Nobody's Family is Going to Change (3 page)

“Why are you so cold with her?” asked Mrs. Sheridan. “Her questions seem reasonable enough.”

“You don't understand. Her questions are those of a law-school student. I sometimes get the strange idea that she could pass the bar exam right now—”

“But aren't you proud?” It was one of her mother's rare interruptions.

“—and
she
thinks she'd get a better mark than I did.” Her father finished on a note of despair.

Afraid of me, is he, thought Emma, progressing down the street toward her apartment house, having decided that the best thing to do about Willie was ignore him. Anybody who worked that hard for applause ought to be shook up not getting any.

“But if your daughter is bright and will be a fine lawyer someday, I should think that would make you very happy.”

“Women lawyers!” her father had answered with a sneer. “Why couldn't it have been Willie?”

Emma let her mind sift around the pain this had caused and, like a forty-niner panning for gold, came up with a familiar stab. She let herself give way to the stab for a fleeting second as she walked into the elevator, but with the change of light and the motion of ascension she let this turn, as it always did, into the just as familiar but far more comfortable feeling of determined anger.

As the elevator rose from floor to floor, she felt her resolve mount too. I will show him. I will make it clear to him that he has made a mistake.

I will bring it all out into the open, she said to herself, as the elevator stopped at her floor, and as the door rolled back, I will do it tonight. I will tell him that I want to go to law school and that, if he won't send me, I will get
a scholarship and how will that make him look to his fat friends in the Bar Association?

After the vision of his father looking ashamed, Willie stopped dancing. He collapsed on the bed, chewing thoughtfully. He felt terrible. He felt unfaithful to his father. He didn't want to be with his father at all. He wanted to be with Dipsey, or Nick, or anybody who liked dancing. He would have gone off, at that moment, with a perfect stranger. If only a perfect stranger would come to the door, would knock, would enter, would say, “You have a job. Come with me. We can use a dancer like you. These people don't understand. These people are not your kind of people. Come with us,” and take him by the hand and lead him away.

There would never be any perfect stranger at the door. He would never come. Dipsey was the only hope he had, and this morning that hope had been pushed right out the window.

He squirmed around on the bed, put his feet up against the wall. He started tapping a little. His mother hated him to do that. There were little black marks where one time he had gotten carried away and tapped like crazy. He did it softly now. It helped him to think.

He hated school with his whole body. He didn't see any point in it at all. He was bad at everything.

When he thought about summer stock, everything made sense. He understood everything about that kind of life. You did your best, your very best, and you worked hard, harder than anybody. Dipsey said that theater people worked harder than anybody else. Dipsey said all those people working in offices didn't know what work was. I'm not afraid of work, he thought. Work was just doing it over and over again until you had it just right. He wanted to work, so it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair when that stupid teacher said that he was just lazy and didn't want to work. He did want to work. What did she know? Dumb broad. He got madder and madder. His feet tapped faster and faster.

“Cut that out or I'll come in there and cut your feet off!” Emma's voice came through the wall.

Jerk. He swung his feet down. Rats. Between his father and Emma, there was no place to go. Only his mother gave him a little smile now and then as though she knew what he was about, and even she this morning, even she had turned out a fink, just working for his father.

He remembered the guy in the hall at school. He'd been running, dancing and running, tapping a little and running from one class to the other, and this guy had minced past him saying “Get you, Mary,” and wig-waggled his ass on by like a dame. Willie lost his temper altogether and tackled the guy, downing him, punching him a good one right in the nose. A teacher had come by and picked them up off the floor. She had threatened to send them to the principal if it happened again.

Thinking about everything, Willie got madder and madder. He never got mad. This wasn't like him, and he realized that, as he continued, nevertheless, to get madder. He got so mad he stood up. My life is being ruined, he thought furiously, and I can't do anything about it. I have no control over it whatsoever. I never get mad. I go along and I take everything anybody gives me until I can't take it any more and that's the way it is today. I can't and I won't. I just won't. I don't know what I'm going to do about it, but I know one damned thing and that is that I am going to do something about it.

The rage and the turmoil and the fury began to express itself and he felt his body turn and he felt his body leap. He felt his body do things he didn't know it could do. He felt a release that was like nothing that had ever happened to his legs before, his arms, even his face; his body turned in a way no body had ever turned. In midair, defying gravity, he turned and soared and jumped and leapt and winged up like a porpoise. He leapt so high his head felt the brush of the ceiling, and even this did not stop the flow, the turning of his body. Faintly, he heard Emma begin to beat on the wall, but it did nothing to his leaping. His body went on and on, inexhaustible, doing everything that he had ever wanted to do and everything that no one had ever been able to do before, and then he
was
in mid-air, he turned in midair and he was before the window of his room and he soared once again. Gravity almost forgotten, a useless thing, his soul pushed his body until the space before the window
no longer had anything to do with the window, but was a space, a space so beautiful, so clear, so completely his that he took it. He conquered it and made it all his own.

