“Joan, there was a reason.”
“Why don’t you say what the reason is?”
It popped out of my mouth like a firecracker, I trying to shut myself up, not with much success. He said: “It would upset me no end to say what the reason was. Joan, you must know by now I’m quite mad about you, and—”
“Then why don’t you act like it?”
“I thought I did. Today.”
I swallowed, I did everything I could think of to make myself shut up, but no soap. I went right on. I said, glancing around and grateful to find us with no one in earshot: “So O.K., you gave me fifty thousand dollars, and I’ve said how grateful I am. But when I really try to say it, you cut me off. So what do I do now? O.K., I’d like to know, what do I do?”
“Not what you think, Joan.”
“How do you know what I think?”
“Then Joan, what do you think? Tell me.”
“If you mean, what I think of what you want me to do for my fifty thousand bucks, I don’t know, but I’m human, and I won’t be too proud, whatever it is that you want. For fifty thousand dollars I could swallow my pride. But if you want to know what I think in general, what I think you should do to prove it, how insanely you feel for me, there’s just one way, Mr. White—that I’m supposed to be too modest to speak of. Well, I’m not. If you wanted a woman for a night, you could have one for a lot less money than you just gave me—perhaps one of the other girls who work here, as I’m sure you know. If you like me enough to give me the amount you gave—why, there’s a way for a man to share that much of what he has with a woman he likes, and only one way I know that’s got any legitimacy to it.” I saw pain flit across his features again, as it had that time before, but mixed, I thought, with a sort of longing, and though I knew it wasn’t the way to go about it, I couldn’t stop myself and plunged right in. “You could ask me to marry you, that’s how—well, goddam it, why don’t you ask me?”
“I’d give anything to,” he whispered.
“Spit it out, then. Why don’t you?”
His face fell, and his next words were so quiet I could barely make them out.
“I have angina, Joan.”
I had to rummage around in my head to remember angina, what it was, and finally placed it was some kind of heart trouble, and after getting connected up I said: “I don’t get the point, Mr. White. What’s angina got to do with it?”
“With angina, marriage is out. To you or anyone. As my doctor has warned me repeatedly, I can’t … be with a woman. He’s quite certain, my heart wouldn’t stand up to the strain. Or in other words, marriage, with you, for me, would be a sentence of death. That’s the fantastic torment I live in: I’ve never met a woman I’ve wanted more, I think about you to the point of distraction, of insanity we could say, but if I do about it what any normal man wants to do, I die.”
I stood there, not really believing him, thinking it was just an excuse, something he had cooked up as an out, a reason for keeping me from hoping for more from Earl K. White III than a mere cocktail waitress should—and then, suddenly, knowing it had to be true— and I don’t know what told me. His expression, perhaps: I’d never seen a man so downcast and frustrated and ashamed. And of course he’d already given me more than I had any right to hope for, and asked for nothing in return, in fact refused what little I’d offered. And I remembered the episode where the touch of my body had left him red-faced and out of breath, and I suddenly felt compassion. I mean, a surge of pity swept over me, so I went over and touched him, putting my hand on his back and giving him a pat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I take back what I said. I didn’t realize.”
“I told you there was a reason.”
“You did, and I accept it. It explains everything.”
He sat there and I stood there, and for a moment things were awkward, as when two people are so overwhelmed by emotion they can’t think of things to say. But then my mouth got in it again, with just one last peep over what had bothered me earlier. “Just the same,” I banged at him, in a somewhat peevish way, “you could have asked me into your house. It’s a simply beautiful house, and the least you could do was let me look at it, just once.”
“There was a reason for that, too.”
“I’m a little fed up on reasons.”
“Casanova, somewhere in his memoirs, says a woman knows only one way of expressing gratitude. If that way had occurred to you, the consequences could have been catastrophic.”
“Casanova?”
“He, of all men, ought to know.”
“You think I might have taken that way?”
“If invited in, you might have.”
“And you couldn’t have resisted?”
