No Matter How Much You Promise

by Edgardo Vega

  She was extremely loyal and like a tigress in warding off potential rivals. The only women from whom she felt no threat were Brigid and his daughters. For Brigid she felt pity, since she was sharing her husband. And yet Brigid was eventually the one she grew to resent the most. One evening when they finished making love, she asked him what was going to happen.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know.”

  “I wanna have a kid,” she said, sitting up on her elbow, her breasts beautiful in the light coming in from the kitchen.

  “Are you pregnant?” he said, sitting up suddenly.

  “Would it matter if I was?”

  “No, but I already have six kids. Are you?”

  “No, I’m not, but I’d like to be. Maybe I could get my own place. I’m doing good working at the restaurant. Mr. O’Bannon says he’s gonna open another restaurant in the Village and I can help manage it. I asked him if we could have music and he said he didn’t think it’d be a problem. I could sing there. You could get a little band together. They have beautiful garden apartments in the Village. Fifteen or twenty dollars a month. I can pay that. You wouldn’t have to spend any money at all. I want you to go with me and pick it out.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, lying back down on the bed and putting his arm over his eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter that you’re married,” she went on, making plans and telling him how important he was to her. “You being married doesn’t matter because I know that you truly love me and there’s nobody else. I don’t mind if we see each other a few times a week. Please, Buck. I’m not asking you to leave Brigid. You have your children, but we should be together.”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” he said.

  She turned away and he knew that she was crying and he felt her leaving him, going away from him, the distance widening as he lay on the bed, his eyes closed, his mind drifting off into sleep. After a while he heard her ask if he wanted a cup of tea and woke up startled, thinking that it was morning and he had spent the night, immediately wondering what Brigid must’ve thought and worried about being late for work. He quickly understood that it was still late afternoon and he was on vacation. He sat up, and she was in the kitchen, dressed. He tried to explain why he thought it wouldn’t work out, but she stopped him and shook her head, again on the verge of tears.

  “It’s not that I don’t love you, Candy,” he said. “It’s not that at all.”

  “I know. You’d feel like a bigamist, wouldn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he said, but immediately he could tell she was being sarcastic and closed to him. “It would be like we were married.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  They sat in silence for an hour or so and then he left, knowing he’d never be with her again. As quickly as it had begun, it was over, although she still came up on summer weekends for the next four or five years. She seemed happy enough and she remained friendly toward him, always in good spirits, except that she was smoking and drinking a lot, and the nightlife was starting to get to her. And then she met Charlie Parker, and that was it. She became obsessed with him and the stories began to circulate. It was like Bird was this bright flame of a candle, his music burning everything around him with its brilliance, and Candy was a moth that couldn’t help itself and was drawn to the light, not feeling the heat until it was too late.

  Buck had remained celibate nearly a year, stunned by the absence of Candy’s love and the contrast of his life with his wife. Brigid didn’t question his lack of intimacy. In a way she was relieved. Eventually, he had returned to Brigid’s bed, often recalling their first years together when merely touching her silken skin was enough to make him want her. In those days she had laughed with embarrassment at his ardor, taking extra care to look pretty on weekends when he wasn’t so tired. Slowly, as childrearing and its attending duties took its toll on her, she grew less and less drawn to intimacy.

  Years passed. The children left to get married and he was again alone with Brigid. One day before he retired from the Transit Authority, he was returning from Maud’s house in Mount Vernon, walking on MacQuesten Parkway, above the railroad tracks, when he saw a black woman wielding a broom and waving it at a couple of white youngsters, running down the steps of her house.

  “Aw, you’re nothing but a nigger whore,” one of them said, once he was outside the gate.

  “Your mother’s the whore, you fey little mothafucka,” the black woman said, threatening to come off the porch with the broom.

  Their hands supporting them as they leaned out the windows, a few girls observed the scene with interest. He didn’t notice it then but recalled later that a couple of them were black and the others were white. One of the two young men, neither one of them over eighteen years of age, now picked up a rock and threw it at the black woman, barely missing her. It was then that he stepped forward and grabbed the boy and shook him.

  “Why don’t you cut that out and go home,” he said.

  “Fuck you, old man,” the first one said.

  “Yeah, grandpa, mind your own business,” said the other, making a threatening move.

  He was close to sixty, still working, and strong. Before he realized it he’d grabbed the first youngster by his shirt, brought him forward against his body, and then shoved him back several feet so that he landed in a ditch. Buck began to move toward the other one, but he ran off and the one in the ditch got up and, limping and cursing, followed his friend. He’d heard about the house from people on the job but had never been that curious about it.

  That was how he’d gotten to know Ruby Broadway and how he ended up going there, every couple of weeks at first, paying his money and making love to Ruby, who in 1972 was around forty. Ruby liked him and after the first year told him to forget the money, but then he brought her presents or asked if she needed any repairs done on the house. There was always something to do, so he went there almost every day, if only for a few minutes. He felt sorry for the girls and wondered if they had fathers. All of them called him Mr. Sanderson and none of them ever made the least lewd remark to him. He imagined that Ruby must’ve told them how respectful they must be. For a while he worried word would get around, but even if gossip reached Maud’s ears, she would pay little attention to it, preferring to sweep any unpleasantness under the rug of her conventions. He often saw men he knew—cops, firemen, trainmen, shop owners. They would nod to him and he would return their dour greetings, their recognition an acceptance of their illicit compact with each other.

