BY one the next afternoon they were cruising down the highway headed for New Orleans, a tankful of gas, and three hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills locked up in the glove compartment for spending money.
Bobby was driving. Olivia was settled down in the passenger seat reading a book Georgia had lent her for the trip. Everyday Zen, by Yoko Beck. There were strips of paper stuck in three pages, things Georgia wanted Olivia to read. “If she’s so smart why is her life so messed up?” Bobby had been saying. “I like her. Don’t get me wrong. I think she’s a really funny lady, even if she doesn’t let anybody else talk. But all the things you tell me that she says. If she can’t even get along with her boyfriend, why do you want her to give you advice?”
“She teaches me things I don’t know. She’s interested in the same sort of stuff I’m interested in. I don’t know. I like to be with her, that’s all. She makes me think. Every time I’ve been around her I have to keep on thinking about things she said. Listen to this. In this book she lent me.” Olivia began to read.
“‘Suppose that we talk about our life as though it were a house, and we live in this house, and life goes along as it goes along. We have our stormy days, our nice days; sometimes the house needs a little paint. And all the drama that goes on within the house between those who live there just goes on. We may be sick or well. We may be happy or unhappy. It’s like this for most of us. We just live our life, we live in a house or an apartment and things take place as they take place. . . . We have this house, but it’s as though it were encased in another house. It’s as though we took a strawberry and we dipped it in chocolate; so we have our strawberry and it’s covered with coating. We have our perfectly nice house, and on top of that house we have another house, encasing this basic house in which we live.
“‘Yet our life (this house) as we live it is perfectly fine. We don’t usually think so, but there’s nothing wrong with our life.’”
“That’s good stuff,” Bobby said. “Yeah, I like that. I might send a copy of that to Sherrill and Tom. Sherrill’s always saying things like that. Trying to get Tom to be satisfied. He’s a restless man. When he gets to writing a book nobody but Sherrill could live with him.”
“I hope we have a good time in New Orleans. I don’t know why I’m so nervous about it. I want you to know how beautiful my sister is, but don’t fall in love with her.”
“How could I? I’m in love with you. Don’t you know that yet?”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
“I’m the one ought to be nervous. I think all the time you’re going to dump me, especially now that you got that oil.”
“Why do you always wait until you’re driving to talk about things that are on your mind?”
“I don’t know. Do I do that?”
“Yes. And I’m not going to dump you. God, I hope Dad doesn’t show up in New Orleans. I want you to meet him. But not down there. I hope it doesn’t happen down there.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting him. And I can’t wait to see New Orleans. Eleven more hours and we’ll be cruising into town.”
It was ten o’clock that night when they left the expressway and drove down the long ramp leading to Saint Charles Avenue at Lee Circle. They came down onto the avenue and Olivia began to point out landmarks to Bobby. “We could go to Tipitina’s right now and I bet Andria would be there. She holds court at a corner table, she’s got a crush on one of the players, a Baby Neville she calls him. Well, there’ll be plenty of time for that tomorrow night. God, I hope Dad isn’t here.”
“You think he might be?”
“He might be, but I don’t think he will.” She scooted over very close to him and put her hand on his knee. “At least I can sleep with you at Jessie’s house. At least she isn’t going to make you sleep on the sofa.”
“I could use a night’s sleep. It’s been a long day.” He covered her hand with his own and they rolled down the windows and let the sweet night air come in. They drove past the Jewish Community Center and on down to Webster Street and turned and drove to Coliseum and stopped in front of Jessie and King’s blue house. The lights were on and Jessie was sitting on the porch swing waiting. When they drove up she jumped up from the swing and ran out to the car. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I want to meet this Bobby.”
Then he was standing up beside her and she got the kind of prickly excited feeling that only King could give her.
King came down the steps and shook hands with Bobby and they carried the bags inside and put them in the guest room. Then King walked Bobby out onto the porch. “I quit drinking,” he said. “But I can get you something if you need it.”
“I’m fine,” Bobby answered. “The main thing I need is a night’s sleep.”
“My grandparents made him sleep on the sofa last night.” Olivia laughed. “Well, I guess K.T. is asleep, isn’t he?”
“You can look at him.” Jessie smiled. “Come on in. I don’t care if it wakes him up.” She took her sister’s hand and led her back to the child’s room and Bobby and King went out and sat upon the steps.
“Jessie says you rodeo,” King began. “I tried it once, when I was a kid in Mississippi. My granddad put me on a steer. That’s a hard goddamn sport.”
