Buddwing

15

They sat on the floor in the basement of the building with their backs to the cinder-block wall. They had made out a list of things they would need from the liquor store and the grocery, and now they sat with their hands clasped, and waited for the laundry to be done.

She was wearing her red cotton robe, tightly belted at the waist. Her left hand was clasped in his right, her head resting on his shoulder. He had put on his trousers and an old sweater. They were both barefoot.

The sounds of the building vibrated everywhere around them. The washing machine hummed and clicked and clattered steadily as it passed through cycle after cycle. Overhead, the water pipes clanged intermittently and dripped a small puddle of water against the opposite wall. There was the sound of an occasional toilet being flushed, the sound of footsteps and unintelligible voices above. A small window was at the far end of the basement. The rain had stopped, but a strong wind had come up, and the window rattled against the sash with each fresh gust. The myriad sounds encouraged whispering.

“What we could do,” she said, “is get rid of it.”

“How? That takes money.”

“Aren’t there pills or something?”

“I don’t think so. Not for... well, not for getting rid of it.”

“My father would give us money. I think he would.”

“I’d hate to ask him. I mean, for something like this. Anyway, they’d tell you to go ahead and have it, Grace.”

“Boy, this is what I really needed, all right. I really needed this.”

“Well, we are married, you know. I don’t see—”

“I’m scared to death.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. My grandmother died in childbirth.”

“That was in the old days, Grace. Nobody dies in childbirth any more.”

“I’ll bet it hurts like hell.”

“No, they give you anesthesia. You never even—”

“Not until its head is showing or something. Ick, it’s disgusting, all of it.”

“It’s a very natural thing, Grace. Women go through it every day of the—”

“Oh, shut up.”

“I’m only trying to—”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” She was silent for a long time. Then she said, “This throws Paris right out the window, doesn’t it?”

“It needn’t. We could—”

“Sure, we could carry a baby halfway across the world. We don’t even know if the water’s fit to drink there.”

“I’m sure the water in Paris—”

“And inoculations. How can you take a newborn baby to Europe?”

“He won’t be born for nine months, you know.”

“Eight.”

“Well, eight.”

“Or actually seven months and about ten days.” She shook her head. “I’m twenty-two years old, and I’m going to have a baby in seven months and ten days. Boy, that’s something, isn’t it?”

“Some women have them even younger than that.”

“Sure, some women are stupid asses, too. I don’t know how this happened. I swear to God, I do not know how this happened. Can we sue Margaret Sanger?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, and laughed.

“I mean, if they put a damn product on the market, you’d think it would work, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s not supposed to be a hundred per cent effective, honey.”

“No, so we get stuck. Do you know what she said to me?”

“Who, Grace?”

“The woman at the clinic. When I went to take the rabbit test. They make you put it in, you know, to see if you’ve been doing it properly, all that. Ick, it’s disgusting. Well, when she saw that I was doing it properly, she said, ‘Are you sure you didn’t leave it in the closet, honey?’”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her, ‘Sure, I left it in the closet. That’s where we make love, in the closet.’” Buddwing began laughing. “Don’t laugh,” she said, “it isn’t funny.”

“Grace,” he said, “the thing is, I wouldn’t mind having a baby.”

She did not answer him.

“We’re young,” he said, “what the hell.”

She still said nothing.

“We’d have a lot to offer a child.”

“Like what?”

“Brains, beauty...” He shrugged, and then smiled.

“Would you please do me a favor?”

“Sure, honey, what?”

“Don’t try to be comical.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You know when it must have happened?” she said.

“When?”

“That night we came back from L.J.’s house.”

“You think so?”

“Mmm, yeah. When was that? August sometime? Just after you got the job — when was that?”

“That was August.”

“Well, that’s when it must have happened.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, at least it was good. That night, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“Boy, I’m really scared. I mean it.”

“Honey, please don’t be.”

“You’re not even supposed to keep this job. It’s supposed to be a stopgap. I don’t want to tie you down to something that—”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Oh, I have to worry about you. I am you, don’t you know that?”

