“Yes, anything, nearly, will do because the dumbest slob back there on that roadway realizes one thing if nothing else: that he comes alone from birth and goes alone to death. So while he’s around he wants his share of the bread and circuses, and above all he wants something to hide under. He says to hell with autonomy. He says take that crap about individuality and shove it!”
“But there are some who don’t say that,” she protested loudly.
“A few,” he shrugged and flung the cigarette butt amid the rocks, where it lay smoldering. “There had to be, if not man would have been the biggest dud of creation—maybe he is anyway—and on top of this small select heap sit the few truly great artists like little gods. And how they pay for that high seat! The world takes more than its pound of flesh sometimes. It’s devised all kinds of torture, the most exquisite being a colossal indifference. Yet despite all that he creates . . .” He gave her a wry bitter smile, his eyes sought the sky to the west, where the lights of Coney Island glowed in a permanent sunset. “Despite all that!”
He stretched, yawning, and when his arms dropped he said casually, “Oh, and then there’s my unhappy breed. Far below the gods and a little above the slobs and worse off than either. We languish in our own special kind of limbo, gaining for ourselves the slob’s ridicule and the artist’s contempt. We’re the men of minor talents. The Pretenders. What’s wrong with us?” He glanced at her intent face as though she had asked the question. “Any number of things. We’re not bold enough. We think and talk too much, and don’t really feel. We were born the wrong color. We despaired before our time. We have the forms, the techniques, but no substance. We’re not really driven . . . Oh, there are any number of things upon which we can very conveniently hang the blame. Christ, my kind knows what they should do—call it quits and high-tail it back to the herd. But we hold out. Hoping. Hoping for what?” He bent his harsh gaze on her and then muttered, “We’re the least among the apostles.”
His words sank into the vast silence of the sea and the night. This final utterance had consumed him and his eyes closed in a profound weariness and his face became like a mask—very still, with his high-molded bones composed in a taut design under his smooth black skin, his lips pressed in a sad line. He might have fallen asleep, but for the hand gripping his knee and the muscle twitching at his mouth.
Selina was shaken by the massive despair his still pose suggested. “Clive,” she called softly and touched his hand. “Doesn’t it help at all when you know all this?”
His eyes did not open, but his lips slowly shaped that amused tolerant smile he always gave her. “My sweet naïve Selina, if only the diagnosis was the cure!” Suddenly with a hoarse broken cry he pitched forward as though shoved from behind by some powerful invisible assailant. His body began a swift drop, and it was only his long arms reaching out and his hands frantically grasping hold of the jutting portions of the rock that saved him from striking his head and somersaulting into the water. The fall broken, he crouched on the last narrow ledge at the water’s edge, his hands desperately gripping into the rock, his big loose body bent almost double and his head bowed between his knees as though he were retching.
Selina had leaped up with a warning cry, her arms darting out but missing him as he had plunged forward. Now that he was safe she stood on the shelf of rock above him, her arms still outstretched, and gazed with mute terror down at his quivering shoulders. For a moment she wanted to close her eyes or run across the barren tract to the roadway, to flee—before his suffering ruined her too. Then, as quickly, she loved him and knelt beside him, wishing that she could absorb all that he suffered and leave him free.
As she huddled there, trembling with him, afraid to speak, another scene swiftly rose from the sea into the night mist and she saw her father crouched in dread before her on the red-faded Oriental rug in the master bedroom, his dream of escape dying in his mild eyes as she started telling him of the mother’s vow to sell his land . . . In her stunned mind the scene was related to something the mother had recently said about the Association. She tensed as a thought gripped her. As it slowly formed her eyes became fierce with determination and her breathing quickened.
