Dreams from Bunker Hill (5 page)

I was born in a basement apartment of a macaroni factory in North Denver. When my father learned that his third child was also a son he reacted in the same fashion as when my two brothers came into the world—he got drunk for three days. My mother found him in the back room of a saloon down the street from our apartment and dragged him home. Beyond that my father paid little attention to me.

One day in my infancy I stood outside the bathroom window of my aunt’s house and watched my cousin Catherine standing before the dresser mirror combing out her long red hair. She was stark naked except for her mother’s high-heeled shoes, a full-fledged woman of eight years. I did not understand the ecstasy that boiled up in me, the confusion of my cousin’s electric beauty pouring into me. I stood there and masturbated. I was five years old and the world had a new and staggering dimension.

I was also a criminal. I felt like a criminal, a skulking, snot-nosed, freckle-faced, inscrutable criminal for four years thereafter, until sagging beneath the weight of my cross, I dragged myself into my first confession and told the priest the truth of my bestial life. He gave me absolution and I flung away the heavy cross and walked out into the sunlight, a free soul again.

Our family moved to Boulder when I was seven and my two brothers and I attended Sacred Heart School. During the ensuing eight years I achieved high marks in baseball,
basketball and football, and my life was not cluttered with books or scholarship.

My father, a building contractor, prospered for a while in Boulder and sent me to a Jesuit high school. Most of the time I was miserable there. I got fair marks but chafed at the discipline. I hated boarding school and longed to be home, but my marks were fair and after four years I enrolled in the University of Colorado. During my second year at the university I fell in love with a girl who worked in a clothing store. Her name was Agnes, and I wanted to marry her. She moved to North Platte, Nebraska, for a better job, and I quit the university to be near her. I hitchhiked from Boulder to North Platte and arrived dusty and broke and triumphant at the rooming house where Agnes lived. We sat on the porch swing and she was not glad to see me.

“I don’t want to marry you,” she said. “I don’t want to see you any more. That’s why I’m here, so we don’t see each other.”

“I’ll get a job,” I insisted. “We’ll have a family.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake.”

“Don’t you want a family? Don’t you like kids?”

She got quickly to her feet. “Go home, Arturo. Please go home. Don’t think about me any more. Go back to school. Learn something.” She was crying.

“I can lay brick,” I said, moving to her. She threw her arms around me, and planted a wet kiss on my cheek, then pushed me away.

“Go home, Arturo. Please.” She went inside and closed the door.

I walked down to the railroad tracks and swung aboard a freight train bound for Denver. From there I took another freight to Boulder and home. The next day I went to the job where my father was laying brick.

“I want to talk to you,” I said. He came down from the scaffold and we walked to a pile of lumber.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“I quit school.”

“Why?”

“I’m not cut out for it.”

His face twisted bitterly. “What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out.”

“Jesus, you’re crazy.”

I became a bum in my home town. I loafed around. I took a job pulling weeds, but it was hard and I quit. Another job, washing windows. I barely got through it. I looked all over Boulder for work, but the streets were full of young, unemployed men. The only job in town was delivering newspapers. It paid fifty cents a day. I turned it down. I leaned against walls in the pool halls. I stayed away from home. I was ashamed to eat the food my father and mother provided. I always waited until my father walked out. My mother tried to cheer me. She made me pecan pie and ravioli.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You wait and see. Something will happen. It’s in my prayers.”

I went to the library. I looked at the magazines, at the pictures in them. One day I went to the bookshelves, and pulled out a book. It was
Winesburg, Ohio
. I sat at a long mahogany table and began to read. All at once my world turned over. The sky fell in. The book held me. The tears came. My heart beat fast. I read until my eyes burned. I took the book home. I read another Anderson. I read and I read, and I was heartsick and lonely and in love with a book, many books, until it came naturally, and I sat there with a pencil and a long tablet, and tried to write, until I felt I could not go on because the words would not come as they did in Anderson, they only came like drops of blood from my heart.

Not a week passed without a letter from my mother. Written on lined grade-school paper they reflected her fears, her hopes, her anxiety, and her curious view of what went on in the world. They bothered me, those letters. Their phrasing fluttered in my head like trapped birds, flapping about at the most inopportune times. Often I simply laughed at them, other times they angered and frustrated me and I pitied my poor innocent mother:

Joe Santucci, my high school buddy next door, had completed a tour in the navy and was now back in Boulder again. My mother wrote:

I sent her $200 from my first studio paycheck and eventually paid off the grocery bill.

