Onyx

by Briskin, Jacqueline;

  “I don’t have the foggiest how to put this,” Justin said.

  “Don’t say a word. No apologies necessary. Okay, so you took off at an impossible time, but you’re back and that’s what counts.” Grinning, Tom set down his glass. “I understand, Justin. There comes an hour in every man’s life …”

  “It’s not about marrying Elisse. It’s about you and Mother.” Justin reddened as he looked directly at Tom, yet he spoke in his normal incisive cadence. “I know you’re my father.”

  The lights struck at Tom’s eyes with an unearthly glow while blood rushed to his chest, swelling the major arteries with such a stormy, violent cramp that he felt he might pass out.

  Your son will never know Claude Hutchinson isn’t his father.

  You can’t promise that.

  The owner of Onyx can. I have money, I have power. I swear it to you on my life, Antonia.

  Tom’s right hand jerked toward his chest, then dropped to his side.

  In this one single battering moment he reached a decision.

  That promise still stood.

  Would stand forever.

  In this same instant it became abundantly clear why Hugh had reversed himself against his ward, shrilly denouncing Justin’s marriage.

  Hugh, Tom thought grimly. Hugh told Justin. That’s why Justin ran off to marry this girl—no wonder Hugh’s so dead set against her. But there’s no proof about me and Justin. It’s Hugh’s word against mine.

  “Tom, are you all right? It was a mistake blurting it out like that.”

  Only with the severest control was Tom keeping himself in an upright position. “That’s some fairy tale you’ve come up with there.” His voice was louder than he intended, scathing, caustic. “Hugh again, right? You really are a gullible ass sometimes, Justin. I figured you had more brains than to listen to Hugh’s cockeyed inventions.”

  Justin looked stunned, as if he had been hit on the head. His suddenly white lips tensed. “This has nothing to do with Hugh,” he said.

  “Bullshit! It’s him all over. Fits right in with that genealogical chart of his.”

  “This is you and me, Tom.”

  “It can’t be any secret to you that he doesn’t cotton to Caryll. He’s elected you as heir to the kingdom.”

  “Forget Hugh. Let’s talk about us.”

  “What’s to say?”

  Justin, deathly pale, gave him a long, level look.

  “Your sister is married to my son, Justin. Our relationship begins and ends there. Hugh and all his crazy ferreting can’t make any more of it than that. Believe me. Take my word—I should know.”

  “One contingency I never figured,” Justin said slowly. “That you’d lie.”

  “Lie?” Tom threw back his head. His short, jarring laugh echoed in the still room. The exigencies of his bond to Antonia had only this one imperative. Lie. Lie. The cost of this lie, his relationship to the son he loved, he dared not consider. “You come to me after taking off for a month, a month when you were fucking well needed, and give me some wild talk about being my long lost son, and I’m lying? Oh, that’s good!” He waggled his long, slender forefinger. “If Hugh’s not in the middle of this tricky little mess, it must be her.”

  Justin tensed as if Tom had hit him. “Tom, cut this out. I know. I know.”

  “I’ve advanced you, and we’re related by marriage, so your new bride’s built it into a big deal. She intends to blackmail your way ahead, is that it?”

  “All right. You don’t want to acknowledge me. You never have before, so why should you now? But leave me some way I can face you.”

  “I have to hand it to Hugh, he certainly knows about this girl, he’s filled me in and—”

  “I didn’t come here to discuss my wife, Tom.” Justin’s interruption wavered briefly as he said the name, then he drew a breath. “Let’s forget the whole thing.”

  Tom no longer had control over the parameters of this battle. It was as if the blood pumping so painfully into his brain were charged with battery acid, painfully burning away all reason. “Yes, she must be the answer. You sneak off with her, and then you’re back, trying to play me for a sucker. Well, she might pretend to be a Bolshie, but she can’t fool me. Money’s what counts to that tribe!”

  The flesh of Justin’s face had gone heavy, and the shadows under his disbelieving eyes were opaque.

