by Max Shulman
Meanwhile these two grown men stood and shifted from foot to foot and avoided one another’s eyes and tried to think of something to say. Finally Ira was struck by a bolt of pure inspiration: he knew exactly what to say to Virgil. “Hello,” he said.
Virgil smiled with joyous relief. Yes, that was the word all right. “Hello,” he replied.
“Hello,” said Ira again, and it seemed just as inspired the second time.
“Hello,” repeated Virgil. Then, spontaneously, he added a refinement of his own: he offered his hand to Ira.
Ira seized it, and with the firm clasp of palm on palm, embarrassment vanished like smoke. They exchanged level looks, honest smiles of friendship.
“I’m glad I got this chance to say good-bye,” said Ira. “Thanks for everything you’ve done—for me and for Polly.”
“Me? Hell, I haven’t done a thing.”
“More than you know,” said Ira. “And please say good-bye to your father. I hope he didn’t take it too hard—what happened last night on the telecast.”
“He’s fine. They’re letting him out of the hospital at noon. In fact, it’s taking four strong nurses to keep him there that long.”
“There was nothing personal in what I did. I’d like your father to understand that.”
“Relax, Ira. Pa’s cracked tougher nuts than you.”
“Well, give him my best.”
“I’ll do that when I pick him up. Anything you want me to say to Clendennon?”
A smile lit Ira’s face. “Is he in the hospital too?”
“In the crying ward,” replied Virgil. “He got fired two minutes after the broadcast. Your Mr. Davies doesn’t waste any time, does he?”
“Don’t think me hardhearted for laughing about Clendennon,” said Ira. “It’s not as serious as it seems. He may lay off for a few months, but in television sonsofbitches like Clendennon always manage to land on their feet.”
“It’s a property of sonsofbitches everywhere,” said Virgil. “When are you and Polly taking off?”
“Right now.”
“Hollywood?”
“No, but we’ll be in touch.”
“You do that, hear?”
“I hear and we will,” said Ira truthfully.
“My love to Polly.”
“Thank you.”
With a final handshake, Ira ran out of the building. Polly was standing outside the taxi, waiting.
“Virgil sends love,” he said to Polly. “And here’s a little from yours truly.”
He kissed her briefly but seriously.
At this point a tall, gangling figure emerged from behind a nearby oak tree where he had been spying: Gabriel. “Hi, Mr. Shapian,” he mumbled sheepishly. “Hi, Mrs. Shapian.”
“Gabriel,” said Ira, “you thought any about working for the FBI?”
Gabriel ignored the sally. “Sir,” he said to Ira, “you know what I thought I just saw? I thought I just saw you kissing Mrs. Shapian.”
“So you did, boy. Here, I’ll give you an encore.”
Ira kissed Polly again, this time with passion.
“Well, I’ll be dog!” said Gabriel incredulously. “Mrs. Shapian, you seemed to enjoy that.”
“It was heaven!” declared Polly and gazed adoringly at her husband.
“Kissing,” said Ira to Gabriel, “is what Mrs. Shapian and I do most of the time—often twelve or fifteen hours at a stretch. Do you know why?”
“No, sir. I swear I do not.”
“Because we are in love,” said Ira.
Gabriel turned eyes full of disbelief on Polly. “Is that true, ma’am? You’re in love? Both of you? With each other?”
“Yes,” she said, gently and honestly. “Yes, Gabriel. It is true.”
Gabriel scratched his head, licked dry lips. “Something’s wrong here,” he said helplessly. “I am confused.”
“Confused is exactly what you are,” said Ira, speaking quite without harshness, touching the boy’s elbow affectionately. “Now, if you don’t mind, we have a plane to catch.”
Gabriel nodded. “I’ll be going,” he said.
“Good-bye, Gabriel,” said Ira.
“I’ve got to rethink this whole situation,” said Gabriel.
“You do that,” said Ira.
Gabriel looked hopefully at Polly. “Have you got anything to say before I go, ma’am?”