“No,” he said softly. “I didn’t know that, Grace.”

“Oh, don’t be such a jerk all the time. I spend my whole damn day figuring out what to say to you, and what to wear to please you, and how to make you laugh, and how to feed you and — oh, the hell with it.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said again, softly.

“I just don’t want to get you hung up like this.”

“I told you, honey, I want the baby.”

“I don’t want us to turn into... I don’t know... shlubs. I don’t want us to be like all the shlubs in the world, walking around with their fat bellies full of kids and their shabby flowered housedresses — boy, that scares me, honey. I don’t want you going to a stupid job each day of the week and hating it and hating me and hating the baby and turning into a stoop-shouldered old man with threadbare pants.”

“How’s a baby going to change anything, Grace?”

“I feel changed already. I feel fat. Ick, I could vomit.”

“You don’t look fat.”

“In fact, I do vomit,” she said, and smiled.

“Now who’s making the jokes?”

“Yeah, some joke. The radiant bride with the fat belly, puking all over the bathroom floor. What a charming picture to wake up to each morning.”

“I love you, Grace,” he said.

“I was wondering when you’d get around to that.”

“Do I have to say it?”

“Yes, you damn well do. Often.”

“I love you.”

“I suppose we’ll have to tell them, won’t we? Sooner or later. The folks, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“My brother’ll flip. His baby sister, The Weeper.” She grinned and said, “Well, he warned me.”

“He certainly did.”

“So I guess I’ve got no one to blame but myself.”

“And me.”

“And Margaret Sanger.” She paused, and then sighed, and then said, “I’m scared.”

He did not tell her that he was terrified.

If only, he thought.

Well.

If only

What we need is a break, that’s all. You can’t start this way, with nothing at all, and hope to survive. You can’t start young and fresh and unscarred and step into this world. No, you can’t. It’s a devouring beast, and if you won’t allow it to feed on you, it turns you against each other and you start feeding on yourselves. Because look at her, for God’s sake. What is she? Twenty-two? And thinking it’s all rolling out of bed with a laugh to make coffee in the morning, thinking it’s all rainy Saturday afternoons hiding under the dining room table the way I used to hide with my cousin Mandy. Children. You don’t take them and throw them into the street naked where the tigers are prowling, how can you? They need a break. All we need is any kind of a break. Ah, sure, self-pity. She said it, she was right, I’m a self-pitying son of a bitch, but I know that if we could only

Her brother could have done something for us; he could have offered us something. What was his big expensive gift to us? A lousy toaster. Doesn’t he know we need money?

I used to think, if only my grandfather were alive.

I used to think, if only Beethoven were alive, why, then I wouldn’t be so alone. Why, then, together, all of us banded in a tight circle with our arms around each other, Jesse too with his hard muscular arms, all of us with our backs turned against those walls that are moving in, why, then we could hold, then we could push the walls back, could keep them from squashing us flat, if only I weren’t alone. Because she can’t help, you see, not the way she is now. She’s too sweet and frail and confused, and she can’t help to hold back whatever it is that’s determined to flatten us, to drain all our young blood and leave us one-dimensional with only an angry helpless snarl on our flattened lips. We’re too young.

We’re too young to be flattened this way. But how can I stop it from happening if I don’t even know who I am, if there’s a hunger inside me to... to be, to grow, to live, to

“You never knew who the hell you were, and you’ve always been hungry.”

Ah, sure, talk about it, the wisdom of the very old. Hungry where? At your fat and overflowing breasts, was I hungry there? Lost where? In the dark jealousy of a love I could never consummate, hating him and loving him, knowing you were ours, yes, but really only his and never truly mine? Lost and hungry, yes, but why didn’t you ever tell me? Why didn’t you say, Sam, there are tigers out there, they are going to try to rip you limb from limb. Why didn’t you tell me that, Mother darling? Why did you leave me to discover it for myself with a girl who had never been told, either, a girl who thinks I know all the secrets when I know none of them at all? Why didn’t you tell me that I would have to go into the street naked and strangle tigers with nothing but love to protect me?

