by Caryl Rivers
“You’re sure, Mary? You could be making a big mistake.”
“I’m sure.”
“I’ll be next door, at Rita’s.”
Her mother left, and Mary went into the living room and sat on the couch. She thought about Harry, the way he had looked in his baseball uniform, so young and full of hope; the gentleness in his hands when he’d held Karen for the first time; his face in the kitchen: ‘You and Karen, you’re my life.”
“Forgive me,” she said to the empty room. “Forgive me, please.”
She heard the door open, and Harry came into the room. He was wearing a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up high so the muscles in his arms would show; he was proud of those muscles. She didn’t like the shirt rolled up that way. She thought it looked cheap, lower class. They’d had a fight once, when she told him that.
“Hello,” he said. He never said “hello.” He always said “Hi,” with that way of tilting his head. He knew.
“Hello, Harry.”
He walked in and sat in the chair opposite her. He did not lean back but sat rigid. He looked right at her, and his eyes were frozen circles. She groped for words, but they came out in uneven chunks, not the way she had rehearsed it.
“Harry, I’ve been thinking, well, about you and me.”
Her palms were sweating, and her stomach churned, but she plowed on, feeling clumsy. “I think it would be better for both of us if we didn’t get back together.”
He was still looking at her with the frozen blue circles. That wasn’t like him.
“We were married so young, and things didn’t go right from the beginning. Maybe if we had been older. But we were kids. I wasn’t any good for you, Harry.”
His silence baffled her. She rushed to fill it. “I haven’t made you happy. A lot of it was my fault. I didn’t know how to be a wife. I wanted to, but — maybe we have to admit that we made a mistake. People do.”
He looked at her, cold as stone. She had never seen him this way. When he was angry he roared with outrage, and when the anger was gone he sat and stared at the wall. She looked at his hands, resting on the arms of the chair. They were short, blunt, strong, unlike Jay’s hands, which were long and tapered. Harry’s hands seemed odd to her now.
“Are you asking me for a divorce?” he said.
“Yes. I think it would be best for both of us.”
“I thought that was it when you called me. You haven’t called in along time.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but I didn’t want — I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“You and that photographer. I heard about that. Now all of a sudden you want a divorce.”
“No, I was thinking about it before —” She paused, certain he could tell she was not speaking the truth.
“Before what?” He was still looking at her calmly. She wished he would get angry and yell. She knew how to handle him then, make him feel that he was in the wrong.
“Say it. Before what?”
“Before I met Jay.”
“Before he fucked you.”
“Don’t talk like that, Harry. Let’s not be — unpleasant.” That sounded absurd, a line from an English parlor drama.
“No. Let’s not be unpleasant. That wouldn’t be nice.”
He was mocking her; she hadn’t expected that. He was still sitting motionless in the chair.
“You don’t like the word? It’s fuck, babe. You don’t like the word, but you like doing it.”
“Please, Harry, can’t we be civil?”
“My wife.” He leaned forward in his chair. “The hotshot reporter. A guy who works in a laundry isn’t good enough for her. She gets hot panties for a guy who carries a camera, shacks up with him like a bitch in heat.”
“Harry —”
“It’s OK for me to live like a goddamn hermit all these months so if I’m a good little boy I can come home to momma. I bought a load of shit from you, babe. It’s all over town that I got horns; the only one who didn’t know was me.” He looked directly at her. “Does he have a long one, babe? Do you like it when he rams it into your cunt? Good luck to him, because you’re a cold bitch. I been in bed with a lot better ass than you, babe.”
He was angry now, but it was still a cold, controlled anger. She could see his hands trembling.
“Do you suck his cock? Do you let him lick your pussy? Do you do tricks for him, like a whore?”
“Stop that, Harry.”
“Tell me, what does he do to you? I want to hear it.”
“I’m not going to sit here and listen to this.”
“I’m going to say what I like, and you’re going to listen, whore.”
“I was always faithful to you, Harry, when we were together. Can you say the same thing? You’d come home smelling of cheap perfume, it would stink up the room.”
“You were always so holy. The big saint. You didn’t waste any time the first time some guy tried to get into your pants.”
“It’s not that way, Harry. I love him. Can’t you understand that? I love him.”
That rocked him, she could see it in his eyes. But his anger congealed again, and he clenched and unclenched his fist, still resting it on the arm of the chair.
“I used to take you out in the car, and you let me feel you all over, right away. Let me grab your tits, do whatever I wanted. You were hot for it. You were trash then, and you’re trash now.”
She was dumbfounded. Had this been eating at him all along?
“I was a girl, a normal girl. What did you want, a block of ice?”
“You’re a whore-cunt, and I made the mistake of marrying you. How many guys did you put out for, besides me?”
“What a filthy mouth you have. You drag things down to the gutter. You always have.”
He got up, walked over to her and looked down. “I’m good at four-letter words.” He reached down and put his hands on her breasts, hurting her. She tried to pull away, but he was too strong. “Four-letter words. Like fuck. Like cunt. Like Mary.”
