CECIL STREET WAS trying to come back to itself, trying to use the setup for the second block party as a mood-enhancing activity to get beyond the tragedy with Neet. Trying to get beyond the edginess pervading the block even before Neet had attempted the abortion. Trying to get back to the way they used to be when the air on the block was loose and freeing, not thick and tight and sad. It helped that one of the block’s favorite sons had just come back from the war in Vietnam, by all appearances intact, ten fingers and toes, steady walk, still able to smile and laugh. Wallace. “Looks good” was the refrain jumping the banisters from end to end. “Old Wallace sure looks good.” They said it with relief, since the year before, Bunny’s son, who lived three houses from the corner, had returned nodding and scratching, addicted to potent jungle smack, and the Smiths’ boy from Ithan Street had returned and taken to directing traffic at Sixtieth and Spruce, imaginary whistle and all. But Wallace’s mental health seemed good, and he’d even grown an inch, standing at taller than six feet, with square shoulders and a strongly set chin and a mother-loving face with big, honest-looking eyes. Joe liked him. Had always paid special attention to him since Wallace’s mother was a single parent and Joe knew the life of a boy without a father. He’d turned Wallace on to jazz years ago and Wallace was a connoisseur. He was especially proud that now Wallace was college bound. He gave Wallace an enthusiastic multi-positioned handshake and they touched shoulders in a hug. It was a Thursday night and a half dozen men had gathered in Pinochle Eddie’s basement to firm up security for the block for the weekend party. Though Wallace wasn’t twenty-one yet, just twenty, but he’d been included because of his size and good sense.
They sat around the table and drew cards for time slots. Joe drew Saturday evening between seven and nine. Then they filled Wallace in on the last party that had been for the most part crime free. There had been a lightweight skirmish between the Corner Boys and a rival singing group from Delancey Street; two girls had tried to scratch each other’s faces over some no-count boy. A couple of loud-talking bad-mouthers had too much to drink and hollered out insults to no one in particular. Nothing serious though: no pick-pockets, no silver salt and pepper shakers slipped out through the unlocked screen doors, no pervert tried to lure the children from the block. Though there was talk of the puffy-haired wild woman who’d challenged the Corner Boys. The story had grown so from when Johnetta had first fanned it until now. Now the story was that she’d appeared butt naked on the corner and asked the Corner Boys which one was gonna have her first. Then she’d gone straight for them and started pulling at their crotches and they’d shooed her away and she’d disappeared into the crowd. Wallace laughed out loud. Said that story was definitely more rumor than fact because the Corner Boys he knew would never have let a female get away who was willing to pat them down. Then Tim said hell, he might not have let her get away either. Pinochle Eddie offered Wallace a Miller High Life bottled beer, saying as he did that though he wasn’t of legal age he’d probably seen as much, done as much in the jungles of ’Nam as any of them had right here on the streets of Philadelphia. Joe handed Wallace a cigar and said, “This is just our way of saying welcome home, young blood, we glad you made it back intact.”
They drank beer and smoked cigars and pipes and cigarettes and got a card game working. Talked politics and women between hands. Talked about the big blue-black man who had gone into Sonny’s store looking for the puffy-haired woman who’d supposedly exposed herself to the Corner Boys. Tim said he’d heard the man was a Black Panther. Eddie said he’d heard he was a crook. Joe said so what, Agnew’s a crook. They all slapped hands in agreement about that, and that Nixon was an asshole, and that Valadean had the prettiest ass to sashay up Cecil Street since their wives were that young. Though Pinochle Eddie maintained that his wife’s ass never looked that good. Swore to God that he loved his wife with all his heart, but damn, he said, her titties been living on her stomach instead of her chest since the birth of their child fourteen years ago. They laughed as they talked, Eddie always turning the conversation back to Valadean and how much he’d love to get a taste of that honey.
Joe didn’t flinch. Took an extra-large swallow of beer and gave himself an excuse to cough. He turned to Wallace then. Asked Wallace was it true what everyone said about Asian women. Wallace said he guessed it was about as true as what everyone said about black women. “I guess it’s all good when you’re into it, Mr. Joe,” he said, sliding the deck of cards in Joe’s direction so that he could cut.