“No, Joan, I’m not at all sure I could. And it would have been fatal.”
He waited a moment, to let that soak in, and went on: “You’d have been left with a corpse in your arms, and a check no bank would honor—not till my estate was probated, and your chances then would have been slim, extremely slim, considering the characters of my stepchildren. And I know how badly you need the money, Joan. I wanted you to have it. So I had you sit in the car, I took no chances.”
“I see.”
“It’s a fiendish sentence to live under. I realize we haven’t known each other for very long, but there is no mistaking how you make me feel, and I know how rare it is, and if it weren’t for this thing I’d give my eyes to marry you, to be with you morning, noon, and night—all the time. But it can’t be.”
“You make me want to cry.”
“While you’re about it, cry for me.”
12
It took me a week to adjust, to catch up with this change that had come in my life, this tremendous, incredible change. Each afternoon I’d sit and look out the window, checking over things I could do with the money I had come into. It was a problem. I had the wherewithal now to get my son back for sure—but no way to explain how I got it, not and be believed, either by Ethel herself or the members of the court she’d hint to about the immoral things I must have done to get a man to pay me so much. Things that in the court’s eyes would make me unfit to be put in charge of a child’s welfare, and not just for now but permanently. I could hear her voice: Where would you have gotten such a quantity of money, Joan? I won’t use the word for what you are, but you and I both know the only thing you have to sell.
At the same time, doing nothing with the money was hardly sensible, not when I had it and needed it so dearly. I had to find something that could get me out of this bind eventually. And then one day, as I stared at that house across the street, I woke up. I had often admired it: a two-and-a-half-story brick cottage, painted white, with nicely mown lawn and cedar trees each side of the drive. But what woke me up was the sign on the front lawn: FOR SALE, with a realtor’s name on it, his address, and phone number. Suddenly I got up, went to the phone, and dialed. Then I hung up before anyone answered. In the Yellow Pages I looked up another real estate man, Ross P. Linden, with offices in Hyattsville just a few blocks away. I rang, made an appointment, and next day went in to see him. He agreed to take over the job of buying, and at the end of the week closed my deal. He had beat the price down from $35,000 asking to $28,000 offered and accepted. He charged me $1,000 for his work, which I thought reasonable enough considering what he did. Then I went out and bought furnishings for it. I bought them at auction sales, which for things of that kind are usually held at night. That meant taking time off from my job, first telling Bianca. “Telling her,” I said, not “asking her”— and of course she put up a squawk. But, if she wanted me to stay on, there was nothing to say but yes, so she said it, swallowing hard. At the end of two weeks, for $1,200, I had the house very well furnished, with living room and dining room suites downstairs, bedroom things upstairs, and very nice rungs all around. On top of the $ 1,200 in regular furnishings, I put out $495 for a color TV, a beautiful cabinet-size thing that I splurged on deliberately. Because, I was getting this place ready to rent, rent furnished to the kin
d of people who might be in Washington only a short time, but needed a place to live in, a nice place they could have for themselves, their family, and friends— and a color TV, I thought, would act as very nice bait, something that might well tip the beam, make them decide between my place and some other place, if they liked to watch Steve Allen or Perry Como or Dinah Shore, all of whom were now broadcasting in color, or Howdy Doody if they had a little one. And within a week of the purchase going through I had the house rented, for $450 a month, to a couple from Akron, Ohio, who had jobs of some sort with HUD. When the husband and wife both work, they don’t have to count costs too closely, and can afford a very nice rental. They didn’t have any children and their name was Schroeder.
So, I had spent $31,000 of my $50,000, but still had things to do. On the mortgage, just under $5,000 dangled, and I went to the bank and paid it. I can’t say what a relief that was, what a blessed load off my back, as well as an albatross from around my neck. It still left me with $14,000 of my $50,000, and I went out and bought a car. I didn’t buy a new car, but one off a used-car lot, from a man I knew fairly well, from his coming in to the Garden and sitting with me quite often. He had a very nice Ford, a sedan, nicely polished, two years old but with not too much mileage on it, for $1,100. It was green, to blend with my hair, and when I drove it around the block, purred nicely, as though in good condition. The only thing was, it still had its original tires, and they were beginning to get worn. But I had Mr. Goss put five new whitewalls on it, for just over $100, and lo and behold, I had practically a brand-new car for the price of half of one.