“It’s what we do where I live.” Bobby laughed. “It’s mighty nice of you folks to have us here. Olivia’s been a nervous wreck all day, hoping I’ll pass muster.”
“So how much dough is she going to get from this oil?”
“Too much. I guess I’ll never see her again after that.”
“It’s a bitch. Figuring out what women want.”
“That’s what my dad always says. He says it’s the hardest thing a man has to do.”
“What does he do? He’s a rodeo star?”
There was a long silence, then Bobby answered him. “He’s a pilot. Right now he’s in jail. He ran some dope.”
“Hell, I’ve sold dope. Anyone can get into that. I’m sorry he got caught. Damn, that’s hard to take.”
“Yeah. Well, life’s hard. No one ever wants to believe that, but that’s the way it is.”
Olivia and Jessie came out onto the porch and joined them and the conversation moved on to where they would eat dinner the next night and what bands were in town. At twelve-thirty they turned off the lights and went to bed. Jessie and King into the master bedroom and Olivia and Bobby into a smaller bedroom that joined the baby’s room. The house was what is called in New Orleans a “shotgun house.” A long rectangle turned on its side toward the street. A central hall ran from the front door to the back. If you shot a bullet through the front door it would exit at the back. The living room and dining room took up the front of the house, the master bedroom and kitchen were on the left of the central hall and the guest room and nursery on the right.
Way down deep in the Desire Street project Richard Brown was shooting cocaine with a couple of his old high school friends. He was staying away from his gang. His gang was mad at him and that was a very dangerous state of affairs. There was something his gang wanted that Richard didn’t want to give. They weren’t real mad about it. They were just starting to get mad. It would be another day or two before it became what Richard considered critical. It would be at least two days before he would have to leave town. For now, the gang still believed in Richard. They believed Richard would change his mind, which would be the best thing for everyone concerned. Only Richard couldn’t change his mind because he no longer had the thing they thought they needed.
He should be doing something about leaving but he had run into two old buddies and started shooting up instead. It was nice, sitting on the stoop with his old friends, shooting up and thinking about King Mallison, Junior, and what a bad little boy he had been and now he had a baby. The cocaine was pretty low-grade shit. The whole deal was turning into a maudlin trip. Richard was getting sad for King. He decided King was like a lost prince in a tower, all closed around by the Jews his mother lived with and all their money and cars and perfect yards and all those goddamn hamsters and gerbils. I’d rather be me than that poor little kid, Richard was thinking. He was in a time warp now. He was fifteen and King was thirteen and he was going down to the Garden District and save the little kid and give him some dope and maybe get him laid. Only it was King who tried to give me some, he remembered. Sell me some. Well, he might have given it to me.
Richard wandered away from his friends. He wandered over to the edge of the project and got into his car and started driving. He had decided to go see King. He drove down Jackson Avenue to Prytania and turned and went on down to where there was a K&B and went in and got a Pepsi and a package of cigarettes and got back into the car and started driving aimlessly, trying to remember what it was he had set out to do.
Oh, yeah, he remembered. Go and see King’s baby. Go and pay a call. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. It said two forty-five. Well, they might still be up. Hell, they’d want to get up and see him.
Richard had looked up the address earlier in the day in the telephone book: 1789 Webster Street. Coming for to carry me home. I looked over Jordan and what did I see, coming for to carry me home. Poor little old King. Fuck a bunch of white folks keeping a bunch of nasty rats in the basement, keeping little old white boys all locked up in a basement with a bunch of rats. He turned onto Webster from Magazine, which was the wrong way, as Webster runs from Saint Charles to the river. He drove slowly past Camp, Chestnut, Coliseum, and came to a stop behind Olivia’s father’s Mercedes. He took a .38 revolver out of the glove compartment and stuck it in his belt and walked up and knocked on the door.
Bobby heard the knocking before King did. He sat up, wondering where he had put his pants. The knocking grew louder. Then a doorbell began to ring. Olivia made a deep, irritated sound and pulled a pillow over her head. Bobby slipped out of bed and pulled on his jeans.
In his bedroom, King climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of underpants and started walking down the dark hall. What the shit, he was thinking. What the hell is going on? He had thought at first he was in his old hippie commune in Buda, Texas. Someone was always beating on the door in the middle of the night in Buda.
King walked to the door and pulled it open. He was face to face with Richard. He had forgotten what Richard looked like and he didn’t recognize him now. The two or three times he had run into him in bars, he had talked to him without really knowing who he was talking to.
