Onyx (50 page)

“Taking food from people is wrong, Ben.”

The boy's freckles darkened. “I didn't start it.”

“But you did swipe his lunch! As soon as we get home you'll go to your room!” Tears standing in her eyes, she gripped the perambulator handle. She decided she was an inadequate mother, she was furious at herself for losing her temper, she felt sorry for the child, Jerrold; she was perceiving through the blur that the houses with their cheery seasonal adornments were not places of comfort and joy but caves in which deprivation lurked.

She was setting the table and Tonia was gumming a cracker in the high chair when Justin let himself in the back door. After he had kissed her, Elisse rolled her eyes in the direction of the loud, remarkably assured violin attack on Mozart. “Trouble, trouble.”

Justin tickled the baby's stomach, touching his lips to satiny, near white hair. “How's my Tonia?” A chortle and beautiful baby smile exhibiting two bottom teeth and clumps of melted Zweiback was his response. “What sort of trouble?”

“Interrogate the defendant.”

“I'm sure he'll be less evasive.”

“You males,” she said in the mock dismay she used when the two drove off on Saturday mornings to the beach or Griffith Park: she and the baby could have gone along, but she knew exactly how much Justin and Ben cherished their dusty, boisterous hours alone. “It's six twenty-five. Mother and Daddy'll be here at quarter to.”

III

As Justin opened the door, Ben put down the violin. While the pressure mark faded from his jaw, he paid rigorous attention to refolding the silk handkerchief.

Justin asked, “
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
?”

“Yeah,” Ben mumbled, not looking up. “Grandpa gave it to me yesterday and I'm surprising him tonight.” He was resentful, not of Justin but of his fear of Justin, in much the same way that a fox cub resents it paw rather than the cruel-toothed trap holding it.

Justin sat on the bed watching his son fit the half-size instrument and bow in the worn red plush of the case. “I was in the Georgia Street police station this afternoon.”

“How come?”

“Six men were picketing the Chevrolet factory. Last week they were fired and then the company hired six other men to take their jobs at half the money. Their placards told their side. They had a permit, but some toughs came along and pushed them around.”

Ben sat next to Justin, whose weight sagged the mattress springs so that their bodies touched. “Did they fight back?”

“It was more of a shoving match. None of the others was arrested, only the pickets.”

“So you went down and got them out of jail?”

“Not me, Ben. The law. The law gives us—”

“The right of havas corpus—”

“Habeas corpus, Ben. Very good.”

“You told me. They give money, it's called posting bail, to show they'll come back for the trial,” Ben said. “It's not fair, only the pickets being punished. That's how it is in school. Miss Gunther, she stinks. Even when it's the other guy's fault, she blames me. And you should see her. She writes one word on the blackboard then spells it over and over. It's so boring!”

Ben's retentive and restless intelligence was no delight to his teachers: he finished every assignment first and then ostentatiously, disruptively, whistled complex classical tunes: Bach or Mozart.

“She has to help the others, Ben.”

“Dummies!”

“They aren't,” Justin said. “They need more time than you, that's all. You learn very quickly. That's a big responsibility, Ben. If a person is cleverer or stronger or richer, that gives him an obligation to help others.”

“Hah!”

“That's something I believe.”

“And what about me?” Ben cried. And because he still remained innocently unguarded with his father, he exposed his burns. “Should I let them hit me, take my things? Call me swear words?”

Ben had been skipped this semester. An insolent newcomer to A2, younger and kitten-boned, he was picked on mercilessly. For his part, he was incapable of letting any insult pass.

Justin sighed. “When I first came to America, I had a bad time.”

“No joke?”

“No joke certainly. I was in a fight, and after that everyone sided with the others. Have you ever heard the word
coventry
?”

Ben shook his head.

“It means, nobody speaks to you. That's what happened to me. I was very lonely. I hated that school.”

“Yeah,” Ben sighed. That his father, all-knowing, all-wise, stronger than God, had suffered his own torments spread wan prickles of comfort through him, and he pressed closer to the large, warm body.

Justin hugged his son. “This morning I was talking to Uncle Mitch. He wants me to go to Detroit with him and work for the AAW. I said it was impossible to move us all there. But remember what we were talking about a minute ago? People having an obligation to help others who aren't as well-off? That's made me think. You know something, Ben? To me the most wonderful world would be one where nobody
needs
help.”

