A Matter of Conviction

Ten

She stood by the bed.

She wore a white skirt and a black sweater, and her blond hair was pulled back into a pony tail captured by a small black ribbon.

“Hello, Dad,” she said.

“Hello, Jennie.”

“How do you feel?”

“A little better.”

He had been in the hospital for three days now, but this was the first time Jennie had come to visit. Sitting up in bed with his face and his body bandaged, he looked at the sunlight playing on his daughter’s hair, and he thanked God that the pain was gone now. The only pain now was in the memory of what had happened to him. The police had found him on the park path a little after midnight. The path around him had been stained with blood, and the hospital doctors later told him he’d been in deep shock. They’d dressed his wounds and filled him with sedatives and now, three days later, the pain in his body was gone. But the other pain still lingered, a pain of puzzlement, the pain of not being able to understand an attack that was senseless and cruel.

“Why did they beat you, Dad?” Jennie asked.

“I’m not sure,” he answered.

“Did it have something to do with the Morrez case?”

“Yes. In a twisted way, I suppose it did.”

“Are you doing something wrong?”

“Wrong? Why, no. What makes you think that?”

Jennie shrugged.

“What is it, Jennie?”

“Nothing. Just... the way the kids in the neighborhood have begun treating me, like a leper or something. I thought — I thought maybe you were doing something wrong.”

“I don’t think I am, Jennie.”

“All right,” she said. She paused. “Mommy went to see that boy the police picked up.”

“What boy?”

“The one who wrote you the threatening letter. About the Thunderbirds. You know the one.”

“Yes?”

“Well, they picked up the boy who wrote it. I guess your beating finally goosed the police into action.”

“Jennie, that’s hardly the proper language for a young lady to—”

“Anyway, they got him, Daddy. He’s a cripple.”

“A cripple?”

“A polio victim. He walks with a limp. They had his picture in the newspaper. He looked very sad, Daddy.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. When I saw his picture, I wondered what it would be like to be crippled and — and growing up in Harlem. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Mommy went to see him this morning. The police let her. She asked him if he’d meant the threat, if he’d really meant that he would kill you.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said, ‘Yes, goddamnit! Why would I send the note otherwise?’”

“Jennie, your language...”

“I’m only quoting him, Dad.” She paused. “But he wasn’t in on the beating. He isn’t even one of the Thunderbirds, and he has an alibi for the night you were beat up. I talked to Mommy on the phone before I came over here. She said they’ll release him as soon as someone puts up the bail for him.”

“How much?”

“Two thousand dollars. Daddy, will this sound strange?”

“What, Jennie?”

“If I had two thousand dollars, I’d put it up for bail. Because, Daddy, he looked so sad. He looked so damn sad.” She paused. “Does that make any sense to you?”

“A little,” he said.

Jennie nodded. “Will they be letting you out of here soon?”

“A week,” he said. “Maybe a little longer.”

“They hurt you pretty badly, didn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“How does it feel? To get beat up, I mean.”

“Well, it doesn’t feel good,” he said, and he attempted a smile.

“Daddy, whichever way this case works out, isn’t... isn’t there the possibility that you may be beaten up again?”

“I suppose there’s that possibility.”

“Are you afraid?”

He met her eyes with his own, and he saw that she was seeking honesty, but he lied nonetheless. “No,” he said, “I’m not afraid,” and he knew instantly he’d made a mistake by lying.

Jennie turned her head away from him. “Well,” she said, “I guess I ought to be scramming. Mommy said to tell you she’ll be here tonight.”

“Will you come again, Jennie?” he asked.

“Do you want me to?” she said, and again her eyes met his.

“Yes, I’d like you to.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

“Maybe... maybe we’ll be able to talk.”

“Maybe.”

“I meant without nurses or anything interrupting.”

“Yes. I know what you meant. The way we used to talk when I was a little girl.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe,” she said again. “But it’ll have to be after next week sometime. Mommy’s sending me to Rockaway to stay with the Andersons.”

“Oh? When was this decided?”

“Last night.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“A week.” Jennie hesitated. “I think Mommy’s afraid something might happen to me if I stay in the city.”

“I see,” Hank said.