“Just good-bye.”
“Sounds pretty final,” he said dolefully.
“And good luck,” she added with sincerity.
He grew moroser. “Sounds even more final.”
“Please don’t think us unfriendly,” said Ira, “but the airlines do have schedules.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to be a nuisance. Only thing is, everything’s so strange all of a sudden.… But I’ll be going now. Lots of rethinking to do. Days, maybe weeks, of rethinking. Someone has blundered, that’s for sure. But who? There’s the riddle. Who? Good-bye, ma’am. Good-bye, sir.”
Polly and Ira stood in silence and watched Gabriel shamble across the tree-lined quadrangle. Still silent, they got into the taxi. Ira turned his neck and looked out the back window at Gabriel receding in the distance. Nutty kid, thought Ira. Wild, exasperating, headlong kid. Volatile, mercurial, impetuous, precipitous, reckless, heedless, defenseless—in short, my kid. My vulnerable flesh and my unreasoning blood. Mine, and I can never let him know. Good-bye, my son. Good-bye, my seed, my self.
“Ira, are you crying?”
“Me? No. Something in my eye, is all.”
“What a coincidence. It’s in my eye too.”
“Really?”
“Really,” said Polly, and took Ira’s face between her hands and kissed him tenderly.
“Thank you,” said Ira to Polly. Then, to the driver, he said, “Airport.”
Ira took one last look out the back window as the cab started away, but Gabriel was gone.
Epilogue
Linus Calloway’s television station in Birmingham was housed in a converted garage—just barely converted. There was one single studio in which Ira Shapian, sweating happily, directed, produced, wrote, rehearsed, announced, and somehow made exciting viewing out of amateur talent, snips of noncommercial film, and provocative ad libs. There was no hint of professional gloss in Ira’s programs; neither was there the fumbling of amateurism. What lifted the shows and made them leap was the unexpectedness and breath of life.
A plywood partition separated the executive suite from the broadcasting studio. Behind this barrier sat Polly Shapian, working as secretary, receptionist, and switchboard operator, and performing each function with exemplary good cheer and monumental lack of skill. Nobody, however, seemed to mind, or, for that matter, to notice.
At night Polly and Ira went home to their substandard dwelling, ate a meal that would cause multiple suicides at the Cordon Bleu Society, and made love to one another—sometimes vigorously, sometimes without any contact whatever, but always happily.
Linus Calloway spent his workdays in the least prepossessing office any executive has ever occupied—unpainted plywood walls, a desk bought from the Goodwill Industries, and two kitchen chairs. What Linus did mostly was write checks, never losing his brave smile though his bank balance raced like a whippet toward the precipice of overdraft. Not one penny of income accrued to Linus’ station, until, to Linus’ surprise and delight, a small, unexpected windfall came one day: the William Lloyd Garrison Foundation informed him they wanted to engage his station and his personal services to tape their annual Community Relations Award on the fourteenth of March.
Professor Linden-Evarts, chairman of the board of trustees of the Garrison Foundation, arrived at Linus’ station at ten A.M. on the morning of March 14th. Despite the professor’s horrid personality, he got along famously with Linus because it quickly became obvious as they talked that both held the same views about race relations.
Promptly at noon the recipient of the Garrison Award appeared at the tv studio—Jefferson Ta
tum. He shook hands with Ira, Polly, and Linus, and then he addressed Linden-Evarts. “Professor,” he said, “you are looking at a very surprised man. I’d have bet my bottom dollar you’d never recommend me for the William Lloyd Garrison Award.”
“Why not?” asked Linden-Evarts.
“Well, first off,” said Jefferson, “if you’ll pardon my language, I had you figured for a sure-enough pissant.”
“A natural mistake, Tatum,” said Linden-Evarts generously. “Actually, you’re in the right phylum; you’ve just got the wrong genus. The kind of insect I am is not a pissant—though I confess I do give that impression—but a gadfly. And believe me, Tatum, it’s a useful thing to be in the academic world. You’ve no doubt heard universities described as the Groves of Academe? A grossly romantic misnomer, sir. Swamps of Academe is far more accurate. It is the little stinging, buzzing, swarming creatures like me who are best adapted.”