“Umm.” The conversation, having drifted away from the personal, no longer interested Ben, and he kicked the metal taps of his heels against the bed frame.

“In Detroit so many people are out of work that they'll do anything to get a job. What beats me is how the big automobile companies take advantage of their weakness.”

Ben burst out, “What are you going to do to me?”

Justin looked down at his son. “Tell me what happened.”

“Yesterday Jerrold beat me up, took my lunch pail, he ate everything and broke the Thermos. Mom was really mad when she saw it was broken. I didn't tell her Jerrold did it. Now today, he called me a curse word, so I took his pail. Miss Gunther, she found it and blamed everything on me. And all
he
had was cruddy stale bread.”

“What did you do with it?” Justin's question, deep and rough, reverberated through Ben's body.

“Dumped it in the trash,” Ben whispered, frightened.

“I'm sorry you were bullied by Jerrold. That was wrong of him. But regardless, you're never to take food from anybody. Ever. As long as you live.”

“I won't.”

“You promise that?”

“On my best honor, Dad.”

Justin's clasp tightened. “Good, Ben. Good.” He kissed the brown tangle as he had kissed Tonia's hair a few minutes earlier.

Ben scowled against the flooding joy of his relief.

“There. That's settled,” Justin said. “We better get washed up. Grandma and Grandpa'll be here any minute.”

IV

After Tonia bewitchingly acquiesced to the cuddling and belly prodding of her grandparents and was tucked in her maple crib, Elisse announced dinner. A salad of sliced avocado, which even after eight years in California, Justin still fell on as a delicacy, was followed by stuffed veal breast surrounded by richly glowing vegetables. The adults talked and ate with gusto: Ben dug a trough in his mashed potatoes to bury his string beans and carrots. The gingerbread, swathed in whipped cream and drenched in turn by ladles of thick butterscotch sauce, silenced everyone.

“A gourmet meal,” pronounced Mr. Kaplan, wiping his mouth. With a maroon paisley scarf knotted at his plump throat and his shirt collar spread outside the lapels of his navy sport jacket in the prevailing Hollywood style, he looked smartly prosperous. And prosperous he was. With the advent of sound, films relied on music to set mood. Harris Kaplan now bowed his viola in the highly talented, highly paid, studio orchestra. The financial tables had turned. He was far richer than his son-in-law. Justin's annual trust income, $3, 110, was the equal of what USC paid its tenured full professors, but in these depressed years Mr. Kaplan's $10,000 glittered like a vein of gold.

Ben mumbled “MayIbeexcused” and bolted from the table, snatching a handful of mint wafers.

Mrs. Kaplan's pretty, crumpled face was wistful. “You really have your hands full, dear. Looking after Ben and Tonia, shopping for food, cooking.” Both Kaplans chipped away at Elisse's socialist madness of coping without a live-in maid, which she and Justin could well afford.

Mr. Kaplan was swaying back and forth across the table like a sun-satisfied pigeon as he explained a nuance of a concert to Justin.

Elisse's cheeks were pink.
Who would ever believe
, she thought contentedly,
that these middle-aged children once rejected my husband
?

“Be quiet, everybody. I'm ready!” Ben shouted from the connecting living room. A fine gloss covering his intent, peach-hued face, Buster Brown shoes planted firmly, his thin body skirmishing in all directions, he fingered and bowed brightly luminous chords through the food-scented room. His false notes were remarkably few considering that he had left his music stand in his room.

Promptly at nine Mrs. Kaplan put on her new broadtail coat and Mr. Kaplan got his fedora. The studio orchestra had an early call.

It was an evening—placid,
gemütlich
, cherished—like a hundred others.

V

Elisse emerged from the kitchen rubbing lotion on her hands, smiling at Justin, who sat at the cleared dining table, his briefcase open in front of him. She stretched on the green sofa, head in the glow of the lamp, opening
A Farewell to Arms
. After a minute she rested the buckram-bound library book open on her breasts, surrendering to a delicately spun sense of happiness and well-being. Sated with her own cooking, contentedly weary, she had no work to get back to, no projects to complete, no compulsion even to finish the novel; she simply let herself drift without thought or inhibition, giving no more consideration to time than the crickets did outside. She felt herself part of their sweet, mournful chittering, part of the cool, damp California night, part of the two children sleeping in their wallpapered bedrooms, part of this large, thoughtful man. Stretching languorously, she said, “Nice Justin,” and went over to kiss pewter hair that smelled faintly of tobacco smoke. “What're those?”