  Tom leaned toward the table as if to embrace this son as he had never permitted himself to, yet the reedy, sarcastic voice seemed to have a will of its own as it burst from his parched throat. “She should have held off awhile. I was set to give you some shares. But not now, buddy, not now. I must say I’m surprised at you. How did she drag you into this …” Tom’s imprecations trailed into a long sigh. He fell heavily into a chair.

  “All right, Tom?” Justin’s voice seemed to come from a half mile away.

  “Ahh shit,” Tom groaned.

  Justin poured a stiff drink, placing it on the table between Tom and the miniature automobile. Tom reached for the glass. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he forced down the liquor.

  “You’re ill,” Justin said quietly. “Shall I call your doctor?”

  Tom could feel the pain course through his body, a twisting of nerves that worsened in the area of his heart. He shook his head.

  “Somebody better take you home. I don’t have a car, but I’ll call the Farm or the Triple E Building.”

  “I’m all right,” Tom muttered.

  “You don’t look it.”

  “I’m not on my deathbed yet,” Tom said more loudly.

  Justin looked down at his hands. After a minute of silence he asked, “Do you have one of those blue tickets handy?”

  “What?”

  “A Security tag, they’re called. I’ll need one tomorrow when I come to clear out my desk.”

  Tom stared stupidly at him. It had happened too quickly. Justin was removing himself from his life. “You mean … you’re quitting?”

  Justin sighed. “There’s no choice.”

  Apologize, Tom thought in that calamitous, becalmed silence. Say you’re sorry. Unbend. You don’t have to say he’s your son; tell him you respect him as the one decently fair man you’ve ever known.

  Yet mightn’t apology be construed as admission?

  And again that hateful, sour voice (surely a thing apart from him) was assaulting Justin. “I’ll have a secretary pack your things. I wouldn’t want you torn from—what’s her name, Sadie? Tell me, is her cooze something special? Is that how she pushed you into this legacy idea?” As Tom spoke he was once again back in that cold kitchen, his hurt exploding against Antonia with this identical vomit of sexual horrors, the same obscenities. His self-hatred was suffocatingly painful. Surely death could be no worse than this anguish. “Is she on to some special tricks?”

  The battle was over.

  The dying looked at each other in mutual defeat. Justin’s irises were leaden blue, his eyeballs seemed almost flat.

  Silently he went to the door, letting himself out, his footsteps echoing.

  Tom’s fists unclenched, and he tried to relax his vocal cords to call out, but the pain clutched him by the throat, a thud, thud, thud of pain that pulled him downward and caught at his breathing. His physical anguish was heightened by the mental bereavement he had inflicted on himself. Ahh, Antonia … I kept my promise, he thought as he heard the outer door shut quietly.

  III

  Outside Tom’s suite Justin halted, standing listless for a minute before wandering down the empty corridor. He had no plans, no destination. He halted at his own office door.

  J. HUTCHINSON

  He peered as though he were nearsighted. What did this name signify? That a decent, red-haired man had loved his mother enough to take him on, endow him with a patronym, warmly carry out the consecrated obligations of fatherhood. That his natural uncle had schemed to procure him a place here.

  His mind blinked. Why did both Hugh and Tom have to attack Elisse? Why am I so surpri
sed? Didn’t her father warn me?

  Funny. He had not been nearly so jarred by Hugh’s bigotry as by Tom’s. Well, why not? He had never revered Hugh as he had Tom.

  Sighing, Justin fingered the gold lettering. His face was pulled into lines of intolerable sadness, but his predominant emotion was shame. He felt humiliated. Unable to abandon the love and loyalty he bore the unpredictable genius who had sired him, the man who had denied him on surely the most primal level there is, he shivered, thinking: I never should have brought up the unsavory subject.

  He doesn’t want me as a son.

  Justin emerged into the freezing chill. He did not put on his coat or gloves—he had not worn a hat, he seldom did. Despite his mental state he walked with his usual briskness across the well-lit spaces of the deserted industrial complex, banging on the pedestrian entry at Gate One, being let out with a cheery, “So long, Mr. Hutchinson, sir.”

  He found himself on Jefferson. The biting, noisy wind off the Detroit River charged at him, and he was shivering violently before it occurred to him to put on his overcoat.

