First Love and Other Sorrows: Stories

by Brodkey, Harold

  “Well, I’m very glad to see you. My name is Laura Andrews and this is my daughter, whose name is Faith. Won’t you say ‘Hi’ to the nice lady, dear?” Laura desperately wanted Faith to do something charming, to win over the solemn and warlike colored woman, who stood impassive and slightly mocking by the door. Faith, rosy and cheerful, refused to say anything, but her face, distended with good feeling and smiles, was fixed on Cora like an obedient searchlight.

  Cora sauntered into the living room, smoothing her cherry red skirt over the tumult of her hips. “Hi, Little Mouthful,” Cora said, “how ya doing?”

  Faith, flushed with coquetry, hurled herself to the floor and squirmed under the couch. She stuck her head out and looked up seriously at Cora; Cora refused to look down.

  Laura, distraught by Cora’s coldness, said: “Cora, would you like a cup of tea? Or coffee?”

  “Coffee, ma’am,” Cora said casually, “good and black.” From her purple bodice Cora fetched a package of cork-tipped Tareytons. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a wooden match, which she lit with her thumbnail. She blew a prodigious cloud of smoke.

  “O do [hot dog],” said Faith. “O do, o do.”

  “You like that, do you, Little Mouthful?” Cora blew a smoke ring.

  Faith watched for a minute and then turned to her mother. “Mommee—ooop.” That meant pick me up.

  Laura swooped down, relieved to be able to hold her daughter, and hauled her out from underneath the couch. Faith looked at the last smoke ring and let out a squeal of uncontrollable pleasure.

  “Has a good time, don’t she?” Cora said.

  Faith, still smiling in her mother’s arms, leaned over and swatted Cora on the side of her head.

  Cora remained impassive.

  “You mustn’t do that,” Laura said desperately to her daughter. She felt perspiration bead her upper lip. Faith held out her hand for her mother to slap.

  “Don’t hit her,” Cora said suddenly. “Let me hold her. Y’all treat your baby rough?”

  Laura closed her eyes and held out her child. It was Martin’s fault: where there was no trust, no love existed, and she had to love this sitter before five o’clock.

  Cora ruffled Faith’s curls. “Y’all kinda pretty,” she said dispassionately. She threw Faith into the air; Faith giggled. Cora looked at the baby, squinting slightly. Then she threw her again; Faith laughed. Cora put her cigarette in the corner of her mouth and threw Faith again. “O do!” Faith said breathlessly. Cora sighed and lay down on the floor, placing Faith on the firm knoll of her stomach. Cora began to bump up and down on the floor. Laura looked at Cora in her red skirt and purple blouse on the yellow rug. That rug’s a mistake in the city, Laura thought. She poured the coffee.

  Faith gripped Cora’s purple blouse; she rolled and tumbled on Cora’s grinding stomach. Her laughter broke off into nearly soundless gasps. Cora sat up. Faith’s arms encircled Cora’s neck and hugged it. “You sure a damn nice Little Mouthful,” Cora said.

  Cora and Laura sat down with their cups of coffee. Laura asked, “How many sugars?” “Four or five,” Cora said. “I don’t pay no mind to getting fat the way some women do.” Laura asked Cora to tell her a little about herself. Cora said she was from Baltimore, her husband was no good and she had left him. “Your husband any good, ma’am?” “Oh, yes,” Laura said, conscious of Faith being in the room. “Very good,” she added piously. Faith was down on her stomach hiding spoons under the rug. “Is he good-looking?” Cora asked. “I can’t abide men who aren’t good-looking.” “He has a very Italian quality in dim light,” Laura said absently. “Faith, not with Mamma’s sterling. You can play with the plate, not the sterling.” Laura reached on the coffee table for a cigarette and placed it unlit in her mouth. Once, in college, she had learned to strike wooden matches with her thumbnail, and now she looked Cora in the eye and asked for a match. Cora handed her one impassively. Laura, anxious to love, to be loved, to show her friendliness, hoped her thumbnail wouldn’t break. The match lit on her first try and Laura held it to her cigarette. But Cora didn’t smile. Laura wondered if Cora disliked her. She wondered how she would ever get such a fierce woman to like her.