“Do you think something might happen to me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well...” Jennie shrugged. “I’ll be going now, Dad.” She bent over the bed and kissed him hastily. “Take good care of yourself.”

She walked to the door, and he watched it close gently behind her. And then she was gone.

The next week went by very slowly, despite Karin’s daily visits. He thought of the attack often during that long, lonely week, and he wondered if he would ever be well enough to forget that Wednesday night, ever be well enough to forget the silent savagery of the boys who had attacked him. He had learned quite a bit from the beating. He had learned, to begin with, that a beating reduced a man to nothing more and nothing less than an open wound shrieking its pain to the night. A man was powerless when attacked by a gang intent on administering a merciless, methodical beating. The gang was a cold jury, a harsh judge, an emotionless hangman. And, lacking emotional content, the beating took on even more horrifying meaning. A man who’d been beaten, Hank knew, would never forget the pain, and the humiliation, and the empty terror of his helplessness.

And yet, the gangs in Harlem conducted warfare on a regular basis. Didn’t each gang skirmish have, by simple logic, a winning side and a losing side? And hadn’t each gang member experienced at one time or another the pain of defeat in battle? A battle, he reminded himself, is not a beating. But still, didn’t they enter each fight with fear? How could they face guns, and knives, and broken bottles — and tire chains — without fear? How could they rationalize the knowledge that if they fell they would surely be stomped into the pavement? Were they fearless heroes, men of steel, nerveless men of action?

No.

They were afraid. He knew they were afraid. And yet they fought. For what?

For what?

He did not know the answer. The question plagued him all that week. On the day before his release, the question still echoed in his mind. He wondered if this last day would ever pass, if he would ever truly leave this damned clean, sterile, antiseptic isolation booth. He was thankful for the respite from his thoughts and his loneliness when, at two that afternoon, his nurse, a woman in her fifties, walked into the room.

“Do you feel like talking to someone, Mr. Bell?” she asked.

“Any time,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, not me,” she said. “There’s a visitor outside.”

“Oh? Who?”

“A man named John Di Pace.”

“And he wants to talk to me?”

“Yes.”

“Send him in, won’t you?”

“Provided you don’t get all excited,” the nurse said.

“Dear,” he told her, “I’m getting out of here tomorrow. How are you ever going to survive without me to fuss over?”

The nurse smiled. “We’ll miss you sorely,” she said. “You’re the nastiest patient we ever had on this floor. I guess the beating didn’t teach you anything.”

“It taught me the pleasures of an alcohol rub,” he said, and he winked lewdly.

“You’re impossible. I’ll send in Mr. Di Pace.”

He adjusted the pillows behind him and waited for Di Pace’s appearance. He felt rather odd. He was about to meet the man who had taken Mary from him so long ago, when Mary had meant so much, and he felt no rancor now, only an absorbing curiosity. Nor did the curiosity have anything to do with Mary. He realized with a start that he was not interested in meeting the husband of Mary Di Pace; he was only interested in meeting the father of Danny Di Pace.

A knock sounded on the door.

“Come in,” he said. “It’s open.”

The door swung wide, and John Di Pace entered the room. He was a tall man who seemed embarrassed by his own height as he walked hesitantly toward the bed. His hair was dark and his eyes were brown, and Hank wondered what quirk of nature had provided Danny with his mother’s recessive coloration. The man provided an instant impression of gentleness. Not knowing Di Pace, never having heard him speak, Hank instantly knew that he was one of the gentle people, and he was suddenly glad he was here.

“Sit down, Mr. Di Pace,” he said, and he extended his hand. Di Pace took it. Fumblingly, he sat.

“I didn’t know whether I should come or not,” Di Pace said. His voice was low, almost a whisper, and Hank instinctively knew again that this was a man who rarely raised his voice in anger. “But I read about what happened, and I... I thought I should come. I hope you don’t mind.”

“It’s a pleasure to see you,” Hank said.

“How do you feel?”

“Okay now. I’m getting out of here tomorrow.”

“Oh. Then I just caught you in time.”

“Yes.”

Di Pace hesitated. “Was it as bad as the newspapers said?”

“I guess so. Yes.”

“Eight of them,” Di Pace said, and he shook his head. “I can’t understand it.” He paused. “Can you?”

“No. Not exactly.”

