You Don't Have to Live Like This

by Benjamin Markovits

  “She’s a fine cook.”

  But my mother said, “It isn’t her cooking. She has no sense of ceremony. The children should get a sense of what Christmas means.”

  “You mean, they should get a sense of the effort you put into it. They should feel guilty.”

  “Putting a little effort into something is nothing to be ashamed about. The fact is that Andrea is not a great coper, which I don’t understand at all, because she has much more help in the home than I ever had.”

  Afterwards my mother and I cleared up and my dad went out to smoke a cigarette. “Did you have a fight about something?” she said, over the dishes. “What about?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Who won?”

  “You mean the squash? I did.”

  “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  The next day my brother drove down from Houston by himself, about a five-hour drive. We had a late lunch together and afterwards Brad and I went out to throw a football in the street. It was about sixty degrees out, there was no wind, and even through the endless white cloudy sky you could feel the heat of the sun.

  Brad was a couple of inches taller than me, bigger in the chest and better looking, with fair hair and a blond face. But he’d also grown a gut, sitting on his ass and billing time. Mostly he threw and I chased the balls down, running routes down the middle of the road.

  At one point he said to me, “So you getting any action in Detroit?”

  “I think I got a girlfriend,” I said. “A real Detroiter.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Someone who grew up there, not someone like me. She’s black.”

  “I meant, what do you mean, think?”

  “It’s early days.”

  You couldn’t talk like this throwing a ball back and forth, but sometimes a car came by, and then we stood around together by the side of the road and carried on a conversation. We wanted to talk and sometimes flipped the ball between us for an excuse.

  After a while, he said, “I think Dad’s got a girlfriend.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He keeps calling me up. He wants to talk. He wants to make me like him before he tells me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This is why Mom’s stressed out.”

  “I don’t understand, did Mom say something to you?”

  “She’s been saying stuff like this to me for the past twenty years, but this time she says it’s true.”

  “And you believe her this time?”

  “I believed her some of the times before.”

  “How come Mom doesn’t tell me any of this stuff?”

  “Come on, Greg. You’re her little boy. She loves you more.”

  He drove home before supper, around six o’clock. My mother tried to put something on the table for him, but Brad said he planned to eat on the road—it would keep him awake. So this was the last real conversation I had about anything until I got back to Detroit. But that was partly my fault. I don’t know why I didn’t tell them about Gloria.

  A FEW DAYS INTO THE New Year, my dad moved out and I started spending a lot of time on the phone with my mother. She didn’t know for sure if he was seeing somebody. At first all he did was rent a room from some friends of his in New Orleans, the same place I moved into briefly after quitting my job at Aberystwyth. My mom had bad things to say about these people, whom she once considered friends of hers, too, but I also felt implicated in the business. As if I’d been giving him ideas.

  “Look,” I said. “It’s not like I was particularly happy there. I mean, I didn’t last long.”

  “I’m sure he’s having a ball.”

  “Are you talking to each other?” I said.

  “He tries to call me about every other day, but I don’t want to talk to him so I hang up the phone.”

  “What did he say to you when he moved out?”

  “He said he wasn’t very happy. He said he’d been trying to talk to me about this for some time, which is true, but that I didn’t want to hear it. That’s true, too. I never could see the point of analyzing what you can’t change, which is that we were more or less stuck with each other. But apparently he didn’t see it that way.”

  “So what did he say? I mean, did he explain what he thought he was doing?”

  “He said, the way we were living, it didn’t seem to him any violation of our marriage for him to get a room somewhere in New Orleans and spend a little time there.”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  “You know what he meant. Don’t make me say it,” she said.

  It was very hard for me to tell how much I cared. I don’t mean that I didn’t seem to care at all, just the opposite. I talked about what was happening to Gloria and sometimes it felt like a kind of offering to her. She had told me her terrible story about her father and so I was telling her mine. Gloria turned out to be a good sympathizer. She had the kind of sympathy people want more of. But what I was doing using this material, which was more or less the story of my life, the people who made me, my whole childhood, and feeding it into a relationship that was about a month old, like it was some kind of fuel, to raise the temperature, I don’t know.