Tigers feast on love, didn’t you know that? The smell of love is fat and rich to their nostrils, and oh, they want to sink their claws and teeth into it; there is too much love in this world for the tigers. Throw love in their faces, hold up love as a shield, swing love as a sword, stand naked with only love as a cloak, and they will pick your bones clean, and you’ll never know who the hell you are or were.

The girl turned off the water tap.

The apartment was very still.

He sat alone and wondered who he was, and wondered why nobody had reported him missing to the Bureau of Missing Persons. He knew there was a Bureau of Missing Persons someplace in the city, and he knew that the first thing anyone did when her husband was late for dinner was to report him to that bureau and they would send around two detectives who asked for dental charts. He had read the newspaper this morning, and the only person missing was Edward Voegler, from a mental hospital. He knew positively he was not Edward Voegler, so how come nobody had reported him missing? And if nobody had bothered to report him, was he indeed missing, or was it simply a case of nobody giving enough of a damn to miss him?

“Have you got a radio?” he called to the bathroom.

From behind the closed door, the girl said, “Yes, on the bookshelf. The left-hand side of the bed.”

He found the radio, and turned it on. A group of little girls were singing a song that seemed to say, “I love him, I love him, I love him, and where he goes, I’ll follow, I’ll follow, I’ll follow...”

Then why didn’t you follow? he thought. Here I am, why didn’t you follow?

“I like that song,” the girl said from the bathroom.

“I wanted to get the news.”

“It’s too early for the news.”

“It ought to come on at eleven,” he answered.

“Come in here,” she said. “I want to kiss you before I put on my lipstick.”

He did not want to go to her because he suddenly felt the entire thing was her fault; she should have been more careful. It was not fair of her to grow as huge as a mountain with life clamoring inside her, a trembling volcano waiting to erupt; it was not fair. He wanted to get out of this apartment that restricted him, wanted to get away from this strange woman who was not Grace at all, not the Grace he had known, but rather some oddly deformed creature who moved ponderously and constantly complained of backaches. The little girls on the radio were shouting, “I love him, I love him, I love him,” in eternal cacophony, but if she really loved him, loved him, loved him, why had she allowed this to happen? He could remember those nights in his father’s car, their secret laughter about her brother Dan-Duke, could remember all of it with a painful nostalgia that made him wish she did truly love him, did indeed give enough of a damn about him to have called the Bureau of Missing Persons. He suddenly knew this was impossible. The voices of the chanting little girls gave way to the sound of what was supposed to be a beeping transmitter signal, and an announcer said that it was news time. He moved closer to the radio.

There was trouble of every kind in New York City and the world, and he listened to the woes of humanity while waiting to learn something about the specific woes of a very special human being who happened to be himself. But the radio told him nothing at all, and when the announcer was finished, a commercial came on in which a bratty kid kept yelling to his mother to bring some more Parks Sausages. He went to the radio and turned it off. The room was silent except for the sigh of the wind against the windowpanes.

He listened to the wind and decided to leave her.

Yes, he thought.

Yes.

Leave now. Go before it is too late.

Go kill all the tigers.

He stood by the window, looking down into the street.

Yes, he thought. You leave Grace now, and one day she is going to leave you.

The thought came into his mind unbidden, and he almost dismissed it at once because it was so utterly illogical. How could she possibly leave him one day if he left her now? He simply would not be there; you can’t leave someone who isn’t there. And yet the very absence of logic in the thought seemed to make it undeniably logical. Yes, it is true, he told himself. If I leave her now fat and misshapen with a baby in her belly, why, she’ll leave me someday; that’s all there is to it. He shrugged. There did not seem to be much sense in pursuing the thought, since he had already decided to leave her, anyway. But he found himself negating the thought, and then discovered there was at least some hope in negation.

If I do not leave Grace now, then one day she is not going to leave me.