“Was it the... the Puerto Ricans? Or Danny’s friends?”

“I don’t know. It was dark.”

“Not that it matters,” Di Pace said, and he laughed nervously and then stopped, and in his eyes there was the greatest sadness Hank had ever seen on the face of a man. “I just don’t understand it,” he said. “Maybe people behave this way, I don’t know. Maybe in war or something? But — Were you in the service?”

“Yes,” Hank said.

“Oh sure. That’s stupid of me. Of course you were...” The voice trailed off. “I missed it,” he said. “I had a punctured eardrum. I was four-F.” He paused. “A friend of mine used to send me Yank magazine.”

“That was a good magazine,” Hank said.

“Yes. Then, of course, I met Mary. She’s a wonderful girl.”

“Yes.”

“And now my son is a murderer.” He shook his head. “If you understand it, Mr. Bell, please tell me. Because I don’t. I’ve wracked my brain trying to understand it, and I can’t. Jesus, I can’t! I can’t understand the damn thing!”

His face was in anguish now, and Hank felt he would begin crying at any moment. “Mr. Di Pace,” he said, “there are lots of things we...”

“Do you know what I’ve been doing ever since this happened?” Di Pace said. “I’ve been going over everything, everything we ever did, every word I ever spoke to my son, every slap I ever gave him, every present, every place I took him. I’ve been reliving his life. I’ve been going over it step by step, inch by inch, and trying to find out why he did this. Because if he did this thing, he’s not to blame. What did I do wrong, I keep asking myself. What? What? Where did I fail my son?”

“You can’t blame yourself for a slum environment, Mr. Di Pace. Danny might have been all right if...”

“Then who do I blame? Who do I blame for getting fired when I worked out on Long Island? Who do I blame for the decision to come back to Harlem? Mr. Bell, who do I blame for the fact that I’m a failure and my son is a murderer?”

“You’ve got a shoe store. You’ve got—”

“I’ve got a life that’s a failure, Mr. Bell. John Di Pace, failure. Even Danny knew it. Mary? Mary loves me. Whatever I want to do is all right with her. But you can’t expect the same love from a child. You’ve got to prove yourself to a child. And what did I ever prove to Danny? I can remember when he first found out I hadn’t been in the service. He came in one day and said his friend’s father had been a sailor, and he wanted to know what I had been. I told him I hadn’t been drafted. I told him I had a punctured ear drum. He asked me what that was, a punctured eardrum. I told him it was a hole in my ear through which poison gas could enter, that gas masks hadn’t been designed to stop this possibility. He said, ‘But weren’t you in the Army?’ I told him I wasn’t. ‘The Navy?’ he said. No, not the Navy either. ‘Then what? The Marines?’ No, not the Marines. ‘Nothing?’ he said. ‘You were nothing?’

“I was nothing, Mr. Bell. You were flying bombers over Germany, and I was nothing.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Nobody wanted to go fight a war.”

“I wanted to. How do you explain a punctured eardrum to an eight-year-old kid who only wants to know that his father was a hero? I heard him outside one day a little while later. This other kid was telling him that his father had been on a destroyer and that it had been sunk by Japanese suicide planes. When he was finished, Danny said, ‘You should see my Daddy’s stamp collection. I’ll bet it’s the biggest stamp collection in the world.’ A stamp collector against a sailor on a destroyer that went down.”

“I don’t think that had anything to do with—”

“Do you have any kids, Mr. Bell?”

“Yes. A daughter. She’s thirteen.”

“Girls are easier. I guess you’re lucky.”

“They’re not so easy.”

“Do you ever get the feeling that you don’t know your own kid?”

“Sometimes.”

“I used to get that feeling a lot, even before this happened, before the — the killing, I mean. I used to look at Danny, and I saw him growing up before my eyes, and I knew that one day soon he’d be a man, and I didn’t even know him. And I used to wonder when I stopped knowing him, when he became something less than my son, and something more than my son, when he became this person called Danny Di Pace who was a person in his own right, a person very different from the two people who’d produced him. I used to wonder where he’d come from all of a sudden, this stranger who sat at the dinner table with us and told stories about friends I didn’t even know. Where did he come from? Who was he? My son? Why, my son was just a little thing I used to hold in my arms while giving him his bottle. Who was this — this man almost that I didn’t even know? Do you ever feel that way, Mr. Bell? With your daughter?”

