Martin Luther King looked distracted, Jay thought. The man whose voice had rung out so powerfully over the hundreds of thousands at the march was struggling with his answers as he stood in front of the White House. He had come from a meeting with President Kennedy, and Jay kept snapping pictures as the reporters descended on him. He was wearing a suit and tie and perspiring in the heat of the September day — a month often as hot as August in Washington.
A few days earlier, on September 15, at 10:22 A.M., a powerful bomb blasted the face of Jesus from the stained-glass window of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Four young girls — dressed in white from head to toe because they were about to lead the Youth Day Sunday service — were in the basement ladies’ room. The bomb had been planted in the basement. There was a terrible roar, shaking the foundations of the church, and all four girls died. One could be identified by her parents only by her feet and a ring on her finger.
The horror of such savagery rippled through the nation. President Kennedy had ordered the FBI in to investigate the bombing — the worst of twenty-eight bombings in the city whose perpetrators were still at large. There was fear that racial warfare could break out in Birmingham. Kennedy had jawboned local officials, urging them to end Jim Crow, but he was loath to send in federal troops. King had come to an edgy agreement with the president, who would send two presidential envoys to Birmingham. Other Negro leaders said this was not enough. Pierre Salinger, the press secretary, had announced that the envoys would be the former Army secretary Kenneth Royall and the former Army football coach Earl Blaik.
Mary stood on her tiptoes to see over the very tall wire service man who stood in front of her. She was hoping Kennedy would emerge to answer questions, but he was nowhere in sight. There were a number of Negro reporters in this group, not a common sight at the White House, and they were taking the lead in the questioning.
King mopped his brow and said, “This is the kind of federal concern needed,” but the reporters picked up his tentative tone, and they pounced, with the Negroes being especially tough. Was sending a couple of retired Army men really an adequate response to the horrible tragedy in Birmingham? Did he know that no Negro had ever played for “Red” Blaik’s Army teams?
King’s replies were short and hardly displayed the eloquence for which he was famous. He darted away quickly after responding to a few questions, relieved to be out of range.
Mary and Jay walked down the winding drive to the White House gate, and she said to him, “He wanted more.”
“Yeah, but if you send troops in, George Wallace would have another chance to be a martyr.”
“But these two Army guys, what can they do? I think I’d be pissed if my church had been blown up and they sent an old Army football coach. What’s he going to do, Sixty-three Blue up the middle?”
“It’s a mess, all right. Good item for your column, though.”
Mary had developed a column called “White House Watch” for the Blade, dealing with the comings and goings at the executive mansion. Readers seemed to like it, since she wrote it with a mixture of sass, style and solid information, and Charlie had given her more space and used her picture. Jay’s photographs, of dignitaries and Kennedy relatives, often accompanied it.
But there was more on her mind than the news today. She had finally summoned the nerve to call Harry, to tell him they needed to talk tonight. His voice on the phone had sounded cold and distant, and she thought, with a coldness in the pit of her stomach, He knows.
Back at the paper, the hours crept along. She had work to do, but every time she looked at the clock, the hands seemed not to have moved at all. Finally, as the time approached, the muscles in her stomach began to cramp. She tried not to think about it, to deliberately relax, but she could not. She gobbled Rolaids and waited. She had told Jay she would meet him in the small park behind the paper before she saw Harry. He was coming to the house.
Jay was waiting for her, pacing. He bent to light a cigarette, cupping his hands near the flame, and in its light his face seemed alien to her. He could have been a stranger. How much did she know about him, really? She was astounded at the panic that clutched at her. She sat down on a bench, and he sat down next to her, occupied by his own thoughts. She wished he would turn and look at her.
“I’d better go soon.”
“You still have a few minutes. How do you think he’ll take it?”
“I don’t know. He sounded funny on the phone.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No. Only that he’d come over.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me outside in the car? He won’t do anything crazy, will he?”
