Seventh Avenue (36 page)

“Why are you having a lot to drink? Something bothering you?”

“
I told my little boy I was going to leave.”

“
You did what?”

His hand shook, and he flipped the glass back and downed the drink in one gulp. The waiter waited, and Jay ordered the same again.

“I couldn’t let my wife get in first. This sort of thing can cripple a kid for life. I had to try to explain that I wasn’t some kind of monster.”

“And she would have said you were?”

“She’d have reason to. We’ve been incompatible from the beginning.”

“Is that all that’s bothering you?”

“Isn’t that enough?” he said truculently.

“All right, you don’t have to lose your temper with me.”

“He’s a sick child with a sad expression on his face all the time. Born that way, as though something is missing from his life. I’ve given him everything - not just money - love, affection. I’m mad about him. I can’t explain about him, but he’s in my guts.
I
never stop thinking about him. You wouldn’t think I’m the kind of man who worries about a kid all the time, would you?”

“I like you better for it.”

“I married his mother because she was pregnant, and we tried to get rid of him. It’s on my back all the time. So when he opens his eyes and wants to say something that he can’t find words for, I get the feeling that he knows what I’ve done, and won’t or can’t let me off the hook. I’m always trying to make it up to him. So when I told him - not about us - but that I’d have to move out, I almost lost heart in the middle. There he was caught in the middle of two people - two people who have nothing to give each other - in a trap. Helpless. He doesn’t get along with his mother very well and there he was stretching out his hand to me, and I ran. I ran like hell as fast as I could. And he had this look on his face . . . I can’t describe the look, but I see it all the time. When someone you love picks up a knife and says he’s going to cut your throat. I’ve got a crazy idea that he wanted to say: ‘Don’t go, not because of me, but for your own sake.’ He couldn’t have said anything like that, could he? He’s only five.”

“Jay, calm down, you’re losing control.”

“Sorry,” he said. He waved his empty glass at the waiter, who asked if they were ready to order. “Don’t rush me.” The man retreated to the bar.

“He wasn’t rushing you, Jay. Honey, take it easy.”

“I’m depressing you.”

“Of course you’re not. If you’ve got problems, then I have them also.”

“
Nothing to do with you. Must keep you out.”

“
It’s not possible. I’m committed to you.”

“You’re involved with me, not committed. There’s a big difference.”

“What difference? I’m going to marry you. Neal will be like my own child. I’ll treat him just as I would our own children when we have them.”

Something jarred Jay sharply in the way she described how she would treat Neal. The prospect of more children terrified him. For him, Neal was enough; he couldn’t imagine introducing him to strange children and complicating his life even more. Neal would be forced to occupy that ill-defined, soul-destroying, incomparably hopeless position of the child who belongs to no one and is finally opted into a family where he is treated “just as though he were their own.” Jay refrained from assaulting the idealistic state of affairs Terry had constructed. She didn’t understand how he felt, nor would she ever understand, and he could not bring himself to explain why and how the child, seemingly passive, had established such a strong hold over him. He imagined he saw Neal’s face at the bottom of the convex whiskey glass which was empty again. And he saw the look, a look so staggeringly malevolent and demoniac that he shrank back. Had Neal come between him and Terry, would he always come between Jay and every other woman?

“
Honey, let’s order something. You’re glassy-eyed.”

“
You order,” he said, at last.

“
Trust me?”

“
With my life.”

She picked up his hand and kissed it.

“I’ll make everything up to you. I’ve got so much love to give you.”

“
You should save it for someone who deserves it.”

“Jay? Honestly, I don’t know what I have to do to convince you . . .”

“
Just convince Neal. I’m sold on you.”

Her smile cracked just a bit, enough for him to notice and not to comment on.

They were both tipsy when they got back to his hotel suite. He had slipped the elevator man five dollars, just to be on the safe side. He threw his coat carelessly on a chair and opened a bottle of whiskey.

“All you seem to do is drink,” she said, standing on the bed. She began to jump on it as though it were a trampoline, and her head narrowly missed the ceiling.

“You passing judgment?”

“No, commenting.”

“I wish you’d stop that jumping. I’m getting dizzy watching you.”

He took a long drink, then sat down on a chair and took his shoes off.

“Romantic beast, aren’t you? God, I hate rooms painted green. All hotels have green rooms, the smell of carbolic acid on the bedspread, and maroon drapes with little hanging balls.”