Tim put his hand on Wallace’s shoulder then. Said, “My young blood, I’m gonna tell you something I don’t tell everyone.” He went on to describe for Wallace the apartment he kept over his barbershop that his wife, Nathina, thought was not rentable because of rats. Told him that since he was still in his mother’s house, if he ever needed a little love nest, “Me crib, your crib, my young brother.”
Wallace laughed, embarrassed, and Joe cut the deck of cards and slammed them on the table. Then Pinochle Eddie, back to Valadean again, said that from what he could tell, Valadean was already some lucky brother’s taste of honey because his wife said that Johnetta said that Valadean had gotten into the habit of disappearing for hours at a time and would return glowing but not talking. “According to Joyce, Johnetta said she gonna follow the girl one of these days.”
“Slow as Johnetta walks,” Joe said, picking up his cards as Wallace dealt them his way. “Joyce probably said that shit to keep your ass in line, Eddie, to make sure you not the privileged one tasting that honey. In fact, where the hell were you between two and five today, nigger?”
Rousing laughter then as they played the hand out, talking between moves. They talked about racism on the police force, on the Phillies, on the school board, on the election commission. Tim said that he had a call in to the ward leader requesting that he get to whoever he needed to get to so that any cops having a presence around the area during the block party would be brothers. Said he reminded the ward leader of his civil suit against the city from when he was stomped by the cops on Fifty-second Street. Said the young folks crowding on the block to have a good time would be waiting for some racist white pigs to start some shit.
“You right about that,” Joe said. “These youngsters not about to join hands singing ‘We Shall Overcome.’ They’re gonna be looking for rocks to throw. That’s why we needed a black ward leader anyhow. You wouldn’t have even had to explain that shit if the ward leader was a brother.”
They agreed on that and then the conversation went back to women, back to Valadean as Eddie told Wallace he should put the moves on her. Joe’s irritation broke through then. He asked Eddie was he trying to get off vicariously through Wallace. “Leave the boy alone, let him go after who he wants to go after.”
“Damn man, calm down,” Eddie said, throwing his losing hand down. “Someone would think you boning her.”
“If I was, I’d be there right now, sure wouldn’t be sitting here looking at your ugly ass,” Joe said as he tallied the score and declared Wallace the winner.
“Probably not your type anyhow, huh, young blood?” Joe said.
Wallace laughed, embarrassed again. Agreed with Joe that Valadean wasn’t his type. Said that he preferred city girls, liked girls better when they didn’t expose everything with their dress. Liked something left to the imagination.
“That’ll change, tell him, fellows,” Tim said. Tim and Eddie leaned into Wallace then, telling him man things about how it used to be for them, how it changes over time. Joe got up to leave. Said he was taking his old ass home and their response was yeah, please take your old ass home.
He was thinking as he walked out of how it had changed for him over time. Ten years ago every man on the block would have known he was hitting it with Valadean. A badge of honor back then. He knew better now. Knew how men let things slip during pillow talk about which husbands weren’t true blue, jealous possibly that it wasn’t they themselves running around. Increased their own pleasures that way too because what wife would deny such an honest, faithful man as the one telling on his cheating friend.
He was outside now. The streetlights were on and the children’s laughter rose up from the steps where they played. The adults’ chatter from the porches blended over his head and reminded him of how much he liked the block on a summer evening. Except that now he thought he heard Valadean’s name from each porch as he walked past. He knew it wasn’t so, but just the fact that he imagined it made him go tight inside. He felt guilty in the first place that he was running around, and in the second place that he hadn’t gone to Valadean’s defense when Eddie and Tim had described her in such base terms. Angry with Valadean now that she dressed the way she did and provoked those kinds of comments. Worried now too that his time with Valadean was fraying at the ends, headed to raggedy, he knew, if Johnetta was making comments. Was going to have to think about ending it altogether with Valadean, he knew that for sure. He was at his house now. Shay was sitting on the steps with her head propped up between her fists. Joe sat next to her. “What’s going on, Daddy’s Girl?” he said.
