by Paul Hond
“Do you?” said Nelson.
“Yes.” Ben sniffed. “I’m sorry, okay?”
“Sorry my ass.” Nelson relented, satisfied that Ben was sufficiently awed, and that his own dominance had been restored. To soothe his own guilt over the lies, over his maneuvers with the gun, he grabbed the back of Ben’s neck and squeezed, secure as ever in his power of touch, his ability to calm another human being, to make things subside. Still, it depressed him to think how much he valued Ben’s respect—no, not respect, something bigger, his idolatry—and how far he himself might go, in word or action, to earn it.
He withdrew his hand and stuffed it into his coat pocket. He longed to start over, to change himself. There was more to him than the image he had hoped to build in Ben’s eyes—he’d been to college, after all, and was smart enough to realize, when money troubles had forced him out (though Mama would never admit it was money!), that he could learn what he needed on his own—and he supposed there was more to Ben, too.
“Guess I’m taking you home?” Ben said.
“Guess so.” Nelson stared out the window.
They headed down to Park Heights. With Ben next to him, Nelson became painfully aware of the changing landscape, as though the abrupt switch from trees and lawns to row houses and liquor stores was symbolic of some personal failure on his part, some shameful biological function that he could no longer control.
Three-step stoops. Bottles. Men on the corners. Little kids bouncing off curbs in the dark.
Nelson tried to think of something to say to distract Ben from the sights, but he found himself speechless, as if punishing himself for wanting to renounce it all. But why should he punish himself? He had nothing to do with this. It wasn’t his fault that he came from here. And certainly he wasn’t going to stay here the rest of his life.
This vow to leave, this denial of any real connection to the rundown houses, the blinking lights, the baggy-clothed gangbangers and young meaty girls whose early ripeness both fascinated and repulsed him relieved Nelson, for the moment, at least, of his shame, and allowed him to submit himself, grudgingly, and not without an easing of conscience, to the fabric of it. Besides, he knew Ben admired the danger of the place, knew too that this setting, for all its horror, flattered his own masculinity; despite himself, he felt tough, a spawn of some exotic strain of violence.
There were distant drumbeats. Shouts. Sirens. And yet a desolation, a loneliness to the noise; all was subject to a dominant, overpowering silence that seemed to have a weight to it, a weight that pressed on Nelson’s bladder.
“Can I stop in and use your bathroom?” said Ben.
Nelson laughed acidly. There’d been a time when he’d have been too ashamed to let Ben see the inside of his house, but now he was inclined to display it like a grotesque mark on his body which he refused, out of hostility, to hide. He said, “You always have to use my bathroom.”
Ben shrugged.
Sometimes, Nelson got the feeling that Ben just wanted to be around Mama. For some reason, Mama adored him. Nelson supposed it was because Crumb was the boss’s son, but he preferred to give both Mama and Crumb more credit than that. There was, he had to admit, a genuine, mutual admiration between the two, a good deal of which, from Mama’s perspective, could be traced to the way Crumb acted in her presence: all good-natured and polite and well-spoken (“The meal was delicious, absolutely delicious, thank you so much”), behavior that Nelson would have found offensive, something on the order of a lie, a con, if he hadn’t believed that Crumb really was a corny gentleman at heart. And if Nelson was ever tempted, out of jealousy, to blow the boy’s chivalrous cover and expose the other side of him—the egg thrower, the shrill, would-be outlaw—he was also aware that “the Lerner child” reflected favorably on him, made him shine just a little brighter in Mama’s ever-demanding eyes. Ben Lerner was, to Mama’s mind, more than a few notches up from other individuals with whom Nelson was known to travel, and in bringing Ben to his house Nelson always felt like an eager pet dragging in a gift for his hard-to-please owner.
Nelson turned the key in the door and pushed. Ben followed him inside.
