Downtown

by Norma Fox Mazer

  I dropped the newspaper. So that was why she had come back. And why now? And why not last year? And why not the year before? Laura, who are you?

  All of a sudden I was ravenous. I pawed through the cupboards and refrigerator, stuffing my mouth with cold hot dogs, a half-chewed apple, soggy rolls that smelled mousy. I was a garbage can, opening my mouth, shoving in all the stale, spoiled, rotting food. Crumbs and bits of food spattered over the floor. Impossible to tell if my stomach ached from hunger, panic, rage, or food poisoning.

  The phone rang. Laura.

  From upstairs, Gene called, “You getting that, Pete?”

  I picked up the receiver, but fumbled it and cut the connection.

  The ringing began again. “What’s going on?” Gene appeared in his striped shortie pajamas.

  “It’s probably a wrong number.”

  “Maybe it’s Broadway calling me.” He picked up the receiver. “Hello? … Oh, yes, I missed you … Well, now, that’s too bad … You’ll have to come when you’re—” He beckoned me. “Sure, he’s right here, Cary.” He sat down at the table and thumbed through the newspaper, going past the second page without a glance.

  “Hello,” I said to Cary, and then, remembering, “how are you feeling?”

  “Not too good. My throat is killing me.”

  Gene whistled for my attention and held up the newspaper so I could read the headline. STRONG PRODUCTION OF OLD FAVORITE PLEASES AUDIENCE. He put his thumb and forefinger together.

  “Martha called—she told me.”

  “What?” Cary said.

  “I was talking to Gene. His play got a good review.”

  “Oh, wonderful, tell your uncle I’m happy for him.”

  “I’ll do that. Listen, I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I hung up. “Gene—she came out.”

  He plugged in the coffeepot. “Out? Out where? Who where?”

  I turned to the second page. “Read that.”

  He was still smiling as he bent over the paper.

  Just then, Martha came in with the croissants and several more copies of the paper. “Ta ta! How about that review?” she said, kissing Gene. He made an odd choked sound.

  “I saw it on TV last night,” I said. Gene glanced at Martha, warning me. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Gene. The whole world’s going to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “When did you see it on TV?” Gene asked.

  “The six-thirty news.”

  Martha looked from one of us to the other. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s—just—” Gene picked up the coffeepot, then put it down. “My God, this changes everything, doesn’t it?”

  “If one of you doesn’t tell me right now—”

  “It’s my mother. She’s come back.”

  “Very funny,” Martha said coldly. “I do not think jokes about the dead are in good taste.”

  “Tell her,” I said to Gene.

  “Where do I start? How—Pete, you—”

  “No,” I said. “You do it.” I walked out.

  Thirty-two

  My dear, dear, dearest son,

  I don’t know where to start this letter. I have come back. Do you know that already? And I want to see you. I want to see you! I’m in prison, but I want you to come here anyway. I don’t want to wait to see you. I am overflowing with feelings, emotions. I am shaking as I write this because I know that I can see you again soon, very soon, and that this time it won’t be for five minutes or fifty minutes, and that when “our hour” is over with, you won’t disappear for another two years. I don’t think you can possibly imagine what this means to me. To see you once again almost at will—of course, there will still be restrictions because I’m in prison, but they’ll seem such tiny restrictions compared to what we’ve known!

  I tell myself to go slowly, that we have years to recover, years ahead of us too, but I am so impatient, I want so much to see you, to hold you—then I remind myself that you are no longer my little eight- or ten-year-old son, that you are sixteen, nearly a man—and I’m frightened. I tell you truthfully, I am frightened—I will always love you, how could I do otherwise, but how do you feel about me? I couldn’t think of this, not in real terms, when I was away, it was too dangerous, too hard, too threatening. But now, along with so much else, I am facing this question. I take a deep breath and write—because I am determined that we will be honest with each other. Do you resent me? Do you hate me? No, I know you don’t. You couldn’t, you mustn’t! But I must face that you are someone I don’t know anymore, that you have a life I know nothing about. I want us to be together again, to be mother and son, to be a family—oh, I know it can’t be wholly that, because I have a trial to face, a prison sentence. Yet we could be near each other through this. We could have some life of our own.

  I love you, my son. And your uncle, my brother—what a blessing he has been to me all these years. I knew, at the very least, you were cared for and loved by someone who was family.

  I’ll try to write a more coherent letter next time. I’m very tired. Please write to me. I am starved for news of you.

  All love,

  Mom

  P.S. Please give the enclosed to your uncle.

  My dear good brother,

  By now, from the newspapers and TV you must be aware that I’ve returned and the immediate consequences of that return. I am now in the Women’s Correctional Institute, facing indictments on several serious charges. My lawyer is working to have me released on bail, but I am not too hopeful of that outcome.

  Nor do I think I will esc—get away without a prison sentence. I started to write “escape without a prison sentence.” So it seems my mental set is still one of flight and hiding. I don’t think it will be easy to shake off some of the effects of the last eight years. To live every day looking over your shoulder, wondering if the steps coming up the stairs are for you, always needing to be alert and sometimes—so often!—so tired of it all—but I don’t want to get started on that now.