  Faith lifted the rug and swept out the five spoons she had hidden. She sat up, her back straight, her small neck holding the rosy weight of her head; her mouth was open, the upper lip curling like a bud. She could get two spoons in each hand and a fifth in her mouth. She stood up and walked away. Then guilt seized her. “No, no, no,” she muttered and dropped the spoons. She toppled to the floor and lay on her back; idly she kicked her heels. “Otsee wahwah,” she said. “Otsee poosfah.” She sat up and put two spoons down the front of her overalls. She took two more spoons in her left hand and the last one in her right hand. She rolled over until she was on all fours; it was the only way she could rise. Then she stood up. She glided toward the kitchen, leaning slightly to one side, perhaps because the spoons inside her overalls tickled. Then she stumbled and looked down and saw that a spoon had fallen down her pants leg. “Oh,” she breathed, “oh.” She bent, straight from the rump, and tried to push the spoon back up her pants leg. “Mamma,” she said angrily. The spoon slipped down again. “Mamma.” Faith lifted her head and gazed at the ceiling, then swooped and shoved at the spoon again; she was chortling as she fell forward; her head bumped on the floor and Faith collapsed. “Mamma!” Faith cried, “Maa-maa!” Laura came running and started to pick her up. “Aagh,” said Faith and took a swipe at her mother’s nose. “Oh, you want me to take out the spoon,” Laura said and removed it. Faith burst into screams of rage. Laura looked blank.

  “She wants you to shove it up her pants leg,” Cora said calmly. “Don’t you, Little Mouthful?”

  At quarter of four Cora began to dress Faith in her snowsuit. Laura thought it was time for her to take her shower and begin to get ready. She was planning to wear the black dress that made her look indecent and with that dress she felt she had to be perfectly groomed. Cora sat Faith on the bureau and began to work the baby’s legs into the snowsuit pants. Faith laughed and swung her legs around. “Put your legs in before I pound you,” Cora snarled. Faith stunned, looked up and then slipped her legs into the snowsuit. Cora looked grim.

  “O do?” Faith tried, experimentally.

  “Hot dog yourself,” Cora said, forcing Faith’s strangely limp arms into the sleeves of the jacket.

  Faith laughed happily. “O do,” she caroled. “O do do,” she went on. Then she played dead. She rolled backward with her mouth open and her entire body limp.

  “Where’s your ear,” said Cora. “I’m roaring hungry.” Faith sat up and tugged at her ear and looked at Cora. Cora said, “I’m gonna chew the damn thing off,” and with a deft motion slipped Faith’s cap on and fastened the strap.

  Faith, encased in her snowsuit, waddled toward the front door. Laura stuck her head out of the bathroom and said to Cora: “Don’t worry about whether she’s warm enough. She’s very warm in that suit. It’s made of the same cloth Admiral Byrd wore when he flew over the South Pole.”

  Cora nodded sagely and followed Faith out the front door. A minute later the doorbell rang. Laura slipped to the peephole and looked out and saw Cora. “What’s the matter?” Laura asked.

  “She’s walking funny,” Cora said.

  “She always walks funny,” Laura said. “She’s built like me.”

  “Open the door,” Cora said wearily. “I got to give your child a medical examination.”

  Laura swung the door open. Faith waddled into the house. With every third step she listed noticeably to port.

  “Well, that’s new,” Laura said.

  “It hasn’t got much chance of getting popular,” Cora snapped.

  Faith seemed undisturbed. She waddled on into the living room, lurching regularly but seemingly paying no attention to it. She circled the coffee table once.

  “Maybe her shoes are too tight,” Laura said thoughtfully.

  “Well, g
o and look at them,” Cora said.

  Laura knelt by her child. “You sound just like my husband,” she muttered under her breath. “Everybody’s smarter than I am.”

  Faith leaned forward, holding out her arms toward her mother; then she gave a cry of pain and clutched her side. “Mamma!” she said rebukingly.

  “Don’t panic,” Cora cried and came running.

  Laura said, half-laughing with relief that Cora cared: “Oh, Cora, I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “I’m here, I’m here,” Cora said, squatting down beside mother and daughter. Laura poked at her daughter for a moment and then unzipped her jacket. She reached a maternal hand down the front of Faith’s overalls and pulled out a spoon that had stuck in the diaper.