So, I had one house free and clear, with no monthly $110 due, and except for taxes and upkeep, no expense at all, and another house free and clear, paying me $450 a month, subject to taxes and upkeep. Or in other words, with the $19.15 tip I still got every night, or nearly $115 a week, and the $150 a week over that that I made in tips at the Garden, I had about $1,500 a month before taxes, and over $10,000 in savings, making me $50 a month, about. Considering that just a few months before I was practically on relief, I knew I wasn’t doing too badly. I also hadn’t heard a peep from Private Church since the day he’d come to my house, leaving me to conclude that neither my recent transactions, if noticed at all, nor Ron’s exhumation had raised any matter of concern to the police. So I was feeling pleasantly up, quite happy with myself, when I drove out to the Lucases’ Sunday, for my weekly visit with Tad. I played it straight with Ethel, making no explanations at all of the car except to say that I had it, and all she could do was stare, first at it, then at me, and say: “I see, I see, I see.” What she saw I didn’t quite know, or to be frank about it, care. I’d been working long enough to afford a used car, on what I was making now; it wasn’t like suddenly appearing with $50,000 out of nowhere.
Tad was all excitement, as I had hoped he would be, and I loaded him in for a ride I had in mind, to the university at College Park, where they had a dairy building, as part of their farm complex, where you can get ice cream of various kinds, experimental kinds, most of them wonderful, not at all like what they sell in “parlors” as they’re called. They brought a book for Tad to sit on, but I held him on my lap, and ordered something made with diced dates for myself and plain strawberry for him, as being pink, pretty, and tasty.
He loved it. He ate it spoonful by spoonful, in the slow careful way a child has for something like that, and I loved watching him. When he was almost to the end he suddenly stopped, closed his eyes, and said: “M’m! M’m!” like he’d heard them sing on the Campbell’s soup advertisements. It made my heart beat up, the most beautiful sound in the world, of my own little baby being happy. He didn’t even complain when I hugged him tight, forgetting about his shoulder, so I knew he’d finally healed. I let him taste to the last spoonful, then ordered two quart cartons, one of strawberry, one of vanilla with chocolate chip, to take home to the Lucases. When we got back Jack was out on the curb waiting. It seemed odd, as previously he had shown me no special respect, and in fact took me quite for granted, in a way I didn’t much like. But now he was deference itself, opening the door, helping me out with Tad, being so helpful I was crossed up, assuming at first it was respect for the new car, or something of the sort. However, it turned out that wasn’t the reason. “Will you go up to Ethel?” he whispered. “She’s in a state up there—went to bed, believe it or not. You were gone so long she thought you’d flown the coop. She thought you’d taken Tad back. So—you aren’t taking him, are you?”
“He is my son, Jack.”
“I know he is, and you are entitled to have him for the day any time you want. But Ethel feared—”
“I know what she feared, and she should fear it, because someday soon I hope to make it happen. I am the boy’s mother and he should be with me.”
“I thought you weren’t ready yet, that you still couldn’t take care of him, all by yourself—”
I swallowed what I wanted so badly to tell him, to tell Ethel, for I was still afraid of how she would turn it against me. “I’m not. But soon I hope to be.”
“She’s scared to death up there.”
And then, as he walked me into the house, holding my arm, as I held Tad by the hand: “She’s nuts about him, Joan, just nuts. Don’t take him, please—not yet. He’s what she lives for.”
“What I live for, too.”
“Yeah, we know about that. But—”
“I’ll talk to her about it.”
