by Rule, Jane;
“And that’s why he needed to order us all around like that,” Gladys said.
“There’s no explaining Hal, Gladdy. Claire didn’t get along with him any better than you do.”
It seemed so ordinary, sitting there at the dining-room table talking about Claire without being afraid any longer that Gladys might blur and refocus into Claire. They couldn’t, now that Ruth had so simply established them as separate people. The pity and rage, so long silenced, had transformed themselves into gentler emotions. But if Ruth, primed by Claire’s name, no longer feared vomiting up the blood and bone of her loss, she would have to be careful, too, not to flood them with the relief of that discovery.
They were still at the table when Boy and Mavis came home.
“You could get drunk inhaling the air,” Mavis said. “It’s given me an awful thirst.”
“Were there any saints?” Tom asked.
“My friend, the whole lovely church just strained with goodwill,” Boy said. “I could have been born again if I’d let myself.”
“Let’s get everybody a brandy,” Mavis suggested, cutting Boy short.
He was willing, and, when they came back into the dining room, they did not draw up chairs to the table but stayed at the edge of the group as if whatever experience they had shared set them a little apart. Gladys was the first to start the move toward bed, and on her way she bent down quickly and kissed Ruth.
“Merry Christmas in the morning,” she said, taking Tom’s hand as they left the room.
Boy followed them.
“Are we going to have one more?” Mavis asked.
“We’re beginning to make a bad habit of it,” Ruth said. “Thanks.”
“I wonder if Boy will come with us,” Mavis mused.
“Would you like him to?”
“I feel as if I could learn something from him. I’m not quite sure what. Kindness?”
“You don’t need lessons in that,” Ruth said.
“Yes, I do, when it comes to myself.”
“Well, that,” Ruth agreed.
“I did feel like Scrooge tonight being taken to church to see the spirit of Christmas. People do want to be nice to Boy. He’s right. In his place, I’d be cynical about it. I am cynical about it. But with all his joking, he’s not. I don’t know where he gets the guts to mock and like himself so well, calling himself some sort of moral throwback …”
“Another good puritan?”
“Not exactly …”
Mavis had no more to say, though obviously more to think. Left alone, Ruth did not feel the building tension she was accustomed to at that hour. Claire moved around in her mind like someone at home there, the absence of two years obliterated. Ruth sat, amazed with that sanity and peaceful.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Willard came home, his face laced even more tightly than usual at the sight of Boy, whose antic speech about having been blackly soiled on the way down the chimney did nothing to reassure Willard. He ignored Tom’s admiration of his new suit and responded to Ruth’s questions about his mother in uninformative monosyllables.
“He’s always like that,” Mavis explained earnestly to Boy.
“This house has got to be big as a church, Mavis, where bigots and black boys read the same funny paper, same as the lion and the lamb. Don’t worry about it.”
When Joanie came home only a few hours later and took a visible step back from Boy at her first sight of him, Tom and Gladys joined Mavis in an attempt to protect Boy’s feelings. They praised Boy to Joanie, trying to tone him down enough to reassure her. Boy reacted with a stepped-up campaign in his own character assassination. He invited Willard to join him at the steam baths that evening.
“When I’m going to get screwed, I like to keep it simple,” he said cheerfully.
Fortunately Willard dealt with the invitation as he did with any other, wrapping his newspaper around him so firmly he looked like a large package from the fish store, but Joanie left the room without even offering an excuse.
“This is turning out to be a short season of peace and goodwill,” Tom said, sighing.
“Not everybody likes glad tidings, honey,” Boy said, patting Tom on the shoulder.
“It’s your own silly fault,” Gladys said fiercely.
“I know,” Boy admitted, striking a pose of guilty dejection so comic even Gladys laughed, “but you got to realize there’s just a little more of de old devil in niggers as de good book say.”
“But you can’t go round guilt-tripping everyone,” Gladys protested. “It doesn’t work with everyone.”
“A soul without conscience is a soul lost,” Boy said sadly.
“There isn’t time for a prayer meeting now,” Ruth called from the kitchen, in which she had somewhat reasserted herself. “Mavis, go up and tell Joanie to come down to dinner and behave herself. Boy?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Come out here and be useful.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Once he was in the kitchen, Ruth confronted him with a large wooden spoon in her hand in contrast to the unthreatening tone of her voice.
“You don’t tease Willard,” she explained. “He’s only got three quarters of his wits and he has a hard enough time keeping those about him without being confused. And he won’t bother you even if you do bother him. Joanie’s a silly little thing who’ll get used to you if you give her a chance. I want you to make her feel comfortable at dinner.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Boy was subdued during the meal, offering small courtesies without mockery, and Joanie was doing about the same thing with her piece of Mavis’ mind that Boy was doing with Ruth’s. If it was not an hour of domestic tranquillity, digestion was basically served. As soon as the kitchen was cleaned up, Boy put on his hat.
“Where are you going?” Mavis asked.
“To get laid, but I’ll be home for cocoa,” he answered with a bow, and was gone.
Outside the blue convertible honked cheerfully.
“The universal solution,” Mavis said wearily.
