Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea

by Richard Bausch

  Alice agreed with this, and her father gave her a look. “Yes,” he said. “Well, it’s going to get Johnson elected.”

  “Fear, then, is what will work. Is that it?” Brightman said.

  “You’re not afraid of Goldwater?”

  “He’s a decent man,” Brightman said. “And he’s no more likely to blow us up than Johnson is.”

  “I don’t think Madison Avenue ought to be deciding presidential elections,” Alice said. “In any case. We’re not buying a vacuum cleaner, we’re trying to elect a president. You watch—if it keeps up, we’ll end up with an actor or somebody like that in the White House.”

  Marshall had a moment of sensing that Alice was far ahead of him in her knowledge of the world. He watched her as she looked back and forth between her father and Brightman. The bottomless darks of her eyes seemed even darker.

  Mrs. Westerbrook laughed at something Emma had said about Albert’s first lessons in Braille.

  Because Marshall was in the middle of the table, he could listen to the talk at both ends of it, and he found himself slightly adrift, neither part of the one nor of the other. Across from him, Loretta and Mr. Atwater were divided, attending to opposite ends, turned from each other, Loretta listening to Mrs. Westerbrook and Atwater leaning toward Mitchell Brightman, who began telling Alice about something that had happened on Air Force One back in the first months of the Thousand Days, or Camelot, as Life magazine had it. A miscommunication that had resulted in a presidential tirade, Kennedy standing in a sleeveless undershirt in the entrance to the presidential sleeping quarters, upbraiding a member of the White House staff. Marshall listened to this with deep fascination, of course—what he could hear of it: The details were lost in the general hum, as Albert caused Mrs. Westerbrook and Minnie to laugh, describing the way he had stumbled over himself, trying to tell Emma’s aunt Patty that he wanted Emma’s hand.

  It was then that Mitchell gulped down the last of his seventh or eighth glass of wine, and stood to make his speech.

  Now everyone seemed to be waiting for his return, even the two servers, young Negro men who stood on either side of the closed kitchen door with their hands clasped behind them, looking like guards waiting for some royal entry. One of them, the taller of the two, had a glazed left eye, partly dragged down in a faint scar, which reached to that side of the mouth. The scar was a bluish color, a shade darker than the rest of the face, whose skin was a perfect, flawless, dark brown the texture of polished mahogany.

  It was this man that Mitchell Brightman leaned on, coming back through from the hallway. “Clarence,” he said.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Mitchell, sir.”

  Brightman brought out a handkerchief and blew his nose, still being supported by the server with the scarred face. He sighed, swaying a bit, folding the handkerchief neatly and placing it in his suit-coat pocket. “There,” he said, perhaps to himself. He looked at everyone. “Folks, this here is Clarence. Everybody know Clarence? Say hello, Clarence.”

  Clarence said, “Hello.”

  Brightman turned a little, and held up one hand as if to reach for the younger man, but then he seemed to forget all about him, lurching away, moving clumsily to the table, where he plopped down, staring at his plate. He picked up a fork and tapped it against the edge. “A toast,” he said. He smiled and sat back. No one spoke. “Guess I ought to knock off on the wine.”

  “I’ll have some more wine,” said Emma, holding her glass up.

  The server named Clarence hurried to pour some for her.

  “Me, too,” said Brightman. “Clarence?”

  The other server, who was thin and sharp-featured and looked too young to be pouring wine, stepped up with his carafe.

  “I don’t want it from you,” Brightman said. “Want it from my pal, Clarence.”

  Alice’s father said, “Mitch, for God’s sake.”

  The wine was poured. Alice had more, as did Loretta, Clark Atwater, Albert, and Alice’s father. Mrs. Westerbrook and Minnie declined, as did Walter.

  Clark Atwater began talking about India and China as the future repositories of world power and domination because of their uncontrolled population growth, the wars that would result from these factors. He spoke loudly and rather hurriedly, as though he were afraid someone might step in and wrest the group’s attention from him. Had anyone at the table read Toynbee? None of this was in Toynbee, particularly, but reading Toynbee’s great twelve-volume work, A Study of History, had given Mr. Atwater the means to arriving at these conclusions about the future. Western civilization was on the decline, of course. India and China, with their vestiges of civilizations and their burgeoning numbers of people, would change everything. This would all take place sometime in the 1980s, if not sooner. And the last of the world’s civilizations was at stake.