“It was your idea, not mine.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a reproach.”

“I’m tired. Everything aches.”

“Are we going to . . . ?”

“What?” he said.

She gave him a sharp little smile that had a hint of menace in it. Her eyes were bloodshot, and the pupils dilated.

“Fuck, of course.”

He lifted his head up from the floor.

“I don’t think you should use language like that.”

“You
are
joking.”

“I’m not.”

“You use it all the time.”

“Never with you.”

“I’m not honored. Don’t people use words like that in a bedroom?”

“Occasionally . . . when they’re nice women who want to be treated like whores. The way you could never treat a whore. Yeah, the nastier kind of woman likes that.”

She took off her shoes and started to open the clasp of her suspender belt to release her stockings. “Treat me like a whore.”

“It wouldn’t work.”

“How do you know?”

“It wouldn’t work for me.” She came over and sat on his lap, and pushed his hand under her dress. “It’s a wonder to me that a nice girl should behave like a pig.”

“I thought of you as though you were one enormous prick, fucking me to death. A machine, pushing in deeper and deeper and deeper until I’m dead.”

He pushed her to the floor gently and without the suggestion of violence, but he had an instinctive urge to strike her. He picked up his drink and emptied it.

“
If you drink much more of that, you won’t be able to . . .”

“That could be the general idea. It’s fantastic what you don’t know about people. I think I might be in love with you, at least I was sure it couldn’t be anything else when I was away from you, and now you’re taking that feeling and tearing it to shreds, as though it was a filthy old rag that nobody gave a damn about. I come up to see you, when I should be home with my kid, and all you’re interested in is smutty talk. Drop down to a poolroom, and you’ll get all you can stand for nothing.”

“It’s the dirt that excites me. Underneath the two-hundred-dollar suit and the alligator shoes and the French aftershave lotion, is a dirty little Jew. That’s what attracts me. And you dress it all up in a fancy slipcover because you’re embarrassed by it. The part that’s important to me is repulsive to you.”

“You’ve got strange ideas of excitement. If you need some guy to give you a shove, Boston must be loaded with them.”

“
It’s you, Jay. It’s you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I owe your father a favor or two so I’ll forget the dirty Jew crack, but if you’d like me to kick your teeth down your throat, you could try saying it again.”

“
Sensitive spot, isn’t it?”

“I was just thinking about what a wonderful mother you’d make. I’ve got a few beefs about Rhoda, but she’s a saint by comparison.”

“
My father said she was a drug addict.”

“
Your father was misinformed.”

“And he said you were an absolute degenerate in your sex life.”

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you about that too. You’ve had a lot of disappointments in one night.”

“You can’t keep your hands off women. Everyone who knows you.”

“Nobody knows me. I was hoping you might be the one . . . Neal and me . . .”

She did her stockings up and straightened the seams in the mirror behind her.

“You’ve got a thing about that kid. It’s unhealthy. Morbid. You can’t act like a man because he’s in the room with us, isn’t he? Watching . . .”

“I’ll call a cab for you. I think you’d better go, while you can still walk.”

“Just threats . . . full of threats.”

He got up from the chair very slowly, like an old man suffering from arthritis, and in a voice that rang through the room he began to scream: “Get out, get out.” Tears streamed down his face, and he advanced towards her. She retreated to the door, and he allowed her to escape. He picked the bottle of whiskey up and pulled from the bottle, then he fell on the bed and began to bang his head against the wooden bedpost.

“Ooooh, baby, that was sensational,” Barney said as Rhoda turned her head to the wall. “Wanta get high again?”

“It’s late.”

“Whaat, eight o’clock in the morning’s late?”

“I’ve got to get home. Haven’t seen Neal for three days.”

“We could make it all day in bed. C’mon. Send out for sandwiches, a little booze. What’s a day?”

“It’s breaking . . . all of it’s breaking up, and I can’t do anything about it.”

“Rhoda, what’re you talking about? We’re on a good time, aren’t we? We laugh it up. In bed, it’s dynamite. You’re the greatest.”

“Tomorrow, or the next day maybe, or next week.”

“Well, if you havta.”

In a trance she rose from the bed, threw some cold water on her face, and rinsed her mouth. The street below was empty, and gray like a bit of ash.

