Voices From the Street

  “Well,” Bob said, facing Hadley coldly, “you can tell the Army to go kiss its ass.”

  Stunned, Hadley slowly lowered his cup of hot, sweet tea. “What?” he murmured.

  “You’ve got a kid, a dependent! They’re not drafting you, are they?”

  “I don’t know.” He was confused. “I don’t think so… I have a liver condition; I’ve already been classified 4-F.”

  “No,” Bob said emphatically, closing the subject. “They won’t take you with a kid.” His eyes roved restlessly around; his blunt, thick fingers drummed on the surface of the table. “You still working for that same shop?”

  “Yes,” Hadley admitted.

  “What are you, floor manager now?”

  “No,” Hadley said. “Commission and draw.”

  “Five percent?”

  Hadley nodded.

  Bob Sorrell made computations. “What’s that bring you, about three fifty a month net?”

  “More like two fifty,” Hadley answered.

  The two mean, narrow eyes half closed. Tiny eyes, as cold and wet as rocks. “Why, for that I’d tell the old fart to go jump in the creek. You can get that anywhere. You can get that breaking rocks with a coon railroad gang!”

  Dave Gold’s dark face turned a sickly gray and he abruptly stopped eating.

  Both he and Laura seemed suddenly like two cross, tired children kept up too late at night. They settled down unhappily at their places and gazed sightlessly at the table, not saying anything, not moving.

  Bob glanced briefly at them and appraised them in one short instant. His eyes summed them up. The rigid square of his shoulders weighed them and rejected them. He dismissed them and turned back to Hadley.

  “How long is this going to continue? Wake up, man; you can’t support a wife and child on that kind of money. With the way this country is bursting wide open, how the hell long are you going to sit around on your can?”

  Hadley pawed clumsily at his fork. “I have a chance of taking over the store. If Fergesson buys this other place he’s talking about…” His voice trailed off uncertainly. “Maybe he’ll turn Modern over to me. He said he would, once.”

  “He did?” Bob’s gravel voice was faintly mocking. “A swell joe, huh? Dangling the old bait in front of your eyes?”

  “I think he will,” Hadley answered stubbornly, not able to meet the stone-hard face of his brother-in-law. “I think he’s really going to buy into O’Neill’s place.”

  “And how much’ll you be making?”

  Hadley’s fingers twisted together as he studied them intently. “One night after hours Fergesson and I sat around talking about it. He said he’d give me three fifty salary plus my five percent on what I sold. And an additional one-half percent on the gross take. That’s pretty good.”

  Sally got enthusiastic. “Say, that sounds like something!” She glanced at her husband. “Doesn’t that sound good?”

  Bob remained unimpressed. “Is this a promise? You got it in writing?”

  “Of course not,” Hadley answered. “The deal with O’Neill hasn’t gone through.”

  Bob made a disgusted noise, waved his big hand, and then turned to consult the wristwatch strapped to his hairy arm. “Time to get going,” he announced, and got to his feet. “Let’s take off, folks.” He eyed the Golds hostilely; their time had come. “What’s with you two? Coming along or what?”

  “We have our own car,” Dave answered hoarsely.

  “Where is it? Around here?”

  After a moment Laura answered: “In a parking lot. Down on the Embarcadero.”

  Bob was getting rid of the Golds. Hadley knew it, but he was powerless to protest. Like a cosmic engine, Bob went through the routine of the brush-off. “All right,” he said. “I’ll drive you down there and let you off.”

  He moved out of the booth, halted with his body holding the curtain aside, and waited.

  “Now?” Laura asked weakly.

  “Certainly,” Bob answered. “Why the hell not? You’re done eating—you’ve had enough of that slop for six people.” To Hadley he said: “Wait here with Sally. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes; this won’t take long.”

  Dave and Laura pushed blindly out of the booth after him, and Hadley was alone with his sister.