Something was still wrong with the thought, but he could not imagine what. He had the oddest feeling that whatever was wrong had to do with Grace herself, and that he could do nothing to prevent her from leaving him forever whenever she wanted to. But at least the thought provided hope.

Hope for what? he wondered.

Well, hope that everything would turn out all right.

That’s the way it’s supposed to work, didn’t you know that? You’re supposed to go through the worst possible trials and tribulations each day before the soap commercial, and then at the end of the week everything is supposed to work out all right. The cavalry is supposed to arrive. That’s what the whole goddamn thing is about, don’t you know? That’s what keeps us going, the certainty that everything is going to work out all right, the mortgage will be paid, the villain will be vanquished, everybody will be rich and happy, and it will end in a clinch at sunset.

He suddenly found himself grinning. You think I’m afraid of tigers? he thought. Hal The cavalry’s going to arrive. Who the hell’s afraid of tigers!

He went to the bathroom door and pounded on it furiously. The door opened. She was wearing her red cotton robe, belted at the waist. She looked out at him with a curious smile.

“Ah, now he comes,” she said. “When I’ve already put on my lipstick.”

“Listen, Grace,” he said.

Over her shoulder, he could see his own reflection in the mirror over the sink. His eyes were brightly glowing; there was a high, intense look on his face.

“What is it?” she said.

“What is this?” he asked. “A big goddamn city?”

“Yes, it’s—”

“What is it? A big goddamn world?”

She was studying him curiously now, the smile no longer on her face, a look of serious concern in her eyes.

“Are you afraid of tigers?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “I’m scared to death of—”

“Neither am I,” he said. “What the hell are tigers? We’re both young, aren’t we? We’re both strong!”

“If twenty-eight is young, then I suppose—”

“We’re going to lick this goddamn thing, Grace. We’re going to make it turn out our way, the way we want it, do you hear me? You’re twenty-two years old. Why the hell should you have to cry in bed at night?”

“What is it?” she said gently. “What’s the matter? Is something—”

“It’s not all making coffee and rolling out of bed on a Saturday morning, Grace. What the hell do they have out there? Tigers? Who’s afraid of tigers? A little colored kid in the jungle made pancakes out of them, for Christ’s sake!”

“What did you hear on the radio? Did something upset you?”

“They took his pants and his shirt and his shoes and his umbrella just like they’ve taken ours, Grace, but the cavalry arrived, didn’t it? They wound up on the breakfast table, so who’s afraid of them?”

“You’re frightening me,” she said.

“There’s nothing to be frightened of. They made the rules, didn’t they? All right, we’ll learn the rules. We’ll play the game their way, why not? We’re together, aren’t we?”

“Yes, darling,” she said. “We’re together.”

“All I need is your help.”

“I’ll help you.”

“I’m going to know who I am, do you hear that?”

“Yes, darling, I know you are.”

“I need your help, Grace.”

“I’ll help you. I’ll help you all I can.”

“Do you know what I was about to do? I was about to leave you, do you realize that? I was about to go out there alone, Grace! What would you do then? What would you do alone, with your big belly, in this empty apartment? What would you do? You’d cry alone, the way I heard you crying night after night, your back turned to me, while I lay there with every muscle quivering, and the apartment closed around us like a tomb, alone, Grace. How could I have even thought of it?”

She watched him silently, and then glanced across the room toward the telephone. She seemed about to move toward it.

“We don’t need anyone,” he said. “Never mind that.”

“What?”

“The telephone. Never mind any of them, the hell with them all. We can do it alone.”

“I thought...”

“What did you think? That I could actually leave you? Just walk out of your life? Ah, no, Grace, that’s your game, not mine. What would you do then, huh? If I left? Weep alone for the boy and girl who met in a park and tried to grow up together, unaware that tigers can stunt your growth? They can, Grace, oh they can, but not to us! What would you do, wipe away your tears and consult your charts and notice that Gemini is under the rulership of the planet Mercury, and that you were born in the second decanate, eleven to twenty degrees, with the sun in ascendance? And then forget? Wipe away your tears and forget? How could I leave you, Grace? How could I ever forget you?”