“No, he won’t. I just wish it was over. I’m a coward, I guess. I was going to write him a letter, but that wouldn’t be right. I have to tell him face to face.”
“Yes, you do.”
She felt a stab of self-loathing. She should have handled the whole thing herself. Why was she dragging Jay through all this? Why did she need him to hold her hand?
“Jay, on the divorce, all Harry would have to do is sign his power of attorney over to a Mexican lawyer. It would be all arranged. I’d go to the courthouse in Juarez and present a paper, and we’d be divorced.”
“And if Harry doesn’t agree?”
“It gets complicated.”
“Yeah, complicated.”
He was very tense. She wondered if he wished he were free of the whole mess.
“It bothers you, doesn’t it, this divorce thing.”
“No, I’m worried about you, that’s all.”
He put his arms around her, and that was what she’d wanted him to do all along. She felt safe that way. She wished she could stay here, next to him, and forget what she had to do. But she got up from the bench and said, “I’ll call you.”
“I’ll be at the apartment. You’ll call me right away?”
“Yes.”
She drove home and found her mother waiting in the hallway. Her mother’s attitude had softened since she had learned Jay wanted to marry her, but still she was anxious.
“You’re sure, Mary? You could be making a big mistake.”
“I’m sure.”
“I’ll be next door, at Rita’s.”
Her mother left, and Mary went into the living room and sat on the couch. She thought about Harry, the way he had looked in his baseball uniform, so young and full of hope; the gentleness in his hands when he’d held Karen for the first time; his face in the kitchen: ‘You and Karen, you’re my life.”
“Forgive me,” she said to the empty room. “Forgive me, please.”
She heard the door open, and Harry came into the room. He was wearing a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up high so the muscles in his arms would show; he was proud of those muscles. She didn’t like the shirt rolled up that way. She thought it looked cheap, lower class. They’d had a fight once, when she told him that.
“Hello,” he said. He never said “hello.” He always said “Hi,” with that way of tilting his head. He knew.
“Hello, Harry.”
He walked in and sat in the chair opposite her. He did not lean back but sat rigid. He looked right at her, and his eyes were frozen circles. She groped for words, but they came out in uneven chunks, not the way she had rehearsed it.
“Harry, I’ve been thinking, well, about you and me.”
Her palms were sweating, and her stomach churned, but she plowed on, feeling clumsy. “I think it would be better for both of us if we didn’t get back together.”
He was still looking at her with the frozen blue circles. That wasn’t like him.
“We were married so young, and things didn’t go right from the beginning. Maybe if we had been older. But we were kids. I wasn’t any good for you, Harry.”
His silence baffled her. She rushed to fill it. “I haven’t made you happy. A lot of it was my fault. I didn’t know how to be a wife. I wanted to, but — maybe we have to admit that we made a mistake. People do.”
He looked at her, cold as stone. She had never seen him this way. When he was angry he roared with outrage, and when the anger was gone he sat and stared at the wall. She looked at his hands, resting on the arms of the chair. They were short, blunt, strong, unlike Jay’s hands, which were long and tapered. Harry’s hands seemed odd to her now.
“Are you asking me for a divorce?” he said.
“Yes. I think it would be best for both of us.”
“I thought that was it when you called me. You haven’t called in along time.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but I didn’t want — I didn’t know how to tell you.”
“You and that photographer. I heard about that. Now all of a sudden you want a divorce.”
“No, I was thinking about it before —” She paused, certain he could tell she was not speaking the truth.
“Before what?” He was still looking at her calmly. She wished he would get angry and yell. She knew how to handle him then, make him feel that he was in the wrong.
“Say it. Before what?”
“Before I met Jay.”
“Before he fucked you.”
“Don’t talk like that, Harry. Let’s not be — unpleasant.” That sounded absurd, a line from an English parlor drama.
“No. Let’s not be unpleasant. That wouldn’t be nice.”
He was mocking her; she hadn’t expected that. He was still sitting motionless in the chair.