“Yes,” he said uneasily. “Sometimes.”

“But girls are different. You don’t have to worry with girls. I read someplace that five times as many boys as girls are arrested each year. And with girls, it’s mostly sexual offenses. They don’t get into the more serious trouble. The beatings and the... the killings.”

“I guess you’re right,” Hank said.

Di Pace nodded. The room was silent. Then he said, “You know, I remembered something the other night. It just came to me out of the blue when I was sitting and thinking over the things we’d done and said. It was something that happened right after I lost my job. I remember I was out covering some bushes. We were going to sell the house anyway, we’d already decided to come back to Harlem, you see, but I don’t like to see living things die, and that was a bad corner in the winter, the way the wind used to rip around it, the bushes could have been damaged, so I covered them every year. This was in the fall, I can remember it was a very bright clear day, but with a nip in the air, you know those kind of days. I was outside working. I had on an old brown sweater, I remember...”

(The housing development in which the Di Paces live is typical of the low-cost developments on Long Island. The house is priced at $11,990 and the Di Paces were required to produce a thousand dollars in cash when they first bought it. Monthly mortgage payments used to be $83, but they are now $101 because the house was finally assessed and also because the bank holding Di Pace’s mortgage says there is an escrow shortage, a term he does not fully understand. He does understand that the house is now costing him eighteen dollars more per month than he had figured on.

Di Pace’s house is a six-room ranch on a corner plot. The plot is seventy feet by one hundred feet as opposed to the sixty-by-one-hundred plots most of his neighbors own. But because the house is on a corner the back yard is really a side yard, and this disturbs Di Pace. He has always wanted a true back yard. The fact that he must barbecue on the side of his house where all the neighbors can see him embarrasses him. He is working in his side yard now, covering his bushes with tarpaulin. The houses of the development stretch in endless symmetry toward the horizon. There is a flawless blue sky overhead. The leaves on the spindly maples which sprout on the front lawns of all the houses are turning brown. There is a sharp wind, and it lifts Di Pace’s hair as he works. The sunshine is very bright. It is a good crisp fall day. It holds the death of summer and the promise of winter.

Di Pace works tirelessly and fastidiously. The brown sweater he is wearing is torn at the elbows and unraveling at the throat. But he likes this sweater. It was given to him by Mary years ago, when they were just kids going together. When he received it, it reminded him of an Army sweater. It smells of perspiration now, and there are streaks of paint on it from previous household chores, but it is a warm sweater and it fits him well. He has not gained a pound since the time Mary gave him the sweater. He knows he will never gain any weight or lose any. He is what he is, and he’ll be that until he dies.

When Danny approaches him, Di Pace does not look up. He continues working on the bush, securing the tarpaulin with cord, tying the cord tightly about the thicker lower stems. Danny is almost thirteen years old, a tall boy who is beginning to fill out, his awkward long-leggedness giving way to the well-proportioned body of a young man. He watches his father silently for a moment.)

DANNY: Pop?

(He has never called his father Dad. There is something effete in the word, he believes. He feels, too, an inadequacy in the word Pop. It does not express to him the father-son relationship he desires. He would like a word that expressed warmth and companionship and man-to-manness. “Dad” does not do that, and “Pop” is somehow lacking. He has thought often of calling his father Johnny. This, he thinks, would establish something between them. But he knows that his father would not like it, even though he has never discussed it with him. He knows intuitively that his father would not like it. And so, rejecting the word expressing a false relationship, eliminating the word for the relationship he desires, he has settled upon “Pop,” which fills but does not satisfy the need.)

DI PACE: What is it, Danny?

DANNY: Is it true?

DI PACE: What?

DANNY: That we’re moving?

DI PACE: Oh yeah. It’s true. Would you hand me that ball of twine?

(Danny hands his father the twine, watching him as he works on the bush. He would like to help his father. He can remember wanting to help his father ever since he was a little kid. When his father was painting, he would come out and ask if he could paint, too, and his father would invariably say no. He could understand this somewhat. His father is a careful and fastidious worker, and he does not like a child slowing down the work or making a mess. But still he wished he could have helped his father sometime.)

DANNY: Where... where are we going?