  It was time for Laura to leave. She leaned out the window and called Cora. At the sound of her mother’s voice Faith came running up the sidewalk. She was pulling a small yellow Holgate toy that had three pegs sitting in three holes in it; one peg was yellow, one blue, one red. Faith yelled, “Toot-toot-toot—” The toy hit a crack in the sidewalk and the pegs spilled out. “Oh,” said Faith, stopping. “O dee, o dee [oh dear].” She bent and carefully replaced the pegs one by one. As she lifted the red one, she murmured—affectionately—“Dadd-ee, Dadd-ee.” She pounded the peg on the sidewalk for a moment. Then she worked it into its hole.

  “Are you going now?” Cora asked Laura.

  “Yes, bring her in and I’ll kiss her good-by.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort. Get the Little Mouthful all upset…no, indeedy. You just sneak out when she’s not looking. That’s what you do. I’ll call you at your party when she goes to sleep.”

  Laura protested.

  “Don’t try to think, you’ll just get yourself all upset,” Cora said, “and you’ll give the Little Mouthful distresses.”

  Faith ran down the street, her feet flying in odd rhythms, her arms outspread, her toy slamming along behind her. “Toot,” came from the distance, “Toot-toot, toot-toot.”

  PIPING DOWN THE VALLEYS WILD

  ALL SHE SAID WAS that the little delft bowl she had bought for an ashtray was a bargain, and Martin started to get angry. He had just come home from work, having walked the half mile from the railway station, and he looked warm and uncomfortable. “A bargain!” he said loudly. “How can an ashtray be a bargain? We don’t need any more ashtrays. Saving money is a bargain. But another ashtray!”

  Laura knit her brows and stiffened her chin—but what came out was a half-smothered laugh. “Oh, Martin, don’t say anything more about that ashtray. You’ll only make a dreadful gulf between us,” she said, feeling terribly witty. “A dreadful gulf,” she repeated, smiling.

  Without another word, Martin started up the stairs to the second floor of their apartment, a garden duplex in Pelham. He took off his coat as he went, and Laura saw that his shirt was damp in places. But it was only May, and Martin claimed it wasn’t proper to wear a summer suit until June. Laura called after him, “You haven’t time for a shower. Stu’s coming in fifteen minutes.”

  Martin groaned, and continued up the stairs. A few seconds later, Laura heard a drawer being dragged open, then banged shut.

  She bit her lip. She was a tall, blond girl of twenty-seven, with a handsome, rosy face, so healthy and high-colored that people—strangers on the street, salesgirls, teachers—tended to smile at her with pleasure. Long ago she had decided that she was somehow unthinkingly comic; all her talk was brightened by this feeling. “I don’t think you’re made of money!” she shouted up the stairs, grinning. She heard another drawer being jerked open. “Oh dear,” she murmured. She headed for the stairs, paused, turned, and hurried to the kitchen and stuck her head out the back window. “Faith!” she called to her three-year-old daughter, who was sitting, playing intently, in her sandbox. “Faith, don’t you dare leave that sandbox!” Then she ran back to the stairs, and halfway to the top she slowed to a walk. Martin, in the bedroom and shirtless, was pawing through a drawer. “I just straightened that drawer,” she said querulously—actually it had been two weeks before. “Please don’t mess it up.” His mouth set, Martin continued to rummage. “I can’t help it if your suit’s too hot,” Laura said. “Someday you’ll be glad we have a delft ashtray.”

  Martin looked at her, still angry.

  “You oughtn’t to get mad at me so often,” Laura said, and her eyes filled with tears.

  “Are you really crying?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Oh!” Laura said. “Oh! You’re impossible!” She flung herself on the bed.

  Martin drifted nearer to her. “Laura?” he asked delicately. Laura sniffled. “Laura, we have to save our money if you want another child next spring.”

  “The money came out of my food budget.”

  “But you could have put that money in a savings account. Even if it’s the food budget, it’s still money.”

  “It only cost two dollars,” Laura said, sitting up. “Two measly, dirty dollars. And it’s real delft. You know what? You’re only mad at me because you got hot on the train. Well, I’ll tell you something,” she said, beginning to smile in spite of herself. “You’re not slaving your life away for me; I’m slaving my life away for you.” She thought that outrageously funny; she roared with laughter.

  Martin stared down at her. “Yeah?” he said. “Women outlive men.” He stalked into the bathroom and turned on both taps in the basin.