“You don’t like the word? It’s fuck, babe. You don’t like the word, but you like doing it.”
“Please, Harry, can’t we be civil?”
“My wife.” He leaned forward in his chair. “The hotshot reporter. A guy who works in a laundry isn’t good enough for her. She gets hot panties for a guy who carries a camera, shacks up with him like a bitch in heat.”
“Harry —”
“It’s OK for me to live like a goddamn hermit all these months so if I’m a good little boy I can come home to momma. I bought a load of shit from you, babe. It’s all over town that I got horns; the only one who didn’t know was me.” He looked directly at her. “Does he have a long one, babe? Do you like it when he rams it into your cunt? Good luck to him, because you’re a cold bitch. I been in bed with a lot better ass than you, babe.”
He was angry now, but it was still a cold, controlled anger. She could see his hands trembling.
“Do you suck his cock? Do you let him lick your pussy? Do you do tricks for him, like a whore?”
“Stop that, Harry.”
“Tell me, what does he do to you? I want to hear it.”
“I’m not going to sit here and listen to this.”
“I’m going to say what I like, and you’re going to listen, whore.”
“I was always faithful to you, Harry, when we were together. Can you say the same thing? You’d come home smelling of cheap perfume, it would stink up the room.”
“You were always so holy. The big saint. You didn’t waste any time the first time some guy tried to get into your pants.”
“It’s not that way, Harry. I love him. Can’t you understand that? I love him.”
That rocked him, she could see it in his eyes. But his anger congealed again, and he clenched and unclenched his fist, still resting it on the arm of the chair.
“I used to take you out in the car, and you let me feel you all over, right away. Let me grab your tits, do whatever I wanted. You were hot for it. You were trash then, and you’re trash now.”
She was dumbfounded. Had this been eating at him all along?
“I was a girl, a normal girl. What did you want, a block of ice?”
“You’re a whore-cunt, and I made the mistake of marrying you. How many guys did you put out for, besides me?”
“What a filthy mouth you have. You drag things down to the gutter. You always have.”
He got up, walked over to her and looked down. “I’m good at four-letter words.” He reached down and put his hands on her breasts, hurting her. She tried to pull away, but he was too strong. “Four-letter words. Like fuck. Like cunt. Like Mary.”
His hands held her, painfully, and she hated him for making her so powerless. She wanted to kick him, bite him, but she thought of Karen, asleep upstairs, and she remained still. He put his hand up under her skirt, between her legs, and jabbed his finger into her. “Cunt.”
Then he released her, and she jumped up, gasping with outrage. She was too angry to care whether he hit her or not.
“Now go and pick on somebody your own size, you bastard! The only guts you ever had came from a bottle!”
She hated the words the moment she said them, but she could not take them back. She had always known exactly how to shame him. He stood still, vibrating with rage, his mouth working. She realized, suddenly, that he was trying not to cry. She was so shocked that the anger suddenly left her.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Harry. I didn’t!”
“You want a divorce, fine, you get one. For adultery. I want to see you stand up and admit you’re a whore. Try and tell the judge you’re a fit mother after that. You’re not a fit mother, you’re a whore. Go ahead, try to get Karen after everybody sees you’re a whore.”
A sob rattled through him, and he turned and ran out of the house. She stood still, staring at the spot where he had been. Her anger was gone. His sob still sounded in her ears. How he must have cared. So much more than she. Guilt embraced her, for not knowing how he cared. She began to shake, and she sat down in the chair until the shaking was under control and then called Jay to come over. Her mother came back from Rita’s, but Mary avoided her questions. When Jay’s car pulled up, she ran out and climbed in the front seat.
“What is it? What happened?”
“Jay, drive, please. Anyplace.”
They drove in silence for a while. “He said he’d divorce me for adultery. He said he’d prove I was an unfit mother.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“I did a stupid thing. I got mad at him. I should have known how hurt and angry he was. But he said things —’
“What things?”