  For a time neither of them said anything. Hadley picked listlessly at his cold, soggy food. Sally had pushed her empty plate away; she leaned back, got a silver cigarette case from her purse, and lit up. Clouds of blue smoke drifted around the booth. Presently Sally unbuttoned her coat and slid it off, onto the back of the chair her husband had vacated. She wore a pale blue angora sweater, long-sleeved, high-necked, stretched tight against her sharply outlined bra, her rigid, white, terribly expensive bra.

  “It’s been a long time,” she said, and smiled quickly at him, blue-eyed, mouth rich and red, proud face tilted high. The old flicker of warm amusement had again touched her lips. The familiar flash of affection between them. Breathing blue smoke from her nostrils, leaning lazily back in her chair, elbow against the table, cigarette close to her lips, she gazed at her kid brother with intense affection. “So now you have a son. My Baby has a little new baby boy…”

  The waiter appeared with a pot of fresh tea. Grinning his pardon, he exchanged it for the cold pot and retired through the curtains.

  “How’s it feel?” she asked.

  “Fine.”

  “You know, Bob won’t have children yet. He wants to wait until we’re settled. Whatever that might be.”

  “Bob is a big man,” Stuart said.

  “He’s a hard worker. There’s always something going on in that bullet-shaped head of his.” Her nose wrinkled, teasing. “Why don’t you get a butch? But you always liked your hair long.” She leaned forward to stub out her cigarette on her empty plate; again a cloud of perfume drifted around him, perfume and the warm smell of her body underneath her sweater, her arms and neck and hair. “I remember, you were always fussing in front of the mirror, combing it and rubbing Wildroot Cream Oil into it. You still use that stuff?”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “I still do.”

  “My kid brother. What a dandy you always were! Worse than a girl.” She lit up slowly, cupping the lighter between her red-nailed fingers, eyes fixed on him, cigarette dangling between her lips. “What does Ellen say to all your primping and”—she inhaled deeply—“and your clothes! I guess you got it from me.”

  Stuart Hadley agreed. In a kind of ecstasy he drank in the presence of his sister; unbelievably, he had her all to himself, completely in his possession after all the years that had passed. That interval vanished from his mind; it was a barren interlude of separation, a marking time in which nothing vital had taken place. Achingly, he realized that Bob would be back almost at once; any minute, in fact. He tried desperately to drink in all of her at once, to consume and absorb her in the few precious minutes ahead.

  “What’s wrong, Baby?” she asked him softly, blue eyes gentle, aware that something painful was happening to him.

  “Nothing.”

  She had taken off her gloves. They lay heaped on her purse, beside her silver cigarette lighter. She reached out now, and again took his hand. Her fingers were long, cool, incredibly slim. Her red shiny nails were like polished glass against his skin as she pressed harshly, convulsively. “I wish you’d tell me what it is. Has—everything been going all right? Are you happy?”

  “Yes,” he pretended.

  “Really?” She watched him intently, leaning toward him, elbows against the table. “You know, Baby, I can read you like a book. Tell me the truth.”

  “I’m fine,” Stuart answered.

  Sally shook her head. “Baby, I wish to Christ I could help you.” Softly, sadly, she stroked his arm with her fingers. “Is it you and Ellen?”

  “No…we’re getting along fine.” He amended himself: “The same as always. Quarrels now and then. Nothing new.”

  “What will the baby mean?” Singsong, she repeated in a
husky whisper: “My Baby’s baby. My Baaaaby’s baby.” She reached up her hand to ruffle his carefully combed blond hair. Red lips slack she sang: “My little Peter’s little Peter.”

  They both giggled, rocked close together, bumped heads and drew back, laughing aloud.

  “All right,” Sally said. “All right as rain. You know, I’ve missed you like hell. You know?” She puffed blue smoke in his face. “Of course, you have a sweet little wife…such a sweet little wife you have. You don’t need me anymore.”

  “I do,” Hadley said tightly.

  “No.” She shook her head. “I can’t look out for you anymore. Remember how I used to look out for you? Remember that time you lost your shoe in the movie theater and the usher and I found it for you? While you stood out in the lobby bawling your head off.”

  “I remember,” Hadley said.