  When he told Pop Butterworth, they’d go together, and Pop, who was younger, lay up with one of the girls and Buck sat with Ruby in the parlor and they talked about Mr. Eisenhower and Mr. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and communism and Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Dandridge and he would tell her she was just as beautiful and she would say, “Go on, you smooth-talking southern man. You think I ain’t heard that kind of stuff before?”

  “Well, it’s true, Miss Broadway, ma’am,” feeling so comfortable with her that his accent surfaced.

  “Were you a dancer in shows down in New York?” he once asked her, wondering how she’d come to the name Broadway.

  She laughed good-naturedly and slapped his arm as they sat drinking hot cocoa one winter afternoon with the snow falling in great big flakes that looked like cotton balls. Ruby explained that it was nothing as exciting as that.

  “I liked boys a whole lot and was carrying on from the time I was eleven, wanting to touch them and getting touched and touching myself and just interested in johnsons in general. You know how some people have a love of things. I loved dick. All kinds. Little ones, big ones, white ones, black ones, thick, thin. It didn’t matter—it gave me pleasure to look at them and touch them and get them all excited and have them go up into me. I read it could become a sickness, but it always made me real happy and healthy and I always slept like a baby and didn’t feel like the Devil was gonna come knocking on the door any day. One day I was fourteen ye
ars old and the Reverend Mr. Wilson began preaching about the straight and narrow and keeping to the ways of the Lord, and right there and then I start giggling, and my mama pinches me real hard so that tears come to my eyes. My friend Livonia asked me later what the heck I was laughing about and I said I was going to Little Rock and from there to Saint Louis and that from then on she should refer to me as Miss Ruby Broad Way, cause I wasn’t cut out for the straight and narrow. So I became Ruby Broadway.”

  He’d nodded and said that was certainly as good an explanation as a man could wish to hear, but what was her real name?

  “Ruby Broadway,” she said, looking at him in dead earnest, her eyes narrow and deadly, just like Buddy Whelan’s eyes, who lived with his mother in Hell’s Kitchen and who did jobs for the fellas on the docks and they said he’d killed so many people that, had he been working for the IRA, Ireland would be by now united and free of the British. He found out later that Ruby herself had killed a man once, in Saint Louis. “Had to shoot him,” she said. “He was coming at me with a knife. I put a little hole to the left of the nose. It was sad, cause I loved him. He gave me the clap and it got so bad that they had to take everything outta me. See, I was planning to retire from the business and find me a good man and have children and everything.”

  So he never pushed her about the name, or anything else, and just enjoyed her company. Sometimes, he’d fall asleep when she left the room and only woke up when the sun had gone down and then he’d wait for the bus back to Yonkers and once he was home Brigid would ask him where he had been and he’d make up a story, something he heard at a bar, like he’d run across Mike Flanagan and he was telling him about a nephew of his that had been jailed by the British and accused of a shooting in Ireland. And she’d mumble something about the IRA being ultimately the end of Ireland and go on about her business.

  Brigid was gone now and in spite of all the emptiness that he’d felt with her, it was worse without her. He couldn’t get over how the girl had gotten Billy to play the piano again. The two of them, Vidamía and Granny, had promised to bring him down to the city so he could hear Billy play, but he didn’t know if he was up to it. They were little she-devils, the two of them. He thought about how they’d gotten Billy to come up to the house in August, under the pretext that it needed repairs, while they moved the piano into the loft. He’d gone along with the deception, caught up in their daring and enthusiasm.

  What a life he’d had. What a long and wonderful life. How much longer would it last? Last time he had spoken to him Billy said Butterworth wasn’t doing too good. He wished he could go see him, but didn’t want to take a chance driving his car. Ernie Witkowski, an old friend from the Transit Authority, had had a heart attack while he was driving on the highway and his car struck a station wagon with a family of eight. Killed four of the kids and the mother. He didn’t want that on his conscience. Even though the doctor said he was still healthy, you never knew. If it wasn’t too cold tomorrow, he’d take the bus across to Mount Vernon and look in on Ruby. Fall was approaching, and then winter. He sat back in his rocker, lit his pipe, and when the tobacco was glowing he closed his eyes and he thought about Ruby’s body, the still taut skin that drew him to her. And then he once again recalled Candy Donovan and the lyrics of the song. It was just one of those things, just one of those crazy flings … He still wasn’t sure if he had done right by Candy.

  33. Ruby Broadway

  Maud Farrell sat across the diner booth from Ruby Broadway and, after they’d ordered lunch and it was brought to them, told her that Vidamía had gotten her boy to start playing the piano again and that now the girl had come up with another idea but she didn’t know quite what to make of it, and Billy’s wife had called and asked her what she thought of the scheme.