“Clive, let’s go away,” she said firmly, her hard eyes fixed on the wraithlike boats. “Please. You know how you’re always talking about getting far enough away. Well, let’s do it. I know a way to get the money!” He stirred, puzzled, and she added with a tinge of excitement, “Yes, I know a way. Remember I told you about this scholarship the Association will be awarding soon? Well, I’m going to win it. It’ll be enough money for both of us to go someplace far, out of the country. I’m going to join the Association and win it. I know I can do it! I swear I’ll do it!” In a sudden resolve she slapped the rock and cried out at the pain. She stared at her stinging hand, intensely aware that this was her hand, as were the long bare legs in the shorts and the heart pushing excitedly against the wall of her chest, her mind—she was all of one piece suddenly, all fused with purpose . . .
“Clive!” she cried, and the wind carried her exultant cry across the bay.
He lifted his face and he had recovered by now; his eyes were hooded again, his face withdrawn.
“I’m going to do it.” She knelt before him, and caught his face between her hands. “Staying around here isn’t good. We’ll go someplace where you can work. Please. I’ll get the money. It’ll take some doing but I’ll get it . . .”
Shaking his head, he gave her a wan incredulous smile.
“Oh yes, I will,” she said fiercely. “I’ll apologize, and watch, they’ll welcome me back. It’s what you were saying before. How they want you to come back to prove that they’re right. That’s how it’ll be. I’ll be contrite, dedicated, the most willing worker they’ve ever had—and I’ll win it!”
The night and the sea both refused to absorb her words. It was as if they had entered into the pact with her, and until the act was accomplished the words would hang there. Suddenly tired, she leaned against him, her legs trailing down into the chilly water, her excited eyes shaping her plan out of the black void while he gazed wonderingly down at her. Overhead a gull wheeled in the darkness, on the bright roadway the speeding cars sprayed gravel behind them, on a cabin cruiser anchored in the bay a man and woman held each other in the cramp of love—and the woman’s cry of pleasure was echoed by the blaring horns and the gull’s sharp, lonely complaint.
VIII
Again she and the mother took the walk through Fulton Park, passing the empty pavilion, down Fulton Street to the Association. This time it was not winter but the beginning of autumn, with a wind that still held the summer’s warmth at its core and the first leaves falling and forming little nervous whorls on the stone path. This time the mother was not relieved but worried, her suspicious gaze shifting over the dark gathering of trees, her plunging stride scattering and crumbling the leaves.
“I tell yuh, she don’t know she own mind.” Her thoughts, flurrying inside her like the leaves at her feet, erupted into a fitful mutter. “All of a sudden now she wants to go back to the Association. Why all of a sudden? After she perform so down there the last time . . . Why?”
Selina flinched at each menacing move of the mother’s head. Only the image of Clive crouched at the water’s edge, his shoulders quivering in despair, sustained her. Only the memory of her father stumbling in defeat down Fulton Street—the Saturday crowd engulfing him as the sea did later—kept her resolve intact. So that she turned with an ingenuous gaze that seemed to bare her whole self and pleaded, “Mother, I just want to apologize. It’s been on my mind all this time but I’ve been so ashamed I couldn’t get up enough nerve to do or say anything. But I want to apologize now . . . Please.”
The mother struggled with her indecision, her gaze darting toward Selina and quickly away, as though she did not want to risk finding the deception behind those widely innocent eyes. “And what about the piece of man you been licking about with?” she cried, and the enraged questio
n desecrated the night silence.
Selina hunched her shoulders penitently; her voice faltered with shame. “I told you I’ve stopped seeing him. We never did anything wrong, still I guess it didn’t look right—my going there like that—so I’ve stopped.”
The mother slowly succumbed. The part of her that wanted, indeed, needed, to be persuaded of this won out, and when she finally spoke, the words were uttered with veiled relief by this self. “I tried to tell you that he wasn’t nobody for you to be associating with, but you wun hear. You was always famous for putting yourself up in things before your time. You did always think the world was put here for you one . . . Well, come ’long then!”
In the basement lobby of the Association building, in that atmosphere of solidarity and purpose, she made a chastened figure behind the mother, her head bowed from those dark taut faces and skeptical eyes, cowering inside as the voices beat through the air in their dissonant chant. Florrie Trotman’s restive yellow eyes and face emerged from the crowd and Selina forced a courteous smile.
“Wha’lah, look Selina! Silla, din I tell you the girl would come to she senses?” Florrie cried triumphantly.