“It’s Richard Brown,” Richard said. “I came to see the baby.” King backed into the hall. Richard had the gun in his hand hanging loose at his side. “Want to see that little ole white baby. Auntee Traceleen told me you got you a baby and I come to see it.” His eyes were everywhere. King kept on moving backward down the hall, trying to think. He was wide awake now and what he knew most was that he needed a weapon. He backed farther down the hall, past the open door to Olivia and Bobby’s room, going to K.T. to protect him.
“I got to see that little baby,” Richard was saying. “Got to see that little old baby of mine. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.”
K.T. started screaming. He had awakened to the sound of human voices and the static coursing through the house and he began to scream. King stopped dead still in the middle of the hall. “Get out of my way,” Richard said. “Get out of my way and show me that little old baby.”
Bobby stepped out into the hall and threw a T-shirt around Richard’s neck and threw him to the floor. Richard pushed the trigger of the gun and the blast went through the wall of the baby’s room and through a painting by the New Orleans landscape artist Katherine Sonlinga and out the door to the garden. Then Bobby was on top of Richard and King was holding the hand that held the gun. Jessie and Olivia were clutching each other in the baby’s room.
“Call the police,” Bobby was saying. “Get the cops over here.”
“Oh, God, don’t tell Daddy,” Jessie was saying. “He’s worried to death already about me living here.”
“What the shit, Richard?” King added, having figured out at last whom he was dealing with. “What in the name of God are you up to?”
“I came to see the baby,” Richard crooned. “Came to see that little old baby of mine.”
Later, after Jessie had gotten the baby to stop screaming and Olivia had made a pot of coffee and they had tied Richard up with package string and the cords off the dining room drapes, they put him on the sofa in the living room and tried to decide what to do. Richard was crying now, coming down off a high and starting to be delirious. “We can’t call the police,” Jessie said. “They would send him to Angola. We have to wait until Manny and Crystal get up and ask Manny what to do. Richard, we are going to help you. I know you don’t believe that.”
“He didn’t do anything I haven’t done,” King said. “Maybe we ought to let him go to jail. The three nights Dad left me in that jail in Florida were the beginning of wisdom to me.”
“If we called the cops on Richard, we couldn’t ever look Traceleen in the eye again. He isn’t going anywhere, is he? Can’t you hold him there, the two of you?”
“He’s sick,” Olivia said. “What he needs is a doctor.”
“You want to give him something?” Bobby said. “Some kind of downer?”
“I don’t have anything,” King answered. He and Bobby were on either side of the sofa.
“We just need to sit here until about six o’clock and then call Manny. That’s all we can do.” Jessie had come and sat on the floor in front of Richard.
“I need a fix, man. I need a hit.” Richard was starting to sweat. He was beginning to get sick.
“We should call Crystal now,” Jessie said. “We need to get a doctor over here. Sitting up all night isn’t going to do a thing.”
“She’s right. Can you hold him, Bobby? I’m going to call my mother.”
In half an hour Manny was there. He was followed by his best friend from high school, a pediatric surgeon, who gave Richard a shot of Valium and Demerol and began to call around the country to find a place where they could dry him out.
“All the good places are voluntary,” he said. “What do you think, Manny. Will he volunteer to go?”
“Richard’s smart, Stuart. I’ve known him ever since he was a little kid. How much Demerol did you give him?”
“It will wear off by afternoon.”
“We’re breaking the law by not turning him in, you know that, don’t you?”
“What do you want to do, then?”
“I can get him in a place in Dallas that’s done miracles, but they won’t lock him up against his will. He’ll have to want to stay there.”
“Call Traceleen,” Manny said. “Get her over here. Call her up, King. Tell her what’s going on.”
Then Traceleen was there and people walked in and out of the house trying to decide what to do. Richard slept for several hours and woke up full of terror and remorse.
“Let’s sit on him,” King said. “Will you help me, Bobby? We’ll keep him here and talk to him and try to get him to agree to treatment. I’ve done it before. If it works, it’s the best way.”
“You haven’t got room here, in this little house.”
“Yes, we do. Richard trusts me. He’ll know I’m not going to call in the cops.”
“He’s got a gang. They’ll come looking for him.”
“Okay, then we’ll take him to a hotel. Let’s do it now. While the Demerol is still working on him.”
“Where?” Jessie asked.
“The Pontchartrain,” Manny suggested. “We can have the old suite upstairs where my grandmother used to live. Let me call and see. It’s still early. We can go in the back way if we need to.”
