“That’s right,” the judge’s wife said. “That’s a good boy.” She attempted to brush my hair away from the lump over my eye.
“Don’t.” I pushed her hand away.
“Teddie!” Lorraine said.
“Let the kid alone, Lorraine!” Ted snapped.
The judge looked at Ted and Lorraine, and rapped his knuckles on top of the desk. “Both of you. Please.”
Leo smiled, as though he were beginning to enjoy himself.
The judge produced a Tootsie Roll from the top drawer of his desk. Without asking me if I would like to have it, he peeled away half of the wrapper and handed it to me, wrapped end first. I stuck it in my mouth and began to suck.
While I concentrated on the candy, the judge asked me what stories I liked to read, the games I liked to play. If I liked going to church, if I listened to the mayor read the comics on the radio on Sunday mornings. He asked the names of my friends, how I had gotten the lump over my eye.
I answered between bites and sucking, usually in monosyllables, short sentences only when required. I did not look at him, nor did I offer any more information than was asked for. I sat in the chair kicking my feet, focusing hard on the candy as if it were the sum of my world.
The judge paused after I had consumed the first half of the Tootsie Roll, after his wife had made her third trip to my mouth with her handkerchief. The judge watched as his wife peeled away the rest of the wrapper and handed me the candy wrapped in her handkerchief.
“Don’t get it all over the judge’s chair,” Marge said.
I nodded.
The judge leaned forward and placed both elbows on the desk. He laced his fingers together and rested his chin upon them, his goatee bristling over the top.
“You know,” the judge began, “your mother and father don’t want to be married anymore.”
I nodded.
“It means your mother and father won’t be living together anymore.”
“He don’t already. We don’t like him there.”
Ted cleared his throat, but I did not look up. It was quiet for a moment, and then the judge turned to face me.
“Teddie, everyone has had their say about where it would be best for you to grow up. Who should take care of you every day. Where you should sleep every night. I asked you to come visit me today so you could tell me what you think. If you could live anywhere you wanted, where would you like to live, Teddie? Who would you like to take care of you for always?”
I had become nervous while he was speaking and swallowed the candy in lumps. I licked my fingers and pushed the judge’s wife away when she attempted to clean my face.
“Do you understand?” the judge asked.
I was aware that I would not be able to hold my urine much longer. I looked at the judge as I slid from the chair, then glancing neither left nor right, walked straight to Leo. I pulled on the shoulder of Leo’s suit and made a face.
Marge came up behind and handed Leo a handkerchief. Leo took it and wiped at my fingers and lips. I shrugged away and pulled on his arm.
I meant to whisper in his ear, but my voice was over-loud in the silence.
“Home,” I said.
I caught hold of Leo’s little finger and tugged hard, as if I were trying to pull him out of his chair. The judge’s wife touched her husband’s arm.
“Yes, my dear. Yes, yes.”
Lorraine made a short, wet sound and fled the room, slamming the door behind her. Marge stroked my hair once, then slowly followed after Lorraine. I did not turn to see them go.
I looked at Ted, but he was standing away from the light, face in profile, running a comb through the hair above his ears.
Leo stood and walked toward the door. I hopped at his side until he lifted me up and caught me on his arm.
The door opened before Leo could touch the nob, and Junior’s face appeared in the crack of light thrown from the hall.
“That lady’s cryin’, Mr. Woodar’,” Junior said. “She run way over there.” He pointed down the hall.
“I know, Junior.” Leo turned and spoke to the judge.
“Let us know how you want to work it, Judge. ‘Preciate your Saturday.”
I wiggled out of Leo’s arms and rushed past Junior and out into the hall. I held myself between the legs.
“Got to go!” I said.
“Come on, then,” Junior said, grabbing my wrist and pulling me in the direction of the men’s room. “Let’s get out of here.” We ran down the empty marble corridor, the pounding slap of our footsteps echoing in our ears.
FOURTEEN
My apartment sits near the heart of downtown in an old neighborhood just north of the financial district. There are more condos now than neighborhood, but there remain a few scattered blocks as yet untouched by the wrecking ball and dozer. Urine-splashed doors of bars and storefront missions neighbor bright-tiled gallery entries and trendy boutiques. Day belongs to the throng of suburban commuters, but, each evening, the resident winos and sharp-faced adolescents appear to reclaim the concrete: they winnow among the suited herds, nibbling for green and silver like so many aquarium fish at feeding.
