Disturbing the Peace (Vintage Classics) (11 page)

“I’m afraid our time is up, Mr. Wilder.”

Their time was up time and again, twice a week, leaving him to stumble for Lexington Avenue with a headful of things he wished he’d said, whispering to himself all the way home on the subway; and Blomberg’s first question at the next session was always the same: Had he been keeping up with his meetings?

“… Yeah, yeah. Went to a new one last night, down in the Village. There was a young girl, started drinking at Sarah Lawrence; had an affair with one of her teachers and when he dropped her she tried to kill herself, wound up in Bellevue. Funny: after all these meetings she’s the only other ex-Bellevue patient I’ve met – or heard, rather.” He didn’t tell of how he’d tried to pick the girl up after the meeting, with Varick Street in mind (she’d been a slender, bedraggled girl with big suffering eyes), or of how she’d almost physically recoiled from his suggestion that they might “get a cup of coffee somewhere” and hurried away down the sidewalk alone.

“But look, doctor; let’s get back to where we were, okay?”

School consumed another therapeutic hour, with digressions back and forth in time: “… Ah, I was always kind of a dud in that school, soloist or not. One thing, I was a pious little bastard. It wasn’t only the singing I loved; I loved the whole damned
formal-religion scene – the rituals, the vestments, the prayers, the stained-glass windows – and I think I must’ve been just about the only kid in school who did. There was a lot of blowing farts in the choir loft, whispering dirty jokes and passing around dirty pictures, sometimes passing around half-pints of whiskey, daring you to take a nip. What I’m getting at, those other kids were on to everything: they had the kind of healthy skepticism it took me years to learn. Old Wanamaker’s Department Store used to hire us every afternoon during Christmas season, to sing carols, and of course nobody complained because it meant a few more bucks for each of us, but can you imagine how much real money must’ve changed hands between the God damned store and the God damned church? What kind of horseshit is that?

“… A lot of the kids were out of luck when their voices changed – some kids’ voices didn’t change ‘right’ for choral work, and even if they did, there was only a small section for tenors and baritones; they couldn’t keep everybody. My voice changed right – not solo quality, but good enough – so they made a tenor out of me and let me stay through the twelfth grade; then I went into the army. Have we got any time left?”

“A few minutes.”

“Because if I get going on the army it’ll take forever, and it’s not that important anyway – not nearly as important as what came afterwards. Let me just tell you one thing. At the induction center they gave us all an IQ test. Didn’t call it that, called it the Army General Classification Test, but everybody knew what the deal was. You had to score a hundred and ten to qualify for officers’ training – or any other halfway decent job, for that matter – and my score was a hundred points. So I asked if I could take it again, and some clerk said I could apply for it at my ‘next post,’ which turned out to be a basic training camp in North Carolina. And I did. There were only half a dozen of us taking
it that time, and there was kind of a nice, easygoing lieutenant in charge: he let us watch while he corrected the papers, and when he came to mine he said I’d scored a hundred and nine. Then he said, ‘Curious thing; you didn’t get a single question wrong, but you only did about half of them.’ I said something like ‘Well, but, sir, if I got them all right, doesn’t that indicate—” And he said, ‘It indicates a hundred and nine. You must be a very slow reader, that’s all.’ ”

And it was a week or two later that he had a fight with Janice – or a quarrel that came closer to a fight than anything since long before Bellevue.

It didn’t happen until after dinner, after the dishes were washed and Tommy sent to bed. He was sitting on the sofa looking over the acres of books and wondering how anyone, with any kind of IQ, could possibly read so much, when she came and sat beside him.

“John, do you know something? I’ve been very proud of you these past – however long it’s been.” And she nestled closer to him on the cushions. “Enormously proud.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hold off on the enormous pride for a while. It hasn’t been all that long.”

“But if you could only see the changes in you. You
look
so much better; you seem to have so much more self-confidence, so much more spirit. You’re a different person.”

“Then why do you figure Tommy still acts funny around me? I don’t think he’s looked me straight in the eye since – you know, our little bedside chat about the suitcase.”

“Oh, John, are you still brooding about that? That’s ancient history. I talked it over with him weeks ago.”

“You
what
? God damn it, Janice, I promised him I’d tell him, and I
told
you that. You had no God damn
business
—” He was on his feet in a spasm of anger, and she raced to close the hall
door in the old ritual of precaution against Tommy’s hearing them at their worst. “—No God damn business violating that promise.”