She did not answer him. She was biting her lip now and watching him worriedly.

“I want to be one of the tigers,” he said. “I want to drink raw blood.”

He saw she was fighting to hold back her tears. She was twisting her hands now, and biting her lip, and the tears were behind her eyes, ready to overflow.

“No,” he said. “Don’t cry.”

“You frighten me. I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “Worry about them! They’re the ones who have to worry!” He walked swiftly to the window and threw it open. “Listen to me!” he shouted to the lighted windows across the street. “Listen to me, you bastards!”

“Darling, please...”

“Open your window eyes and look at me up here! Do you see me? This is me standing here! I am going to get all the things I need and want, and I am going to get them with these bare hands. Now, what do you think of that? Go ahead, turn out your bathroom light up there — what the hell do I care? You can’t stop us, do you hear me?” He turned from the window. Very softly, he said, “They can’t stop us, Grace.” He walked to her and dropped to his knees before her. He opened the red robe and put his head against her belly. “I love you, Grace,” he said. “I love what’s inside you.” He paused. “We’re going to learn. We’re going to beat the bastards.”

She sighed deeply and gently stroked his face. He stayed on his knees before her, his cheek pressed to her belly, for what seemed like a long long time. Then he rose and stood before her with his head erect and his shoulders back. “I’ll go down for the whiskey now,” he said. “We’re going to have our party. We’re going to celebrate.”

“Maybe I ought to go. Maybe—”

“No, you still have to dress.” He smiled. “Don’t worry about me, Grace. There’s nothing out there that can harm me.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she said.

“Nothing will happen to me.”

“Or to us. I don’t want anything to happen to us.” She paused. She studied him for a long time, and then cautiously, she said, “Look, would you...” She bit her lip. “We can get help, you know. If you’d let me...”

“We don’t need help,” he said.

“It’s just... I don’t want to lose you.”

He smiled and went to her and took her in his arms. “No, huh?” he said teasingly. “How come?”

“I love you,” she said.

“You do, huh? Then how about giving me the money for the booze?”

She hesitated, watching his face. “You’ll come right back, won’t you?”

“I’ll fly,” he said.

She moved away from him and opened her handbag. “It’s two blocks up. The liquor store. You’ll have to look for a grocery. I don’t know if any’ll be open at this time of—”

“I’ll find one.”

She handed him a twenty-dollar bill. “Please hurry,” she said. “I’ll be worrying.”

“Go put on your dress,” he said. He kissed her lightly on the forehead, and went out of the apartment.

The streets outside had been washed clean by the rain, and everything glistened with the sparkle of fresh wetness. He breathed deeply of the air and walked two blocks up the avenue to the liquor store. He spent $6.94 for a fifth of Old Grand-Dad and $6.80 for a fifth of Black and White. In one of the side streets, he found an open grocery store where he bought two quart bottles of club soda for fifty-nine cents, six splits of ginger ale for the same amount, a bag of potato chips for thirty-nine cents, a bag of cheese tidbits for twenty-nine cents, and a can of salted peanuts for thirty-nine cents. He had spent a total of fifteen dollars and ninety-nine cents. In addition to the thirty cents he still had from Gloria’s five-dollar dole, he now had four one-dollar bills and one penny, for a grand total of four dollars and thirty-one cents. He was rich again.

He stopped on the street corner, the brown paper bag with the whiskey bottles in one arm, the brown paper bag with the groceries in the other. The buildings of New York rose around him like a wall of slitted eyes. Beyond that wall, there lay the world for his taking. With Grace beside him, he would destroy every tiger in these narrow canyons. He would drain a bottle of booze, and then shout a war cry in the streets. He would flush out all the yellow and black cats, seize them by the tails, twirl them over his head in exultant triumph, and then call Gloria Osborne at MO 6-2367 to tell her he was a giant, and perhaps go to eat a victory feast with her at Izzy’s Cafeteria.

MO 6-2367.

Gloria.

No, not Gloria, but

“It’s not your fault,” Dan says.