I live in an old brick building, newly gentrified, which sits among a cluster of others of its kind—its iron work and masonry beautifully restored, its plumbing and wiring left in their ancient, unreliable states. I have lived here since my last divorce and have outlasted so many of my upwardly mobile neighbors that I have claimed one of the coveted underground parking spaces for the Ranchero.
My bedroom window overlooks the street corner, and, having adjusted the blinds so that I can see out but those below cannot see in, I stand naked before the window, one foot propped on the sill, smoking a final cigarette before sleep.
It will be cold today. Clear and cold. The sun is up, the streetlights are dimming, and the first of the working folk have begun to migrate along the windless, shadowed sidewalks. These are locals, on their way to bus stops, on their way to work: only love and money will call us out of warmth onto dismal concrete, and there is something in the way they move which says it is well past the time for love.
The people on the sidewalk are bundled in thick coats, their hats pulled low upon their heads, their scarves wrapped tight about their mouths and ears. Their feet pound their way to the Plexiglass bus shelter across the street, heads tucked into their upturned collars, arms swinging or hands jammed into their pockets. Short bursts of white breath appear in front of their faces every three or four steps. Two skirted women sit at opposite ends of the shelter’s bench; a man with a lunch box leans against the schedule pole, two others pace.
The apartment is cold, and I have opened the valve on the radiator. The pipes rush and clank with steam. I have turned the electric blanket on high and, in a moment, I will wrap myself in warmth and hope for a purging, sweaty sleep. For even now, my mind seeps inward, seeking to armor itself against the coming of American Lit 121. Yet, I am pleased to stand awhile within the safety of the moment, listening to the groan of the pipes, watching the anonymous stirrings outside my window. Sleep will come soon. Then the toxic waking. The customary reassurances whisper through my mind like mantra.
If I am able to maintain a semblance of sobriety until spring break, I may appear before the Faculty Disciplinary Committee seeming to have satisfied the conditions of my oneyear probationary contract. Should I convince this conclave of peers that I have fulfilled my pledge regarding dress, sobriety, and adherence to curriculum, I must be accepted back into the academic fold. This, despite the fact that I have alien ated administration to such an extent that the district lusts after my resignation.
Though administration would reject my point of view, I contend that twenty years in the classroom have earned me some accommodation in this regard. For not once in these many years have I allowed alcohol, or any other facet of my personal drama, to interfere in the teaching: I am unable to escape a vigorous work ethic imprinted upon my youth. More than this, in the way of men who never come to
trust the intimacy of family and marriage, I have become my work. I have become it with a zeal verging on compulsion.
I stub out my cigarette, walk to the bedroom, and climb under the covers. As I stare up at the tiny cobwebs drifting at the ceiling on currents of radiator heat, I must acknowledge that I am the most conventional of drunkards: drinking to distance self from personal history, only to reinvigorate the past so that it leaks more ferociously into the present.
I hear Ted’s voice. It is a year after the meeting in the judge’s chambers. Ted is standing in the middle of Marge’s kitchen, tucking his shirt into his pants, smoothing back his hair with his hands. He is on his way, with Miriam and their new baby, to “better days out West.” He has given me a portable radio as a good-bye present, a radio he calls his own, but one which I know to be Miriam’s. It will be the last I see of him.
“Jesus Christ, Muttie,” Ted says. “Turn it down. You want to wake the dead?”
Bunching the pillow about my head, I can almost feel the cold, ghostly plastic of a telephone receiver pressed against my ear. I have just come home from overseas and am standing at a pay phone outside the bus station, calling Lorraine and Trudy for a ride home. It is the first I have seen of my family in over two years. Trudy answers, nervous and over-loud, telling me Lorraine will not be coming, but she will be right down. Although Trudy does not say the words, her tone of voice says that I am about to learn why Lorraine’s letters stopped coming.