  Mitchell Brightman looked across the table at Marshall. “Tell us about the fire at your school,” he said.

  Marshall glanced at Mr. Atwater, who had clearly not finished talking and was visibly unhappy at the interruption.

  “Come on,” Brightman said. “Tell me.”

  Marshall began describing the scene at the D’Allessandro School as he had arrived last evening—the fire trucks, the police, the confusion. Alice’s father broke in to say that he had sent a film crew to the scene, and mentioned the fact that the police were suspicious about the cause.

  “Somebody torched it,” Brightman said. “Right?”

  “Could be.”

  “I was trying to make a point, here,” Atwater said.

  “Clark,” said Marshall’s mother. “Nobody wants to talk about world history.”

  “These are newspeople—and you’re telling me nobody wants to hear about it?” He pointed down the table at Brightman. “What was he saying about cooperation? Wasn’t that about world history?”

  “I had a call,” Brightman said to Marshall. “From that Mr. D’Allessandro. Apparently, my talk is still on?”

  “Yes, sir,” Marshall said.

  “Maybe I’ll talk about cooperation.”

  “See?” Mr. Atwater said. “This is the subject. Well, I’m on the subject.” He leaned toward Brightman. “Have you read Arnold J. Toynbee?”

  Brightman took a swallow of wine. “Twice a year.”

  “You have read him.”

  “I said. Twice a year.”

  “All twelve volumes?” Atwater seemed impressed.

  Brightman nodded. “I read it through once in regular print, and then again in Braille.”

  “I read Braille,” Albert said from down the table. He indicated Emma. “And this is my teacher.”

  “Yes,” said Brightman, obviously embarrassed. “I remember.”

  Atwater was staring at him. “You’ve never really read Toynbee.”

  “Clark, stop it,” Loretta said.

  He turned to her. “Don’t order me around.”

  “I’m sure Toynbee has a lot to tell us,” Mitchell Brightman said. “At least twelve volumes’ worth. Here’s a toast to old Mr. Toynbee.”

  “I think I know when I’m being patronized,” said Atwater.

  “Nobody’s patronizing anybody,” Alice said crisply. She stood and poured more wine into Atwater’s glass. “Have some more wine, why don’t you?”

  Atwater stared at her for a moment, then lifted the glass and drank.

  “Think about a fire in a building in Washington, D.C.,” Mitchell Brightman said. “Four alarms, four different fire companies arrive to fight this fire. Cooperation. And somebody started the fire. That prob’ly took cooperation, too. Isn’t that right, Patrick?”

  “Come on, Mitchell.”

  “Well, Patrick—it’s true. I’m interested in the truth. Think about cooperation, I ask all of you. I’d like to make a toast to cooperation. Or did I do that already?”

  “I think one toast is enough,” said Mr. Kane.

  “I’d like to toast Mr. Brightman,” Clark Atwater said. He held his glass toward Brightman. “To you, sir. For your
fine work on the news pretending to know what you’re—”

  “I have a toast,” Brightman said with insistence, talking over the other man.

  “—talking about.”

  “A toast,” Brightman said, standing again. There was no slur in his speech. He held his stance straight, seemed completely in charge of himself. His voice was clear and his diction exact. He looked down the table at Minnie and smiled, then loosened his tie. “Minnie, you don’t mind, do you?”

  “Miss Jackson to you,” Minnie said.

  He smiled, then laughed lowly to himself. “You know the Billie Holiday song, ‘Miss Brown to You,’ Min—I mean, Miss Jackson?”

  Minnie smiled, nodding.

  “Bet you could sing it, right now.”

  “You’d lose all your money,” Minnie said to him.

  “Anyway,” Brightman said, “I want all of us to toast the beautiful and tragic human capacity for cooperation. The source of all our joy and all our woe.”