What struck one most about the first room was not the frankness of its poverty—the plum-colored carpet, the telephone on the floor, the blank walls with mysterious white blotches that seemed to signal an eternal waiting for workmen in white overalls—but, rather, the almost shrinelike composition of the shelves on the far wall, which were crowded with framed pictures of Nelson: Nelson at one, two, four, six, a smiling, dimpled, big-toothed Nelson, Nelson in a playpen, on a bike, Nelson at ten, twelve, a suddenly different Nelson, this one posed and carefully lit, arranged shirtless on the floor against a white backdrop—a thin, serious boy, slave black, Caribbean black, the beloved subject of a mother with a secondhand Nikon and a fleeting ambition. The images then tapered toward the teen years, more afterthought than study, a click and a flash, pictures increasingly unfocused and ill-composed, ending, finally, atop the uppermost shelf, on the formal and impassive note of the framed high school portrait: Nelson in a tie and jacket, chin lifted, head slightly turned: studious, unsmiling: the face that is reprinted in the papers, held up by relatives screaming for justice, shown to jurors, the face no one can reconcile with the facts.
It was the effect of the contrast of this room, the spareness and spectacle, which had, when Ben first stepped foot in the house four months ago, demolished any expectations of comfort for the rooms beyond; so that, when he’d walked through the next room, which contained little more than an old stereo system and scattered cassette tapes and compact discs, he was literally shocked—he felt it in his bones, an electrical charge—to come upon the yellow light of a spacious, sunny kitchen, its shelves alive with bottles of oil and spices, its sills clogged with peaches and apricots. There was a small color television screaming with applause set atop a round table covered with coupons and magazines, and the refrigerator, a fairly new model, was adorned with the crayon drawings (an airplane caught between clouds, spaceships battling under stars) of Nelson’s little cousins, and topped with glass containers of grains and herbs and dried berries.
Now, as they moved toward the kitchen, Ben could hear the television, and Donna calling: “Nelson? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Where you been? Why are you home so late?”
“I had to work overtime. I got Ben Lerner with me.”
“You what?” The television went silent.
They entered the kitchen, which smelled as though it had just been scrubbed. Ben threw his shoulders forward and felt a strange anticipation of his own importance.
Donna was wearing an Oriental-type robe—a kimono, that was it—and was so pretty and young-looking and full of kindness that Ben always had a hard time understanding how she could possibly have given birth to a gun-toting homeboy like Nelson.
“Well, if it ain’t my boy,” said Donna, with a playful folksiness that brought out the dimples in her cheeks. She opened her arms, and without thinking Ben smiled and walked into an embrace full of mint oil and powdered cleansers. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been held so close, and in his ecstasy was only dimly aware of Nelson standing by, watching them. In Donna’s arms it was impossible to fear her son; in the softness of her flesh Ben was able to locate a secret about Nelson, a certain tender knowledge of the material of which he was made.
Donna stepped back and looked at Ben with concern. “Does your father know where you are?” she said.
Ben wasn’t sure what she meant; she’d never asked him that before, she’d always treated him like an adult. He then recalled Mickey’s lecture to him the other night—how he wanted him to stay away from Nelson’s neighborhood. Did Donna sense Mickey’s disapproval? But how was that possible?
“Yes,” Ben said. “I told him I was taking Nelson home.”
Donna touched one of her braids. “Because I know,” she said, “that parents worry when their child is out after dark.�
�� She looked at Nelson, who turned the other way. “Yes they do,” she said, her eyes still on her son. “Even in the day they worry.”
“You can’t blame them,” Ben said. “The way things are these days. Even if your kid is good and stays out of trouble, it’s no guarantee. Parents have it tough.” Ben relished the role of the mature, well-bred young man, it came easy to him, he had a feel for just what to say in these situations, knowing, too, that such performances benefited Nelson, made him valuable to Nelson, put Nelson in his debt.
Donna nodded her head, agreeing with him, expanding his sense of his own worth; they might have been the parents, and Nelson the child.
“Don’t you have to use the bathroom, Crumb?”
“I will,” said Ben. He understood Nelson’s warning.
“You boys hungry?” said Donna. Without waiting for an answer she turned and opened the refrigerator. “How’s your parents?” she called, moving items around on the shelves. Ben noticed what looked to be a few Lerner’s desserts in there. Tarts. A pie.