I hear the thump of my duffel bag as I throw it onto the concrete between the phone booth and the newspaper machine. I sit down on the bag and smoke, watching people pass, thinking that the street seems smaller, less consequential than I had remembered.
A young man with long blond hair and beard stops for a paper. It is early spring, the wind is sharp, I am shivering in my summer uniform; the young man is barefoot, dressed only in cut-off jeans and a paisley vest, but he seems not to notice the cold. He looks at me as he drops coins into the machine and pulls out his paper. I have seen some hippies out on the coast, but I have never spoken with one. This one removes his octagonal, rose-colored glasses and smiles down at me.
“Coming or going?” he asks, squinting in the bright light.
“Four days back.”
“How long were you over?”
“Eleven months, twenty-three days.”
“Far out.”
“Far out?”
“Looks like you’ve got all your pieces.”
The hippie looks to make sure no one is watching, then pulls the tops of two joints over the edge of his vest pocket.
“Panama Red,” he whispers, smiling. “Buck a piece. Blow your mind.”
I shake my head.
He replaces his glasses, shrugs, and walks away. I watch how his dirty feet pad across the sidewalk, how he tosses his head, how the wind catches his hair and blows it straight back over his shoulders. I want to ask him, though he has spoken to me for only a moment, how he is so sure that I am intact.
A shiny beige Biscayne pulls up to the curb. Trudy slides across the front seat and rolls down the window on the passenger side.
“Hey, soldier boy,” she calls. “Looking for a good time?”
I stand as Trudy climbs out of the car. She is dressed in men’s black slacks, work shirt, and penny loafers. Her hair is greyer than I remember; she has allowed it to grow out, and it hangs just past her shoulders. She wears large hoop earrings. A hint of lipstick and eye shadow. She has lost so much weight that, for the first time in my life, I see the bones of her face.
“You skinny little rabbit!” Trudy crushes me to her. “What they been feeding you in that good-for-nothing army? Soldier boy clothes hangin’ on you like a bag.”
She wrestles me back and forth, nearly squeezing the breath from me with her still formidable arms. She finally releases me, holds me at arm’s length, and looks full into my face.
“How you been keepin’?”
“Okay,” I say, trying not to stare, for the skin around her neck jiggles when she speaks; her complexion is pale and unhealthy; the flesh beneath her eyes is dark and bloated.
“Yeah?” Trudy says, cupping my face in her hands. “I seen scarecrows got more meat than you.”
“Marge’ll feed me up. How about you guys? Working hard or hardly working?”
“Just rotated off a month of graveyards,” she answers. “Prob’ly look like something the cat dragged in.”
Trudy runs one finger under a straying lock of hair and smooths it over her ear. She picks up my bag, hefts it onto her shoulder, and walks toward the car. As she opens the door, she breaks into a fit of coughing, and the bag falls onto the sidewalk. When I reach to pick it up, she slaps my hand away and throws the bag into the back seat. Slamming the door hard, she leans against it, hands on her hips, breathing heavily.
“Runnin’ a quart low.” She shakes her head. “Your mom and me been gettin’… we was gettin’ all the overtime we could handle—and then some.”
“Nice wheels.” I glance at the new Biscayne.
“We been doing alright—money wise.”
Trudy holds out the keys. “Remember how?” she says.
We make small talk as I drive. Trudy is careful not to speak of the war; I turn up the radio and stare ahead, careful not to ask about Lorraine. After a few blocks, Trudy flicks me lightly behind the ear.
“Want to stop for a short one?” she says.
“Sounds good. Where to?”
“You pick.”
“Horizon’s close. They burn it down yet?”
Trudy looks at me, but does not speak.
“We don’t have to.” I adjust the rearview mirror. “Only place I could think of close.”
“Horizon’s okay. Why the hell not.”
It is a weekday afternoon, the shift has not yet come in from the mill. The Blue Horizon has changed very little over the years. The wood and metal are dingier, the regulars sit lower into their glasses. The smells, the music, the bartender are the same. Bobby makes a great fuss when I come through the door; a man recognizes me and yells from the bar. Others look up for a moment, then return to the television. Bobby will not let us pay for drinks, and Trudy and I have two pitchers of beer and a few shooters of bourbon. I never take my eyes from her face as I watch her struggle for words.