  A week after New Year her classes began, which knocked her out most evenings, but we saw each other on the weekends. She introduced me to her mother, who was an attractive, elegant, not very nice woman, in her early fifties. She had long straightened black hair, with some white in it, and a long sort of French-looking face. I guess her coloring was what people in books call high yellow. By this point I had started reading a lot of African American literature—Black Boy first, then Another Country. I figured I may as well educate myself, but I was also a little ashamed, since it seemed I had a taste for it, and I didn’t want Gloria to know it was a taste.

  Her mother was named Eunice; her stage name was Eunice Ray. She used to be a singer and was moderately successful in her thirties, when Gloria’s father met her at Cliff Bell’s jazz club. It wasn’t called Cliff Bell’s then, but something else. I heard this story from Gloria first, and then Eunice. Tom Lambert seems to have been a well-known, well-liked figure in his community. People came to him with their legal problems, he listened to everybody, he worked hard. But he also liked to have a good time, even if he didn’t drink, he liked pretty women. “I was one of them,” Eunice said. “Gloria takes after her father. What?”

  “Nothing,” Gloria said.

  But she showed me a few photographs. Her father had one of those innocent happy dark-skinned white-teethed black faces that probably cover up a lot of private opinions. He must have been fairly old when they had Gloria. I got the sense that she was his darling girl, and maybe Eunice used to resent it, and still did.

  The first time I met her she gave us brunch in her apartment. It was all laid out when we got there, on her number one china. Eunice was dressed in a thin floating dress or robe, which had an African print on it, made of different browns, but you could also see through it to her gray silk underclothing. I was incredibly nervous, but Gloria told me not to worry. My mom’s a big snob, she said. And in fact we ended up ganging up on Gloria, making fun of her.

  Afterwards I saw her around the building occasionally. She always looked heavily made-up, even when stepping out with the trash. I offered to carry it down for her once—she seemed the kind of woman who doesn’t mind a little gallantry.

  Gloria and I talked about our parents a lot. At the end of January a letter from my father arrived. He had called a few times while I was out, but I hadn’t called back. This is what he said in his letter, or the gist of it anyway. He said he hadn’t been happy since he retired. There are men who like retirement but not that many in his experience. He used to argue with my mother about moving back to New Orleans, but the truth is, she never liked the city very much, and her life was the house. But he didn’t have anything to do.

  “This is why I watched all that TV,” he wrote. “Even when you w
ere kids I watched a lot of TV. Instead of getting up to no good. I thought, better stay on your ass and watch TV. Keep out of trouble. And I don’t regret the time I spent on the couch, because I wanted to be a good husband and father. And believe me, the TV helped. But I’ve been playing that game now for almost forty years, and after a while I thought, who are you doing it for anymore. You kids don’t need us anymore. And I don’t make your mother particularly happy. You’re sixty-five years old, and all your so-called domestic virtue is really just another name for laziness. So get off your ass. I don’t have any illusions about going it alone either. Men of my generation weren’t brought up to it. But I’ve got a room at the Wenzlers’, and there isn’t a TV in it. If I haven’t got a reason for going out I lie in bed and read books. When I was your age, or maybe a little younger, I loved to read. Of course, there’s another side to my life here but I don’t expect you want to hear about it so I won’t tell you. But this is what I want to say. From the outside I look like a worse man now than I did two months ago. But it doesn’t feel that way from the inside, it really doesn’t. For the first time in years I feel like a moral agent again. I’m a human being, and people coming into contact with me are bumping into somebody who is actually there. They get some response. For years, and this is literally true, I didn’t say a single thing I hadn’t said before, not to anybody, not even to your mother. Now I say something new every day. All this is kind of a long-winded apology. But what I really want to apologize for is that dumb fight we had over Christmas, when I was still dealing with this shit. Maybe I was jealous of you. Your brother understands a little better what I’m talking about, he has three kids of his own. But he’s also got his own reasons for staying mad, which you don’t have. So next time I call you pick up the phone, don’t play these answering-machine games. They’re beneath you. And let’s talk.”

