A Meaningful Life

by L. J. Davis

  Fortunately, he thought of a good solution that very afternoon.

  “You’re out of your mind,” said his wife. “I can’t imagine what’s gotten into you. I categorically will not move to Brooklyn, and that’s final. What part of Brooklyn?”

  “Go ahead and lock yourself in the bathroom,” said Lowell. “Nothing will stop me. It’s about time we came to grips with real life and the significant issues of our time.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said his wife. “Listen, I’ve had a hard day.”

  “I’ve never been more serious in my life,” said Lowell. He tried to sound manly and confident, but actually he felt defensive and edgy, as if he could easily be made to look ridiculous if the right sort of questions were asked, like the time he wanted to build a model railroad in the corner of the bedroom. “I was thinking about things this afternoon, and I suddenly remembered an article I read. Lots of people are doing it. There are all sorts of good reasons. Anyway, do you want to stay here and stagnate for the rest of your life?”

  His wife turned to the counter and began slicing a potato. “I thought next we might move to West End Avenue,” she said in a funny kind of voice, but her face was hidden, and it was hard to tell exactly what was on her mind.

  Lowell could remember neither where he’d seen the article nor precisely what it said, but he recalled the general drift. That was all he needed. Creative young people were buying houses in the Brooklyn slums, integrating all-Negro blocks, and coming firmly to grips with poverty and municipal corruption. It was the stuff of life. It was what he was looking for. The more he turned it over in his mind, the less it became a fuzzy memory of some magazine article and the more it resembled an inspiration. In the vacuum of despair his mind had become, it took on richness and color and swelled to heroic size. In his mind’s eye he saw himself striding down the littered streets like a latter-day Marshal Dillon, intimidating clubhouse politicians and inspiring his neighbors, exciting the envy of his colleagues in Manhattan because of all the rooms he owned.

  “Definitely not,” said his wife after a long interval during which they’d both worked industriously on the dinner and neither of them had spoken a word. Lowell was cutting up a duck with the poultry shears. “No, sir,” she said. “You got me to New York, but Brooklyn is going too far. What do you know about Brooklyn, anyway?”

  Her question was well-put and hard for Lowell to answer. A second or two later his wife answered it for him.

  “You don’t know anything about Brooklyn,” she said. “Not a thing. God, how I wish we’d gone to Berkeley when we had the chance. Everything would have been so ådifferent.”

  “That was ten years ago,” said Lowell, feeling a little stab. “This is now, and there’s no going back. We’ve got to take the bull by the horns.”

  “Take your own bull by the horns,” said his wife. “Unless it’s the Heights, I’m staying right here. Or maybe Albemarle Road. Is it the Heights?”

  Lowell didn’t have any specific part of Brooklyn in mind, but he was pretty sure the Heights were not what he was after. Albemarle Road rang no bell either. The only other parts of Brooklyn whose names he could remember were Flatbush and Bedford-Stuyvesant, but he was pretty sure he would not win his wife to his cause by mentioning either of them. “I haven’t made up my mind yet,” he said finally. “I’m still studying the situation.”

  “Study it all you like,” said his wife.

  Lowell knew from experience that a conversation of this sort could continue indefinitely, hour upon hour of statement and retort, assertion and denial, the domestic politics of exhaustion, until the point was completely lost and the two of them began to sound more and more like a cross between Long Day’s Journey into Night and Father Knows Best. They always sounded that way, and Lowell decided to put a stop to it at once before they became so firmly entrenched in their roles that only sleep would release them.

  “You may be right,” he said, meaning no such thing, but the statement always satisfied her. The few problems that had cropped up between them since the days of the novel had always had to do with something Lowell had said, or with something that he had failed to say, but never with anything that he had actually done. He sometimes felt that he could do almost anything he liked provided he said the right words, even if they were downright lies. There was no time like the present to test his theory. “Yes,” he said, assuming a musing tone, “there may be something in what you say. Perhaps I was hasty. I’ll have to think it over in another light. I’ve been tired and confused lately. That must be it.”