  “What scheme, woman?” Ruby said.

  “She’s gonna get him a piano,” Maud said.

  “She’s gonna do what?”

  “Yeah, she’s going to buy it.”

  “What’s it made out of, cardboard?”

  “No, a regular grand piano. Used, but a real one.”

  “Where she gonna get the money?”

  “She’s got one of them gold cards.”

  “Say what? You saw it?”

  “I sure did.”

  “And it’s got her name on it?”

  “That’s right, Vidamía Farrell.”

  “Looky, looky,” said Ruby. “Whyntcha talk to that child and see if she take us shopping. Ruby could use her a fur coat or some sort of girlish trinket. Her mama’s rich, ain’t she? No, it’s her stepdaddy’s got the bucks. It don’t matter none to me if he ain’t good-looking.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The song.”

  “What song?”

  “‘Summertime.’ Her daddy’s rich, and her ma is good-looking.”

  “Oh, right,” Maud said, cutting into her open roast beef sandwich.

  “You know something, girl?”

  “What?”

  “You’re too blond. Where do you go in your mind when you get like this?”

  “Oh, stop it, you old witch,” Maud said, brandishing the knife at Ruby.

  “Oh, scary white lady with a dull knife,” Ruby said, shrinking back in mock horror. And then becoming serious again: “You worried about this piano thing, ain’t ya?”

  “Yeah, she says that it might cause problems when her mother finds out. She wants me to go with her.”

  “To get the piano? You going?”

  “I don’t think I’ve got a choice. She’s got her sister on the case and if this one is smart, the other one is twice as cunning and can talk you out of your last dime.”

  “I know, honey. I seen her. You’re one lucky grandma having those girls. I gotta tell you something, though.”

  “What?”

  “Whoever named that child had no consideration. Your daddy’s right, that is one ugly name. I mean colored folks will make a blunder from time to time, calling a girl Velveeta or Linguina, but white people got some serious problems when it come to naming children. Hortense? Look out! Here come Hortense. Name sound like a threat and whatnot.”

  “A threat?”

  “Yeah, I’ma put a serious Hortense to you,” Ruby said and laughed, explaining that’s the way people up in the hills in Arkansas, where she came from, talked. “So’s you can hardly understand them. But that’s one ugly name, child.”

  Maud laughed uproariously, nearly choking on her food.

  “I don’t like it too much either, but everybody calls her Cookie or Horty.”

  “I like Cookie, but what she gonna do when she grows up?”

  “I guess she’ll deal with that when she gets to that point,” Maud said as the waitress asked if they wanted dessert.

  “Anyway,” Ruby said, “the reason I wanted to talk to you was that I’m worried about your father.”

  “Me too,” Maud said.

  “Business’s dropped off considerably the last couple of years, with AIDS and everything. My girls have always been clean, but to tell you the truth the kinds of young ladies applying for employment these days shouldn’t be trusted very much, if you ask me. So I’ve officially retired. At the end of the summer I gave the girls their bonuses. Right before I went to see my sister, Pearl, in North Carolina. To this day Pearl still thinks I been running a rooming house.”

  “Well, it was sort of a rooming house, wasn’t it? People roomed for short periods of time.”

  “No, it wasn’t. The place was a genuine, no-nonsense ho house,” Ruby said, pointing her knife at Maud. “Just shush for a moment and let me tell you about your dad.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry I interrupted you.”

  “That’s okay, just eat your vegetables and listen. Your father came by the other day,” Ruby said and paused, letting her statement hang enigmatically.

  “And?” Maud said, knowing something else was coming.

  “Shush! He just sat on the porch and talked about how tired he was, except he loo
ked fine. I knew something was up.”

  “It’s Mom being gone, I think,” Maud said.

  “No, it don’t have nothing to do with your mom being gone.”

  “What, then?”

  “Well, I’m thinking I don’t need a great big house like that,” Ruby said, her tone unsure, uncharacteristic for her. “I’m selling it and I’m going to get me one of those condominium-type apartments. And then again, I don’t know.”

  “What are you getting at, Ruby?” Maud finally said. “You sound like some teenage girl. Condominiums, my father, selling your house. You have to know that I know all about you and my father all these years so it can’t be about that.”

  “Well, it is and it isn’t,” Ruby said.

  “I see,” Maud replied, turning her eyes up to the ceiling in exasperation. “That really explains a whole bunch.”

  “Well, I was thinking that if you don’t mind, I’d keep him company, permanent like. If you don’t mind, that is. You being a white lady and your father being a white gentleman, I thought I better discuss it with you and kind of get your view on it.”

  “You gotta be joking. Tell me I’m not hearing right.”

  “Well, you never can tell with white folks.”

  “Ruby Robinson,” Maud said, warning her friend. “You insult me one more time and I’m never gonna talk to you again.”

  “Watch it, girl,” Ruby said, relieved that color wasn’t an issue between Maud and herself. It had been for a while during the business with Billy, but that had passed. “Just cause I told you my last name don’t mean you can go using it in public places.”