“They’re doing well,” Ben said, wondering if Nelson had taken those goodies from the bakery. “My mother’s going to Paris on Thanksgiving. To perform.” He glanced at Nelson, who picked up a magazine from the table—either Time or Newsweek, both of which Donna would bring home from the waiting room where she conducted her practice—and began to read, or pretend to.
“That sounds wonderful,” said Donna. “Is your father going too?”
“No. He has a passport, but never goes with her. He almost went somewhere with her a couple of years ago, to Germany, I think. But at the last minute he decided not to.” Ben took a step to get a closer look at the contents of the refrigerator. He supposed it was possible that Mickey had given the food to Nelson, but usually it was bread he gave, not the costlier stuff. Yet even that possibility—Mickey giving it away, donating it—disturbed him for some reason, almost more than if Nelson had stolen it.
“This refrigerator needs a cleaning,” Donna said. She turned, holding three apples. “Nelson, get me some napkins.”
“I’m not hungry,” said Nelson. “Neither of us is hungry. We already ate. Yo, Crumb. You comin’ up or what?” He walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs that led to his room. “Come on!”
Ben felt a chill. Donna was looking at him. “I guess I’d better go up,” he said. He felt confused, caught in the middle of things. Above them, Nelson’s footsteps could be heard. Ben thanked Donna and walked out.
Nelson’s room was to the right of the landing. Ben hesitated at the door.
“Come on in,” said Nelson. He was seated by a window, stroking the leaves of several purple-flowered plants that Ben hadn’t noticed on his previous visits. But the rest of the room, with its unmade bed, desk, wall map and comic books, was familiar to him.
He eyed the map. Continents grew like algae on blue water. It was hard to equate Nelson with the idea of such expanses, such distances; he seemed so doomed to his very own block.
Nelson watered his plants from a paper cup on the sill.
Ben noticed Nelson’s cheap rubber basketball near the foot of the bed. It was strange: there’d been a time, not too long ago, when he’d have been compelled to pick it up, a time when he’d needed a ball, needed to hold it, smell it, feel the roundness of it in his big spidery hands. It was a physical need, he’d thought, infantile, as of a toy, a breast; but now, looking at the map, he wondered if the ball hadn’t in some way been like a globe, a world. Maybe it had. But for some reason he didn’t feel that strongly about it anymore.
“You like my flowers?” said Nelson.
Ben looked at them. “African violets.”
“I know what they are,” said Nelson, but his maternity over the plants took the edge off his defensiveness. “Saintpaulia ionantha.”
“My father used to have some in the window,” said Ben.
Nelson was eyeing words printed on a small plastic stake in the soil. “Named after some German man,” he said. “Name was Saint Paul. Went to Africa. Tanzania. Found these flowers, sent some seeds back to his father in Germany.” He stroked more leaves. “They’re not real violets, though. Just look like violets.”
Ben wondered where Tanzania was. He ought to know, he felt; Africa came up often in Empire. He looked at the map and noticed, for the first time, the physical prominence of Africa—a continent twice the size of the United States, right smack in the middle of the map; a mass of land that resembled—Ben just now noticed it—a fetus: the coastline from Western Sahara down and around to Nigeria describing the tucked head, and the tip of South Africa, Cape Town, to be exact, forming the foot, the little primordial flipper.
“What color were your violets?”
“Pink,” said Ben. He looked at Nelson’s wildly blooming plants. There were two desk lamps trained on them.
Nelson pressed his finger in the soil.
“I guess I’d better get going,” Ben said. “Better get the van back.”
“Don’t forget to use the bathroom.”
Ben averted his eyes. Did Nelson suspect he had other reasons for wanting to come inside? “I think I’ll hold it in.”
Nelson nodded. “Guess I’ll see you later then.”
“Guess so.” Ben hesitated; he didn’t want to leave on this note.
“And Crumb—make sure you keep those headlights on.”
Ben looked at his friend, who flashed him a smile. Ben smiled back. “Yeah,” he said.