“My head’s . . .” She dressed hurriedly, threw her crumpled clothes into the small alligator suitcase that Jay had bought her on Mother’s Day.

“Rhoda, take it easy. Let’s make a date . . .”

“I’ll call you,” she said, and rushed out. She ran down the flights of steps like someone panic-stricken, escaping from a conflagration . . . On Fiftieth Street, she went into the subway and caught a train. Tired, lined faces hidden behind newspapers turned pages of blurred newsprint. She heard herself sob, and she stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth. At Fourteenth Street she changed trains and caught a Brighton express, then she changed trains again, and again until the names of the stations whizzed past her face without registering. Finally she got off the train and walked through the turnstile into the cold street, past the fruit and vegetable stalls where men and women wearing gloves cut off at the fingers stood by small potbellied stoves that they fed with the street garbage. She crossed the street and stood for a full five minutes swaying on the corner until a car horn blasted through her brain. It was still there: Modes Dress Shoppe with its tattered green striped awning flapping in the wind, its crowded window with hopelessly passe dresses, the window glass cracked as though it had been seized by a sharp and death-dealing embolism, and its mound of dirt in the ruts that had not been swept into the gutter. She dragged her suitcase into the store, and when she was inside it was so dark that she could barely see who was sitting behind the counter. Then she gave an agonized moan. She tried to speak, but nothing would come out. A figure approached her.

“It’s me, Rhoda. I’ve come back. Please, please, Mr. F, forgive me. I didn’t mean it. It was Jay . . . he made me do it. I never stole from anybody. He made a thief out of me.”

The figure came closer until its head was very close to hers, but all she saw was Finkelstein’s torn and ravaged face.

“I’ll pay it back. I can afford to now. Please, I’m sorry.” She lurched against the edge of the counter and almost knocked it over and cradled her head in her arms, as though to ward off blows. “I’m a decent woman . . . I was a good worker until he . . . he made me . . .” She couldn’t continue because the man’s eyes looked through her as though she were a pane of glass.

“For God’s sake, lady, what do you want?” an outraged voice said.

“It’s Rhoda. I should have stayed on with you and forgotten about him.”

“
What’re you talking about?”

“
Say you forgive me, Mr. F.”

“
I’m not Finkelstein. He died four years ago.”

She stretched out her hands as if to grab him, and the man drew away.

“I’ll call the police if you don’t get out,” he said angrily. “You pull yourself together or you’ll wind up in a canary hatch. Now if you don’t want to buy, cop a walk.”

She edged towards the door, backing away from the man. Where was she? She wiped her eyes, and the voice droned: “If you got somethin’ to confess, go to the station, but don’t bother me. What a way to start the day!”

Rhoda wiped her face with her sleeve and walked out. She took a shortcut to her parents’ house and sat down on a flight of steps opposite it. The stone was cold and damp, and water had gathered in the cracks. She lit a cigarette and waited. At 9:30, she saw her father open the door, rub his hands like a surgeon in a Marx Brothers film, and then Miriam came out swinging a briefcase and hopping down the steps.

“You’ll brek the sandwiches,” he said, and Miriam giggled mischievously.

Rhoda made a move to go to them, but suddenly her father was inside the maroon Chevrolet that Jay had given him, and Miriam had slammed her door and the car shot down the street and she stood in the roadway with her arms stretched out trying to grasp something that was beyond her reach, something so elusive and distant that she came to her senses because the effort of holding her arms out had tired her, and she realized with a chill that what she now wanted, she had once had and that she could never again recapture it. She and Jay had conspired to murder it, and they had been successful. She walked down the street and turned onto Fourteenth Avenue. She stared aimlessly and blankly at the murky shop windows with their tired, out-of-date displays, the people who worked in the stores idling behind counters, sipping coffees, slaves to the useless and despairing commerce that she had once been a part of. On Forty-Eighth Street, she went into the Royal Music Shop where Myrna had worked. She pointed to a clarinet in a glass showcase and told the salesgirl that she would have it. She wrote out a check for ninety-one dollars, and the manager, who Rhoda recognized but who did not recognize her, approached her with that desperate servility and suspicion that people who are on commission assume whenever an easy, unexpected sale comes their way. She wrote the address to which it was to be sent, and the manager, who spent most of his time demonstrating sheet music on an out-of-tune Steinway located in the middle of the shop on a platform, hummed something vague and tuneless.