Percy Challenor bore down on them and she heard her own hurried respectful whisper, “Hello, Mr. Challenor. I thought I’d come back . . . if it’s all right . . .”
The entire lobby seemed to pause while his officious eyes probed deep, while that speculative frown gathered. Then his hand rose, pink-palmed, and the stentorian voice spoke for them all, “Girl, how yuh mean? We’s glad to see yuh back.”
Inside the meeting room she left the mother with a reassuring glance and hastened toward the young people. Most of them were already there in their own large grouping to the side. She saw Julian Hurley’s dark sardonic profile, Beryl Challenor’s complacent face and Dudley Risbrook seated importantly among them all. Her resolve wavered and she fought to restore it as they looked up and their suddenly chary eyes fended her off. For a moment it was as if they would rise in one body and chase her from the room. And in that same moment Selina asked herself what was there for her to fear when she was all of one piece. Nearing them, she bowed her head to show how willing she was to accept their censure. Her arms hung defenselessly at her sides and she begged softly, “Don’t say anything yet please . . .”
The air stiffened and she smiled. It was her father’s smile, the one he would use when even his charm failed him—a thin, resigned, and disarming smile that had always won him forgiveness long ago. “Please . . . just hear me out. I know I behaved inexcusably the last time I was here. I said some very stupid and childish and cowardly things which I didn’t even mean. I don’t know why I said them. All these months I’ve been asking myself why . . . and I still don’t really know. I’m . . . I’m always doing crazy things like that. Just to disrupt and make a scene, I guess. You know that, Beryl.” Her eyes pressed Beryl to intercede for her, reminding her that they had often lain in each other’s arms behind the high rock in Prospect Park.
“I should have come before, I know. But I’ve been so ashamed. I couldn’t even look any of you in the face when I met you on the streets. You know that, Una,” and she noted that Una Trotman’s hands twitched indecisively. “Perhaps it’s too late but I had to come anyway . . . to beg your forgiveness . . . to apologize.”
Her words hung unresolved, and she stood unforgiven before them. She heard Julian Hurley’s fingers drumming a derisive staccato on his chair leg, and caught his cold smile; and with a contemptuous glance she told him that she knew why his eyes darted to each man that passed. Then, her gaze fixed Beryl again.
“Oh Selina . . . why . . . ?” Beryl whispered after a long unyielding silence. “Why’re you like this . . . ?” and they might have been on the dim staircase in her house again, the others listening above as Beryl whispered the same question. She turned to the group now, her smooth face troubled. “I don’t know what to say . . . Maybe we could forgive her just this time. She’s always been like that, flying off, getting mad for no reason. I know. And I think she’s really sorry and since she’s apologized, I guess . . .”
“Oh, it’s all right,” Dudley Risbrook declared with a pompous gesture. “After all, a little criticism is healthy. Besides, if your own can’t criticize you, who can?”
“C’mon, Selina.” Una Trotman offered her a chair. “Maybe you can think up a good gimmick for our fall dance. Nobody else has yet!”
As she accepted the chair with a grateful smile to all, she was almost disappointed it had been so easy . . .
From then on, she went to every biweekly meeting of the Young Associates and spent all day Saturday there. For the first two months she seldom spoke, and when she did, her voice was low, her manner unassuming. But gradually she became a little assertive, until after a time, there was a stir of interest when she raised her hand and an attentive silence as she spoke. Nor did she volunteer in the beginning, but when the Association started its own small banking and loan company she quietly volunteered to work as a clerk there on Saturday mornings. When the Young Associates organized a membership drive she wrote most of the circular, and a copy of it, with her name, was put on the bulletin board. As the building was renovated she helped decorate, and on the Association’s eighth anniversary she planned and danced in a program given at the local YMCA, which netted six hundred dollars for the scholarship fund.
“How is it you’re in everything so tight?” Clive asked her one evening in spring as they lay on the sofa.