“Rotten things. About you and me.”
“What? Tell me what he said, the prick.”
“I don’t want — Oh, God!” She began to sob, her whole body shaking, and he pulled the car off the road and held her. “What did he say?” and she heard the anger in his voice. She remembered how he had smashed the bedpost, and she was suddenly afraid of what Harry and Jay could do to each other.
“Oh, Jay, he was almost crying. I was such a fool. I thought we’d have this nice little chat. He knows it’s all over town about us.”
“Christ!”
“To try to take Karen away from me, I never thought he’d do that. I never, ever thought.” she wept again, desperately, against his chest, her breath rasping. When she was spent, she rested against him exhausted, and he stroked her back.
“Mary, what are we going to do?” He sounded tired, drained.
“I don’t know.”
There was a long silence, and then he said, “I’m not going to ask you to choose between me and Karen. I can’t ask you to do that.”
She thought of Karen, the bright eyes and the high, clear voice, who liked to draw farts and ride her wagon at breakneck speed down the hill. She had never known she could love a child the way she loved Karen. Often she’d be at work on a story in the city room, and something that her daughter had said that morning would pop into her head, making her smile. She thought of Harry, raising their daughter. Belvedere would make her nice, docile, polite. She wouldn’t let that happen. Belvedere was not going to get Karen.
“If I had a kid,” he said, “I could never walk off and leave her. Not for anybody.”
“I know.”
“I thought, what the hell, plenty of people get divorced. But I never figured this. I should have.”
She did not answer him.
“I won’t ask you to choose.”
They sat in silence for a long time, and then he said, “If I were smarter, maybe I could think of something. But I can’t. Every way you slice it, it comes out the same way. I can’t make things come out the way I want them to. I never have.” He laughed, a bitter laugh with no mirth. “Maybe you’re better off without me, anyhow. I got the Midas touch in reverse. Everything I touch turns to shit.”
She looked at him, his face etched with misery. In a few hours, she had reduced one man to tears and another to self-loathing. The thought awed her. She had always thought of herself as a woman a man could easily do without.
He took a deep breath and said, “Well, it’s been a long night. We’d better get out of here.”
He turned on the ignition, and she reached over and shut it off. Then she pressed her mouth against his and kissed him, an erotic kiss. She felt his mouth open under hers, and then he jerked away.
“What the hell are you trying to do to me, Mary?”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Tell me. I don’t like guessing games.”
“I love you. I want you now. Tomorrow. For good.”
“What about Karen?”
“I wasn’t thinking: he couldn’t get her. He has a police record for being drunk and disorderly. I was so wrought up I wasn’t thinking straight. Now I am. A private detective could get so much on Harry in twenty-four hours he’d have no case. The whoring, the drinking. Would a judge give a child to an ex-drunk?”
“You’d get a detective on him?”
“If he forces me to it, yes.”
He frowned.
“You think I’d like that?” she said. “My God, it would make me sick, but if he tried to take Karen, I would.”
“Jesus, that would be a mess.”
“That’s right, a mess. You don’t have to stay around for it, Jay.”
“What do you mean by that crack?”
“Fair warning. It’s going to be messy and ugly. But I’m going to get the divorce. Harry could name you corespondent in a suit, I couldn’t stop that. But you’re free to go, Jay. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Is that what you think of me? That I’d just say, ‘It’s been fun,’ and light out?”
“No, I think you’d stick it out, even if it made you sick to your stomach. Like your father, driving his cab while he was dying. You’re like him, you wouldn’t quit. But I don’t ever want to be a weight around a man’s neck, Jay. Not again. I have too much pride for that.”
“You’d never be that. Not you.”
“Promise me, Jay, if there’s ever a time that you don’t want me, you won’t stay out of pity.”
“What kind of crazy talk is that?”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Make love to me.”
“Here?”
“Here, on the ground, anywhere. If you want to.”
“I want to.”