  “I’d rather toast Miss Jackson again,” Emma said, and she held her glass out in the faith that someone would follow suit. Alice hurried to do just that, standing and reaching across Marshall.

  “Good, Emma,” she said. “To Miss Jackson.”

  “Amen,” Albert said. “That’s right, Emma.”

  “I second it,” said Patrick Kane.

  And they all clinked glasses. Brightman drank his glass empty, and then poured more. “Okay, now that we’ve toasted Miss Jackson, I insist that we toast—” he stopped, looked down the table, and then back at Alice’s father. “I can’t remember what I wanted to toast.”

  “You were talking about cooperation,” Loretta said.

  “I was?”

  “You wanted to toast cooperation,” said Alice. “I think we’ve all been brought to an appreciation of it, though.”

  “Cooperation.”

  “That’s what it was,” Albert said.

  “Cooperation,” Brightman repeated. “What an odd thing to toast. I wonder what I could’ve been thinking about?” He sat down.

  Mr. Atwater reached for the bread, and knocked over his own wineglass. There was nothing in it, but it made a clatter that silenced everyone for a moment.

  Then Brightman stood again. “Oh, that’s right. Cooperation.”

  And now Alice’s father got up and took him by the arms. “Mitch, there’s some things we need to talk about.”

  “I want to tell them about it, Patrick.”

  “Let’s just—can you come with me for a minute?”

  Brightman looked at the others. “He needs help in the powder room.” Then he turned to Mr. Atwater and said, almost aggressively, “You had something to say?”

  “I wanted to toast you, sir.”

  “Where do I know you from?”

  Atwater reached down and picked up his overturned wineglass. “A toast,” he said. “To newscasters.”

  “I don’t have any more wine,” said Brightman. “And neither do you.” He turned to Alice’s father. “This guy needs more wine.”

  “In one minute, Mitch.”

  Alice’s father guided him to the doorway, and out, and for a few seconds they were arguing, in whispers, in the hall. The whispers faded, and then there was silence.

  Alice turned to Marshall and laid her head on his shoulder, a gesture of weariness more than anything else. She sat up straight and sipped her wine. Mr. Atwater was watching her. “They’ll be back soon,” she said to him.

  “That’s immaterial to me,” he said.

  Loretta slapped him on the fleshy part of his upper arm. “Clark.”

  He turned on her. “Don’t ever do that again,” he said.

  “Well, come on,” she told him.

  “You are not in a position to talk to me that way.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t talk to her the way you are,” Marshall said.

  “Honor thy father and thy mother,” said Mrs. Westerbrook.

  This was followed by what felt like a protracted silence. Alice took Marshall’s hand and held it in her lap. He was aware of his mother’s eyes on him, and after a few seconds he gently took his hand away, using the pretext of pouring himself more water.

  Mitchell Brightman came back into the room, followed by Alice’s father, who looked at her and made a signal as if to say that he had tried his best, and that his best had ended in failure. Brightman sat down and brought a pint bottle of whiskey out of the side pocket of his suit coat. He opened it and poured a swallow into the empty wineglass at his elbow. “Anybody else?” he said.

  “Nobody else,” Alice’s father said.

  “Medicinal purposes,” said Brightman. “You-all go on talking.”

  For a little while no one seemed willing to say anything. But finally there were a few soft murmurings—about the fire at the school, the lateness of the hour. Minnie and her friend Mrs. Westerbrook were discussing the difficulty Mrs. Westerbrook’s son was having in his job as a driver for one of the members of the executive council of the AFL-CIO. The gentleman, a close associate of George Meany himself, was experiencing personal troubles with his wife, and was taking it all out on Mrs. Westerbrook’s son.

  “I work there,” Albert said. “Is your son Jerry Westerbrook?”

  “Yes, suh.”

  “I know him. I’ve had lunch with him a few times.”

  “Well,” Minnie said. “Ain’t it a small world.”

  “Jerry’s a nice old guy,” said Albert. But in the next instant his face registered some sort of distress. He looked over at Marshall, then lowered his gaze.