  Let me just say this. I believe I will have to serve a prison term for what I did, and, indeed, in some sense I want to. I am not a masochist, but this is why I returned. To do penance, to pay the price society sets, however paltry it may seem compared to the loss of lives for which I am responsible. And I do take responsibility, although I was part of a group and carried out a group decision. And do you wonder, Gene, why I return now? Why come back now, at this time, at this particular juncture? I can only say that to have arrived here, at this moment in my life, has been a process. I have been on the way to this moment for a long time. I suppose everything in life is a process, but that is cold comfort when I think back over the past eight years.

  I have never forgotten the two lives that were sacrificed. I thought I would come to terms with those deaths, but as time passed, it has come to seem to me not a lesser, but a greater offense against nature and life. Life must be preserved. That was where I started years ago, in a revulsion against war and killing. And of all the things that have happened to me over the years, that is the one steady point of light. Yet I was the instrument, the cause, of the loss of life.

  I refused at first to accept this. I couldn’t. I told myself, “You didn’t kill. You didn’t know. It was an accident—something unforeseen.” Time after time, I buried the part of me that did not accept these excuses. That is what I have come to—they were, are, excuses. Each one of us must account for ourselves in this life and to our fellow human beings, or else life has no meaning. And that I do not believe and cannot believe and never will believe. Did you see the movie about Mahatma Gandhi? I wept through the whole thing. I couldn’t stop crying, and that was when I knew I couldn’t go on any longer.

  Well, I must stop now. It’s time for exercise. Dear Gene, there will never be words with which I can thank you for what you did.

  Love,

  Laura

  My dear,

  A prison is no place to be private, to have one’s own thoughts. But I don’t mind to
o much. I find myself getting along with the women in here, finding a great deal in common. Isn’t that strange? I’m a political, and most of them are in here for quite other reasons. Yet nearly all of us have children, and that links us. We don’t talk much about why we’re here, instead we talk about our children and our childhoods.

  My son, I miss you. Three years, three long years, since we’ve even seen each other. How much you must have changed. I’m longing and longing to see you again, to kiss you, to look at you, to listen to you, to get to know you. In some ways, it’s harder for me to wait patiently than it ever has been before.

  Now I come to something very difficult that I must tell you. I’ve been putting it off, but that’s unfair. I know you realize by now that Hal did not come back with me. I feel sad to tell you this, but your father and I are no longer together. We have agreed to disagree, not only in our political frame of reference, but personally. I still have and always will have the greatest affection and respect for Hal, but the fact is, we haven’t lived together for two years. There are no words that will tell you how sorry I am to have to give you the news this way. My only consolation is that I have faith that you are old enough, mature enough, and stable enough to take it in stride.

  For the past eight years, we’ve lived, as you might imagine, under deeply stressful conditions, and they took their toll. Initially, we decided to separate in order to cut down the chances of our being found. But we discovered that more and more, we were going our separate ways. Disagreements appeared on a number of fronts. I can’t tell you everything in this letter, although I want to tell you as much as possible. The important thing is, first, I developed serious doubts about the wisdom of continuing the life of hiding, hit-and-run actions, etc. Doubt is pernicious, it worms its way into one’s mind and is, quite literally, poison to someone in my situation. I became ineffective—well, your father disagreed, but at least in my own mind that was the verdict.

  And, then, my obsession (your father’s word) with being “punished” (as he said; I say, “with taking responsibility”) for the lives lost—that, especially, came more and more between us. We do not see eye to eye on this, obviously. So, after much discussion and not a little heartbreak, we realized that our marriage had run its course.

  And at last, against Hal’s will, I made my decision to return. Strangely, in prison, I am now experiencing a kind of peace I have not had for eight years.

  We’ll talk more about all these things. We have kind good friends here, who have offered to take you in, to give you a home with them so we can be near each other. Will you come?

  I enclose the address of our friends. They have a room for you and you can go to them without hesitation.

  All my love,

  Laura

  Dear Pax,

  Today I was remembering when you were born, with what joy and belief Hal and I named you. Your special name—to honor Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, those two giants among men, both believers in nonviolence. And for the first time in I don’t know how long, I thought of Gandhi’s belief in ahimsa—nonharming of others. It was one of the profoundest beliefs of his life.

  That was what Hal and I both thought and believed would be our way, too. And we never did hurt anyone—not till that night, and now I ask myself, “How did we do that, how could we have been so sure no harm would result?” But we were sure, sure with the sureness of those who believe in a way that blinds them to reality. The belief makes the reality. Do you understand? I myself am just beginning to understand this, to realize that in the beginning passion motivated me, a longing to do something good for and in the world, and that gradually, through a process I can hardly trace, passion was replaced with a mindset—this is Right, that is Wrong—everything known before the event. Therefore, it was Right to do what we did and no Wrong could come of it, since Wrong was always coming from the Others. Yes, in writing this, I see that what had been fluid and flowing in me became hard and frozen, as a river becomes ice in winter.

