—Whatever all that means.
—Means they’ve dragged this sculptor Szyrk into it makes it a Federal case, diversity of citizenship.
—A name like that what could he expect.
—Nothing to do with his name Christina, just meant to protect somebody from another state against getting chewed up by your local rednecks.
—Which is exactly what will happen. Can’t you fix that fire?
—Exactly. Get a jury trial going they’ll chew him up and spit him out, something wrong with the damper I just opened it. The old man they’re really out to get, this J Harret Ruth with his own cheap political agenda’s nose up so far between the cheeks with that Neanderthal senator of theirs up for reelection, if they can kill the Judge on this appeals court seat that’s what he’s after, you’ll see. Perfect forum, you get the . . .
—You’ve got to do something about it Harry, my . . .
—Not a damn thing I can do about it, just told you it’s the law. Demand a jury trial within ten days after the pleadings and they’ve got one, a perfect forum. You get the . . .
—The fire, I’m talking about the fire. My eyes are burning I can hardly . . .
—Wood’s probably wet. Or green, you get a leading old time states’ rights advocate like Bilk up there in front of these hambones talking about the Federal government spending their tax money where it’s got no business, he’s already stood out there on the Senate floor and said art today is spelled with an f hasn’t he? right in the public’s face? Product of warped sick minds, sexual deviants, degenerates and foreigners Szyrk’s made to order. Where are you going?
—To open some windows, why on earth you had to build a fire.
—Just seemed, Sunday afternoon in the country a fall day like this it seemed like what you do.
—You ought to turn on the football game then, you always like seeing somebody lose. You’re simply not a country person Harry, you shouldn’t go around building fires, any minute Oscar will be out from his nap and he’ll have a fit.
—Nothing unusual about that.
—Well you can’t blame him can you? Day after day waiting for this decision he calls Mister Basie and he’s told he’s out of the office, out of town, we’re both nervous wrecks and these lawyers he got God knows where on his accident case now what are you doing.
—This, damn, damper keeps slipping closed trying to, damn. There. All be clear by suppertime.
—I can’t wait till suppertime Harry, another day of this, another hour I’ll lose my mind, if I have to watch one more nature program. No deer or bears or anything healthy no, no the ones he watches are all animals pretending to be flowers, deadly insects that look like twigs, harmless looking creatures simply seething with poison just lying in wait it’s all rather unwholesome, and Ilse. If you could hear the splashing and carrying on in there when he has his bath God knows what they’re up to, at least he hasn’t mentioned that mess of a blonde I think I hear him coming, Harry for God’s sake. A cup of tea and we’ll leave. I’m all packed and I cannot endure another discussion deciding whether we’ll have salmon with the dill anchovy butter or poached in an aspic glaze, simply tell him your office called and, oh Oscar? We’ve got to be off.
—But I thought, but Harry just got here Christina I thought he’d come out for a rest look, look he’s built a lovely fire and I’ve told her to make tea I thought, about supper I thought . . .
—So did I, but they called and want him in there first thing in the morning. We want to miss the Sunday night traffic.
—But when did, I didn’t hear the phone ring, I . . .
—It’s ringing right now.
—No, I can reach it but, hello?
—Harry, can you bring down my bags?
—Who? But, oh, later, call later I, goodbye.
—Oh Ilse, you needn’t bother with the tea. Well who was it.
—Who was, oh. A wrong number. They got the wrong number.
—Then why did you tell them to call back later.
—I just meant, you said Harry was exhausted that he needed a rest and I wanted to talk to him about the . . .
—My God Oscar we’re all exhausted, we all need a rest Harry? can you hear me? She passed to fight a casement window closed, —there’s a small makeup case in the bathroom, will you bring it? And she stood arrested, looking down the lawn where only the day before he’d stared out, even called her to see the only thing that moved out there, a bluebird hopping across the discoloured grass? or was it only a jay, but she’d been too busy to look, picking up streamers of newspaper, scraps of notepaper —if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s litter, will you ever learn to keep your things in one place? And now, —you’ve got to get that damper fixed Oscar, before somebody burns down the house. Are we ready? The squeeze of a hand, of a shoulder, —let me know if you hear from Father, perhaps you should call him, Ilse? Will you help us with these bags? And out on the veranda, —I wish you’d look down on the front lawn Ilse, there’s a blue plastic bag blowing around out there where someone’s been eating potato chips or something, don’t things around here look shabby enough? Bracing herself against the bound of the car up the pits in the driveway, —that veranda is one thing, but if there’s one thing I cannot stand it’s, look out! throwing her arm up.