  And he signed himself with his name, “Your father, Charlie.”

  I showed this letter to Gloria, but for once she gave me the wrong kind of sympathy. I’m sorry, she said, this is the craziest excuse I ever heard. A man walks out on his wife to make himself a better man. And for something to talk about. You’ve got to be kidding me. She got too angry on my behalf; she was also a little angry at me. But we didn’t have a fight about it—I kept the lid down.

  22

  Walter knew my father a little, they met at graduation, but he wasn’t around to talk to. When I got back from Baton Rouge I found a note under my door. Walter and Susie had decided to fly home—they were going to spend New Year with his mother. I was surprised the doctors let her fly. And then one night Walter came back alone. I heard his taxi idling in the street and went down to say hello. Susie had stuck around in New York and was trying to mend fences with her parents. I carried one of his suitcases inside.

  He offered me a cup of tea and I went upstairs to get some fresh milk. Then he told me what had happened. Just before Christmas they lost the baby. For two days Susie didn’t feel any kicking. She was getting more and more panicky, so Walter told her to go in, just so the doctors could calm her down. But the heart had stopped. There was a problem with the placenta, blood clots; the truth is, they were surprised the placenta had lasted as long as it did. Then they doped her up with Pitocin so she could push the baby out. Susie found the whole thing not only unbelievably awful but tremendously embarrassing—to go through all the special attention of labor for the sake of this dead thing. So afterwards they flew home. She needed a change of scene and couldn’t face anybody who knew her pregnant. They weren’t telling people yet so I should keep quiet. And I didn’t feel like bringing up my father with him. He looked fat and sweaty and unhappy. There wasn’t much to eat in his apartment, but he found an old box of Entenmann’s powdered doughnut holes and kept popping them into his mouth while we talked.

  I told him about Gloria, but the first time we appeared in public together was Jimmy’s baptism. Cris had had her baby, another son, and Tony asked me to be his godfather. This surprised me. I didn’t think we got along very well anymore. But Tony was one of those confident abusive types who act that way only in front of people they like. He could be pretty quiet with strangers. It’s also possible that his best friends got pissed off with him after a while, so he had to keep making new ones.

  Walter came, too. We put on our jackets and ties, and Gloria met us at the house, wearing a cream-colored dress and a cream-colored hat with black spots, and a rose on top. Her overcoat was a hand-me-down from her mother, with a black fur trim. She looked great. Going to church was one of the things she really dressed up for.

  I couldn’t tell what impression she made on Walter. He had a funny way with women he didn’t know. He simpered and half shut his eyes; he talked very gently. And Gloria made a real effort. “This is what happens when a man dresses himself,” she said, and tightened the knot of my tie. Then she offered to straighten out Walter’s. I could feel her hands on his shirt, my first little flare-up of sexual jealousy. It wasn’t till we pulled up outside the church, which had a parking lot big enough for a football field, that I realized how painful the whole business must be for him.

  There was a sign fronting the road, like a football scoreboard, which read:

  ST BARNABAS WELCOMES INTO CHRIST

  JAMES CARNESECCA

  WILLIAM HOFSTEDTER

  LUCY TEMPLETON

  Underneath that it said:

  SPAGHETTI DINNER

  JAN 20 7 P.M.

  Gloria knew about Susie but wasn’t supposed to. She was the only black person in the church and I walked in holding her arm and feeling self-conscious. Everybody would assume we were sleeping together, but the truth is we weren’t.