  “You poor darling,” said his wife, coming quickly to his side. She cradled his head against her breasts, a position he unaccountably loathed as much as she was fond of putting him in it, but which he tolerated now for tactical reasons. “What you need is a nice strong drink,” she said.

  Lowell agreed that a nice strong drink was just what the doctor ordered.

  4

  Over the phone the real-estate man advised them to come down Lafayette instead of Greene because the light was better there.

  “He sounds like a fruit,” said Lowell's wife. "Let's forget about it. I hate fruits.”

  “I don't think people call them fruits anymore,” said Lowell, with his hand over the mouthpiece. They had the phone between them, and he found it hard to hear. "Hush,” he said.

  “Fruits or queers or whatever you call them,” said his wife. "They're all the same to me.”

  “When you get off at Fulton Street,” said the real-estate man, "go up Clinton Avenue to Lafayette. Turn right on Lafayette and walk to Vanderbilt Avenue, and then turn left. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Greene is simply out of the question,” he concluded ripely, as though putting it on for the benefit of Lowell's wife.

  “Thanks a whole lot,” said Lowell, hanging up before more damage was done. He had a map of Brooklyn before him on the table, and he tried to decide if the borough's shape reminded him of anything. It bore a faint resemblance to a half-clenched fist, but not enough of one to count. It didn't really look like anything, which was disappointing. Lowell liked things to resemble things; it always helped him to comprehend them better.

  “I guess I'll be back in a couple of hours,” he said, folding the map and putting it in his pocket. "I'll just look at a couple of places to get the idea, and then I'll come right back.”

  “I don't trust you,” said his wife. "I'm coming along.”

  “You don't have to do that,” said Lowell. "Even if I was going to buy a house behind your back, I couldn't do it in a day. There are all sorts of papers to sign and people to see and things like that. I doubt if I could buy a house behind your back if I wanted to. Anyway, I wouldn't think of doing such a thing, and you don't have to come along unless you want to.”

  “Poppycock,” said his wife in the voice of her mother. "I know a Blandings syndrome when I see one. I can also tell when you're lying. You talk too much and forget to blink.”

  Lowell realized that both his mouth and eyes were dry, and he blinked and swallowed.

  “You see?” said his wife. "Nothing gets past me. Let's get started.”

  They took the subway. Lowell glanced at his wife from time to time, but she was lost in her thoughts, and anything could have been going on inside her head. He hated it when he didn't know what she was thinking. She was thinking something now, and he didn't have the faintest idea what it was.

  “I don't like it,” she said as they emerged on Fulton Street. "It's pretty bad. You can tell by looking at it.”

  The wide street was bordered with low brick structures, most of them dating from the last century, with boarded-up stores on their ground floors. There was a Spanish market on the corner. Outside it stood a group of men in threadbare overcoats, drinking beer from cans in brown paper bags. All of them were drunk, and one of them was throwing up.

  “I don't know,” Lowell said, feeling his hopes slide down to his stomach in a cold little elevator. "Maybe we should skip it. Let's go b
ack to Manhattan, what do you think?”

  “Good idea,” said his wife. "There are colored people here.”

  “What's that got to do with anything? There are colored people everywhere in New York. Black people.”

  “Not in Brooklyn Heights there aren't. That just goes to show how much you know about it. In Brooklyn there's only one place where colored people are, and when you see a lot of them standing around, you know that's where you are too. Let's go.”

  “I don't know,” said Lowell, pausing with his hand on the railing. "I mean, here we are and everything. Maybe we ought to take a look around. We came all the way over here. Anyway, I've got an appointment.”

