Home Sweet Home

by April Smith

  The Tudor mansion in Scarsdale had been sold, and the remaining three Fergusons moved to an apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. Betsy had dropped out of Hunter College and given up her dream of becoming a doctor. Instead, she took the Gimbels job to support her father and disabled sister, Marja, who had contracted measles at six months old and was partially blind. It was Marja’s handicap that had inspired Betsy to become a doctor and, poignantly, Marja’s care that had forced her to abandon it.

  Tension from the worry that her absence was undoubtedly causing her father and sister was the hardest thing to endure—an unending drumbeat that made her want to jump out of her skin. Hours later, an orderly came through and put a ham sandwich and a cup of pop through the bars. She still hadn’t heard the charges or been allowed to call home. Abruptly a different matron appeared, this one with glasses and a sucked-in frown.

  “You,” she said.

  Back at the booking desk, a telephone was plunked down in front of Betsy.

  “Three minutes,” the matron commanded.

  Betsy was so shaken that she had to dial her home number twice.

  “Papa?” she said when he answered. “I’m sorry for calling late. I know you must be worried—”

  “I’m not worried, I’m hungry! Where are you?” he demanded. “It’s way past dinnertime.”

  She pictured him picking up the phone in the living room, rye on the rocks in the other hand—bald, thin except for a portly middle, still dressing every day for business in a crisp white shirt she’d ironed for him and a pin-striped vest.

  “Papa, there’s food in the fridge. There’s a roast left over from yesterday, just look. Can you please put Marja on?”

  “Hi, Betsy,” came her sister’s voice. “Did the subway break down or something?”

  “Marja, I’m in trouble.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “I’m in jail.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marja squealed, sounding like she was on the edge of hysteria. “Why would you be in jail?”

  “I was arrested on the picket line.”

  “Oh, no—”

  “I’ll be out in a couple of hours—”

  “Just a minute,” her sister interrupted, and Betsy could hear the news repeated to Albert and then a crash, as if he’d thrown a Chinese vase or stumbled over the kidney-shaped coffee table.

  “Marja!” Betsy shouted. “Listen! I’m going to get out, I’m waiting for the union lawyer…”

  Despite the fuzziness of the connection, she could hear her father’s harsh voice demanding, “Give me the phone!” Then, “Where the hell are you?”

  To her shame, Betsy discovered that her mouth was dry and her voice had shrunk. “I’ve been arrested and I’m in the Women’s House of Detention, Papa. On Tenth Street in the Village—”

  “Good!” he said. “That’s exactly where you belong!”

  The matron stood by with arms folded, keeping her eyes on the minute hand of the clock.

  “I need money for bail. I only have seventy-five cents on me—”

  “Well, you’ll just have to learn the hard way. Let your precious union bail you out,” said her father. “I have nothing more to say.”

  Marja came back on the line, now in tears. “He’s really upset, Betsy—”

  “I did what I thought was right,” Betsy replied steadily. “I’m not going to change my principles to make Papa happy—because he’ll never be happy with anything!”

  “He’s not letting you back in the house, Betsy. That’s what he’s saying.”

  “He’s being stupid. He’ll forget.”

  In the heat of it, Betsy was unaware that a tall, impatient young man had pushed the matron aside and was standing right over her, circling a forefinger in an urgent sign to hang up.

  “Marja? I have to go—”

  The line went dead. The impatient young man had pressed the plunger on the desk phone to cancel the call.

  “Come with me, Miss Ferguson,” he said.

  He put a hand in the air above her shoulder, invisibly guiding her through a set of double doors and out of the booking area. They came to a lobby where globe lamps cast a tired glow on a hectic scene of attorneys set up at makeshift tables, even on the stairs, conferring with women who’d been arrested during the strike.

  “My name is Calvin Kusek,” the young man was saying. “I’m one of the lawyers for the retail workers union.”

  “What took you so long?” Betsy cried in desperation. “I’ve been waiting for hours!”