“You’ve
got
to keep your voice down,” she said, and he did, first clamping his jaws and breathing hard through his nose – the Bellevue method of self-control – but he liked the ring of his last line so much that he said it again, very low: “You had no business violating that promise.”

“I didn’t see it as a ‘violation.’ I thought you’d be relieved.”

“You thought I’d be relieved.” He tried to make that sound contemptible and emphasized it by pacing the floor with shoulders hunched and fists tight in his pockets; even so, he had to admit she had a point. He
was
relieved, but he was damned if he’d let her know it.

She was back on the sofa now, not curled up but sitting straight, in her civilized-discussion posture.

“… I asked him if he knew what a nervous breakdown was and he said he guessed so, but I could tell he didn’t. So I said sometimes people worked so hard and got so tired that their nerves couldn’t take the strain and they had to go to a hospital and rest. And he did seem to understand. You mustn’t forget he’s nearly eleven, John. And I said—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah – oh, Jesus, I can picture it. You said ‘Isn’t it wonderful how Daddy doesn’t get fall-down drunk any more?’ ”

“John, I never even mentioned your—”

“Well, thanks,” he said. “Thanks for nothing.” He grabbed his coat and raincoat and headed for the door, where he stood dramatically with one hand on the knob. “I’m going out. Maybe to a meeting, maybe to get smashed. If I’m not back by morning you’d better call the cops – or call Paul Borg; same thing. In the meantime you can take your Enormous Pride and shove it up your – shove it up your—”

He let the door click shut behind him before finishing that sentence; then he was out on the street and walking fast, downtown, with no idea of where he was going. Somewhere around Twenty-third he stopped for a drink – just one – and studied Bill Costello’s directory for a meeting that might still be open. There was one on West Houston Street.

It took place in a fourth-floor loft, and its leader was quick to explain what made it different from most other meetings. “We don’t schedule any formal speakers here,” he said. “We’re impromptu. We call on anybody in the room for a few minutes’ talk; if they don’t feel like talking we respect their privacy. I see a young fella over here on my left been with us a few times before, looks like he might like to say a few words; trouble is he looks all out of breath. How about it, Carl?”

A compact, tight-faced boy who couldn’t have been more than twenty went forward, said his name was Carl and that he was an alcoholic.

“Hi, Carl!”

“And you’re right, Tony, I am out of breath. Got on the wrong train in Brooklyn; had to get off down at Broadway and Delancey Street and I – I ran all the way.”

“Whyn’t you take it easy a second, Carl?” Tony said. “Get your wind back.”

“Okay.” Then he said “Guess the reason I keep getting lost in the subways is I’m not a native New Yorker. I’m from Kansas. Led a very sheltered childhood out there; what I mean is, I spent most of it in state correctional institutions. Wasn’t bad; I always had three meals a day, always had clean clothes and a clean place to sleep and plenty of smokes, and I learned my trade. I’m a barber. Then I got out, and that’s when I started drinking. Oh, if it was just me it wouldn’t matter; I make good money; I’m a good barber even when I’m half crocked; but it’s not just me.
Past year or so, eleven months, I’ve been living with this girl in Brooklyn. And the thing is – the thing is, it’s not working out. I’m not – She’s not – It’s not working out at all.” He was silent for a few seconds. “Hell, I know I can’t bullshit you people. I won’t claim I’ve quit drinking because it’s not true.” And here his voice could scarcely be heard. “I’m scared, you see. I’m scared she’ll leave me. That’s why I come to these meetings. That’s why, when I take the wrong train like tonight, why I figure it’s worth running all the way – worth it because if nothing else, if nothing else, I can be with people like you for an hour – just an
hour
– and be sober. Thank you.”

There was plenty of applause but Carl didn’t acknowledge it; he went quickly back to his chair and used it in a way he’d probably learned in the correctional institutions: sit stiff, keep both hands on your knees, look straight ahead and never smile, especially after any chance that you’ve said something dumb, or smart, unless you want somebody to think you’re some kind of a fruit.