  “You don't know?” demanded his wife. "You just said we were going. Didn't you say that? Come on, let's go like you said we would. Lowell, I want to go.” She took his hand and pulled on it, but when nothing happened, she released it and glared at him. A Negro man came up the steps and went past them with a big grin on his face. Lowell wondered if he was smiling because he knew they were quarreling or because he'd just gotten a good look up his wife's dress.

  “I mean, as long as we're here...” he said weakly, making a vague movement away from the steps but not really going anywhere.

  “All right, if you won't come with me, I'll go by myself. I'm not staying here for another minute.”

  “Actually, you know, that's not a bad idea. Look, why don't you go on back home, really? I'll keep my appointment, and then I'll hurry straight home too. It won't take more than an hour. If it takes more than an hour, I'll walk right out on them. Do you have enough money for a token?”

  “You mean you're not coming with me? You're sending me off by myself?”

  Lowell looked at her with some confusion. At the same time, he became aware that the men on the corner had begun to stare at them with bright, drunken grins. Lowell was always at a loss when Negroes stared at him. They infallibly seemed to know what was going on in his mind, and he was a complete pushover when they asked him for money. "Can't we go someplace and talk about it?” he asked.

  “You said we were going home,” said his wife. "You said. I don't know why you won't do what you say. Okay, if that's the way you want it, let's go and get it over with. I really am mad and disappointed, Lowell. I really thought you were going to keep your promise. You have really made me mad.”

  “Promise?” said Lowell weakly.

  Without another word, his wife pushed furiously past him and began striding up the street as though treading on his face with every step.

  “Dear?” he said, trotting after her. It was amazing how fast she could go when she wanted to, and he had a hard time keeping abreast, especially because she seemed to slow down when he caught up and speed up when he slowed down.

  “I'd give her a bust in the goddamn mouth,” said one of the Negroes as they passed the store. "Straighten her out right away.”

  “Who asked you?” snapped Lowell before he could think.

  “Better watch yourself, man,” said another. "You a long way from home.”

  Lowell's wife turned the corner as though on rails, somehow getting directly in Lowell's path and causing him to stumble all over his feet. The Negroes got a big kick out of that. A moment later, when Lowell looked back over his shoulder, he found several of them peering happily around the corner with their beer sacks in their hands, waiting to see what would happen next. Lowell felt like he was walking into a box canyon. He hoped there was another way back to the subway.

  The street was lined with tall old trees, real country trees, higher than the houses, and so big you couldn't put your arms around them; their roots had tumbled the sidewalks and cracked the curbing. Lowell wondered vaguely what kind they were, but he was preoccupied with his wife. She was steaming along with her eyes fixed on some utterly hateful middle distance, and Lowell had the impression that she wouldn't have turned her head if a bomb had dropped in the street beside her. They passed three old frame houses with deep porches and mansard roofs. One of them had been converted into a kind of church with painted windows and a big sign on its fence that said: USE THE GARBAGE CANS. THIS IS GOD'S HOUSE.

  “Look at that sign over there,” said Lowell. His wife said nothing and kept on walking.

  It was a pretty strange street they were on, and Lowell would have paid a great deal of attention to it if it hadn't been for his wife's behavior. She didn't behave like this very often, and he never knew what to do when she did, possibly because he got so little practice. That was the trouble with having a nice life; you never knew what to do when things took a bad turn.

  “This sure is an interesting street,” he suggested, not very forcefully, as though struggling to open a conversation with a forbidding stranger. That was exactly what his wife was right now: a forbidding stranger. He had no more idea of what she was going to do or say than if he'd never met her before in his life. "Who'd ever think we were in New York?” he suggested, but although his wife blinked, she still refused to take up the thread.