His hands held her, painfully, and she hated him for making her so powerless. She wanted to kick him, bite him, but she thought of Karen, asleep upstairs, and she remained still. He put his hand up under her skirt, between her legs, and jabbed his finger into her. “Cunt.”
Then he released her, and she jumped up, gasping with outrage. She was too angry to care whether he hit her or not.
“Now go and pick on somebody your own size, you bastard! The only guts you ever had came from a bottle!”
She hated the words the moment she said them, but she could not take them back. She had always known exactly how to shame him. He stood still, vibrating with rage, his mouth working. She realized, suddenly, that he was trying not to cry. She was so shocked that the anger suddenly left her.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Harry. I didn’t!”
“You want a divorce, fine, you get one. For adultery. I want to see you stand up and admit you’re a whore. Try and tell the judge you’re a fit mother after that. You’re not a fit mother, you’re a whore. Go ahead, try to get Karen after everybody sees you’re a whore.”
A sob rattled through him, and he turned and ran out of the house. She stood still, staring at the spot where he had been. Her anger was gone. His sob still sounded in her ears. How he must have cared. So much more than she. Guilt embraced her, for not knowing how he cared. She began to shake, and she sat down in the chair until the shaking was under control and then called Jay to come over. Her mother came back from Rita’s, but Mary avoided her questions. When Jay’s car pulled up, she ran out and climbed in the front seat.
“What is it? What happened?”
“Jay, drive, please. Anyplace.”
They drove in silence for a while. “He said he’d divorce me for adultery. He said he’d prove I was an unfit mother.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“I did a stupid thing. I got mad at him. I should ha
ve known how hurt and angry he was. But he said things —’
“What things?”
“Rotten things. About you and me.”
“What? Tell me what he said, the prick.”
“I don’t want — Oh, God!” She began to sob, her whole body shaking, and he pulled the car off the road and held her. “What did he say?” and she heard the anger in his voice. She remembered how he had smashed the bedpost, and she was suddenly afraid of what Harry and Jay could do to each other.
“Oh, Jay, he was almost crying. I was such a fool. I thought we’d have this nice little chat. He knows it’s all over town about us.”
“Christ!”
“To try to take Karen away from me, I never thought he’d do that. I never, ever thought.” she wept again, desperately, against his chest, her breath rasping. When she was spent, she rested against him exhausted, and he stroked her back.
“Mary, what are we going to do?” He sounded tired, drained.
“I don’t know.”
There was a long silence, and then he said, “I’m not going to ask you to choose between me and Karen. I can’t ask you to do that.”
She thought of Karen, the bright eyes and the high, clear voice, who liked to draw farts and ride her wagon at breakneck speed down the hill. She had never known she could love a child the way she loved Karen. Often she’d be at work on a story in the city room, and something that her daughter had said that morning would pop into her head, making her smile. She thought of Harry, raising their daughter. Belvedere would make her nice, docile, polite. She wouldn’t let that happen. Belvedere was not going to get Karen.
“If I had a kid,” he said, “I could never walk off and leave her. Not for anybody.”
“I know.”
“I thought, what the hell, plenty of people get divorced. But I never figured this. I should have.”
She did not answer him.
“I won’t ask you to choose.”
They sat in silence for a long time, and then he said, “If I were smarter, maybe I could think of something. But I can’t. Every way you slice it, it comes out the same way. I can’t make things come out the way I want them to. I never have.” He laughed, a bitter laugh with no mirth. “Maybe you’re better off without me, anyhow. I got the Midas touch in reverse. Everything I touch turns to shit.”
She looked at him, his face etched with misery. In a few hours, she had reduced one man to tears and another to self-loathing. The thought awed her. She had always thought of herself as a woman a man could easily do without.
He took a deep breath and said, “Well, it’s been a long night. We’d better get out of here.”
He turned on the ignition, and she reached over and shut it off. Then she pressed her mouth against his and kissed him, an erotic kiss. She felt his mouth open under hers, and then he jerked away.
“What the hell are you trying to do to me, Mary?”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Tell me. I don’t like guessing games.”
“I love you. I want you now. Tomorrow. For good.”
“What about Karen?”
“I wasn’t thinking: he couldn’t get her. He has a police record for being drunk and disorderly. I was so wrought up I wasn’t thinking straight. Now I am. A private detective could get so much on Harry in twenty-four hours he’d have no case. The whoring, the drinking. Would a judge give a child to an ex-drunk?”
“You’d get a detective on him?”
“If he forces me to it, yes.”
He frowned.
“You think I’d like that?” she said. “My God, it would make me sick, but if he tried to take Karen, I would.”
“Jesus, that would be a mess.”
“That’s right, a mess. You don’t have to stay around for it, Jay.”
“What do you mean by that crack?”
“Fair warning. It’s going to be messy and ugly. But I’m going to get the divorce. Harry could name you corespondent in a suit, I couldn’t stop that. But you’re free to go, Jay. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Is that what you think of me? That I’d just say, ‘It’s been fun,’ and light out?”