  He thought of his mother in her hospital bed, head bandaged, face like bruised marble, her hand limp in his as she died.

  A trolley clanged behind him.

  He had been oblivious to the other trolleys, but for some reason the metallic noise pierced through his near cataleptic state.

  Elisse, he thought. Elisse.

  He held up his watch. After nine! I told her I’d be back by six thirty. He was miles from downtown. He sprinted up the broad, icy sidewalk, racing with the streetcar. The streetcar reached the stop before him, lurching onward without slowing. The icy wind stung his gasping lungs. Headlights beamed from a car traveling westward. He jerked his thumb desperately to hitch a ride. The new Dodge didn’t stop.

  IV

  By eight Elisse, mad with worry, was sitting on the rose-colored bedspread in their room at the Book Cadillac riffling through the Detroit telephone directory. Already she had asked the hotel operator to dial Onyx’s Woodland plant, which did not answer. Each shift, it seemed, had a different number, but only the day shift was listed. None of the Bridgers were in the book. Without much hope she turned to H. She found Justin Hutchinson. From Hugh’s butler she got the number of the house in Indian Village that Caryll and Zoe were renting.

  A woman with a heavy brogue answered.

  Elisse asked for Mrs. Bridger. “Tell her it’s Mrs. Hutchinson—no. Tell her it’s Elisse, her sister-in-law.”

  “If you’ll hold on, ma’am.”

  Elisse’s shoulders hunched as she planned light ways of explaining to Justin’s gorgeous sister that he was late, she was worried, and she needed some help in tracking him down. Every remark she came up with rang with either hysteria or paranoid jealousy. Elisse remembered Justin’s pallor as he came through the revolving door of the Hotel Laguna. Oh, who cares how I sound!

  The maid’s voice said, “It was a mistake I was making. Mrs. Bridger’s not home.”

  “Will you give me the number at the Farm, please?”

  “She’s not home!” The line went dead.

  Elisse’s eyes squeezed shut. After a minute she sprawled on the bed, turning over her magazine, wasting several minutes in an attempt to make sense of the meaningless symbols. Time for action, she thought, jumping up. She had no clear plan. But she couldn’t stay here, doing nada.

  As the elevator let her out she inhaled the scent of hothouse flowers from the lobby florist’s shop. Bellhops in crimson bustled about. Couples moved purposefully toward the dining room, the women loosening their furs, the men straightening their dark wide-shouldered, double-breasted suits. The automotive industry executive uniform, she thought. Praise God Justin doesn’t dress that way.

  The doorman, lifting his red top hat, opened a door for her. She paced restlessly toward the lit, rococo monument in Cadillac Square, peering into taxis and glancing over her shoulder to keep an eye on the green bronze hotel entryway. The night wind slid howling between tall buildings to penetrate her coat. Bought on their one day in Los Angeles, it was California weight—Justin had suggested they try the fur department at Robinson’s, but she was against fur coats on principle. She was sneezing vehemently and considering going into the hotel for a fresh handkerchief when a man’s voice behind her called, “Hello!”

  What a night for a pickup, Elisse thought, not turning, walking faster.

  “Don’t you speak to your old friends now you’re married to a big shot?”

  She wheeled around. Mitch Shapiro was grinning at her.

  “My buddy,” she cried. She had written him a letter about her marriage. It explained her defection from the organizing committee that this autumn had met four nights a week at his house. She had used those meetings to take her mind from Justin’s absence. “What are you doing here in the Arctic Circle?”

  He linked his arm in hers, and she felt the warmth of the thick body below the shabby Windbreaker.

  “You’re shivering,” he said. “There’s a drugstore. We can talk while you’re getting something hot.”

  “I’d rather the Book Cadillac coffee shop.”

  “Too swanky for me.”

  “We’re staying there. I’ll sign. Come on, be a schnorrer.” Elisse seldom used the sparse Yiddish of her vocabulary, but tonight, in her wretchedness, she repeated, “A schnorrer,” savoring a disloyal heart’s ease as she tugged Mitch into the hotel.