Shay shook her head. “Nothing much.”
“Block party’s gonna be boss this weekend,” he said as he leaned into her shoulder, pushing her playfully.
“Nobody says boss anymore, Dad.”
“Well, okay then, groovy.”
“Dad, please, that’s so white people.”
“All right, well, how ’bout peace and love, my sister.”
Shay laughed. The first time she’d laughed since the tragedy with Neet. Joe got filled up inside listening to her laugh. “Or should I just raise my fist and shout, ‘Power to the people’?” he said. Or ‘Sock it to me,’ or ‘Here come the judge.’” Shay laughed harder now. Joe kept it going, not loud though. He didn’t want to let himself get too loud for fear he might miss this simplest, greatest pleasure of the sound of his daughter’s laugh.
Nathina’s daughter, Bobbi, came across the street then. She asked Shay if she wanted to go around the corner to Sonny’s Store and get a milk shake and play the pinball machine. She was three years younger than Shay, only fourteen, a lifetime separated them at that age, but Shay was touched by the gesture and she could feel Joe nudging her on. “Only if you quit it with the slang, Dad,” Shay said as she got up to leave and in her leaving gave Joe no other option than to go in the house.
THE HOUSE WAS dark and quiet. Joe whistled as he walked through the living room, toward the kitchen where he guessed Louise would be cleaning up the dinner dishes. She wasn’t. The kitchen had neither the look nor smell of having just been through a meal. He was about to go upstairs, maybe Louise had turned in early though it wasn’t even nine. She walked in through the back door then. She was still in her nurse’s uniform and her eyes were red and wet. “Louise?” he said, concern wrapping around his voice. “What’s wrong?” he asked as he went to her.
She pushed past him and went to the sink and ran the water and spit. “What is it, baby, your mouth?” he said at her back now.
“I can’t find him, I think he’s dead,” she said.
“Who? Who, Louise, look at me and tell me what you’re talking about.”
She turned around and something about the sight of her now reminded him all over again of the first time they’d met.
Louise was crying out loud now. Her mouth was puffy and Joe could see that she’d had more teeth pulled today, from closer to the front this time. It was difficult for him to look at her mouth, she looked so comic and sad, and he almost wanted to cry himself. He pulled her to him. Asked her again who was she talking about, who died.
“Cat,” she said. “I’ve been up and down the length of every alley between here and Alden Street. I can’t find him. He’s not even coming home to eat. And the other day there was even blood and vomit in his bowl. I think he’s dead. Either that or he ran away. And if he ran away, then someone’s getting ready to die.”
Joe held Louise close to his chest. He rubbed her back. He told her that he was sure that Cat was alive and well, just keeping a low profile the way cats sometimes do. “And that business about somebody dying just because a cat runs away is foolishness, Louise.”
Louise gave in to the feel of Joe’s arms wrapped around her. Her first instinct was to pull away from him as if his arms were no longer meant for holding her. But his arms were so warm and solid. She held on to him. She cried and dripped blood from her mouth onto his shirt. Maybe it was the death of them, Joe and Louise as a couple, that had sent the cat away. She couldn’t stand the thought of the death of them any more than she could picture Joe really dead, in a coffin. But she worked in a hospital, felt death hovering around all day long. As much as the hospital discriminated, death did not. People left here, just that simple. Never mind that they left next of kin hollering after them not to leave. The way she felt like hollering right now, Joe, don’t leave us, give us a chance to live, to breathe together a while longer. But she had never been the hollering-after type. Didn’t even holler after her mother’s eternal stare. Sure wasn’t going to holler after a man. She pulled herself from the sturdiness of his arms though she wanted him to hold her like that forever. She said she was okay. He was right, the cat would be home. Her mouth was sore, she said, and the temporary partial plate the dentist had made didn’t fit right so she was gonna have to walk around with teeth missing near the front until Monday. She went back to the sink and ran the water to sponge away the blood that had fallen on her uniform. She said then that she hadn’t cooked dinner. Maybe he could go around to Sonny’s and get a cheese steak if he was hungry, she said, adding that Shay had eaten at Maggie’s and she herself wasn’t up for solid food tonight and anyhow he’d been keeping such irregular hours these days, who knew when he’d decide to come home. She surely wasn’t going to try to guess. Don’t look for her to plan meals around his schedule these days, she said as she walked past him. She needed to get the uniform off and soak it in cold water before the stain set, she said, telling him there was blood on his shirt too, and if he wanted, she’d clean up his shirt. “Going to bed after that, because I’m tired. You know what I mean, Joe. I’m tired.”