“I didn’t understand one word of that,” said Jefferson. “But never mind. There’s a more important reason why I never thought you’d give me the Garrison Award: you been calling me a tokenist every chance you got. You been saying I don’t give a hoot in hell about colored folks; all I want is to keep my Negroes quiet and peaceable.”
“And isn’t that true, Mr. Tatum?” Linus interjected.
“I ain’t saying,” replied Jefferson cannily. “But if it is, it seems to me a pee-poor reason to give somebody a race-relations award.”
“Mr. Tatum,” said Linus, “there’s no question that the Garrison Foundation could have picked any number of white folks who have a genuine feeling of brotherhood for Negroes. You, as Linden-Evarts says—and as I, too, happen to believe—just want to keep your Negroes quiet and peaceable. And how do you accomplish that? By paying a living wage. By giving equal job opportunities. By desegrating public facilities. By keeping a strict watch on police brutality. By denying the ballot box to nobody because of his color … Your motives, sir, are far from admirable, but your results pay off—for you and for the Negroes. Love is a beautiful ideal, and we should never stop striving for it. Meanwhile, enlightened self-interest deserves to be recognized.”
“And it better be recognized damn quick,” said Ira, looking at his watch. “Come on, Linus, Mr. Tatum. Let’s get this presentation taped. I’ve got a show going on in six minutes.”
Ira hustled Jefferson and Linus into the studio and placed them before a camera. “Roll it,” said Ira and threw a cue to Linus.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Linus, “the William Lloyd Garrison Foundation is one of America’s oldest, most tireless, and most effective forces working for better understanding between the races. Each year the Foundation gives a Community Relations Award to that city which has made the greatest strides toward true racial equality. It is my privilege now to present this year’s award to the city of Owens Mill. Accepting the award will be Mr. Jefferson Tatum, Owens Mill’s most prominent citizen and most dedicated laborer in the cause of racial equality.”
Linus handed a handsome bronze plaque to Jefferson.
“Thank you kindly,” said the old man. “I ain’t one for speeches. I only want to say this: I never set no store by the color of a man’s skin; it’s what’s inside that counts. I’m real proud of this award and I want to announce, here and now, that first thing tomorrow morning I am sending one million Tatum Cigarettes, absolutely free of charge, to the NAACP.”
Ira, torn between laughing and crying, made the throat-cutting gesture and the camera went dead.
“I done pretty good, huh, sonny?” Jefferson asked Ira.
“You were incredible,” replied Ira.
“You wasn’t bad neither, Mr. Calloway,” said Jefferson, patting Linus’ shoulder.
“You are too kind,” said Linus.
“Let me ask you something,” said Jefferson to Linus. “This here tape we just made—who’s going to see it?”
“We’ll run it on this station, of course,” said Linus. “And the Garrison Foundation will supply copies to every other station in the country. Some will use it; some won’t.”
“Uh-huh,” said the old man thoughtfully. “So just as a rough estimate, maybe ten or twenty million people might see this tape.”
“Entirely possible,” said Linus.
Jefferson grew even more thoughtful. “Mr. Calloway,” he said, “can I talk to you private for a minute?”
“Certainly.” Linus ushered Jefferson into his shabbily furnished office. They sat.
“Mr. Calloway,” said Jefferson, “before I came down here, I done a little investigating about your television station. I’d say you was in pretty bad trouble. You’ve got no money to buy canned shows. You’re putting your programs together out of spit and gumption. You’ve got no rating to speak of, and your bank account is disappearing like frost on a spring morning.”
“All true,” admitted Linus promptly. “Just the same, we are picking up a small audience, and my bank account isn’t quite empty. I figure we still have a chance.”
“Mathematically, I’d reckon about a ten percent chance.”