  Laura rose and trailed after him and leaned against the doorjamb. “We could practice suttee,” she said, “if you wanted.” Then she added slyly, “Your life isn’t so hard. I see you’re putting on weight.”

  “God damn it!” Martin howled, bent over the washbasin. “Do you have to insult me?” But his back quivered. Laura saw he was on the verge of laughing.

  Faith, at the foot of the stairs, called up, “Mommy, why do I have to stay in my sandbox?”

  Laura thought for a moment, and said, “I’m coming,” and started down the hallway. Martin flicked his washcloth at her. Laura let out a squeal and ran down the stairs, her husband pursuing her as far as the landing. There he halted, leaned over the banister, and squeezed the last drops in the washcloth over her head.

  “Not in front of the child!” Laura said.

  “I’m infantile,” Martin said, looking at her in a funny way, confused and tender. “I’m too young to have a wife,” and he turned back up the stairs.

  Laura had scooped up her daughter and started toward the kitchen. A horn honked—a little, wizened, foreign horn. “Stu’s here,” she called up to her husband, and hurried into the kitchen to take care of the dinner.

  Martin rushed into the bedroom and resumed his search in the bureau for a comfortable shirt. “Ah!” he said, and hauled out of the bottom drawer an old red-and-white faded cotton shirt with slightly ravelled sleeves. He had bought it his second year in college, the year he and Stu became roommates. Stu had been tall, gangling, irretrievably gloomy then, whereas Martin had been cheerful, athletic, and, though he didn’t suspect it, almost deliriously happy. Martin played baseball for the college and basketball for the fraternity; he drank a little too much, because everyone did; every fall, he fell in love—in a way—and if that romance didn’t last through until summer, he fell in love again in the spring. Stu had looked up to him. Stu had daydreams in which he saved Martin from drowning. And he had other daydreams in which Martin drowned and he sent a telegram to Martin’s parents. Now Martin stood in front of the mirror, in a faded sport shirt that was a little tight under the arms.

  The self he saw was six feet tall, with broad shoulders and a squarish, amiable face, and twenty-eight years old.

  He broke away from the mirror still buttoning his shirt. He had two buttons to go as he burst out of the house onto the front stoop. Stu had turned around in the traffic circle at the end of the deadend street, and was trying to maneuver into a tiny parking place between two cars—this even though there were empty places all along the curb big enou
gh to hold trucks.

  Through the opening in the roof of the little foreign car Stu’s hand appeared, making a circle with thumb and forefinger, and there sounded a challenging whistle. Martin watched Stu whip his car backward, forward, throw the wheel back and forth, and make it on the third try. “No oversize American tub could do that,” Stu called out as he closed the panel in the roof.

  Martin finished buttoning his shirt and stood with his hands in his pockets, smiling vaguely toward the street, remembering college, hardly conscious that he was doing so.

  Two little boys about seven years old wandered up to the car and began to talk to Stu. Stu, trying to ignore them as he climbed out of the car, managed to wedge himself between the steering wheel and the seat. He turned pink. One of the little boys said, “But why do you drive such a little car, Mister?” Martin turned and went into the house; he didn’t want Stu to know he had seen the episode.

  A minute later, Stu appeared at the front door, his face still pink with irritation. “Scrofulous bastards,” he muttered, and with Wagnerian rage stamped up the stairs to the bathroom.

  Martin ambled out to the kitchen. Laura had set out two cans of beer on the top of the ice box. “Don’t we have any whiskey we can offer our guests?” he asked plaintively.

  “We’re saving money.”

  Faith sat in a chair at the table, eating spaghetti and cucumbers, her favorite meal. “Tony threw sand in my eyes,” she told her father.

  “Again!” Martin exclaimed. He looked so large and concerned, so vague and helpless before the mystery of rearing a daughter, that Laura suddenly arched her back and felt quite passionate. Martin leaned over and kissed her.

  “You might try kissing me sometime,” Laura said, enraged. “Peck, peck, peck, nothing but pecks. It’s a wonder I stay faithful.”

  “You damn well better not talk like that!” Martin cried, his face turning dark.

  Laura huddled against his chest. “You’re jealous,” she said. Placatingly, she added, “I’m glad you’re jealous.” Martin’s heart slowed its beating; Laura could hear it through the faded old sport shirt.