  Sally listened to his voice, as if trying to catch something beyond, far down, deep inside where it didn’t show. “You seem so—oh, my God, Baby.” Her blue eyes were full of pain for him. “You seem so beaten.”

  He didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not trying! It’s all gone—there wasn’t much to start with, and what there was is gone.” She rushed on wildly: “Baby, you’ve got to stand up… Not the way Bob does, maybe. But even that wouldn’t hurt you!” Fiercely, she jabbed her cigarette at him. “Goddamn it, Baby, it kills me to see you like this. Like something washed up by the tide, the sort of thing we used to kick around—jump up and down on. Remember? You remember; I know. We both remember. It’s my fault; I knocked all the spirit out of you. You should have looked out for yourself… You wanted to look out for yourself, once. But I wouldn’t let you. I had to take care of you… I wanted to take care of you. I made you weak; you weren’t always weak.”

  “I’m okay,” Hadley said awkwardly. “What are you worried about?”

  “You’re not okay, Baby,” his sister said softly, gently. “You’re in bad shape… You make me want to cry. Damn you,” she snarled at him; her blue eyes swam with tears. “I wanted you to be something!”

  “Like Bob?” Hadley asked bitterly.

  “No. I don’t know—anything. You used to have such a temper… You used to get so damn mad. Remember that? You weren’t always soft this way. Milky.”

  Genuinely surprised, Hadley said: “What do you mean? What sort of temper?”

  “You used to go crazy; you used to go into fits. You could only be pushed so far and then you’d fight. You’d get your back up against the wall—all of a sudden you’d start swinging, at everybody, everything. That’s what I want…understand? And it was my fault; I knocked that out of you, that backbone, that temper. We teased you—we teased it out of you. And I thought it was good. I thought you had to learn, become—disciplined. Self-control, growing up. That sort of thing. I wanted you to mind…like a parent. I wanted obedience. And I got it, didn’t I? That’s all gone now. When’s the last time you got mad?”

  “I still get mad,” Hadley said.

  “Do you? Is it still there?” She leaned breathlessly toward him, elbows planted on the table, hands clasped together. “Then why don’t you stand up? Where’s your backbone?”

  “It’s there,” Hadley repeated.

  “Like it used to be? You used to smash your toys: you remember how you lined them up all of a sudden, and you just smashed them, one after another?”

  He remembered it, now that she said it. But only now; a moment ago, he would have denied it. “Yeah,” he admitted.

  “All your things, everything you had. Something you’d been working on, something you were building. You’d work away on it, hour after hour, sometimes for days. And then, when it didn’t come out right, when it didn’t turn out the way you wanted, you’d just sit there with it on your lap… I got so I knew the signs. You’d sit there, sort of limp, and your face would get red as a beet. Redder and redder, and you wouldn’t say a thing. And then all of a sudden you’d leap up and smash it, whatever it was, smash it to bits. Jump up and down on it. And I or Daddy would come in and spank you.”

  “Yeah,” Hadley admitted. It was something that even now, years later, he only vaguely understood, only dimly comprehended. “I wonder why I did that. All of a sudden I just did it. I wanted to bust whatever meant the most to me.”

  “I think you broke just about everything you had, sooner or later. But that finally went away… Then you got into fights. Then you beat up kids. Remember that girl you hit with the hoe?”

  “Sure,” Hadley said.

  “You were a bastard. And I set out to change that. Now I wish it were back.”

  “It’s back,” Hadley said. “It’s there somewhere. It’s not gone. I can feel it still there.” He grinned at her. “A thing like that can be driven underground, but not away.”

  Sally turned away, lips tight. For a time she sat, rigid and silent, not looking at her brother. Outside the booth shrill voices screamed banalities back and forth in Cantonese. Chairs scraped, the cash register clanged. Somewhere a man coughed, hawked, and spat loudly.

  “I’m sorry about your friends,” Sally said, turning to him finally. “I forgot to tell Bob they were coming. He hates people to turn up when he doesn’t know them.” She smiled waveringly. “I wish you’d get a car again; you and Ellen could drive up and visit us. And Pete. Golly—” Eagerness swept across her face, swift and fluid. “I’m so excited about him! Does he look like you?”