She gave him one of those looks that he felt as a chill up and down the length of his arms. She left the room then, left him standing in the middle of the kitchen with the bright yellow walls. The walls were blazing at him now, spotlighting the shame that he felt over what he was doing, wronging two women in fact when he thought about how he’d listened so passively to the way the men had talked about what they wanted to do with Valadean. He couldn’t stand how bright these walls were, was thinking that when they repainted he’d suggest a more muted shade. He walked out of the kitchen, headed back outside to the porch to catch a smoke. The porch was dark and soft and he inhaled deeply and settled in to the night sounds of Cecil Street. That’s when he saw Alberta.
Actually, he didn’t see her first, costumed in her usual long and dark something. He felt her presence at first until the night pulled back to reveal the outline of her face.
“Alberta,” he said as she walked up the steps on her side of the thin railing that separated the houses. “How you doing this evening, Alberta?”
“Joe,” she said and then disappeared into her house so quickly it seemed as if she’d just changed form and become air and seeped in through the brick porch wall. Joe felt a tightening in his stomach. Something about the way her face looked in the half-black air, a familiarity about her face. He suddenly needed to hear some music. Thought about going down to Tim’s apartment and putting his horn to his mouth and making his own tunes. But he felt too incapable of blowing his horn, afraid still. He crushed his cigarette out and went back into his house, went to his stereo console and riffled through his albums and found what he was looking for. “Round Midnight.” He put it on and settled down on the couch. He felt like such a fallen man right now, pieces of himself scattered all over the place, scattered all the way back to twenty or more years ago.
He was thinking now of the night he’d asked Louise to marry him. They’d been seeing each other for about half a year though their time together was erratic because of Joe’s touring schedule. Louise was living with her sister on Queen Street and this night Joe had two bouquets when he showed up, one for Maggie, just to get through the door, and the other one with the white orchid in the center for Louise. He was loaded down with other offerings for Maggie that night: a double-decker box of Whitman’s chocolates, silk nylons, a slab of steaming-hot barbecued ribs that he’d just gotten from D’s on South Street. Maggie scanned the dining-room table and said that if these gifts were leading up to him asking for her sister’s hand, he should take them back on out because her sister wasn’t ready for marriage, furthermore, the sauce from the ribs was leaking through the bag and onto her good lace tablecloth. Joe snatched up the bag and carried it into the kitchen saying as he did that actually he hadn’t come to propose to Louise. “Maggie,” he said, “I wants to marry you, baby.”
That got them all laughing and Maggie told Louise that though in her heart she thought that Louise should see the world before she carved out her rut in it, at least Joe would make her laugh. “That’s not the worst trait for a son of a bitch,” she said as she followed the aroma of the barbecued ribs and left Louise and Joe standing at the dining-room table.
Joe fumbled for the ring under the blazing light of the chandelier. He was quiet for once. Not talking, not making a joke. His hands were sweaty, and he thought cold too when he took Louise’s hand and her hand was so soft and warm. He slipped the ring on her finger, chipped diamonds around a gold band that had swallowed up two months’ worth of work. Louise was looking down. Her mountain of thick black hair had fallen forward and he couldn’t see her face. He tilted her chin up so that he could see it. Wished then that he’d left it lowered because it was easier to look at the crinkles in her hair than what her face was doing, her eyes. Dark eyes that stared right through him, not spilling over with tears of joy, or sparkling with delight. Just barraging him with a steady, unblinking gaze.
“You sure it’s me you want, Joe? Me?” Louise asked, her voice as steady as her gaze.