  And this is why we did what we did, why we went away from the consequences, away from you. It seemed imperative. Our work, we said. Our work has to go on. After all, we said, had these people not been doing the bloody work of the generals, work that could lead to the destruction of thousands, no millions, of lives, had they not been dipping their hands into the blood of innocents, they wouldn’t have died.

  Not good enough. Not anymore. I am so sad. I have been sad for a long time.

  I’ll write again. Still no word from you.

  Love,

  Mom

  Thirty-three

  “What do you kids want today?” the man behind the counter said. He gave Cary a big smile. It was a hot day, but cool and white inside the ice cream shop. I stared at the garish red, purple, and pink posters of ice cream sundaes and sodas over the counter. Unreal. Everything seemed unreal to me, even being with Cary.

  “I really want to go to your uncle’s play,” Cary said as we sat down in a booth with our ice cream.

  The play! I almost smiled. It was so far away from me. “You’ve got time, it’s running for another two weeks.”

  “Let’s go together. You wouldn’t mind seeing it again, would you?”

  “I don’t know, Cary, I’m not sure what my plans are …”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My mother—did you see the article?”

  She nodded. “After you told me about it, I got the newspaper and read it. It said she was in prison.”

  “She is. Did you tell your parents anything about it?”

  “No, Pete, are you kidding? They wouldn’t—you know, if they knew, they wouldn’t even want me to talk to you on the phone.”

  “And what about you—how do you feel?”

  “Well … it’s not a total shock.”

  “But it is a shock, right? That my mother’s in prison.” It wasn’t easy to say that, but if I couldn’t say it to Cary—

  “It’s just—When you told me about her and your father, Pete, it was more like—a story. Do you know what I mean?” She leaned toward me. “I don’t mean I didn’t believe you. It just wasn’t—it wasn’t entirely real to me. I met your uncle and—to tell the truth, I sort of let the whole thing about your parents go out of my mind.”

  I knew what she meant. She’d told me all that stuff about her foster homes, but what was vivid and real to me was the Yancey family. I’d forgotten most of the details of her foster homes.

  “My mother wants me to come live near her. She’s got it all arranged, these friends of hers in the city—”

  “New York City? That’s a long way away.” Cary looked remote, brooding.

  A silence fell. We were right next to each other, but very far apart. I didn’t have the energy even to try to break through to Cary. I sat there, tapping the spoon against the dish, trying to think clearly about Laura’s letters, but I didn’t have the energy for that either. What was the matter with me? Why wasn’t I clicking my heels and shouting hallelujah? Mother and son reunion coming up just over the horizon. From now on, no more secrets, the clouds lifted, the sun-son shining forever. Only one little flaw: she was in prison (although not forever). No, two little flaws: no father in the rosy dawn. Laura and Hal were no longer Laura-and-Hal. They were Laura. And Hal. I got the feeling Laura told me about her and Hal, let out a big sigh of relief, and figured I’d be, well, not glad, but understanding. I wasn’t understanding. I didn’t understand, I didn’t want to understand. Goddamn it! First I had no mother and no father, and now I had a mother in jail and still no father.

  I scraped up the last of the ice cream. “If I do go, Cary, I’ll come to see you every weekend.”

  “No you won’t!” She shrugged and said flatly, “People don’t come back.”

  “My mother did. Eight years … and she came back.”

  “Is that how long I’m going to have to wait to see you again, Pete?”

  “It was just an example.”

  “You’re going there to her,
aren’t you? I know you are.”

  “I don’t even know it myself yet.”

  “Well, what are you waiting for? You’ll go. To see your mother? You will.” She flung out her arm as if she wanted to hit me, then said very clearly, “Don’t think your parents are any better than mine, Pete.”

  “What? … I don’t—”

  “Oh, come on! You think they’re superior. Superior moral beings! I’ve heard you talk about them—‘Everything they’ve ever done, Cary, is for their principles, not for selfish reasons.’”

  Was that how I sounded—pompous and self-important? “Cary, just because I said those things—”

  The man behind the counter looked over at us. “Everything okay, kids?”

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  Cary put her face close to mine. “My parents were pretty cruddy, but don’t forget—your mother killed two people.”

  My hand ached, I wanted so much to slap her.

  I pushed my dish aside. “Well, this is a real nice time we’re having. It’s so nice I guess I’ll go home.” I threw a couple of dollars down on the table and walked out.

  Cary’s words came with me. Your mother killed two people. Laura had said it in her letters too, but in other words … two lives sacrificed … grief for the loss of life … Cary had not been so polite.

  Your mother killed two people. Killed, as in murdered. The knowledge had always been there in the back of my mind, but I had thrown up a wall against it, built the wall high, pretended that behind it there was nothing, except perhaps other words. The wall had been shaky for a long time, but now it was tumbling, bricks and boards battered me. Two real people with real names and real bodies and real families were dead. Had been dead for eight years. Laura hadn’t shot them, strangled them, stabbed them. She hadn’t wanted to hurt them … but they were still dead. Bodies exploded, an arm flew across the room, a leg lay twisted under a table, fingers and toes, bloody little body flowers, were scattered in the rubble. My mother killed two people.