She lifted her head from his chest, laughing, her black, fine-textured eyes glowing in the fading light. “Well, I found out something that’s probably true of most organizations: Nobody wants to do the hard work. Dudley expands all his energy being pompous, Julian is clever but lazy, Beryl was never very bright and the rest of them don’t have any ideas. So there’s me. The older people are beginning to notice how busy and dedicated I am too. In fact”—she winked at him—“somebody mentioned the scholarship the other day with an eye on me. And now that my mother’s in the inner circle she’s got her own undercover campaign going. And me, I’m mum.”
“You really intend doing it, don’t you?” he said, and a certain astonishment underscored his amusement.
“I mean to get it!” She jumped up. “It’s almost too easy in a way. I want to do more. Can you understand that? I want more intrigue, more deception, more duplicity! I want to work harder! Take this bazaar we’re planning. I want to do everything. I get impatient with the others muddling . . .” She broke off, dropping back down, pensive suddenly. “Perhaps that way I’ll feel less guilty when it’s all over. But it’s not that so much. I just want to prove how I can do anything for you.” She bent and kissed him, her tongue and her mouth crushing into his, and then lay down on him again, saying with a small laugh, “I think I’m a little crazy.”
He made no comment, but through the cigarette smoke his shrouded eyes appraised her intense face, and for a moment something akin to admiration and envy belied his aloofness. He started up as though he would ask her, outright, what was the source of her strength? whence did she get her daring?
“Clive,” she said, her voice and face soft with trust, “where will we go? Where will you take me?”
His body involuntarily recoiled, the heavy lids closed, and he made a noncommittal gesture.
“I wish you would decide,” she said, and then laughed. “Oh, don’t tell me. Let it be a surprise. I don’t care where it is, just so it’s far away.” Her arms closed around him. “Just so it’s someplace warm too. Please, I hate winter.”
All during her first year at the Association, she paid him these brief clandestine visits, appearing in the doorway with a sly roguish smile and a finger on her lips. She always found him sprawled on the sofa now, for he suddenly had stopped painting altogether. The unfinished canvas remained on the easel near the sink with its back to the room. The paint on his ivory-handled knife, on the brushes he occasionally used, on the palette had dried. He never mentioned it, and Sel
ina, although she was troubled, said nothing.
Sometimes she found him reading, but usually just lying there, his body utterly drained, his dark face unnaturally still, except for the faint twitch at his mouth. For minutes she might stand above him, unnoticed, her books cradled loosely in her arms and the expectancy dying slowly in her eyes. Other times he would fix her with a critical look that sought to define her to himself. Once, as she rushed in late with her tights on under her clothes, he said, almost accusingly, “Why is it you’ve never danced for me?”
“I would but I need music. You’ll have to play.”
With sudden compliance he got up, opened the scarred and dusty piano and began playing a soft melodic piece, which he started over again when she was ready.
She danced nervously at first because of his hard gaze, but gradually she forgot him as her mind and body, drawn to the music, became coördinated: her mind translating the sound into movement and her body shaping it with restraint, a certain skill and grace. Her movements were simple, yet each lift of her arm and subtle motion of her head, each fluent turn and leap attested to her control and her sure conception of the piece. It ended and she came to a finished stop, her arms dropping lightly to her side. “Am I any good, you think?”
At his equivocal silence she tensed, feeling that if he condemned this part of her, it would be as if she had been utterly condemned.
“You’ve been working very hard, haven’t you?” he said.
“Yes . . . You know I took lessons all last summer on my own . . . Look, it’s hard to dance to something right off . . .”
He closed the piano. “You’re very good. You have soul.” And his casual tone did not completely mask his own wistfulness . . .
Often they lay in silence for her entire visit, Selina watching the sky change over his shoulder and listening to the sounds of the house: water gushing through the pipes in the walls and the roomers’ footsteps above. Sometimes though, despite his frown, she would talk excitedly of all she was doing, sitting on the floor before the sofa with her smooth-fleshed legs bared and her strong hands sketching the words as she talked . . . During that year, whenever he wanted her, she offered herself with the same full passion.
Brown Girl, Brownstones Page 27