“Use our house,” Crystal suggested. “Just use the basement of our house.”
“No. I don’t want to do that,” King said. “Too many entrances to guard. How do you think I sneaked out all the time? No, a hotel is better. Okay, Bobby, get what you need. Let’s do it.”
Then Manny called the Pontchartrain Hotel and the manager met them at the back door and Bobby and King took Richard to a room and started working on him. For two days Bobby and King sat in the hotel room and ordered things from room service and watched old movies on television and tried to reason with Richard. “I got to go somewhere,” Richard said several times. “I was planning on going to Florida. I got some money hid away. The trouble with my gang is that money. They found out I saved it and it’s supposed to be share and share alike. I can’t go out now. They think I’ve run out on them as it is.”
“They’d never look for you in this place,” King kept saying. “This is the richest dry-out center in the United States. Shit, man, they’ll be so glad to see you. They never had a gang member there, I bet. You can tell them things they never get to hear. Besides that, you can save your life. Why you want to be dead, Richard? I’ve been there, man. I know what it’s like to think your days are numbered, but they don’t need to be. You can get well. You can start all over.”
“And get me a little wife and baby and a job?”
“Don’t knock it. It’s not too bad. You can go to college and get an education and be a happy man. You don’t have to hide out and be scared.”
“Get Auntee Traceleen over here,” Richard said at last. “I want to talk to her.”
Then Traceleen came, and Andria, and they stayed shut up alone in a room with Richard for two and a half hours and at the end of that time Traceleen called Bobby and King into the bedroom. “I’ll do it,” Richard said. “How long does it take? How long do I have to be locked up?”
“Two or three months,” King said. “It takes at least that long, but you’re strong, man. Anybody strong enough to join a gang is strong enough to join the human race.”
“Look at all the great people that have done it,” Bobby said. “Hell, man, half the famous people in the United States have been in drug treatment centers. There’s no telling who you might meet while you’re there.”
While King and Bobby were locked up in the hotel room with Richard, Olivia and Jessie worked on the Japanese garden. Traceleen’s husband brought them a ton of gravel for a gift and hauled it around to the side of the house and Crystal took care of K.T. while they drew the pattern and smoothed the gravel into waves. It was almost dark on the second afternoon when they finished the pattern and set the stone markers to the east and west. Just as they were finishing, a soft rain began to fall. By the time they got inside it was pouring and they sat on the porch watching the rain fill the grooves in the pattern and run down into the yard. “I never thought about what it would look like in the rain,” Jessie said. “I was just trying to copy the picture in the book.”
“It’s beautiful.” Olivia slipped her arm around her sister’s waist. “Nothing is ever what we plan. Everything is always a surprise.”
Lightning played across the sky, so far away there was no sound of thunder. Inside the house the phone began to ring. “I bet it’s Aunt Helen,” Jessie said. “I was wondering when she’d call. She has a dowser’s rod for trouble. She’s worse than Grandmother.”
“Are you going to tell her about Richard?”
“Sure. Why not. Who would she tell?” Jessie went into the house and picked up the phone. “Hello, Aunt Helen,” she said. “I was wondering when you’d call.”
“How did you know it would be me? Am I getting that predictable?”
“No, you’re right on time. Wait till I tell you what’s going on.”
“Wait till you hear what happened in New Orleans,” Helen said, when Mike came in that evening from class. “You won’t believe what they’re up to now.”
“Oh, yes I will. Start talking. I can’t wait to hear.” Then Helen gave him an account of the events around Richard Brown’s visit, stopping every now and then to say, “Oh, God, I bet this is boring you to death.”
“Oh, no it’s not,” he insisted. “You can’t imagine how much I like to hear about your family.”
Helen did not call Daniel. No matter what anyone believes, Helen did not call Daniel or even mean to tell him. She had known Daniel all her life and she would have known better than to tell him that. She was sitting around knitting a blanket for DeDe’s baby when Daniel called to talk to her about her divorce. Late in the conversation, just chatting, happy to be talking to her brother when it was clear he was sober, she just happened to mention the girls. “Your girls are doing fine,” she said. “They’ve got hold of some real men.”
“Oh, that thing down in New Orleans. The citizen’s arrest and all that.”
“What citizen’s arrest?” Daniel’s voice had grown quiet, but Helen chattered on, telling him the story as she had told it to Mike, putting in all the flourishes Mike had laughed at, saying several times how brave it was of them not to call the police and how young people were so understanding and forgiving.