—Did you see? He skidded back into the rut he’d swerved from avoiding the old car cutting a swathe through bull vine and bittersweet down the driveway behind them.
—No, what. Who.
—Lily.
And see what she’d brought him, —Oscar? banging the outside doors, clattering down the hall —are you okay? It was a chocolate icecream cake and look, he already had a fire going in the fireplace, it was like old times, everything was so cozy, it was like he expected her, when she’d called and he hung up in her face she just came right over, to tell the truth she wasn’t too sure what kind of welcome she’d get, coming down beside him, didn’t he even have a kiss for her? sitting here all alone like old Mister Grouch with the silent television already aglow where a mouse flattened a cat with a sledgehammer, —you’re not watching that are you? Look at me. Aren’t you even going to ask how I am? But all he wanted to know was what she’d done to her hair. —I had it cut and shaped, do you like it? Me neither. Is that why you’re so standoffish? You’re not mad are you? But he seemed suddenly absorbed in the predicament of the cat, who was being stamped into smaller editions with a cookiecutter. —Oscar? Is everything okay?
—Is everything okay! Of all the stupid, you show up here like this out of nowhere just to ask me if everything’s okay?
—I only meant, I thought maybe by now you’re up walking around again and that, that everything . . .
—That everything was okay. That I’d forgotten all about the way you walked out of here with that, that, that all these medical bills were paid and I’d won my suit against the movie sitting here with seventy five million dollars in my pocket? Will you just tell me why you came? without making a big scene about it, just a plain honest answer?
—Oscar you can’t! seizing both his hands —no, I’ve thought about you every day, how kind and gentle you are I forgot, I forgot how cold you can be, how you can look at me like you’re looking right through me like I’m not even there. Do you know how that cuts right through somebody that cares about you like I do like this big knife cutting right through them? I never said anything about your seventy five million dollars, is that why you think I came? That’s why you think I came isn’t it, I don’t see how you can be so cruel to me, how you can be so suspicious the minute I walk in the door that you won’t even look at me because you’re afraid I might ask you for money, even just a little because all this time you thought well I won’t have to go through that again didn’t you. You thought I’ll never have to go through that with her again because I told you with Bobbie gone maybe I’ll have this reconciliation with Daddy over this old misunderstanding where now I’m all they’ve got so maybe he’ll help me out where there’s
all this money he put in Bobbie’s name in this joint account where the government wouldn’t get it when he died in these death taxes only now it’s Bobbie that died instead so he has to pay all these death taxes on Bobbie’s estate for his own money coming back to him which was really his all along, are you even listening to me?
—Now you listen to me. This miserable ambulance chaser you got to help everybody out, do you know how he helped me out? Sending me a bill for seventy five hundred dollars for filing some court papers someplace in my accident case and he won’t hand anything over to the new lawyers I’ve got looking into it till I pay him, you remember right back at the start? When I asked you about paying him and you told me he said don’t worry about it? The same trick that miserable woman lawyer played on us when he took your divorce case away from her after she made some feeble excuse and pulled out? Now he does the same thing.
—You know why Oscar? Because now she’s this judge. Because he told me how they made her this judge and he got scared if he crossed her that some time he might have to appear before her in court where she’d wipe up the floor with him for revenge like she ought to do anyway just because he’s such a real sleazeball.
—Then why did you let him get your, get you in the back seat of his BMW and every motel bed from Disney World to . . .
—I told you!
—You did not tell me!
—Because I was mad at you, because . . .
—Why! You didn’t tell me why, you just . . .
—Because you hurt my feelings, I told you.
—You’ve told me that a hundred times, how. How did I . . .
—Because you just did again, you said I was stupid right when I came in, just because you’re smarter than I am with all these books that doesn’t mean you’re better than me does it?
—Listen, just tell me what I did that made you get into bed with that, that real . . .
—The way you treated me laying there on your back with this big erection sticking up right in front of somebody as if you never saw me before you didn’t even . . .
—No wait, wait. In front of who . . .
—I don’t know who! Because he didn’t have any clothes on either like you were just laying there showing off and there were these cans of shoe polish on the bed, there were these three kinds of shoe polish and you . . .
—No wait stop it, stop! You mean this was some dream you had? some stupid dream that made you so mad when you woke up that you . . .
—It was real! It was as real as anything, it was just as real as that little man in the black suit you dreamed came to see you in the hospital to take these messages to the other side and . . .
—No that happened! That really happened, it was as real as we’re sitting here now with your . . .
—That’s what I just said! It was just as real as right now with your hand on my, I still get mad when I remember you laying there with it sticking up like I never saw you have one like that before and you looked at me like you never saw me before when I reached over and . . .