These are the first kind words Dan has ever said to him in his life.

“I know it isn’t,” he answers.

“In case you thought it was.”

“It just started wrong,” he says.

“You’ll have to call tomorrow morning,” Dan says. “They need all that information. About how many people there’ll be, all that.”

“I’ll be going there, anyway.”

“I know, but... maybe you ought to sleep late, get some rest. You’ll be there all day, you know.”

“I thought I’d go early.”

“There’s no need for that. Molly and I will be there.”

“All right, I’ll call them.”

“Unless you want me to handle it.”

“No, I can do it.”

“You’d know better than I, anyway. And it’s your decision to make.”

“Yes, I know.”

They are silent for a long time. He walks beside Dan and tries to hate him, tries to hate somebody, but all emotion seems to have drained out of him.

“How will you be going?”

“What?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll drive,” he says.

“Do you think you should?” Dan asks.

“Why not?”

“I’d feel a lot happier if you took the train.”

“I can drive.”

“Still, you might be there late tomorrow night, and you’ll be tired. Take the train. I’ll drive you home tomorrow.”

“All right,” he says.

“Maybe we ought to get a schedule.”

“All right.”

They walk toward Grand Central. At the information booth, they ask for a Harlem Division timetable. He puts it into the inside pocket of his jacket without looking at it.

“You have the number now, don’t you?” Dan asks.

“Yes,” he says.

“You wrote it in the book, right?”

“Yes.”

“You still have the book?”

He feels his pocket. “Yes, I have it.”

“You won’t forget to call, will you?”

“No, I won’t forget.”

“You won’t forget, now, will you?”

“No, I won’t forget.”

MO 6-2367.

Again, as it had earlier this morning, the need to call that number seemed terribly urgent. As he walked, he began looking for a bar or a cigar store, the need rising, his pace quickening. He had promised to call, had he not? He had specifically written down the number so he would not forget to call. Besides, now that he was brimming with plans for the future, he felt he owed her a call, just a ring — Hello there, how are you, this is me again — to let her know she was forgiven. What the hell, he should not have expected her to know all the answers. He would tell her that he was strong and swift and ready to do battle. I am going to make you proud of me, he would say. He could almost visualize her listening to him as he spoke. She would be standing in her bedroom with the phone tucked under her ear, and she would smile and nod encouragingly and benevolently, Yes, son, go kill all the tigers.

He went into a United Cigar Store and walked directly to the phone booth. He deposited his dime and dialed her number, MO 6-2367. His hand on the receiver was trembling. He listened to the phone ringing on the other end, and then Gloria’s voice came onto the line, and his heart lurched.

“Hello?” she said.

“Hello there, how are you?”

“Who is this?”

“This is me again,” he said.

“Who the hell is me again?”

“You remember. I was there this morning.”

“What do you want? Another handout?”

“No, Gloria, I thought—”

“My husband is here with me,” she said curtly, and hung up.

For a moment, he could not believe he was holding a dead phone in his hand. He stared at the instrument as though it had betrayed him, and then put it back on the hook and sat motionless in the booth, watching the grinning white face of the dial. He clenched his fist suddenly and banged it against the coin box, and then he picked up his bundles and walked out into the street again.

I only wanted to tell you what I was planning, that’s all, he thought. I mean, I thought maybe, just maybe, you might be interested in knowing what the hell your son was planning. So what was all that business about a handout? Who needs anything from you? I’m a big boy now, sweetie; I can make it alone. I knew I’d have to make it alone from that day in Yokohama. I left you a long long time ago, sweetie, so what gives you the right to, talk to me this way now, to tell me your husband is there with you? Your husband has always been there with you — is that supposed to be news? Who the hell needs you or him? I’ve got Grace with me, she’s going to learn to growl and spit, we’re going to run so far and so fast that neither of you will know where the hell we are, or even if we ever existed!

He nodded his head defiantly, and began walking back toward the apartment.

The blond woman in the black cocktail dress was waiting in a taxi at the next corner.