“And I’d reckon you’re pretty close to the mark.”
“Slim odds, friend,” said Jefferson.
“I never thought it would be easy,” answered Linus.
Jefferson removed a checkbook from his breast pocket. “Would you like a donation of five million dollars?” he asked.
“Let me put it this way,” said Linus. “Yes.”
The old man wrote a check and shoved it across the desk. It’s yours.
Linus made no move to pick up the check; instead, he looked closely at Jefferson. “Forgive the question, Mr. Tatum, but is it conceivable that the Garrison Award has given you just a tiny attack of conscience?”
“I’m a businessman, Mr. Calloway. And I thought you was too. Us businessmen don’t say words like conscience. What we say is deductible contributions and things like that.”
“Quite right,” Linus agreed.
“Also—I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Calloway—Shapian gave me a pretty good kick in the head when he did that show up at Acanthus College. Sales been disappointing since that goddam program.… So I’m thinking this. You say ten or twenty million people are going to look at the tape we just done. I calculate a quarter of ’em, maybe a third, will be black. Right?”
“Probably.”
“And when them black folks see me getting the Garrison Award, there’s bound to be an awful lot of ’em switching over to Tatum Cigarettes. Way I look at it, I’ll get this five million back with interest, and damn soon.”
Now Linus pocketed the check. “Self-interest—God bless it,” he murmured.
“I’d appreciate it,” said Jefferson, “if you’d let this be an anonymous contribution.”
Linus’s eyes widened. “That, I confess, puzzles me.”
“It shouldn’t,” said Jefferson. “It’s my experience nothing gets talked about quicker than an anonymous gift. Ain’t that the way you’ve found it?”
“It is,” said Linus.
“Sure. So you get a double payoff. First off, folks think you’re a mighty big feller for giving away so much money. Second, they think you’re an even bigger feller for not blowing your horn about it.”
Linus laughed deeply.
“Thoroughly enjoyed our visit, Linus,” said Jefferson, rising.
“Come again soon, Jefferson,” said Linus, offering his hand.
Barbara Ogilvie Owens Fuller, called Boo, thought long and hard about bearing Ira’s second bastard in brave secrecy, and the longer and harder she thought, the less brave seemed the project and the more imbecilic. Even for a soul as exalted as Boo’s, there is a point when nobility must yield to good sense. One day, during her third month of pregnancy, Boo finally reached that point. She invited Virgil to come by.
“Virgil,” she said, “you have been asking me to marry you for more than twenty years. Would you marry me now if I told you I was bearing another man’s child?”
�
��I can think of more ideal conditions,” replied Virgil, “but yes.”
“Do you want to know who the other man is?”
“Hell, no!”
“I feel I must be completely honest,” said Boo. “It is Ira Shapian.”
“I didn’t ask you,” said Virgil, “and I’d have been a lot happier never to know. Still, I will say this: I can’t fault your taste.”
“Ira Shapian is also Gabriel’s father,” said Boo.
There was a period of silence from Virgil. “Boo,” he said at length, “I told you I’d marry you, and I will. But if it’s not too much trouble, do me one favor: try very hard not to have any more children by Shapian.”
“Yes, dear,” said Boo.
“Now I’ll tell you why I’m going to marry you,” said Virgil. “Half of the reason is plain habit. I’ve been wanting to marry you for so long that it’s become part of my life—like shaving every morning, or drinking coffee after dinner. I suppose if there was some compelling reason, I could grow a beard or switch to tea, but it seems easier just to go on shaving and drinking coffee—and wanting to marry you.”
“Not entirely flattering,” remarked Boo.
“Neither is the second half of my reason,” said Virgil. “I want to marry you because I love you. I love you so much that it grinds me up inside when I see you doing a stupid thing like not loving me back. Don’t you know how many years of happiness you’ve cheated yourself out of by not marrying me? Don’t you know I’m the best goddam man you’ve ever clapped eyes on, and I specifically include Ira Shapian?”