  Actually, the strange thing about the street was that there was nothing strange about it at all: with its tall trees and old houses of brick and clapboard, it was the kind of street he'd grown up expecting he would live on; it was the kind of street everyone lived on when he was a kid. It was older and closer together, but not enough of either to make any difference, and anyway, he'd forgotten most of the details of how things looked back home except for very close up or very far away, the way a child sees things. It was the same way, distracted by his wife and Negroes, that he was seeing things now, as ambience instead of objects, interspersed with brief, vivid glimpses of things he really wanted to see, like bark and brickwork and turrets with sharp conical roofs. Once he'd read a Ray Bradbury story about some men who went to Mars and discovered a Midwestern town. It had given them quite a turn. That was the same way Lowell felt now. The street wasn't supposed to be here, but here it was, and he couldn't decide what to do next.

  “Shit,” said his wife. "Shit, shit, shit.”

  Lowell deemed it best not to respond to this. A moment later he said, "I think this is the corner we're supposed to turn.”

  “Not this one,” said his wife with repugnance and loathing. "It's the next one. This is Greene. The light was wrong here, remember? Can't you even read a street sign?”

  There seemed to be considerably more wrong with Greene than the light, but Lowell was too abashed to pay much attention to it beyond noting that it was obviously another part of the colored-people place.

  The real-estate office, when they finally doubled back to it, proved to be housed in a building that was in the process of being either torn down or repaired. Half the cornice was missing, all the upper windows were broken out, and although ladders and brickwork were visible in some of the rooms, others appeared to be filled with bags of garbage and broken television sets. There were, in fact, several burst bags of garbage stacked up in the lee of the stoop, along with the remains of a pair of tubular kitchen chairs and a V-8 engine block. The double front doors were off their hinges, the ceiling was coming down, the walls were painted a dingy lavender with a shiny substance that appeared to be compounded equally of mucus and glue, and there was a dirty loaf of bread lying on the floor. The place was such a complicated mixture of the decrepit and the sinister that Lowell couldn't decide what was more likely to happen to him if he entered it: falling through a weak place in the floor or being knifed from ambush. A kind of dark vapor seemed to hang over it (the adjoining building had tin over its windows and looked comparatively tidy), and as Lowell turned to his wife he heard, from somewhere within, the sound of hammering followed by a noise like sand and pebbles being poured down a drainpipe. It was impossible to tell what part of the house it came from or what it was all about.

  “You were right,” said Lowell. "Let's go home. I'm sorry about the whole thing.”

  “It's too late for that,” said his wife. "You dragged me here, and we're going in.”

  “If I was by myse
lf I wouldn't go in,” said Lowell. "I'd go home. I see the light now.”

  “You're not by yourself,” said his wife, starting toward the gate beneath the stoop.

  The basement was inhabited, after a fashion. Its windows still had glass in them, and in the left-hand one there was a dimestore sign that said REAL ESTATE. Below the sign was a notary decal that had mostly flaked off. Lowell's wife marched up intrepidly and began to haul away at the locked gate, while Lowell remained limply behind on the sidewalk with a miserable expression on his face. After a while the rattling and clashing was answered by a blond young man who looked about sixteen years old. "Most people ring the bell,” he said, indicating a boldly lettered sign that said RING THE BELL and pointed to the button with an arrow. Lowell had seen the sign but had not been able to find words to tell his wife about it. "At least you didn't tap on the window with a quarter,” said the young man, unlocking the gate with considerable bad grace. "God, I can't tell you how that bugs me. Taptaptaptap. Sweet Jesus.”

  “May I speak to your father?” said Lowell's wife.

  “I am my father,” said the young man. "I fought in the Korean war and I'm old enough to be your uncle. Everybody makes the same mistake, and frankly, I don't care if you believe me or not. Come into the dining room.”

  The room he led them to was an office with a desk and filing cabinets; it didn't look in the least like a dining room, and Lowell expected momentarily to be led somewhere else, but he wasn't. The preternaturally elderly young man went behind the desk and sat down moodily in a swivel chair. He was wearing tan chinos and a bulky-knit yellow turtleneck, both of them much cleaner than Lowell's clothes ever seemed to get. It seemed incredible that he'd been in the Korean war. He looked scarcely old enough to shave.