  “Ah’m very proud of him,” Mrs. Westerbrook said. “He turned sixty years old this week.”

  “Sixty years old,” Albert said. “He—he doesn’t look sixty.”

  “You got to git him when he ain’t in that unifahm.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sixty years old and working as a driver,” Brightman said.

  Emma said, “It’s such a small world sometimes.”

  “Small world,” said Mr. Atwater. “I’ll give you small world. How about this—I was this boy’s teacher.” He indicated Marshall. “I told him to go to radio school. He wouldn’t know anybody here—except his mother—if I hadn’t said he ought to go to radio school and learn how to be an announcer. Think of that for a while.”

  For a little time, no one said anything.

  Finally, Loretta murmured, “Clark, we have all understood your importance.”

  He glared at her. “I was merely pointing out a fact.”

  “About cooperation,” Mitchell Brightman said, working his way to his feet again. “Consider the president of the United States.”

  “Mitch, that’s enough, now.”

  “The president of the United States is a man who has in all cases having to do with the personal conduct of his life the cooperation of the American press. Would you say that’s an accurate reflection of the situation, Patrick?”

  After a pause, Mr. Kane said, “It’s accurate.”

  “Consider the case of our dead hero president.” Brightman looked directly at Marshall. “Now here’s a young man with presidential aspirations.”

  Alice said, “Please, Uncle Mitch. Shut up.”

  Brightman swayed a little, then sat down again. “Where was I?”

  “You were through,” said Mr. Kane. Then he called for the main course to be served. The two servers made passes back and forth from the kitchen, carrying the food: a platter of steaming slices of roast beef and ham, a roast turkey, plates of hot green beans, bowls of salad, and cornmeal muffins, more glasses of wine, and iced tea.

  “I wondered what you thought of Toynbee’s theories about civilizations dying as it relates to our civilization?” Atwater asked Mitchell Brightman.

  “Forgive me,” said Brightman, “but I don’t—” He belched low, under his breath. “Have the—” And he belched again. “Slightest—idea who the—hell I’m talking to.”

  Atwater stood. “You people—” he began
.

  Loretta held him by the wrist. “Clark—please.”

  “You think you know everything—you think your lives are more important than other people’s—”

  “Excuse me?” Brightman said.

  The other man made a sweeping gesture toward Minnie and Mrs. Westerbrook without taking his eyes from Brightman. “This dinner is supposed to be in honor of your host’s maid. And you sit there talking. People like you are the ones who really keep these Negroes down. You don’t care about anything but your own prestige—”

  Minnie said, “Ah don’t need you to defend me, mistuh.”

  “I think we should go,” Loretta said, rising.

  “I haven’t had my say yet,” said Mr. Atwater. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Clarence,” said Alice’s father. “Would you and John see this gentleman out?”

  “Wait,” Brightman said. “Let the man speak.”

  But Mr. Atwater appeared to have run out of steam. He sat down, his hands resting in his lap.

  There was a long silence. No one moved.

  Brightman hiccoughed loudly, then offered Mr. Atwater a drink of whiskey.

  “No thank you,” Atwater said.

  “I’ve seen you somewhere before,” said Brightman. “It’s the damnedest thing. I can’t remember where. You don’t work at the D.C. drunk tank.”

  “I teach school.”

  “Great profession,” Brightman said. “Future of the country. I’ll drink to it. Takes a lot of cooperation to run a school.”

  “I run it, too,” Atwater said.

  “I bet you do. Everybody reading Toynbee?”

  “No.”

  “It’s forbidden?”

  “No, it’s not forbidden—”

  “I can’t understand what you’re here for. You belong to somebody?”

  “I’m leaving,” said Atwater. And he turned to Marshall’s mother. “Loretta?”

  She had begun a nervous conversation with Minnie about making cornmeal muffins. She was trying to gloss over everything, and her son understood this with a pang. He looked across the table at Clark Atwater and said, “Why don’t you eat a little something first?”

  Atwater ignored him. “Loretta.”

  She paused. “Just a minute, Clark.”