  “A little. It’s too early to tell.”

  “Like Daddy?”

  “Sure.”

  She was delighted. “I’m so glad.” For a time she sat smoking and gazing at him, and at the walls of the booth, the framed picture of a sleeping dog hung above the row of coat hooks. “What’s he going to be?” she asked. “When he grows up. Have you thought about it?”

  “Yes,” Hadley answered. “I’ve thought a lot about it. He’s going to be something… He’s going to get somewhere.”

  “Don’t think too much about it, Baby,” his sister said anxiously. “Promise me? Promise you’ll think about yourself? Do you understand what I mean?”

  He pretended he didn’t. “I’ve got a lot to think of. This business at the store—”

  “Look at me.” She reached up and turned his face toward her. “Baby, are you stopping completely? You can’t turn it over to your child… You can’t drop it all on him. That’s not right—you’re so damn young; do you know how young you are? You’re just a little boy, a little blond-haired baby. You’ve got so much ahead of you. You could be so much…”

  “Sure,” Hadley said, without emotion.

  “You don’t want to be.” She shuddered. “You used to be so active—even when you were a kid. Remember the little electric motor you built? And all your mats and baskets, all the things you made. Your Erector set… You were always building something. And you loved to fix clocks!”

  After a moment Hadley said: “Sally, something’s happened to me.”

  She clenched her fists. “Do you know what it is?”

  Hadley laughed. “Of course! I don’t mean it the way it sounds…like an evil spell or some kind of bone disease.”

  She was watching him uneasily. “What do you mean?”

  “I met somebody.”

  “Don’t tell me in bits—who did you meet? Are you and Ellen splitting up? Did you meet another girl?” She looked delighted.

  Hadley tore apart a napkin and wadded the fragments into a ball in the palms of his hands. “No, nothing like that.” He grinned at her shyly. “You and Ellen—that’s the first thing you think of. You think maybe I’m playing around with some waitress over at the dime store.”

  Sally smiled doubtfully. “Baby, I don’t care if you’re shacking up with the Virgin Mary. You know that—all I care about is you. Let’s face it…to me, Ellen’s a sweet girl and I think a lot of her. But she’s just like any other young gal with brown hair and big sorrowful eyes. I’ve seen a thousand of them… You know, Baby,
maybe if you’d got a wife who could help you—” She shrugged. “It’s none of my business. But you need something besides—” She gestured and smiled mockingly at him. “Admit it…you can get that stuff anywhere—right? You don’t have to get married just for that. You’re a nice-looking boy, Baby. I remember what some of my girlfriends used to say about you.” Lazily, her blue eyes filmed over, cunning and feminine, the lurking cloudiness of sex. “How long ago was that? Eight, nine, ten years… You were fifteen years old.”

  “Sixteen.”

  “You’re a liar. I know how old you were… I was four when you were born. I remember the day.” She raised her voice sternly. “So don’t try to kid me.”

  “I never kidded you,” Hadley said simply. “I mean, I never got away with it.”

  “So don’t ever accuse me of trying to make you toe the straight and narrow.” Her blue eyes danced. “You know how I feel about that.”

  “I know.” He grinned tightly.

  As she lit another cigarette Sally went on: “The thing about Ellen is—” She glanced up. “Do you mind?”

  “No.”

  “What can she do for you? What’s she got? She’s a sweet kid, Baby, but you need more than that. You’ve got too much on the ball…don’t you see? Nothing should hold you back. You want a woman who can work with you…somebody with your own ability. You’ve got a lot of ability.”

  “Christ,” Hadley said mildly, “I haven’t painted since college.”

  “I don’t mean just that. But that’s part of it. I mean, you’re a unique person, Baby. There’re depths to you. Layers. You go down a long way… You’re complicated. Does Ellen really understand you? She wants to; I believe that.” Sally laughed lightly, gaily. “You’re a damn fool, Baby—you shouldn’t let me say that about your wife.”