“Mitch's letters. From men he knows at Woodland.”

As she heard the plant name, the joy drained from Elisse's face. One delìcate eyebrow shot up. “He shares his mail?”

“You might as well hear the worst. He's going back to Detroit in a week or so. He wants me to drive with him.”

“The very season for a pleasure jaunt through the frozen Middle West,” she said, sitting at the table, the better to watch him.

“He wants us to move there. He's asked me to work for the AAW as an organizer.”

“That's Mitch all over! Oh, damn. Justin, the idea's too ridiculous to discuss.”

“Just what I told him.”

“Firmly, I trust.”

“Yes, firmly.”

“There's no need to feel guilty, Justin. Handle his legal work, contribute to all his strike funds, that's enough noblesse oblige for anyone, even you.”

“Yes. But something's terribly wrong there,” he said, frowning.

“It's called the Depression,” she said. “We have it right here in Los Angeles. Did Ben tell you about that fight? He took a boy's lunch and there was only stale bread.”

“He explained the whole thing, and promised he'd never take food from anybody again.”

“That should end hard times in southern California,” she said tartly. Clasping her hands on wood that she had polished this morning, she peered at him. “You can't be taking Mitch seriously, Justin. Aside from giving up your practice, it would mean Detroit. And we both know Detroit's poison for you. Pure poison. Tell me you aren't serious.”

Justin picked up a typewritten sheet. “Listen to this, Elisse,” he said. “‘The minute you enter Woodland a fear comes over you. Not all Security men wear uniforms, so you can't know who they are. They're all around. Talking on the assembly line is forbidden. Even at the break you're meant to keep quiet. Say something and you might feel a tap on your shoulder. Then off you go to Gate Four.'” Justin glanced up at her. “That's where the Employment Office is, it means you'll get your dismissal slip. ‘You're constantly spied on, and you feel the eyes on you even after you've shut your own front door.'”

“Nice style,” she said. “Good sense of drama.” Her voice was high, tense. “You haven't answered my question.”

Justin picked up a piece of brown paper that was crumpled as if it had been cut from a grocery bag. “‘The line is so speeded up you can't imagine. I get home twitchy and jump all over the kids. I don't sleep so good. My bowels isn't right. And I'm not much good to the wife anymore. But we got food on the table and I'm paying off the mortgage, so I'm holding on for dear life.'”

The letter had brought tears to Elisse's eyes, and she turned so Justin would not see. “Unions are Mitch's life, not yours. He wants to use you.”

“He didn't write these.”

“Let him get somebody from A F of L to go with him.”

“Who else knows the industry like me?” Justin pushed the letters into a heap. “It's so brutally unfair, Elisse, to grind down poor devils already desperate.”

It was, finally, that very quality she adored in him—his innate and never dormant principle of equity—that touched her off. “No need to go to Detroit, Justin! To play Jesus Christ
you
don't need to go anyplace. You don't need wood and nails! All
you
have to do is stand up and hold out your arms!” Her words rang. “I'm going to bed!”

A half hour later he came in. She lay tense, facing the windows, and he must have sensed she was still awake, yet he did not turn on the light as he undressed. As was his habit, he stepped into both children's rooms. The clock, ticking loudly, measured his movements.

In bed he clasped her shoulder, pulling her toward him. For several ticks she held apart, then she turned to press against him, splaying her hands on his spine above and below the waist. The nightgown made a silky, slithered sound as she shucked it, and her hair, longer now, trailed on his belly as she flurried brief, ardent kisses on his erect penis. Then she straddled him. Aphrodisiac scents of their bodily moistures blessing their bed, his fingers weaving patterns on her breasts, she glided up and down. All at once she halted, throwing back her head in a kind of waiting trance, her only movement a violent pulse at the throat. He pulled her roughly onto the mattress and, he above, they thrust toward each other as if to annihilate their individual identities.