“They have enough in common to get along,” Gladys said.
“What are we going to say to Joanie about the farmhouse?” Mavis asked.
She had to wait for an answer while Joanie came down the stairs and went out to the now impatient horn.
“I don’t think we have to worry,” Tom said. “I don’t think she’ll like it.”
He was right. Even without telling her that they’d also invited Boy to live with them, Joanie found the place too far-out, too run-down, the country smells suspicious. She had already decided on a bachelor suite of her own in a new high rise near Stanley Park.
“Nothing to cope with but colored plumbing,” Mavis said wryly to Tom.
Still, everyone was relieved. When Joanie decided to move at the weekend, they all offered to help. Ruth had given Joanie the furniture in her own room, which she could take with her, along with a basic setting for a table and a few of the smaller pots and pans.
“Thanks anyway,” Joanie said, “but Stew’s offered. He can borrow a truck from a friend.”
“Why not ask him to dinner?” Ruth suggested.
Prepared for the change in his appearance, Ruth was still surprised when Stew smiled shyly in at the kitchen door. Clean-shaven, his hair conservatively barbered to his collar—and he had not only a collar but a tie—he looked freshly, even innocently made, his eyes less important in his face now that he also had a mouth, a jawline. Ruth realized that she had never lost her suspicion of a weak chin under a lot of hair. Stew had been hiding nothing but the authority of his class-blessed genes.
“Smells as good as ever around here,” he said.
“You look fine, Stew. It’s good to lay eyes on you.”
“I should have come round before,” Stew said. “I guess I felt there was more apologizing and thanking to do than I knew how.”
“Not a bit of either. Clara was so glad to hear you were coming for dinner, I almost persuaded he
r to come back for the occasion.”
“Joanie and I thought we might drop in and see her one day soon.”
“She’d love it. It’s too quiet a life for her there though she says it suits her. I hear you’re thinking about law school in the fall.”
“If I can get in,” Stew said. “I can’t play my clarinet for the exam.”
Stew had none of Joanie’s difficulty with Boy, even took his flirtatious teasing without archness or alarm. Whatever else Gladdy did to the men whose beds she had shared, she gave them a liberal confidence about what it was to be attractive, and she was warm now with Stew as if neither of them had anything to forgive the other. Joanie bristled occasionally with self-importance, but they all felt too kindly toward her for solving her own problem not to jolly her back into a good temper. Boy worked right along with Tom and Stew to get her belongings stowed in the truck, and, aside from a couple of loudly sung songs of slavery, in which the others joined, he did nothing to offend the sensibilities of “little white pussy,” his private name for Joanie. Once Stew and Joanie had gone, taking Tom with them to help at the other end, Boy relaxed into a simulation of an epileptic fit so convincing that both Gladys and Mavis tried to jab a pencil between his teeth until he laughed, rolled over and onto his knees, shaking his woolly head back and forth.
“Is she really that bad?” Mavis asked.
“She’s deeelicious!”
“You scared me shitless,” Gladys protested.
“Dat’s de way ah live, child. It’s cleansing. You’ll see.”
“Boy never heard of leading a life of quiet desperation,” Mavis said.
“Ain’t my bag,” he admitted, getting up.
“I’m going over to Clara,” Ruth announced from the doorway. “I need an hour or so in a rest home.”
“Tell her I’ll see her tomorrow,” Mavis said, “and don’t take any complaints about our having tired her out on Christmas. She’s not turning into a vegetable, and that’s that.”
In fact, they had tired Clara, but she had been less distant about them since. She was even curious to meet Boy, though she was glad enough to postpone that experience for a few days at least.
“I wonder if it’s the first time Willard’s ever been propositioned for the steam baths,” Clara said.
“I don’t think he knew what Boy was talking about. Willard can ignore anything, and now that Joanie is moved out, the last three weeks will be simpler.”
“Have you found a place?”
“I think so,” Ruth said. “There’s a two-bedroom apartment on the third floor of one of those big buildings on Beach. It’s got a view of the bay and the mountains, and Willard might even enjoy that. Now all I have to do is persuade him to go and look at it. Sunday’s probably the easiest day to break into his routine.”
“Has he ever said he’ll go with you?”
“No, but I’m sure he will. It’s the only solution he doesn’t have to think about.”
Ruth had brought a pile of Christmas cards for them both to look through, most of them from people who had at one time or other stayed at the house.
“There’s been a lot of traffic through that house in fourteen years,” Clara said. “Jim Wright. Now who was he?”
Ruth could have said “the boy with the beautiful voice,” but she said instead “that actor friend of Claire’s.”
“Oh yes, I remember now,” Clara nodded, “the one with the beautiful voice.”
Something in Ruth wanted to shout Claire! Claire! Claire! Claire! against two years of silence, but, if Clara could keep from noticing that there was anything extraordinary about mentioning her name at all, perhaps Claire could come back into their life together as gently as she had into Ruth’s.
The house was quiet and purposeful when Ruth got home. Boy and Mavis were taking down the tree. Tom had come back and was making pies in the kitchen with Gladys.
“You’re on a long busman’s holiday this week, Tom,” Ruth observed.
