

"Go to hell, Jonah."

"Did you know she'll be coming home Friday?"

"Yes, I knew."

"I told here I'd pick her up at the station. Is that all right?"

"That's fine."

"In the meantime, you might call to let her know you're alive."

"All right, I will. Is that all?"

"That's all."

"Goodbye."

Dris is right, Ebie thought. Nothing in that courtroom is real, it can't be. All of them have their own ideas, the truth is only what they
want
to believe. Even the judge, even
he
doesn't know what's real, and he's the one who's supposed to decide. How can he? Does
he
know what the book is about? None of them do. So how can any of it be real, the courtroom, the conversation here at this table, how can any of it be the slightest bit real?

"I don't think I get you," Jonah said.

"There's no reality in that courtroom," Driscoll answered. "There can't be."

"It seems real enough to me each day," Jonah said. "What do you think, Mrs. Driscoll?"

"I think it's real enough," Ebie answered.

"Anyway, the reality is that you didn't steal his play," Jonah said. "And the further reality is that it's a bad play, and no one would have
wanted
to steal it."

"Who says it's bad?"

"Jimmy, there's no question about it."

"You mean the critics said it was bad, and the movie companies, and the editorial expert, Chester Danton, right?"

"That's right."

"So that makes it a bad play."

"I would say so."

"Constantine doesn't think so."

"Constantine is mistaken."

"Yes, and the man who produced it was mistaken, too, because
he
obviously thought it was a good play. And the actors who agreed to play it,
they
were mistaken as well because
they
thought it was good. Everyone involved in it was apparently mistaken because the critics came to see it and said it was bad. Tell me something, Jonah. If the Honorable Frank H. McIntyre decides I stole Constantine's play, will that suddenly make it
good
?"

"You didn't steal it."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Constantine is a bad writer who wrote a bad play. Whatever McIntyre decides, it will still be a bad play. There's your reality, Jimmy."

Reality, she thought.

My first year in New York was real, the school and the small apartment I took on Myrtle Avenue, the elevated trains roaring past the window. And after that, and before I knew James Driscoll existed, reality was a boy named Donald Forbes, who limped. I'm a cripple, he said, okay? You're not a cripple, I insisted. No? Then what? I drag my leg, I limp, I'm a cripple, don't lie to me, Ebie, I'm a goddamn cripple. Holding him in my arms while he wept. He was not a good-looking boy, he reminded me of Phillip Armstrong whose nose had been too long ("I used to have this little turned-up button nose, but I had an operation done to make it long and ugly") and who was always coming down with a cold or something. Donald was that way, thin and looking like one of the hundred neediest, with large pleading Keane eyes. He took to carrying a cane in January because there was such a heavy snow that year, he said. That was just before I began sleeping with him.

"… real or otherwise, that's my point."

"You may be giving him more credit than he's due. I'm still not sure he really thinks you stole it."

"Then why did he bring suit?"

"There's a lot of money involved here, Jimmy."

"There's more than just money involved here. Constantine thinks I stole something that is very valuable to him, no matter
what
anyone else says about it. He wants credit for his work."

"No. He wants credit for
your
work."

"What makes
my
work any better than his?"

"Jimmy, this is a foolish argument. You know
The Paper Dragon
is far superior to
Catchpole
. Now why…?"

"We're not in that courtroom to judge the value of the two works, are we?" Driscoll said. "That's why I don't approve of what you were trying to do."

"What was I trying to do?"

"Make him ashamed."

"No," Jonah said.

She had never been ashamed of what she'd done, though of course she lied in her letters home, even in her letters to Miss Benson. And yet she always felt a pang of regret at not having told her the truth, because she was certain Miss Benson would have been the only one to understand. Wasn't this what she and Miss Benson had
really
discussed on that waning afternoon, wasn't this what Miss Benson had meant by a capacity for giving? In February, when Donald stopped using the cane, she thought she must have known how that Negro lawyer in Atlanta felt when he began sleeping with Miss Benson. If a nigger in the South (and she stopped calling them niggers the moment she realized Donald disapproved of the expression) if a
Negro
in the South could just once in his life stand up and be counted as a man, be accepted as a man by a woman like Miss Benson, why then maybe he could think of himself as a man from that day forward. And maybe, if they had let him alone, if they had allowed him to give this woman love and to accept it from her in return, if they had not been so desperately threatened by the notion, then maybe he'd have walked proud the rest of his life, without dragging his leg, without limping. But of course they couldn't allow that to happen. No, you see, we can't allow that to happen, Missie, standing in the driveway and talking in low voices to the schoolgirl in her cotton pajamas and robe, we cannot allow it, Missie, you had better get the hell out of Atlanta. Maybe that's what Donald was all about, because she knew without question that she did not love him, and yet she gave him love. And in February he threw away the cane, said the streets weren't as slippery, but she knew. She would watch him combing his hair in the morning, whistling as he studied his own face in the mirror over the sink, and she knew. And she would nod silently, a small smile on her mouth, and think of Miss Benson, and think she should write to her and tell her, thank her, say something to her. But she never did. It would have been too difficult to explain, the way it was impossible to explain later on. Oh not
Donald
, you could always explain the lovers of your past, especially if they were not really lovers. Though even then, there'd been a scene, my young James Driscoll laying down the law, you will not do this, you will not do that, yes my darling, yes my darling, yes, I love you.

"… that the work is
unworthy
of piracy, that's all."

"How do you know it is?"

"What are you talking about, Jimmy?"