  On the second night I spent with her, Gloria explained to me what the deal was. She wasn’t a virgin, but the two or three times she’d had sex with her boyfriends she ended up regretting it afterwards, when the relationship ended. It seemed to make ending it more painful. So I was going to have to take it slow. It was early days so I didn’t argue with her. But even though we started spending many of our weekends together, nothing changed. I called what we did the hug-and-spoon race, which nobody won. She liked the phrase and I was stuck with that, too. On nights she stayed over I got very little sleep—I couldn’t sleep. We fooled around a little and did other stuff. Her thighs were like a strong boy’s, muscular and warm brown and totally smooth. She had these short little powerful legs. Her body was longer; her breasts sat up high on her chest; her nipples were rough and large. Once she took pity on me (the whole thing seemed to amuse her somehow) and gave me a hand job, but I didn’t like that much. It made a mess and left messy feelings, too. I felt kind of sticky all over, and she seemed to resent it afterwards. So we had a fight later about something else. I didn’t ask her again, but whenever she stayed over I couldn’t sleep. Sleeplessness makes me obsessive; I lay there next to her body all night obsessing.

  Church was a funny place to have these thoughts. Two other kids were being baptized that day—all the parents sat together in the front row. Mostly it was just a normal service, but then Cris and Tony walked up with baby James, and I walked up, too, in front of everybody. The priest had black hair, combed up at the front like Elvis’s. His skin was very pink, though he probably had to shave a lot, because the black hairs came through darkly. He wasn’t very tall. Then he took the baby and dipped his head and Jimmy didn’t do anything but just lay there stupidly with a wet head. He cried when Cris took him. Cris and Tony said their bits, and I had to cast out the devil. Then we walked back and sat down. But the devil felt real to me then, I must say.

  The priest, whose name was McAndrew, read out: “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

  For some reason Brad wasn’t baptized but I was. My mother must have insisted, and for the second-born son my dad didn’t put up a fight. So I was once a baby with a wet head. Tony and Cris were sitting in front of me, and I could see Jimmy trying to push his
nose into her breast. Cris had on a dress you can’t lift up, and he was crying and butting his nose against her. I remember thinking, Don’t be greedy.

  Afterwards we all filed out. The Carneseccas had invited everyone back to their place. For once it wasn’t snowing. The sun shone bright enough the snow hurt your eyes, and most of the guests wore sunglasses as they walked to their cars. We were all dressed up and out of the house early on a Sunday morning, and people had a relaxed easy air, like it’s time to get drunk. Gloria said to me, “I been to church twice today already. Aren’t I a good little girl?”

  “A very good girl.”

  She said, “You know, you don’t have to hold my arm all the time. I’m okay.”

  Then Walter caught up with us and drove us to Tony’s.

  Everybody arrived at more or less the same time, but Tony had paid for caterers. Pretty soon the house was full of people and it wasn’t a big house. I ran into Mel Hauser.

  “I didn’t see you in church,” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. When are you and me going to hit the range again?”

  I introduced him to Gloria, but he wandered off to get another drink. He seemed a little drunk already.

  There were flowers all over the house. Cris had banged in nails and hung flowers over the front door and the kitchen door, and by the stairs. The television set was hung with ivy.

  Robert James was there. So were Clay Greene and his wife. Their kids were there, too, and one of them said to Helen, “May we go outside?” He looked tall for his age and well brought up—he had short dark brown hair, parted in the middle. It looked recently cut. Afterwards I noticed him alone in the garden, rolling a snowball down the snowy slide. But it was only the angle of the window. Another kid, maybe his brother, rolled it back up again.

  Cris sat in the kitchen, nursing Jimmy. “Wasn’t he a good boy?” she said to me.

  “I’ve never been a godfather before,” I said. “What do I do?”

  “Just pay a little extra attention, that’s all I ask. It doesn’t matter so much now but later on. You’re a good influence on Tony. The boys could use a man in their life who isn’t their father.”