“I’m practicing,” Tom said. “I think I may have a new job the first of February, cooking at the country club. I could walk to work from there, and maybe, after I got to know a few people, I could find work for Boy.”
“It’s not a good place to work,” Gladys said.
“She doesn’t think the rich should eat,” Tom said.
“I don’t think you should cook for them, that’s all.”
“If you want me to cook for the Salvation Army, we’ll have to move to town.”
“I don’t see why you have to cook at all,” Gladys said. “If feeding people is socially significant work, it has to be the right people. You should be working for world relief.”
“Let him get his citizenship first,” Ruth said. “Before you have him bombing the wheat board, be sure he can vote.”
Willard came in from the beer parlor in the fuzzy, nearly friendly mood that overtook him only on Friday nights.
“Pies,” he said in an approving tone.
“How about a piece, Willard?” Gladys suggested. “These are nearly cool enough to cut.”
When he hesitated, she urged him as if it were socially significant to see that Willard had a piece of pie. Allowing himself the indulgence, he enjoyed it, but in the middle of his pleasure, Ruth took advantage of it.
“I want you to come take a look at an apartment after church on Sunday,” she said.
“I have my book,” he said as if he were refusing a social invitation with a prior engagement.
“I know you do, but it won’t take long, and I want you to know where we’re moving at the end of the month.”
“This month?”
“Yes.”
“You said the first of March.”
“That’s when the buildings begin to come down. We can’t wait around for that. I think you’ll like the apartment. It’s much nearer work.”
“This is your house,” Willard said.
“Not any more. The city’s bought it, and it’s going to be torn down.”
Gladys and Tom watched Willard as intently as Ruth did to see if he really understood that. He chewed and made no further comment. When he had finished his pie, he nodded to them and went off to bed.
“Do they think about people like Willard, those bastards?” Gladys demanded. “They tear down whole hotels full of people like that, just barely sure of where they are in the first place, who don’t have a clue where else to go.”
“I think Willard knows he’s all right,” Tom said. “He trusts you, Ruth.”
“Yes,” Ruth agreed, feeling the dull burden of that trust.
“Christmas is back in its box another year,” Boy announced, “and it won’t pop out at you again without plenty of public warning.”
“Boy, what are you going to do about papers?” Ruth asked. “Is there anything you can do?”
“White folks is always wantin’ to be legal. No piece of paper ever goin’ to make me legal ’less somebody wants it to, and somebody don’t.”
“How can you get work, though?”
“You got to know somebody who knows somebody who wants somethin’ bad done, and there you are.”
“Gun for hire!” Gladys said. “You’ve been watching too much TV.”
“You don’t understand. Guns is gross. I’m a cook like Tom here, only I cook books, and they don’t put you on the payroll for that. They ‘depreciate’ you or write you off as an entertainment expense.”
“I can believe that,” Gladys said.
“That’s illegal,” Mavis said.
“I’m illegal,” Boy explained, “and if you don’t know how hallowed book cooking is in this here old Western tradition, you ain’t been reading your Dickens like I thought you was.”
“I don’t think it’s right,” Mavis said.
“Now Mavis is going to give you a little speech on living within the law,” Gladdy said. “The crooks in Dickens are bad guys. They help the rich exploit the poor.”
“That’s right. That’s right,” Boy agreed.
“That’s what we’re all about. That’s what I learned in college: how to screw the poor. It was called Humanities 1-A the first year, but then we got into economics and accounting.”
“Before this turns into a full-scale political battle,” Ruth said, “I need to know what day you’re all going to move.”
“Maybe this little nigger crook’s going to have to bunk in with Willard.”
“No way,” Tom said, laughing. “You’re just the kind of confusion we need.”
“We’re moving the last Sunday,” Mavis said.
“Then Willard and I will, too.”
Willard did not go with Ruth to the apartment to inspect it. All he would say was “When the time comes” from behind his thriller. She went over by herself to put down a deposit and measure the rooms for placing furniture. Preoccupied with practical considerations, she did not notice the view until she had been in the apartment more than half an hour. “Do you see it?” she heard Tom ask. From behind the sealed glass, it seemed less real than when she walked the beach, but she could do that, too. She might even teach Willard a new habit of strolling along the shore with bread to feed the birds down in Stanley Park. There were two children on the beach now, playing on the crusted edge of snow in Christmas-new hats and jackets. They were conspicuous because they were the only children in this gigantic neighborhood of young singles and old singles, who paired and separated with the same uncertainty in their journeys from bench to bench. As Ruth walked back along her own street, she realized that most of the children had left it, too. She hoped, like her own young, that most of them were now out in the country where there were still no signs which said, “No Children.”
“Could we,” Tom asked, as she came into the house, “get a pup before we move? The thing is, I just talked to a fellow who gave his kids a pup for Christmas, and his wife can’t handle it. He’s got to get rid of it.”
“Why not?”
“Actually,” Tom admitted, “it’s already here. Gladdy?”
The kitchen door opened, and a puppy of potentially disastrous size tumbled out into the hall, wagging its whole body for its joyful reunion with Tom.