"Let's suppose for the moment that I did steal his play, okay?"

"I would rather not suppose that."

"It's entirely possible."

"It is not possible," Jonah said firmly.

"I could have seen it in 1947 when they gave out those free tickets to Pratt."

"I don't believe they gave any free tickets to Pratt."

"Constantine testified to it under oath."

"Better men than Constantine have lied under oath."

He's lying now, Ebie thought. He doesn't believe a word of this, he's teasing you, Jonah, playing a game and enjoying every minute of it, the way he enjoyed that first afternoon in Bertie's on DeKalb Avenue, teasing the little Southern girl who had just cut her hair, the way he teased the world with his book, 
I
know what that book is about, James Driscoll.

"Even if I didn't see it at any of those preview performances, why couldn't I have caught it on Broadway? I was eighteen years old in '47, why couldn't I have seen the play? I started going to the theater when I was twelve, you know, used to go every Saturday with my father. Isn't it plausible that a play about the Army might have appealed to me?"

"Not a flop play."

"Maybe I've got a mind of my own, Jonah."

"I'm sure you have."

"Maybe I wanted to form my own opinion, despite what the critics had to say."

"That isn't the Way it works, and you know it."

"Or maybe I read the reviews and decided there was the kernel of something good there. Maybe I went to the theater with a notebook, intent on stealing whatever—"

"And then waited fifteen years to write your book, is that it? You're really an arch-criminal who entered Pratt Institute under the guise of studying art, though really wanting to be a writer all along. You searched the daily reviews to see what you could steal, and your imagination was captured by what you read about
Catchpole
. So you went there to copy it, realizing you would have to wait fifteen years before you could use the material. Is that it?"

"It's a possibility."

"Dris," Ebie said, "I wish you wouldn't talk this way. Even in jest."

"Ebie thinks I
did
steal it, you see," Driscoll said, and grinned.

"I think nothing of the sort."

"It's what she thinks, Jonah."

"Not at all."

"Tell the truth, Ebie. You think I stole that play, don't you?"

"You know I don't."

"Come on, Edna Belle, 'fess up."

"Stop it, Dris."

My name is Jimmy Driscoll, he had said. The tables in Bertie's were long and scarred, and she could remember looking away from him, down at the table top, initials in hearts, a group of engineering students singing at the other end of the room, November light filtering through the stained glass behind the tables, the room smelling of beer and steam heat, wet garments hanging on wooden pegs, his eyes were blue, she dared to look up into them. He teased her about her short hair and about her age. He imitated her Southern drawl, and then bought her a second glass of beer, the last of the big spenders, he said, and asked her out for Saturday night. She promptly refused.

You'll be sorry, he said. I'm going to be a famous artist.

Yes, I'm sure.

Come out with me.

No.

"There are good things in that play," Driscoll said. "It's not a good play — but there are things worth stealing in it."

"I wouldn't advise you to say that on the witness stand," Jonah said.

"Why not? I'll be swearing to tell the truth, won't I?"

"Yes, but…"

"You wouldn't want me to lie under oath, would you? Even though better men than Constantine have lied under oath?"

"I'm not enjoying this, Jimmy," Jonah said.

"That's too bad," Driscoll answered. "What am I supposed to do, pretend Constantine is an ogre? Well, I can't. I feel closer to him than I do to you or anyone else in that courtroom. He made something with his hands, he pulled it out of his head and his heart, that play of his, that terrible play, oh yes, unanimously panned and reviled — well, that play is Arthur Constantine, and not just words for lawyers to argue over and judges to decide about. He thinks he was wronged, Jonah, first by all the critics who sat in exalted superiority the way McIntyre is sitting, completely on the outside, the external critics who could find nothing good to say about his ugly'little child. And next by me, who took his miserable bastard and combed its hair and shined its shoes and made a million dollars on it. That's what he thinks and believes, Jonah, and I can understand him better than I can this cold contest between professional assassins, or this almighty judge who may murder him yet another time. I weep for him, Jonah. Don't try to shame him again."

"Do you want to lose this case?" Jonah asked flatly.

"It might matter more to Constantine than to me," Driscoll said.

"Why?"

"Because I'll never write another book as long as I live."

"That's nonsense, Dris," Ebie said.

"And don't repeat it on the witness stand," Jonah warned.

"Why not?"

"Because this case can go either way, and I don't need any more headaches — not if we're to win."

"Is that so important to you? Winning?"

"Yes," Jonah answered.

It's important to Dris, too, Ebie thought, don't think it isn't. He may
say
it's unimportant, Mr. Willow, he may
say
he'll never write another book as long as he lives, but I know him better than that, I know him better than any human being on earth. He knows he'll lose, you see. He knows that, and he's hoping against hope that he'll come out of it with honor somehow, without having to speak; that somehow a miracle will come to pass, he'll win without having to say what he tried to say in his novel and only failed to say. He'd give his
life
to be free of that Vermont rock garden where he pretends to grow his meager crops, living on royalties that still come in from the foreign editions and the paperback, constantly dwindling. He'd give his
soul
to be able to come back to New York, which is his home, his
only
home, come back and look this city in the eye again, be able to feel like a man in this city that's his, maybe not even to write again, though I know that's what he wants, I know, I know. I know this man so well, I know this fierce proud stupid stubborn man, I love this man so much.

He could do it. He could do it all, he could be free at last, if only… we could win this case so easily, we could do it so simply, if only he would…

"We'll lose, Ebie thought.

He'll never tell them.