Among the Living (22 page)

Goldah kept his hands in his pockets as he moved through the rain. The rest of him was soaked through, but the hands, miraculously, remained dry. It occurred to him that he had always given special care to his hands. Writing, his father said, required it. They had kept lotions and creams in the house for the winter, others for the summer. A cracked finger or a knuckle too dry and it was a day lost, even a week if the skin became too brittle. Of course Pasco had been right, too. Feet were life, shoes were life, but only in a place that took life to mean something other than what it was.

Goldah walked and thought how right little Pasco had been. One could pretend — that was the lie — or forget, but even forgetting was no hope against the past. It always found its way in. And he thought of Malke — unknown and unknowing Malke. Shredded memory only made it worse.

Goldah turned onto his street and saw Eva sitting on the stoop under his small awning. The building had been her choice, the rooms on the second floor pleasant and with a western view: less heat in the morning, she said, and a chance for a sunset in the late afternoon. She had found him a few things to furnish it with, simple but inviting. The dresser had been her husband’s as a boy. She had been keeping it in her attic — who knows why, she said — and asked if he felt strange about that. Strange? She had brought him to a quiet place where he could lock a door and know that no one else could come through it. All of it was strange, and that night he had told her he loved her.

Her arms were now resting on her knees, her hands clenched beyond them and, for a moment, Goldah thought she might be in prayer. It was an absurd thought, just as ridiculous as his soaked-through appearance on this somber little street. When she looked up he was standing by her, the light from the lamp caught somewhere between them.

“You should have called a cab,” she said, as if they might be meeting for drinks or a quick bite before a movie.

“You could have gone in. You have the key.”

“It’s cooler out here.”

He recalled countless conversations like this, though nothing like this at all. “You took Julian to your parents?”

She nodded. Then, as effortlessly as before, “Is she someone you loved?”

He reached his hand down. “Let’s go in.”

“If you’re going to tell me things are going to get complicated, I think I can do that out here.”

“Come inside. Please.”

“A policeman asked if I needed help. I must have looked quite a sight.” She took his hand and stood.

“You look fine.”

Upstairs he changed while she put a kettle on for tea. He lay his suit on a chair and hoped the humidity might let it dry by next week. He stepped into the small sitting room where she was pouring out two cups.

“You have nothing to eat,” she said. “I’ll make a few things and put them in the icebox. That way you’ll have them.”

He sat with her at the little table by the window and placed a hand around his cup. “Your father called you?”

“A young woman with a foreign name?” she said. “Of course. He said Mr. Jesler sounded quite insistent. Concerned. The next thing I knew I was sitting on your stoop. I wasn’t thinking you’d come by tonight but I just couldn’t get myself to leave. Isn’t that silly?”

Goldah placed his open hand on the table. He expected her to place hers inside but she brought her cup to her lips with both her hands and took a sip. It was all slipping away, wasn’t it?

“She was a woman from Prague,” he said. “I’d known her since I was a boy.”

“Was? She’s just up the road, isn’t she?”

“I thought she had died.”

“In the camp?”

Like a bright, white light the memory crept in and blinded him for a moment. “I thought she’d been — that she hadn’t survived. The first night. I thought they had taken her.”

“You thought she was gone all this time?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Eva set her cup on the table. She sat calmly, staring at it, the intensity in her gaze an unsettling prelude to the sudden and aimless movement she made, standing and going to the kitchen doorway. He watched as she leaned her back against the jamb — the tears he had expected downstairs forming — and she shook her head as she brought her arms tight around her chest.

“All this time,” she said. “She’s been waiting all this time and you’ll have no choice. You’ll tell yourself you have no choice.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes it is. And if you loved her —”

“I never did.”

Goldah heard the words. He had never said them before but here they were, presented to Eva like a sacrifice.

She looked at him, not with relief but with a deep, deep pain. “Why tell me that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Oh, because it’s true. You think the truth takes care of it. But here she is. She’s found you after everything else because she loves you — truly loves you — and you know it.”

“You can’t possibly know what I know.”

“Don’t say that.”

He went to her. She made a weak effort to push him away but she let him take her in his arms all the same.

“That doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Of course it does. Don’t be a coward. Don’t hide behind that.”