Mrs. Brownell and I were experiencing some turbulence. She had doubts about my working in the studio, and was careful not to question me about it. We were silent together during long periods, and it was difficult to invent small talk. Sitting before the radio we listened to Jack Benny and Bob Hope and Fred Allen until it was time to go to bed. We lay in the darkness and stared at the ceiling until sleep came. I felt far away from her, a drifting away as the strangeness developed. She was cold and silent in the morning, the gap widening. It was coming, and I knew it, a separation, a break. I told myself I didn’t care. I was working, I had money. I didn’t have to stay in that ancient hotel. I could move to Hollywood now, into the Hollywood hills. I could rent my own house and even hire a cleaning woman. Bunker Hill was not forever. A man had to move on.

Thinking of her depressed me. I sat in my office and squirmed, thinking how old she was, five years older than my own mother, and I gagged, and tried to cough away the unpleasantness. I thought of her face, the little lines around her eyes, the cables in her neck, the crinkled skin of her arms, her old body, the buttocks too small, her dresses too long, the crack of her knees when she sat down, her sunken cheeks when she removed her dentures, her cold feet, her old Kansas ways. I didn’t need it, I told myself. I had only to turn my back to make it go away. I could have any girl in town, any starlet, maybe even a star. All I had to do was apply myself. It was wrong
to spend my best years with an old woman who gave me only old thoughts in return. I needed a bright and lovely creature familiar with the arts, steeped in literature, someone who loved Keats and Rupert Brooke and Ernest Dowson. Not a woman who got her literary inspiration from her hometown Kansas newspaper. She had be-friended me, yes, she had been kind to me, yes, but I had been kind to her too. I had given my juices to her, served as her friend and companion. Now it was time to move on.

I looked around my office and sighed. I loved it all. I was born to it. Maybe I wasn’t writing a line, but I had found my station. I was making good money and the future was limitless. I had to get away from that woman.

All morning I sat brooding in gloom, for it was ever thus with me, probing the ashes, searching for blemishes, overwhelmed in despair. At noon she telephoned, and my heart leaped and I was glad.

“Still mad?” she asked.

“No. And you?”

“No,” she said, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I did it. I don’t know why. I never know why. It’s for you to forgive me.”

“I do, I do. You’re a sweet boy. You’re good for me. We mustn’t quarrel.”

“Never again. Let’s have some fun. Let’s celebrate.”

“I’d love that. Let’s do something crazy.”

“How about a good dinner first?”

“I’ll wear my new suit.”

“I’ve got a new suit too.”

“Wear it.”

“I love you,” I said. “You’re the dearest woman in the world. We’ll have a party.”

She wasn’t there when I returned to the hotel at six o’clock. There was a note for me on the desk. Back in a moment, it said. I walked back to my room, showered,
and got into my new suit. I had never worn it before. A fine, hand-tailored $200 job. I studied myself in the mirror. The reflection was perfect: a high-priced writer. The shoulders were padded a little more than I wanted, but it was a pleasant garment. We belonged together. I walked down the hall to the lobby and she was there behind the desk, beaming as I kissed her. There was a scarf over her hair. She withdrew it and primped.

“Like it?” she asked. “It’s a pageboy.”

Her graying hair had been turned under at the ends in a sleek roll. It was stiff from the beauty parlor. I studied it but could not conjure up an opinion.

“Great,” I said. “Fine.”

I noticed a touch of rouge on her cheeks. It seemed superfluous.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“First we’re going to Rene and Jean’s.”

“Lovely,” she said. “Let’s have a cocktail.”

We walked into her apartment, and there were two martinis on the table. I lifted one and toasted her:

“To the kindest, sweetest girl in all the world.”

She smiled and sipped her drink. It made her cough and she laughed. While she dressed I sat down and had a couple more. She was in the bathroom for a long time. When she emerged, playfully stilted as if modelling, she showed off her Joan Crawford suit with wide shoulders and narrow skirt. She was taller, in high-heeled ankle-strap shoes. I felt a shudder of lust and kissed her. There was a thin film of scarlet lip rouge on her mouth. Perhaps it was too much. I didn’t know. It made me wonder.

We took my car and drove out Wilshire to Vermont and parked in Rene and Jean’s lot. We had been to the restaurant frequently and it was a pleasure to be greeted by old Jean and the waiters. We drank wine and ate too much. When it was time to leave she asked, “Where to now?”

I was ready for it. “Leave that to me.”

We drove back to Wilshire and turned toward the Ambassador Hotel. She was quiet and smiling and a little
frowsy. Leaning back against the seat, the wide shoulders of her tailored suit had lost their elegance and seemed to overdress her. At the Ambassador I turned into the driveway, and parked the car and got out. She stepped from the car and looked about mystified. I took her arm.

“Let’s go,” I said, leading her toward the hotel.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To the Coconut Grove and the music of Anson Weeks.”

She squealed and hugged my arm in delight. “It’s so nice to be with a famous writer!”