—Of all the, the shoe polish? three kinds of shoe polish? Of all the, dreams like that all of them, they’re the junkyard of the mind all of them of all the crazy, and you want me to believe that? that that’s why you did it?
—Oscar why are you doing this to me! When you’re all I’ve thought about day after day crying myself to sleep sometimes at night remembering all the nice things I did for you when it was just you and me? Like that time that we, I can’t even talk about it, that sweet sad kind of smile you’d always have when I came in the room I thought about it all the way coming over here but you just look at me like you wish I’d go away, I can feel it, you don’t even want to look at me but I can feel it, don’t you even think I have feelings? And finally letting go his moist hands to look up where his gaze lay fixed —at her? a full bosomed blonde crossing a knobbed knee on the screen, —you’d like to be feeling hers wouldn’t you, did you think that’s what I meant? This lump I’ve got, I think it got worse since I saw you, can you feel it? No don’t then, you didn’t even ask, it’s too late please don’t try, can’t I say anything to make you listen to me?
—No wait, look! he startled upright, —where’s the, here! The room shook with the sound of cannon fire, the screen with a tumult of plunging horses, flaring rockets and the Stars and Bars and men, men —look!
—How can you do this! I can’t believe you’re actually doing this just to drive me away when I came here to . . .
—Please! as the smoke cleared, and now the room echoed with the clop clop of a horse and carriage seen approaching up a drive adroop with Spanish moss from the pillared veranda of an antebellum mansion by an imposing liveried black, the sun gleaming on the strong lineaments of his brow arching disdainfully as a decrepit horse and buggy bearing an aging woman and a handsome intense young man standing to snap his whip imperiously came close for an exchange of unheard words to be pointed scornfully on their way, glimpsed from behind a curtain by a ravishingly beautiful young woman in negligee in their retreat back down the drive. —Good God! he barely whispered.
—If that’s all you can . . .
—That was the first scene of my, did you see it! And here was the blonde again, seated knob knee to knee with a black man of imposing dimensions and sartorial splendour introduced as ‘our guest today’ by a name she was sure their wonderful audience out there would want to know if it was his real one? —Yes it’s that friend of look it’s, listen!
—No I’m going! I’m going right now Oscar, if you think I came over just to sit and watch television I can’t believe how much you’ve changed, maybe I can’t still expect you to feel like I do about you but I hoped at least you could be kind, are you listening to me? She’d lurched up only to come down closer as they were being told it was a long story, how he’d taken this name, because his old name was way behind him, far enough behind him that now he could talk about it, because he’d done time under his old name, —can’t you see what I’m going through? she came on, —that you’re looking at somebody that’s practically coming to pieces? You’re not even looking at me, can’t you even hold my hand if you can’t bear to look at me? It was back in Illinois, he’d been sent up for three years for something a dumb kid would do stealing a car and he didn’t even realize he’d driven across the state line that made it a Federal crime and a Federal prison and he felt like his life was over before it hardly began but maybe you wouldn’t believe it, that was the best thing that ever happened to him. —Don’t you believe me? and she had his hand again, tight —if I told you it really didn’t mean anything? that I was all upset about your accident seeing you in pain and then Bobbie when tragedy struck down there and I hardly knew what I was doing when I let him do it? The best thing that ever happened because they had a program there, kind of play acting therapy for the prisoners to help them understand their anger by venting their hostility in these plays they chose, The Emperor Jones, he’d done The Emperor Jones —when I was really crying out for help Oscar and you weren’t there on account of your accident, nobody was, can’t you understand? He’d always been pretty vain about his looks, had to admit it now with the studio lights gleaming on the strong lineaments of his brow arching in a deprecating sort of way but they’d never brought him anything but trouble and now suddenly here was a place for them, a place for all his anger and strength and talent if you’d call it that and he’d never have made it without the others, the other prisoners when he heard their applause he knew he had something, one buddy in the program in particular kind of a jailhouse lawyer in there for something that would curl your hair tried to help him out on his appeal, told him if you’re black in America you’re always playing a part, no way around it just got to find the right part to play where you aren’t going to take your bows in a cell block and that did it, —Oscar?
—Just listen will you!
—Can’t you just listen to me for a second? please? her voice broke in what might have been a sob, and that was when he sw
ore he knew what he’d be, who he’d be when he got out of there, when he took that name from one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence because this was his own declaration of independence from who he’d been, who they’d told him he was when they took one look at him, who they’d tried to make him, besides he’d had a little brother once they called Button, died from meningitis they’d thought was just a bad cold, didn’t have any doctor, couldn’t afford one —because I need you to help me Oscar, won’t you just listen?