  Insisting on a booth where she could see the lobby, she borrowed Mitch’s handkerchief. After the waitress had taken the order for two soups, she sat back.

  “Tell me why you’re here,” she said. “And what’s happening at Columbia? Anything? No. I would have read if the grips had struck even a miserable, third-rate studio like Columbia.”

  “Martha’s in charge now,” he said. “I’ve been asked to come here.”

  “By whom? Harry Cohn?”

  The waitress returned with steaming bowls of beef noodle soup. Mitch waited until she had gone. The broad, serious face with the smashed nose was conspiratorial. “I’ve joined the Party.”

  Elisse sneezed into his handkerchief. “I’m not surprised,” she said—in fact she had often wondered what had kept him from carrying a card.

  “They want me in Detroit. With Onyx shut down the unemployment’ll be fierce, and they figure it’s a big opportunity to organize an industrial union. So far, though, I’d have to say auto’s one tough nut to crack.”

  “The movement’ll have to get along without me,” she sighed.

  “What is it, Elisse?”

  “Somehow I don’t think I’d further Justin’s career by cruising the factory gates to hand out leaflets.”

  “That’s not what I meant. You’re jumpy as a cat, you’re staring at the lobby. Where is Justin, anyway?”

  “Seeing his boss.”

  Mitch gazed at her from Slavic, almond-shaped eyes. “It’s your old teacher here. You can tell me what’s wrong.”

  Picking up her spoon, she said lightly, “These mixed marriages—ahh, what’s there to joke about? My parents won’t see us—they’d be sitting shiva for me, if they knew how to sit shiva. And an hour ago I called Justin’s sister—if you’ve been reading your society columns, you know she’s married to Caryll Bridger. She was home, I’m certain of it, but she refused to get on the line—as if my voice might contaminate her!”

  “You poor kid.”

  “I went into this with open eyes.” She tapped the spoon on her glass: she had not touched the soup. “I’ve had a lifetime to get used to being Jewish, but Justin’s bewildered. This morning we drove out to Hugh Bridger’s—he’s Justin’s guardian—and the head secretary told us he was out. The guy’s a recluse, Mitch. It’s like saying a turtle’s left its shell. He’s never out.”

  “Hugh Bridger’s a bloodsucker. Every repressive measure at Onyx can be traced to him.”

  “Spare me the dialectic, Mitch. This is real people. They cared a lot about one another. And now they’r
e hurting one another.”

  “I know about caring too, Elisse,” he said quietly. “Why do you think I didn’t join the Party until after you got married?”

  Mitch?

  Elisse dropped the spoon. It fell between the booth and stiff white tablecloth, but she did not try to retrieve it. Mitch? Elisse’s physical presence and lively personality had drawn men, but that lousy high school romance had scared her, and as soon as a boyfriend got serious she backed away, contritely apologetic as if she had lured him on by false advertising. Mitch? Once, years ago at Berkeley, he had kissed her under the Campanile, the chimes had sounded, the syringa had been sweet in her nostrils, but her blood had stirred not. Mitch? Could he have misinterpreted her faithful attendance at meetings this fall as some crazy sort of crush?

  “You wouldn’t be taken in by me,” she said breathily. “You know me for what I am. The dilettante of the Western world. In the labor movement for all the wrong, sentimental reasons. A job I despise. You’re an out-and-out atheist, but you know more about the religion than I do. I run around making like a prize daughter, then marry a man my parents are dead set against. God knows I’ve messed up life for Justin.”

  “He’s a very lucky guy, and my guess is he knew what he was getting into better than you did.” Mitch looked down at the oyster crackers he was crushing into his half-finished soup. “That remark wasn’t meant to put you on the spot. You looked blue and it seemed a way to cheer you up.”

  She stared at him, her eyes questioning.

  “I joined for the obvious reason,” he said. “I need the Party’s backing.” He smiled at her.

  His teeth were crooked, and though his smile did not enhance his face, Elisse felt it was sincere. Relaxing back in the booth, she said, “It would have been more dramatic the other way, wouldn’t it? If Justin stays at Onyx, we’ll be on opposite sides of the barricades.”

  “What do you mean if he stays?”