  “Busy night,” he said mildly, indicating that she have a seat at an improvised office consisting of two chairs and a briefcase on the floor.

  He was practiced and calm, projecting competence. He wore a straw-colored linen suit and had recklessly loosened his tie. His stick-straight glossy brown hair kept falling into his eyes, and he kept sweeping it back with his fingertips in a boyish gesture. There was a sheen of sweat on his face from the steamy night, and he had a lean body that could not get out of high gear. He was several years older than Betsy, used to talking fast and moving fast because his mind was racing ten steps ahead of the opposition. He had a legal pad on his lap and a cheap fountain pen at the ready.

  “Tell me what happened that might have led to the arrest. In your own words,” he added, brushing back his hair.

  “What other words would I use?” Betsy shot back irritably.

  He peered alertly into her eyes. “Need a cigarette?”

  “Desperately.”

  He gave her half a pack. “Keep it. When’s the last time you ate?” he asked, then dove for the briefcase and came up with two candy bars, one an Oh Henry! and the other a Mounds. Betsy chose the Oh Henry! and Cal said, “Damn!”

  Betsy smiled in spite of herself. “Want to trade?”

  “No, thanks,” he said, unwrapping his. “The game is rigged. I like them both.”

  “Then it’s a no-lose proposition?” she said before she could amend the suggestiveness of the remark.

  “We’ll see about that,” he replied gravely. “In the matter of your arrest, bail has been set at ten dollars.”

  “I don’t have ten dollars.”

  “Nobody does. The union picks it up. Sign here and you’re free to go.”

  Twenty minutes later, Betsy charged the brass doors and shouldered them open, bursting gratefully onto the avenue of the living. Never mind that she had barely enough for subway fare—there, among jubilant union girls freed from prison, was the young lawyer waiting for her.

  “Which way are you going?” he asked, offering a cigarette and lighting it for her.

  Betsy inhaled. The smoke was soothing. “I’m afraid I’m not going anywhere.”

  “The Lex’s still running up to the Bronx.”

  “I’m in kind of a pickle. My dad won’t talk to me. He hates unions and hates that I’m part of one.”

  “Then he’s a crumb and I’m glad you hung up on him.”

  “You’re the one who hung up for me,” she reminded him.

  “Stick to your guns,” the lawyer advised. “Your dad will come around.”

  Betsy gave a halfhearted smile, but could no longer hold it in. He saw her eyes were filled with tears.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She nodded, but a sob escaped her lips. Calvin Kusek whipped out a clean white handkerchief and she took it gratefully.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed.

  “Don’t be.”

  “It was awful in there. Everything was awful.”

  “It’s okay. Take your time. Want to sit down?”

  They found a bench near the entrance and shared another cigarette in silence. Intrigued, she glanced more closely at his face in the burned yellow light falling from the prison windows. Despite exhaustion—even disillusionment—from toiling on behalf of desperate people, his penetrating dark eyes maintained a look of confidence—in himself as well as their shared ideals of justice. The combination was hopel
essly seductive.

  “I can’t tell you how good it feels just to breathe the air,” said Betsy. “I never really appreciated what freedom means.”

  “Freedom is worth fighting for,” he agreed without irony. “What do you say, Miss Ferguson? It’s late and you must be exhausted. Let me put you in a cab.”

  “That’s very nice of you, but I can take the subway to my friend Elaine’s. She’s a real pally. She got arrested, but I don’t know where she went. Her roomies will take me in.”

  “Which way are you going?”

  “I’m taking the six up to Twenty-Eighth Street,” she said. “What about you?”

  “I can take it down to Chambers and catch the J. I live in Brooklyn. I’d be happy to walk you to the station,” he said. “But you better start calling me Cal.”

  “Betsy.”

  They shook hands formally.

  “Do you have your own place?” Betsy asked, then bit her tongue for the implication of the remark. She couldn’t seem to stifle her attraction.