“I’d like to address my remarks to Carl,” said the next speaker, a wobbling old man with few teeth. “I want to say ‘Carl, I don’t care how many wrong trains you take. I don’t care how much running you have to do. Just keep coming, boy; keep coming. You’re on the right road.’ ”

There were four or five other speakers, and then Tony took over. “We’ve got something special to conclude our meeting tonight,” he said. “We’ve got a birthday. Now, personally, I’ve always thought most AA birthdays are kind of silly: you see them give some guy a cake with six, eight, twelve candles to prove how many years he’s been dry, they tell his last name in honor of the occasion and he makes his little speech, and you sit there thinking What does
this
guy need AA for? He just tryna show off, or what? But a
first
birthday, that’s different. That’s something
else. That’s an achievement. I mean those first twelve months – well, hell, you know what I mean.” He nodded toward a curtained-off portion of the loft and out came a pink man, all smiles, bearing a pink cake with a single candle whose wavering flame he shielded with his hand. Then Tony said “Will Mr. Sylvester Cummings please come forward?”

A gaunt middle-aged Negro got up and went to the rostrum, wearing a cheap blue suit and trailed by cheers and whistles. He shook hands with Tony and thanked the man who gave him the cake platter, but when some of the audience broke into a ragged chorus of “Hap-py birth-day to—” he held up one hand and said “No, no, please; never mind the birthday song. I mean I appreciate it, but that’s a song for children. I’m forty-seven years old. Even my own children aren’t children any more; they’re grown and gone.” He stood looking down at his cake for some time. “It doesn’t seem possible,” he said. “A whole year. Only thing I know for certain, I never would’ve made it without your help – without Tony here and all you other people. I think back to the way I was – way I was for more years than I want to think about – and sometimes all I can remember is how I’d wake up every morning on my knees with my arms wrapped around that old toilet bowl, puking my guts out, and I’d say to myself ‘Sylvester, you are praying. You are worshiping at the only altar in which you have ever truly believed.’ ”

That won him a laugh, but he didn’t smile. “I’ve never been a very religious man, you see. Even here at these meetings, when it’s time for the Lord’s Prayer, I just kind of move my mouth a little and hope nobody’s noticing. Matter of fact I don’t enjoy cake very much either – maybe some of you people can help me out on this one.” He looked down at it again in a long, meditative pause. “But I have come to believe something, this past year. I’ve come to believe that I would rather – I would
rather light one candle than curse the darkness.” Then he blew the candle out, and there was a standing ovation.

It was enough to send Wilder home without stopping for even so much as a beer, enough to make him wake his wife and tell her he was sorry.

“Oh, I know, dear,” she said. “I know …”

He had insisted he wouldn’t spend much time on the army with Dr. Blomberg, and he didn’t. The army had convinced him he wasn’t very smart and jolted all the religion out of him; he’d seen action only at the end of the war in Europe and spent his whole final year in the mildewed “Tent Cities” of France, where there’d been nothing to do, between painfully infrequent threeday passes, but go to the movies every night. “I told you we’d get back to the movies.”

“Mm.”

“Funny thing: in civilian movie-houses people’d sit still for any kind of trash – you’d never hear anybody laugh out loud in a love scene or anything like that – but in the army there was nothing magic about the big silver screen any more, and we all got to be very vocal, brutal movie critics. We could spot a fake plot or a fake ‘message’ a mile away; we’d stomp and laugh and yell obscenities at anything cheap or trite or hoked-up or sentimental, and I remember thinking Jesus, these guys are like me: we’ve
all
been raised on movies, and we’re just now beginning to figure out what frauds most of them are. And here’s what I’m getting at, doctor: that’s when I decided I wanted to make movies.
Good
movies. Oh, I knew I couldn’t be a director – that’d take more talent than anybody with an IQ of a hundred and nine could claim – but a producer: the man who gets the idea, raises the money, hires the talent, puts the whole thing together. That’s what I wanted.

“Course, I couldn’t tell my parents, or thought I couldn’t.
They were still in the old apartment when I got home, working at their old jobs, and they both looked old as hell – they must’ve been in their middle fifties – but the damned chocolate business was bigger than ever in their heads. My father spent all his free time hustling up Venture Capital, and the funny part is he did well. Everybody was talking about a postwar boom: just the right time for a good, well-marketed luxury product to catch on. He took me along with him to meet some banker. ‘This is my son John. Twenty years old; infantry veteran just back from Europe; went through the Bulge and all that. Going to Yale next month; he’ll be in on the business from the start.’