“Not famous, but working.”

We walked to the hotel entrance.

“My feet hurt,” she whispered.

The strains of Anson Weeks’ music wafted from the ballroom as we entered the lobby. The song was “Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.” I held her arm and could feel the beat of her heart.

“I’m so happy,” she said. “I always wanted to come to the Coconut Grove and here I am.”

The headwaiter greeted us and bowed, “Good evening.”

I nodded. “We’d like a table.”

He led us into the big resplendent room with its colored lights and coconut trees. On the dance floor couples glided to the music, and spotlights played colored beams over the walls and ceiling. Our table was on the second tier. We sat down.

“Would you like a cocktail now?” the waiter asked.

Mrs. Brownell was so breathless that she could only nod in assent.

“I’ll have a brandy,” I said.

She put her hand on mine across the table. “I’ll have one too,” she said.

The waiter disappeared. We watched the dancers.

“I can’t dance,” I said. “At least, not very well.”

She squeezed my hand again. “I’ll teach you.”

I started to rise. “Let’s try it.”

“Not now,” she breathed. “Let’s wait a dance or two.”

Then the waiter returned with our drinks. He put my brandy before me and smiled as he served Mrs. Brownell.

“Here you are, mother,” he said.

It cut her like a knife. Her startled eyes fixed me. They seemed guilt stricken, embarrassed, intimidated. She lowered her head and I thought she was going to cry. But she did not cry. She lifted her face and smiled bravely. The embarrassed waiter moved off.

“Drink your brandy,” I urged.

She sipped carefully and our attention went back to the dancers.

What happened thereafter was my effort to make a joke, to cheer her, to make light of the waiter’s gaffe. The band began to play a Strauss waltz. Then I said it.

“Shall we dance, mother dear?”

She looked frightened, biting her lip and staring helplessly at me, her eyes suddenly awash with tears. Crying uncontrollably, she shook the table as she groped to her feet and rushed away toward the lobby. I downed my brandy and hurried after her. She was not in the lobby nor on the staircase, and I stepped outside in time to see a cab pulling out of the driveway with Mrs. Brownell in the back seat. I ran after her calling, but the cab sped away. I walked back to the Grove, paid my bill, and went out to my car.

What a mess. I drove back to the hotel reluctantly. I hated facing her, her tears, but it had to be. I turned the key in her apartment door and walked inside. There was a hiss of water from the shower in the bathroom. Sprawled on the floor, wantonly discarded, was her Joan Crawford suit, as if dropped from her body and kicked aside. Her blouse hung over a chair, her shoes and stockings carelessly discarded.

I undressed down to my shorts, and slipped between the covers of the studio couch, folding my arms behind my head, waiting for her to appear. I had nothing to say. I decided to leave it up to her. She emerged finally, dressed
in her nightie, my unexpected presence irritating her. She had washed her hair, washed out her coiffure, and her hair hung in moist strands. Her face was scrubbed and plain and wrinkled.

“Please go,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

She crossed to the window and flung it open. The cool of the night wafted in from the hillside. Without a word she gathered up my clothes, my coat and pants, my shirt, my shoes. At first I thought she was tidying up. Instead she turned to the window and flung everything out into the night. I leaped out of bed and rushed to the window. Below I saw my clothes flung about on the weed-clogged terrain. It was a steep incline. My scattered garments looked like dead bodies. My pants hung from the branch of a tree. I glared at her.

“Satisfied?”

“Not until you leave.”

I started to gather up her garments—the Crawford suit, the blouse, the underskirt. She rushed to stop me, and we struggled, pushing and pulling, but I was the stronger, and broke her grasp, and flung her things through the window. With a smile I said, “I’ll go now.”

“And don’t come back,” she panted. I walked down the hall to my room, put on a robe and slippers and moved down to a door at the rear of the hotel, which opened on the yard area. As I scrambled up the hillside to my clothes I saw Mrs. Brownell making her way down the hillside. We glared at one another and began gathering our things. I had to climb the tree to reach my pants. When I dropped to the ground she was crawling back toward the hotel front. At my feet was one of her shoes. I picked it up and threw it. The shoe hit her in the ass. Enraged, she picked it up and hurled it down at me. It sailed over my head.

I was very sad when I got back to my room. Women! I knew nothing about women. There was no understanding them. I opened a suitcase and dumped my things into
it. The room spoke to me, and implored me to stay—the Maxfield Parrish picture on the wall, the typewriter on the table, my bed, my marvellous bed, the window overlooking the hill, the source of so many dreams, so many thoughts, so many words, a part of myself, the echo of myself pleading with me to stay. I didn’t want to go but there was no denying it, I had somehow blundered and kicked myself out, and there was no turning back. Goodbye to Bunker Hill.