  “I live in a one-bedroom apartment with three male cousins, one more of a slob than the next.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “If you’re a beer bottle.”

  Betsy’s laugh was a little too shrill, but he indulged her with a grin. Her thoughts sped like the number six train into darkness. Probably engaged. He’s got to have a girl. By the time they’d reached Spring Street, her romantic delirium had turned to panic, triggered by the approaching moment of truth at the token booth. She would go uptown and he would go downtown. Would they part with another awkward handshake…or—was this crazy?—a kiss? On the other hand, what if he just said good-bye and walked away forever? They arrived at the entrance to the subway.

  “Thanks for everything,” she said breathlessly. “It’s such a beautiful night. I think I’ll walk through Washington Square.”

  “I’ll go with you,” he agreed offhandedly.

  “Oh, you don’t have to. We’re already at the station…”

  He shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  She was so disoriented that she bumped right into him as they crossed the street. They found their way to Washington Square and back down to the subway stop at Bleecker Street, but when they got there Cal said, “Do you feel like walking?” as if they hadn’t already covered thirty blocks, and Betsy said, “Are you sure that briefcase’s not too heavy?” and that’s the way it went all night, at least the way they would describe it later: the story of how they fell in love.

  At every subway station they would just keep going, talking nonstop, sharing sly jokes about passersby, solving the problems of the world, as they wandered the quiet, tree-lined streets of the Village, easy in the flow of jazz buffs heading to clubs, homosexuals in couples; past redbrick row houses wrapped in fire escapes, tiny gardens, cul-de-sacs of elegant brownstones with ironwork gates, speculating if that’s where the famous writers lived who supported their strike. They stopped at a pay phone so Betsy could tell Elaine she’d been sprung but that things were bad at home. Elaine had been booked at the Midtown South Precinct, and she, too, was out on bail. “Stay at my place as long as you like,” she said.

  Cal told Betsy the facts of his upbringing. He’d been raised in rural Pennsylvania. His father, Emile Kusek, was a judge, descended from a line of clergymen going back to the eighteenth century. His mother, Annabelle, had been a scholar of French literature and an early feminist. She would have been president of a university, he was certain, except she had died giving birth to him, a tragedy that Betsy deeply understood, having lost her mother not so long ago. Calvin, an only child, was sent to Jesuit schools, which he found compatible enough. When he was a teenager his father remarried, to the widow of a lawyer in town named Mary Schneider, who had children of her own, and her family became his.

  “Mary is a nice woman,” Cal said dutifully. “She takes good care of my dad.”

  Betsy felt there was something missing in the way he said it, and wondered if he’d been lonely, growing up without his real mom, and if there had been more than a whiff of small-town scandal around an affair between a widowed judge and the wife of a deceased attorney that further distanced Cal from his family, but said nothing, grateful to live in the big immoral city, where the lights were still on in dive bars and grocery stores, and briefly there was dry thunder and the scent of summer rain that arises when the breeze picks up and miles of asphalt are cooling beneath darkened, fast-moving clouds. A shiver of wind passed through the trees and Cal pointed out their delicate tracery of leaves.

  “Those are the famous ailanthus that John Cowper Powys wrote about,” he began, but Betsy interrupted him. “I know,” she said, and they recited together: “The ailanthus is my tree. Her buds are jets / Of greenish fire that float upon the air”—and burst out laughing because they’d each had to memorize the same poem at boarding school and neither could remember the rest.

  The artsy tempo of the Village flattened out as they wandered down Prince Street, Broome Street, Grand Street, until they were in the dead-quiet commercial district, mainly of sewing factories, having to avoid the bums sleeping on the bare sidewalk. Signs in warehouse windows said TO LET. A sleepy bootblack emerged from a doorway and tried to brush Cal’s shoulders with a whisk broom. Cal got rid of him with a nickel. A street vendor led a horse-drawn wagon home with unsold sacks of beans, and a young prostitute was plucking cigarette butts from the gutter as if they were nuggets of gold.