The word
coward
caught inside him, stark and unforgiving and all the sharper because he knew she had never intended it that way. He felt an unexpected strength in his hand and he
slammed it against the wall even as he saw himself moving anywhere but near to her.

“Don’t say that,” he said with unaccustomed bitterness. “Don’t say it. Do you have any idea — do you? My God. You think crawling back to all of that makes me brave? Love out of pity, love because fate said these are the only choices to be had?” The truth flooded in and doused whatever anger remained, leaving only a frail disbelief in its wake. “I’ll never leave there, will I? It’s the criminal set free but with the mark on his forehead, his arm. And they all stare and know, and who cares if it’s remorse or shame or kindness — it’s still the prisoner they see. And if he says ‘No —’ ” His throat tightened. “ ‘I won’t go back, I won’t be there every morning, every night,’ then it’s ‘Shame on you for never having loved her.’ ” He felt his own tears. “There’s your redemption,” he said. “That’s what we’ll give you. Take it and be glad and be done with it.” He crouched down, his arms to his face, and he wept.

Eva let him cry. She let the weight of everything pass, only now, knowing once they were apart it would all come rushing back and trample them both underneath.

She was next to him and he brought his head up to rest it against the wall. He saw her stained cheeks and thought he might never leave this room again, if only that were possible. Words formed in his mind but he couldn’t find a way to say them.

They had never spent the night together. He had never spent the night with anyone. But he knew to wait until the morning to tell her.

10

“
AND SHE ASKS
, ‘How you always make it taste so good, Ethel?’ ” Mary Royal spoke with an unencumbered glee. She sat by herself at Raymond’s kitchen table, while his mother, Lilian, at the sink, pressed fruit through a strainer into a jar. “You know how proud Miss Sophie is about her sisterhood dinners, and here’s Ethel in the dining room in front a all Miss Sophie’s Jewish folk being asked how come her food always taste so good, and Ethel says, ‘Why it’s the lard, Miss Sophie. It’s the lard.’ ”

Lilian laughed quietly, almost reluctantly, as she shook down the jar. “ ‘The lard,’ ” she repeated. “Would’ve been better if that child had said, ‘It’s the Lord, Miss Sophie. Praise Jesus, it’s the
Lord
!’ You telling me Ethel’s been cooking in that house with lard all this time, even when she’s putting one set a forks in one drawer and one set a forks in the other, and she don’t understand the koshuh?”

“No, ma’am, she don’t. And she’s still there cause Miss Sophie likes her food so much. I hear Miss Sophie’s planning on going with Ethel to the market every now and then.”

“I bet she is.”

Raymond stepped in through the back door. He looked almost himself, save for the discoloration around his eye. His chest and shoulders were once again tight under his shirt. He kept his hand deep inside his pocket.

“What we all laughing about?” he said.

“We all?” said Mary Royal. “I didn’t know you was laughing again.”

“I laugh just fine depending on what it is I’m supposed to be laughing at.”

The two women shared a look before Lilian went back to her work at the sink. “Well,” said Mary Royal, “it seems your cousin Ethel’s been serving up pig fat to Miss Sophie’s house ever since she got there, proud as punch to be doing it.”

Raymond thought a moment, then gave in to a smile. “Now that’s funny. See? I’m laughing.”

“Oh, is that what that is?” Mary Royal tried to peer around his back. “What you got there, Raymond?” His mother turned her head from the sink as Raymond brought out a piece of metal attached to a thick strip of wood — the metal curling at the end, the wood with straps and buckles up the side.

“I had Silas work it up,” he said. “It don’t dig into my wrist so much now. Looks good, don’t it?”

“It does,” said Mary Royal, “if I knew what it was.”

“You know what it is. Help me get it on.”

He handed her the harness, such as it was, and laid his dead hand and forearm on the table.

“Make sure it’s tight, up to the elbow,” he said. “You see what I mean?”

She wedged his hand up into the curl of the metal, set his forearm on the wood, and then notched each of the straps until she saw the skin spread out and whiten underneath the leather.

“Tighter,” he said, wincing for a moment as she drew each strap a single hole deeper.

“It’s going to leave a mark.”

“Good.” He pulled his arm away, twisted it at the elbow, and stared at the harness with pride. “That ain’t moving at all.
You see that.” He shook it out; the metal and wood remained fixed on his arm. “Now I’ll show you something. Move yourself back.” Mary Royal glanced over at Lilian again, and Raymond said, “Just move yourself back.”