DI PACE: To Harlem.

DANNY: Where Grandma lives?

DI PACE: Near there. Yes. Give me that scissors.

(Danny hands him the scissors. He recalls that on the few occasions he did help his father it was always in the capacity of the person who handed him things or held things. In his mind, he has created a fantasy wherein he and his father are painting the side of the house, sitting on the same scaffold. He calls his father Johnny, and they crack jokes together and laugh together, and at lunchtime they sit on the scaffold and eat sandwiches Mary has made, and then Johnny says, “Well, back to the salt mines,” and they begin painting again. Occasionally, as they work, they begin singing. The song is spontaneous, and it stops just as quickly as it has started, usually ending on a laugh. At the end of the day, they lower the scaffold and then they back away from the job and, paint-smeared hands on dungareed hips, they survey their work. And Johnny says, “That’s a damn good job, son. Let’s go up to the center and get ourselves a couple of sodas.” It is a nice fantasy. It has never happened. It will never happen.)

DANNY: I don’t like Harlem much.

DI PACE: Well, you’ll get used to it, Danny. Your mother and I think it’s best for us to—

DANNY: I saw a beating there once.

DI PACE: When was this?

DANNY: When Grandpa died. When we went to the funeral. I was walking with Christina. We were going to get some ice cream pops.

DI PACE: You never told me this.

DANNY: They were chasing this colored kid. A whole bunch of them were after him. He tried to climb onto a car that stopped for a light. He tried to get away from them that way. But the car had no running board, and he hung to the door handle when the car started, and lifted his feet off the street, trying to hang on. But the car sped up, and he dropped off, and they surrounded him. They hit him with an ash can. I can remember him laying in the street, and the kids kept lifting up this ash can and throwing it down on his back, and the colored guy just kept laying there with his hands covering the back of his neck while that ash can went up and down, up and down, passing from hand to hand. Then the cops came.

DI PACE: You never told me this.

DANNY: And later, when I was walking with Christina, we were behind one of the kids, and he said, “Man, did you see me hit that jig? I musta split his head wide open with that ash can.” That was what he said. And he laughed. And the kid with him laughed, too. That was when Grandpa died. We went back to the funeral parlor then, and Grandpa was laying in the coffin. I began crying, don’t you remember? I didn’t cry for Grandpa up until that time. But I cried then.

DI PACE: I didn’t see you crying, Danny. I didn’t know my father meant that much to you.

DANNY: Pop, I don’t like Harlem.

DI PACE: Well, I haven’t got a job here any more, Danny. And this shoe store...

DANNY: Pop, do we have to move to Harlem? Pop, I really don’t like it. I’ve got friends here and—

DI PACE: You’ll make new friends there.

DANNY: I don’t want to be friends with kids who hit a colored guy with an ash can.

DI PACE: All the kids in Harlem aren’t like that.

DANNY: Pop, listen to me. Can you stop working on that bush for a minute? Can you listen to me?

DI PACE: What is it, Danny?

DANNY: I don’t want to live in Harlem, Pop. Please. I don’t want to live there.

DI PACE: It’s not as easy as that, Danny. I’ve lost my job.

DANNY: Well, for Christ’s sake, why’d you lose it?

DI PACE: I don’t like that kind of language.

DANNY: I’m sorry, but why’d you have to lose your job? Why couldn’t you hang on to it? What’s the matter with you, Pop?

DI PACE: They cut production, Danny. It’s not my fault.

DANNY: I don’t want to live in Harlem!

DI PACE: (with some anger): You’ll live where we have to live!

DANNY: I don’t want to live there! I don’t want to live where guys—

DI PACE: Danny, we’re moving and that’s it. I don’t want to hear anything more about it.

DANNY: Pop, please, don’t you see? I couldn’t live there. I’d be... I’d be...

DI PACE: You’d be what?

DANNY: I’d... I’d...

(He turns and runs out of the yard. His father stares after him for a moment and then goes back to tying his bush.)

“He never finished the sentence?” Hank asked.

“No,” Di Pace said. “But the other night, thinking about it, I knew what he was trying to tell me.”

“And what was that?”

“He was trying to say he’d be afraid. Afraid.” Di Pace paused. “And I wouldn’t hear him.”