  “Just like the poor things who were stuck behind bars in prison,” Betsy murmured, seared by the memory. “I’ll never be able to get them out of my mind.”

  As if he could feel her trembling, Cal offered his arm. Betsy snuggled up gratefully and he tightened his grip.

  “Are you this nice to all the girls?” she asked flirtatiously.

  He smiled too quickly and gave her a line. “Only the prettiest,” he replied, in a tone that left her to wonder if maybe she wasn’t really pretty enough and if he had someone else who was. Her hopeful feelings were getting ahead of her.

  “Let’s get some coffee,” he suggested, and there were plenty of places still open—Greek coffee shops, bohemian hangouts, diners, and kosher delis—but none of them was alluring enough to break the rhythm they had found, so they kept on walking, as happens in New York City on a summer night, passing through Little Italy, where the street lamps seemed brighter, and even at this late hour happy groups of young folks and big, lumbering families strolled arm in arm—dressed in hats, coats, and neckties, showing off their babies in big-wheeled carriages. For no reason at all, an operatic tenor stood up from his chair in a sidewalk café and poured his soul into a passionate a capella aria that caused everything on the street to stop—followed by whistles and applause from the entire neighborhood.

  Sharing the thrill of the moment, they found that they were holding hands.

  “Let’s go over to the water,” Betsy suggested, which took them to the East River piers, where they could smell the brine and oily gas of fishing boats and great billows of steam continuously rising from the power plant there. Incongruously, seaplanes were tied up beside sailing vessels at the foot of Fulton Street, rocking on their skids.

  “This is where they land private planes,” Cal said. “Millionaires who live on Long Island and work on Wall Street.”

  “Is that what you want to be?”

  He shook his head. “It sounds conceited, but I believe I was put here for better things—to help people. When I was an undergraduate, I worked for a congressman from a rough neighborhood. I thought it would be the real nitty-gritty stuff, but it was all about drinks with the big boys and keeping track of payoffs. I was a highly educated bagman.”

  “What about the union job? That’s helping people.”

  “The jury’s out on that. I’ve seen what happened to my buddies from Yale. They got corrupted. They live on the Upper East Side, go to the swankiest parties, but never feel like they have enough. They’re exhausted, and yet their slogan
is ‘I don’t have time.’ What gets me is the ones who benefit from the marketplace are always the ones in power, not the little guys. They’re stuck in it, can’t imagine life any other way. I’ll bet these big shots take off in their Cubs and bury their heads in the stock report and don’t even look out the window at the view.”

  “That’s my father,” Betsy said. “All he did was work. Now that he’s not working, he takes it out on everyone else.”

  “Maybe you have to get out of your own life to see what it’s all about.” Cal looked back at the seaplanes longingly. “I’ve always wanted to fly. If we do get into this war, I’m going to put in for pilot training.”

  They walked toward the fishermen’s shacks beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.

  “Like oysters?” he asked.

  “Love them.”

  “All repressive regimes have the same thing in common,” Cal went on. “Frankly, the Wall Street mentality is as bad as the Russians’. They make it impossible to think outside the system. They really want to keep you in fear, those liberators of the masses.”

  Betsy’s palms grew damp and she let go of his hand, afraid that the same argument she heard at the dinner table at home was going to cause the magic of the night to evaporate.

  “Then I’m afraid you’re not going to like me very much,” she said.

  Cal gave her a sidelong glance. “What makes you think I like you at all?”

  “I’m a member of the party.”

  She scrutinized the look on his face—disappointed and dismayed.

  “I am opposed to Communism,” Cal admitted. “But I’m also opposed to denying Communists their constitutional rights.”

  “Spoken like a true lawyer,” she replied defensively.

  “It’s a dream. It’s a con. Communism has never worked, Betsy. You’re asking too much of people—to give up their wealth and ambition to some kind of amorphous ‘state’ that turns out to be corrupt and even murderous? Look at Stalin. Why are you so enamored of it?”