“No, I think you’d stick it out, even if it made you sick to your stomach. Like your father, driving his cab while he was dying. You’re like him, you wouldn’t quit. But I don’t ever want to be a weight around a man’s neck, Jay. Not again. I have too much pride for that.”
“You’d never be that. Not you.”
“Promise me, Jay, if there’s ever a time that you don’t want me, you won’t stay out of pity.”
“What kind of crazy talk is that?”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Make love to me.”
“Here?”
“Here, on the ground, anywhere. If you want to.”
“I want to.”
“Up yours, creep,” Mary said into the receiver, and then I slammed it down.
At the next desk, Jay looked up and said, “The mayor is calling again?”
“One of our readers, calling us nigger lovers.”
“Yeah, I’ve been getting it too.”
Sam looked up from his typewriter. “I get nigger-loving Jew. A twofer.”
“Did you hear there was a cross burning out in Howard County last night?” she said.
“The Klan, in Maryland?” Sam asked.
“They were pretty big in the state in the twenties. They haven’t been around for a while.”
Jay’s phone rang, and he picked it up. “Yeah, this is Broderick.” He paused. “Yeah? Well, same to you, pal.”
“Another one?”
“Yeah. Some of the folks are pissed at me.”
The Blade had used boxcar type for the headline, HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETES ARRESTED IN FIRE DEATHS. The story went on to say that it was a detail remembered by the Blade photographer Jay Broderick that had helped crack the case. The pair of boxing gloves hanging in the rear window of the car had jogged the memory of one of the state troopers. He recalled that a senior a Belvedere High School, a member of the football team, had been picked up twice for reckless driving, and his car had a pair of gloves hanging in the rear window. Under questioning, the young man had broken down and admitted that he had been driving the car the night of the fire. He said they had only meant to set the fire as a warning, that they had no intention of killing anyone.
“Do you believe that stuff about the kids not wanting to hurt anybody?” Sam asked Mary.
“Maybe. But when you set a fire, you have to be an idiot not to know it could happen.”
“Their lawyer is trying to say it was just a prank that went wrong,” Jay said.
Sam shook his head. “Burning down a house is not a fucking prank. It’s arson, and in this case, murder.”
“It’s all people are talking about,” Mary told them. “I was out getting reactions. People are upset. They know the kids, they know the families. You know who they’re mad at? The Negro community. For starting the whole thing in the first place. One guy blamed us for bringing in ‘outside agitators.’”
“Sounds like George Wallace.”
“Will the DA go for murder one?” Jay asked.
“I think he will,” Sam said. “This is a national story. The wires are carrying our stuff; the Times and the Post are on it. How can they plea-bargain, when a woman and child were burned to death?”
Milt walked over to Jay’s desk. “Great work on picking up on those gloves, Jay. Have you got the pictures for me?”
“What pictures?”
“Miss Darnestown. Didn’t you shoot that Wednesday night?”
“Oh, yeah.” He reached into his desk. “Miss Darnestown, nineteen sixty-three. She’s sixteen, and she’s got legs like Bronco Nagurski but the boobs you would not believe. I don’t see how she can even stand up.”
Milt peered at the picture. “Oh, my God, that’s too much cleavage. This
is a family newspaper.”
“Milt, that’s all this girl has got — head, feet and cleavage.”
“Well, you’re going to have to ink it in.”
“How about I take the schlong I took off the puppy and paste it on Miss Darnestown’s tits?”
“Real funny, Jay. The time you stuck Richard Nixon’s head on Miss Hagerstown, it almost got in the paper.”
“I should have done it the other way around. Nixon has better legs than Miss Hagerstown.”
“I need the picture right away.”
Jay sat down with the bottle of ink and a sigh. “This is a crime, desecrating a natural wonder. Milt, I am an artist, a fucking artist, I capture life with my camera. What the fuck am I doing here, splashing ink on Miss Darnestown’s tits?”
“Just do it. And give me a caption.”
As Jay was typing the caption the phone rang.
“City Room. Broderick. Oh, for Christ’s sake, go fuck yourself, you pervert.”
“Jay, what the hell —” Milt said.
“He asked me if I had sucked any black cock today.”
“How many of those have you gotten?”
“At least a dozen.”
When he finished with the picture, Jay beckoned to Mary, and she walked over to his desk.
“Hey, I heard from the guy I told you about, the art director at the new magazine they’re starting in New York.”
“Does it sound good?”
“Yeah. The guy who’s backing it has lots of dough. He wants to make it a real slick city magazine, you know, arts and politics and profiles, stuff like that.”
“Are they hiring any writers?”
“At first they’re going to use mainly freelance. But if it flies, they’ll need some staff people. I told him about you, and he said you sound perfect for them. Somebody who’s done politics, and can write features.”
“What are they paying?”
“If they hired me for staff, I could get maybe two hundred a week. That’s pretty good money.”
“New York. I’ve never been there. Broadway, the Great White Way — oh, Jay, it would be exciting to be there!’
“If I got the job, we could pick up and go. You have custody of Karen.”