“What? Sure? Baby. Sure? Ask me anything, Louise, but don’t ask me if I’m sure.” Joe had had to look away then. Couldn’t hold on to her eyes. Thought that if he didn’t look away right then, Louise would have seen that he was anything but sure. He’d gone searching out C earlier. Just to make sure. Went back to Pat’s speakeasy/brothel where he had not been since the night he’d first met Louise half a year before. He’d never been to Pat’s during the day. During the day the normal three-story corner house with a storefront basement entrance gave no indication of the flesh and whiskey devoured there at night. Children played hopscotch out in the street, farther down the block a man proudly hosed down his ’48 Chrysler. Joe walked around to the side street and down the three short steps and knocked on the door with two quick knocks, a pause, and two more, the code to get in. His door knocks went unanswered. The storefront window was tightly draped. He cupped his hands and peered through the square of the window at the door. Could see the card tables arranged, which meant that at least games still went on there at night. Then he saw a figure walking across the room, headed for the door. She was light and thin and his breaths quickened that it might be C. He had to admit that he might not even recognize C under the light of day. Chuckled at the thought that he’d have to stand her under darkness to know for sure it was her. This one almost to the door looked like a ragamuffin though, in two or three layers of clothes, scarf tied around her head, unmistakable pout to her stomach indicating a baby on the way.
“Nothing till ten,” she shouted through the door and then closed the blinds, tightly blocking Joe’s view into the room.
“Well, wait, hold up, please,” Joe shouted through the door. “I’m looking for C. She still around?”
Silence then. “Hello,” Joe called again. “Please just tell me whether or not she’s still around.”
“Long gone—”
“You know where, I mean, she working still?”
“Gone, got her a man, she married now, long gone.”
He hadn’t expected such news. Had imagined himself walking into that third-floor bedroom just like always, his heaviness lifting at the sight of the curves of C’s back under that green silky robe, then the thrill of her in the dark. He told himself he should be happy for C that she’d escaped that life, been rescued from that life and made respectable by a husband. But he didn’t feel happy. Felt a rock turning over in his stomach that he recognized as molten, craggy regret.
He walked away from the house, up the street and into the store on the corner to buy a Tribune. Made small talk with the old cat behind the counter. Told him he used to be a regular at Pat’s Place but he’d been away for some months. “Still good action?” Joe asked.
“Naw, daddy,” the old cat said as he twirled a toothpick around in his mouth. “Some crazy babe married to Pat’s jailbird stepson got freed from Byberry and stabbed Pat in the chest with an ice pick. Didn’t kill her, but it shook her up so much that she went back to Chicago where she’s from. Pat’s hos split even before the red car got there. Here tell those hos took the jewelry from ’round Pat’s neck while she was bleeding on her kitchen shed floor. Nothing much goes on there at night anymore. A little card game, a little overproof liquor poured by some sweet little homely chick, some stepgrand-child to Pat. Try South Street, you want some action, daddy.”
Joe stayed in the store for about an hour talking to the old cat, thought he was the age his father would have been had he lived. He told the old guy that he was a musician, that he was thinking about getting married, had even been looking at houses, had his eye on a two-story row on Cecil Street in West Philly. “Tree-lined block feels like heaven when you walk through,” Joe said.
The old guy laughed and asked Joe if he was sure. “You a musician, daddy? Plus, you out here looking for the likes of Pat’s Place? You sure you sure?”
Joe tried to convince himself that he was sure as he focused on the china closet in Maggie’s dining room where silver-framed pictures were propped behind the gleaming glass door. Even went to the china closet and opened the door and fingered the picture of Louise as a young girl snuggled under her mother’s arms. He allowed his eyes to soften as he looked at the picture. Said to the picture because he still couldn’t look at Louise just yet, “Mnh, you asking me, am I sure? Baby, ask me anything, but don’t ever ask me if I’m sure that it’s you I want.”
ROUND MIDNIGHT” was easing in and out of Joe’s consciousness as he sat on his living-room couch. He was moving his fingers through the air as if they were closing and opening over his saxophone. He’d always gotten a rousing ovation when he played that song. Even from C. Though when he thought about it now, never from Louise.