“They let some black man go that broke into the house in the middle of the night? That’s what you’re telling me, sister?”
“It wasn’t like that. Well, it’s all over now. I guess I shouldn’t have said anything about it. Well, never mind. Tell James to go on and get the divorce finished. You’re sure he can do it without me being there?”
“If you’re really going to settle for this offer Spencer made. I think you’re a fool to do it, which is why I called you up. But whatever you want to do. It’s up to you, Helen. It’s your life. Well, I got to go now.”
Daniel stayed up all night thinking about it. He started to call Jessie several times, then he would hang up the phone without finishing dialing. Finally, at noon the next day he went out to the airport and got on a plane and flew to New Orleans. He called Jessie from the airport and asked them to meet him for dinner at the Royal Orleans. Then he called Crystal and asked her and Manny to come and bring Crystal Anne. Then he checked into the hotel and lay down upon the bed and went to sleep. He had told everyone to meet him at six-thirty. At five forty-five he woke up and took a shower and put on a fresh seersucker suit and a white shirt and tie and went downstairs and had a shoeshine and then went into the bar and started drinking. By the time Jessie arrived he had had three double gin martinis. By the time the dinner party was gathered around a table he was slurring his words. By the time the waiter brought wine there was a chill around their end of the dining room so intense that Crystal Anne had started sneezing.
“What are you doing in town, Daniel,” Manny said, trying to bring the evening back into some order. “Crystal said you came on business?”
“I came down here to talk to all of you,” Daniel began.
“Well, great,” Crystal said. “I was just thinking what to cook for dinner when you called. This is a real treat. An unexpected dinner party in the middle of the week.”
Jessie closed her eyes. She knew the stages of Daniel’s drinking like she knew the beating of her own heart. The most dangerous thing of all was when he grew quiet. It was the harbinger of disaster. The death of safety, the death of peace. I should get up and leave right now, she thought. I could say, King, take me out of here and he would. I can leave. All I have to do is stand up and walk away. She looked down into her lap. Folded and unfolded her hands.
“I hear you’re trying to save the little son-of-a-bitch that broke into my daughter’s house in the middle of the night and tried to kill your baby. Is that right, son?” Daniel leaned toward King. “I came down here to find out about that. You want to tell me that I’m wrong.”
“I’ve known him for years, Daniel. Yes, I’m trying to help him. We all are. All he did was come to see K.T. He wanted to see the baby. He wasn’t trying to kill anyone.”
“He had a gun with him. Or was Helen wrong about that too?”
“Oh, please,” Crystal said. “Let’s talk about something else. Could we please just leave this alone. Tomorrow we’ll explain it to you, Daniel. He’s the nephew of our housekeeper. We couldn’t call the police. They would have sent him to Angola.”
“Angola is a terrible place.” Crystal Anne was standing up. “I have to go to the bathroom, Daddy. Will you show me where it is?”
“I want you to see my new office anyway.” Manny put his hand on Daniel’s arm. “You come down in the morning and we’ll explain it all to you. We have the young man in a clinic in Texas. It isn’t whatever you think has happened.”
“So you’re trying to help this nigger that broke into my daughter’s house and tried to kill her baby. That’s the crap you got going on down here in New Orleans. Goddamn, Manny, I thought you had some sense. I wouldn’t have let Jessie marry this boy and move down here except I thought you had enough sense to protect her. Letting her live in that little frame house on the edge of a black neighborhood. I wouldn’t treat your daughter that way if you sent her to me. I want them out of that neighborhood tomorrow. That’s what I came down here for, to buy my daughter a decent house.” He waved his hand to the black waiter, who had been listening and would be very slow in waiting on this table. That was clear from the expression on his face. THE TYRANNY OF A DRUNK IN A RESTAURANT.
Crystal Anne was standing up. She was facing Daniel. “You shouldn’t yell so loud,” she said, “and don’t say racial things. You’ll hurt somebody’s feelings.” She turned on her heels and walked toward the hall leading to the bathroom. Crystal jumped up and followed her. Manny was on his feet.
Don’t move, King thought. Until you decide exactly what to do.
I think I’ll kill myself, Jessie decided. Wherever I go, it’s like this, someone is always getting drunk, always screaming, screaming, screaming.