“You can just tell it, Trudy,” I say.
Trudy nods and twirls an empty shot glass between her thumb and forefinger. She does not look up.
“I’m not a kid anymore.” I shake a cigarette out of the pack and tap it against the back of my hand.
Trudy smiles. “Course, you ain’t, Teddie. You ain’t been a kid since Ike was president. It ain’t you. It’s just some things is hard to get out.” She laughs. “Even when you been practicin’.”
Still, Trudy does not speak right away. Her eyes wander about the tavern, along the bar. She stares, still twirling the shot glass, then sets it on the table and begins.
“There was that time with your dad.”
“Which time was that?”
“Whole bunch of things hit your mom about the same time. The deal with your dad. Her losing the baby. That son of a bitch judge. You was just a kid so you prob’ly don’t remember, but your mom was kind of sick even before all that. Kind of person took things too personal. Would get her insides … all twisted up.”
“I remember.”
“Well, she been sick again.”
“How bad?”
“We had to … the doctor said she ought to go in the hospital for awhile.”
“Lorraine? You’d have to hit her over the head and drag her by the heels.”
“Wasn’t like that. The fact she went peaceable scared us more than anything. Lorraine didn’t fight it, so we just packed her up and took her down to the state hospital. Me and Leo. She been down there six or seven weeks. They been hittin’ her with ‘lectricity. Feedin’ her pills.”
“Why didn’t somebody …”
“You being overseas. Leo th
ought maybe we oughtn’t to bother your mind with it. Leo’s still the boss on them kind of things—what he says goes. We was hoping she’d be out ‘fore you got home.”
Trudy straightens in her seat, folds her hands on the table.
“I was workin’ swing and your mom was watching Jeanette for me. You know your mom. How she gets to tipping a few now and then. More lately, worrying over you and all. And Jeanette wasn’t doing too good this last year or so. Medicine wasn’t holding her as good. Her fits was coming more and harder. Finally, old Doc Kresskie give us a football helmet. To keep the poor kid from bashin’ her brains out. A Baltimore Colt’s. Jeanette was crazy for it.
“To make a long story short, your mom come off graveyards, and Jeanette was such a pill all day long, your mom only got a couple hours’ sleep after workin’ all night. So, after supper, she was tipping a few ‘round Jeanette’s bedtime. I come home late and your mom was crapped out on the couch. Jeanette was on the bathroom floor. Poor little thing must’ve had a good one. Doc says she prob’ly swallowed her tongue. I told Lorraine it could of happened to any of us. Me just as easy. I told her the Lord prob’ly figured Jeanette had suffered enough for five people, no blame to nobody. But, Teddie, your mom, she won’t quit eatin’ her insides up over it.”
Trudy holds up her empty glass and waves to Bobby.
We sit unspeaking until Bobby sends over two more. Trudy is unused to the drinking, and after we swallow them down, she makes a face and hunches forward in her chair. She thumps her elbows on the table, rests her chin in her hands.
“Sorry, Teddie. Hate to load you up on your first day home, but there don’t seem to be no way around it. I best out with the whole mess and have done with it. I ain’t told nobody this part, though I got to pretty quick. Got to tell Lorraine. God knows she can read me like a book. But it seems like the timing is all shot to hell.”
Trudy coughs and scratches the end of her nose. She raises her eyebrows and peers into my eyes.
“Guess I got the cancer of my female parts. Doc Kresskie says it’s settlin’ into my lungs.”
Although I was not present to experience the episode with Jeanette, there is a place in my mind which holds it fast and in exquisite detail. Lorraine asleep on the couch. Coffee table cluttered with plates and glasses, overflowing with ashtrays and magazines. Jeanette’s clothes and playthings scattered everywhere, Lorraine too tired to care. Jeanette is sprawled on the bathroom floor, lying on her side with her head twisted between the tub and toilet. She is wearing her white dress with the huge pink flowers and full-length blousey sleeves—the hem is pulled high upon her unshaved thighs. There is a slipper dangling from the toes of one foot; she has kicked away the other. Jeanette’s head is encased in a football helmet, her dark curls stick out along its edges. I cannot see her face.
The Violent Child Page 20