Mary Royal slid her chair toward the wall and Raymond, leaning over, placed his arms wide across the tabletop. He hooked the curled metal under the edge and lifted the table two feet off the ground, then set it back down.

“You see that? All the weight’s in my shoulder and my muscle. You just hook it under, settle it in, and bring it up. And there ain’t nothing my hand can’t do it ain’t done before. Pull on it. Try and move it. See? See how firm that is on me? And I can lift a table or boxes or crates. I even tried a barrel down with Silas and it come up easy, no pain in my arm or back. And now no one can look at me and say I can’t do what I always done.”

Lilian had a cloth and was wiping her hands. “Well, that looks fine, Raymond,” she said with as much encouragement as she could muster. “And the doctor says you’d be okay with it?”

Raymond’s breath showed his irritation. “Mama, the doctor ain’t no engineer and all he cares about is the pain. If I say I ain’t got no pain, then I got no pain. And when I take it off I ain’t feeling strain in any part a me.”

“You mean when you take it off after picking up one barrel and one crate,” said Mary Royal. “Oh, and one table here. You ain’t feeling pain.”

She saw the beginnings of his anger and thought he might bust out through the door — he had done it enough in the last week — but he just kept looking at her.

“I ain’t going to bite this time, Mary,” he said. “I ain’t going to show you my anger ’cause I ain’t got any. I got
this.
”

“And that’s enough?”

“Why you doing this?” he asked more gently than any of them expected. “Why the two a you sitting here not seeing what I’m doing? Or what I’m trying to do. It ain’t perfect. I know it.”

“Do you?”

“Here we go …”

“I’m just saying —”

“I know what you saying. You think I don’t know? I got a piece a bent metal bolted to a hunk a wood that’s digging into my arm. I know that don’t bring my hand back. I know it don’t make my headaches any less. And it sure as hell don’t stop me from wanting to find those boys and beat them ’til they bleed. But ain’t nothing’s going to do that so I got this harness instead. And if it don’t work out, well … then it don’t work out. And I’ll know it then, long before either a you two.”

“Mary Royal ain’t saying you don’t know that, Raymond.”

“Mama, I can’t be done. I can’t sit here with a lame hand and feel sorry for myself.”

“No one’s saying that.”

“Not yet they ain’t. But
I’m
saying it. I ain’t got no time to be no angry or thankful nigger when Mr. Jesler decides to throw me some work so he can feel better about himself. I got to show it don’t make no difference.”

Mary Royal said, “Even if it
does
make a difference?”

“Mary” — he choked back his frustration — “I don’t know what you want me to say. You been telling me I can’t sit back, I can’t give in.”

“But you giving in just the same if you say it ain’t no different. It is.”

Lilian said, “What about Silas’s brother? He did all that training. Negro police no different than the others. He’s got a badge now.”

“Mama, please. I ain’t talking to Silas’s brother. We been through this. There ain’t nothing he can do when it comes to white boys. That badge he got is for Negroes, plain and simple. He try to arrest a white boy, policeman or not, they’ll do him worse than me.”

Mary Royal said, “I ain’t talking about that.”

“No, Mary, I know what you talking about. That newspaperman. Well I ain’t talking to him again. That’s the
last
person I’m talking to.”

“I never said that, Raymond. That’s in your head, not mine.”

“Then what is it you want, Mary?”

“It ain’t what I want that’s important,” she said.

“Oh, really? Mary … if you saying I got to make some kind a point, show everyone —”

“I’m talking about getting
yourself
up, Raymond, getting in on what Mr. Abe and the store is doing. Nothing else.” She was glad he was finding his way back, glad to hear his frustration, but his eyes had dimmed again, and she thought maybe some of that was on her. “This family’s been with Mr. Abe and Miss Pearl close on twenty years. Twenty years, Raymond. He’s feeling bad right now? Good. Let him. Then he needs to make it right by giving you a part in it. I ain’t saying you got to make some kind a stand. No one’s saying you got to take that on. This is our family and theirs. Nothing bigger than that. And he don’t have to tell no one else — make some kind a point — just us, but you got to get your share, your percent. You got to make him see that. This ain’t about being no angry or thankful nigger. This is about being the nigger that earned it.”