“And careful with them eggs.”
Ben laughed. He liked to think that their shared adventure—the two of them standing spread-eagled against the van, enduring the same humiliation—constituted some sort of brotherhood. He said, “I’ll take them home, cook up an omelette.”
“Careful with that fire.”
“A’ight,” said Ben. He felt better as he walked out and descended the stairs.
Donna was no longer in the kitchen; she must have gone to bed. Ben walked through the barren rooms and let himself out the front door.
Driving back to the bakery, he wondered at the strange perspective of emerging from the ghetto at night. Was this how they saw things, coming out here in cars, on buses?
He fixed the bakery in the needle of his vision, pretending it was his target, that he had a gun, a plan. The lights were on. The bakery really was vulnerable, he thought.
He parked the van on the lot in the usual space. His game of make-believe was over: he didn’t have a gun. Still, he considered entering the store and in some way surprising the bakers and Lazarus. Scaring them, maybe. He wished he had a mask.
If this was childish, Ben reasoned, then it wasn’t his fault. He’d been reduced to it. Sure, he’d have rather imagined himself walking in there as the boss (“Good evening, gentlemen, just thought I’d pop in to see how things were going”), but he didn’t dare dwell on that one. It was too remote. And yet in a certain way it didn’t seem far-fetched at all. He gazed longingly at the lights of the bakery—the only lights, it seemed, in the entire night. Hell, he could run the place ten times better than his father.
He walked to his house, rehearsing his excuse should Mickey demand to know where he’d been. It was simple: he’d dropped Nelson home and stayed for a snack. What could Mickey say to that?
In the alley leading to his house he stomped on crisp leaves, tapped the tops of the neatly arranged garbage cans with a stick he’d picked up on the way. He was the only person out.
He entered the house through the back door. No one home.
He fixed himself a bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup and a sliced banana and sat at the kitchen table, hoping to cap off with gusto what was maybe the most exciting evening of his life. Suppose Nelson had been caught? They’d been damn lucky. Deep down, Ben was grateful to the cop, who, in handling him a little forcefully (and it wasn’t so bad, really; in a way it felt good to be grabbed, flung, straightened out), in shoving him into the side of the van, had derived the pleasure he’d needed to let them g
o, had quenched the fire in his solid, belt-packed paunch.
On the table, in a pile of mail and clippings, Ben noticed Emi’s airline ticket to Paris. Funny that Donna had asked him if Mickey would go too; often, Ben had the same thought. More a wish, really. To be left in charge. Somehow, some way, it would have to happen. One way or another. He was eighteen years old. It was time.
7
Mickey busied himself with the hors d’oeuvres, aware, on his periphery, of Shaw, who he thought was eyeing him. He looked across the room at Emi. Toshiki Sato said something to her, then set down his drink and disappeared down the hall, in the direction of the bathroom. A few seconds later, Emi followed him. Mickey’s imagination took off. Could it be? Sato? He sidestepped the approaching Shaw and pursued Emi through the room, stopping her with a hand on her shoulder at the threshold of the hallway.
“Em.”
Emi turned. “Oh, there you are. What happened to your head?”
“Your friend Shaw attacked me with a tube of red stuff.”
“Cute.”
“You were on your way to look for me?”
Emi tilted her head. “Yes, I thought—are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” said Mickey. He peered down the hall at the blade of light under the bathroom door. He waited for her to cheerfully encourage him to go home, sleep.
She said, “I thought you escaped to the bedroom.”
“How long do you plan on staying?”
“Why? Do you want to go?”
“You can stay,” said Mickey. “Just make sure someone walks you to your car.”
“You can walk me there.”
“When?”
“As soon as you’d like. I really should get some sleep.”
“Good,” said Mickey, now wondering if she were trying to trick him, throw him off the trail. I’m no idiot, he wanted to tell her, and yet his own suspicion baffled him. Could it be that he wanted her to have an affair, so that he himself would be free to pursue another woman? But that was absurd. There were no other women. He touched her hair. “Let’s go home,” he said.