So I did, coming in on her as she lay on their double bed, staring at me with puffy cheeks and red eyes, and giving a little cry when Tad came toddling in, having let go my hand at the head of the stairs, to pull up his sock or something. She jumped out of bed, swept him into her arms, and listened close as he told her: “’Tawberry! ’Tawberry! ’Tawberry!”
“Ethel,” I told her, very calm. “I brought him back—this time. But I’m in better shape now, financially I mean, than I have been—the job has worked out very well, and I could afford a woman, one to come in and stay with Tad while I work. I mean to say I’ve been thinking about it, and though I haven’t done it yet, you should prepare yourself for it.”
She looked up at me from where she was cradling my son by the foot of her bed and wrapped one hand around the back of his head, as if to protect him. To protect him from me, his mother. “You may do that, Joan, when you’re settled proper and have a situation suitable to the mother of a young boy. Not working nights for tips, from men who pay to drink and see your bosom, and if it’s only to see it and not to touch it, and much more besides, I’d be surprised.” She spoke this all in a syrupy sweet voice, as though the tone could hide from my little son what venom the words contained. “I know Luke Goss, and so does my Jack, and he bragged just two nights back about that car he sold you, saying he expected he’d have you in its back seat some night soon if the way you pet him on the arm and give him glimpses inside your blouse at the Garden is any indication of how you feel about him. Now Luke Goss does well enough with that yard of his and I’m not telling you he couldn’t make a tolerable husband for some woman, so if you’ve decided to make a play for him, so be it. But I have to warn you, Joan, you might find marriage proposals aren’t what you get put to you in the back seat of a used car.”
I was frozen, my temper held in check only by the look of distress I saw had crept into Tad’s eyes. He may not have understood all the words but he wasn’t taken in about their meaning, and could tell that there was something like hatred between us. “Luke Goss is a liar,” I said, “a salesman who will say anything to anyone to make himself shine in their eyes. I serve him drinks and that is all, and there never will be more, and if I ever touched his arm it was only to keep him from falling over in his seat from too many Manhattans. I will not be kept from my son by lies, not his, nor yours, nor anyone’s, and if you try you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“… Wish I hadn’t? What are you saying, Joan? That I might have an accident like Ron’s someday?”
“I wouldn’t
know, that depends on whether you drink as much as he did.”
She stood. “I’m sorry, Joan, but I don’t think it is appropriate for us to continue this conversation in front of the boy. If you would kindly leave, Jack will see you out.”
I bent to kiss my son, and he saw the tears I was holding back, because he flung his arms around my neck and clung, until finally I had to take his little hands and gently lift them off me and force myself to step away from him. “Mommy will be back,” I told him. “Next Sunday. And the Sunday after. And more than that, soon, much more, I promise.”
“More,” he said, but his voice quavered as though uncertain. And I knew then I couldn’t give up on Mr. White, however impossible it might seem.
13
All that time, I hadn’t said anything, to Liz, Bianca, or anyone there at the Garden, about what had happened to me.
And I said nothing to Mr. White as to what I’d done with his money, not that I minded his knowing, but I feared he wouldn’t approve, and shied off from letting him veto. I also said nothing to Tom, who came in as he had before—not every night, but two or three times a week, always sitting at Mr. White’s table, always taking seltzer, and always staying completely sober, but it must be said leaving me feeling a little tipsy in turn. He kept trying to date me, for an evening, or early morning actually, after I got through work, saying he knew a place where we could go “and not be bothered,” whatever that meant. And I kept putting him off, saying, “Soon, I hope—I’ll take another rain-check,” but it was harder each time. In spite of the way we’d begun, I’d come to like him. Or perhaps ‘like’ is the wrong word, but I was drawn to him, and I was coming to understand better what Liz had told me that first night, about the undeniable appeal of being asked, especially when it’s an attractive man doing the asking.
Then one night he came in earlier than usual and didn’t bring up the subject. He seemed in a very low mood, as though something was on his mind. I asked: “What is it, Tom? Did I pour gravy on your ice cream? What’s on your mind anyway?”