Emma heard all the noise next door and beat on the wall a couple of times, which produced, finally, silence. She went back to her work, her research in children's rights. Emma was drafting a Children's Charter. It was a Magna Charta, a Bill of Rights, a Constitution, and a Declaration of Independence rolled into one.

Mrs. Sheridan opened the door to Emma's room. Willie was hanging on to her arm, looking in at Emma as though he were at the zoo.

“Emma?”

“Mmm.”

“Emma, your father and I are going out to dinner. Martha will make supper for you. Emma?”

“Mmm.”

“She don't hear nothing,” said Willie.

“She doesn't hear anything,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “That's right,” said Willie complacently. “Not a thing.”

“Emma?”

“Yes.”

“Emma, look at me when I talk to you.”

A pair of eyes as glazed as doughnuts moved up to rest near her left earlobe.

“We won't be out late.”

“Have a nice time,” said a voice lost in 1776.

“She don't hear nothing,” said Willie again as Mrs. Sheridan closed the door to her daughter's room.

“Anything,” she said absently as she rustled up the hall, the wide, flowing legs of her silk pants suit making a noise that enchanted Willie.

“Beautiful! You look so beautiful!” he said happily, bouncing, skipping, jumping along behind her.

They both admired Mr. Sheridan when he appeared in his tuxedo. “I feel like a panda,” he said gruffly.

“You look beautiful!” said Willie.

“Oh, for . . .” Mr. Sheridan was through the door and in the hall, ringing for the elevator.

“Goodbye, Martha, we won't be late,” called Mrs. Sheridan. “Goodbye, darling.” She bent and kissed Willie.

“Come on,” said the bear in the hall.

“Bye, Mommy!” yelled Willie. He closed the door behind them and skipped to the kitchen. “Hi!” he said wildly to Martha.

“Did you wash your hands?”

“Nope.”

“Wash.”

“Yep.” Willie ran down the hall, colliding fiercely with Emma as she floated out of her room.

“Were you listening at my door?” She clutched the front of his shirt.

“To what? The pages turning?” Willie squirmed.

“You were, you little rat, I'll—”

“Emma.” Martha stood at the end of the hall. “Stop that and wash your hands. Go into your parents' bathroom. I don't want the two of you at that sink at the same time.”

Emma dropped Willie like dirty laundry and stomped down the hall.

Willie stuck out his tongue at her silently, felt himself all over to see if he was maimed and, finding that he was whole, danced to the bathroom.

At dinner they sat opposite each other, with Martha in between.

“Pass the butter,” said Emma. Martha took it from Willie and passed it to Emma. There was silence after that.

“Pass the butter,” said Willie. Martha took it from Emma and passed it to Willie. More silence.

“Pass the butter,” said Emma.

“What is this?” said Martha.

“What?” They both looked up at her in surprise.

“Are you two aware that I have done nothing but pass the butter back and forth for half an hour?”

Willie giggled.

“Why don't you seat us next to each other and put the butter in between?” said Emma humorlessly.

“Because you hit me,” said Willie.

“What are you talking about, you little idiot? And what were you doing in your room all afternoon?”

“Practicing leaps.”

“Hah! The nigger Nijinsky!” said Emma ferociously.

“Emma!” Martha was appalled. “Emma, that's the worst thing I ever heard in my life. Now you apologize, right this minute!”

“It's better than faggot,” said Willie, eating his peas.

“You will leave the table, Emma, if you don't apologize,” said Martha.

That did it. Emma had no intention of leaving the table until she finished. “I apologize.”

“Sincerely. I want you to mean it.”

“Oh, little brother, friend of the white man, I meant you no harm. I would not hurt a nap on your nappy head.”

Martha wasn't quite sure what to make of this, so she let it go.

Willie laughed. “Big Chief Loony Lady Lawyer,” he crowed.

Emma gave him a murderous look, but kept eating steadily.

“You two are too much,” said Martha. “I'm glad my kids don't carry on the way you do. I'd go right out of my mind if they did. Do you want some of this fresh custard I made or do you want ice cream?”

“Both,” said Emma.

“Neither,” said Willie.

“Now look, you two. You have to lose weight, Emma,
and Willie here has to gain. I'm going to give Willie both, and you neither one.”

“I'll explode,” said Willie helplessly.

Emma regarded Martha with a steady eye. “You can be put in jail, you know, for depriving children of food.”