“Daddy,” she said. “Please don’t do this. Don’t do it here. Don’t yell at anyone. Don’t yell at King. Don’t yell at me.” She began to cry, very softly at first, then terrible sobs. King took her arm and pulled her up beside him. “I’m taking Jessie home,” he said. “Daniel, don’t say another word to her. If you say one more word, I’ll kill you. I mean it, Daniel. You can trust me.” Then the waiter was beside him and two more behind him and Manny held Daniel’s arm and King and Jessie made their escape through the side door out onto Saint Ann Street.
At two that morning Jessie started bleeding. At four she started hemorrhaging and at four-fifteen the ambulance came and took her to Touro Infirmary and she bled away the fetus that would have been her daughter. “I’ll be like Anna,” she wept into King’s arms. “I’ll lose all my babies. I was probably lucky to have K.T. Go on home and take care of him. Don’t leave him alone for a minute.”
“He’s with Momma,” King said. “He’s with Momma and Manny and Crystal Anne.”
At ten the next morning Daniel showed up at the hospital with an armload of flowers but Jessie would not let him come into the room. “I lost my daughter,” she said, when he appeared in the door. “I’m never speaking to you again, Daddy. Go away. I never want to see you again as long as I live. Doctor Kaplan said I don’t have to do this anymore.” As if on cue, Doctor Kaplan appeared behind Daniel in the door and came around him and went to the bed and sat beside it and took Jessie’s hand. “Are you okay, honey?” she asked. “Are you doing all right now?”
“It was a girl,” Jessie said. “It was my daughter. Now she’s gone. I’ll be like Aunt Anna. I’ll bleed my daughters and sons away.”
“Nonsense,” Doctor Kaplan said. “It was a miscarriage. That’s all. Nature knows what it’s doing. There will be plenty more babies if you want them. You’re a strong and healthy girl.”
Then Jessie began to cry again and Daniel laid the flowers on a chair in the hall and walked down to the elevator and got on it and went down to the first floor and out onto the street. It was very bright and lively on Prytania Street in the hot summer morning light. Daniel stuck his hand into his pocket and felt his money clip. He felt his car keys and his hand brushed against his balls and he walked on down the street and stopped at a doughnut shop and bought a Coke for his hangover and thought about his life, now officially over, and went out to the airport and got on a plane and flew on home.
Back at Daniel’s house, Spook was walking around the empty swimming pool picking up leaves and scraping mold off of corners and muttering to himself. Goddamn little kids, I’m not writing another check to that service until they come out here and get this thing right. We ought to fill the damn thing in and plant some flowers in it. Nobody’s here anymore. Nobody swims in it. Nobody uses it for a goddamn thing.
Poor Daniel. He’s finished now. Some days I wish he’d go on and shoot himself like his granddaddy did and get it over with. Spook climbed the steps from the shallow end and walked over and sat down in one of the four-hundred-dollar yard chairs by the bath house and thought about it. He lay back in the chair. Then he sat up and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “Father in heaven, it’s a sinner pleading with you. Would you tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do here, please? Would you tell me where I’m supposed to start and don’t tell me to clean out this goddamn swimming pool because I’ve already done that and if I hear any more about it I might get me some dynamite and blow it up.”
The phone was ringing in the house. Spook could hear it but he wasn’t going to answer it. It was Helen tuning in on the trauma. It was Helen, standing by a window in her living room looking out on the streets of Boston and biting her lower lip. She had on a white cotton blouse and a little red pleated skirt and a pair of white sandals and she was calling everybody up.
“We were prisoners,” Crystal said, when Helen finally got her on the phone. After trying everyone in the family, she had finally gotten hold of Crystal. “If Jessie hadn’t started crying. If Crystal Anne hadn’t gotten up, I guess we would still be sitting there letting that drunken fool hold us hostage. Well, she lost the baby, I guess you know that. Is that why you’re calling?”
“What baby? She was pregnant? What are you talking about?”
“She was three months pregnant. No one knew. King had only known a few days. She had menstruated twice so maybe it was inevitable. It might have been a bad pregnancy anyway. The doctor had said he wanted to do an amnio. She’s pretty hysterical about it though. If you call her, be careful what you say. She thinks it was a girl.”
“Crystal Anne was there? In the mélee? God, I’m sorry about that. I feel responsible for this, Crystal. I shouldn’t have said anything to Daniel. I didn’t mean to. He called me about something and I was just rattling on. Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I think it was my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault. It’s Daniel’s fault for being drunk. I don’t think Jessie will ever forgive him.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s in Charlotte. If you want my advice, leave him alone. He’s got a nice woman who loves him. Let her deal with this. We have spoiled him to death all his life. Let him get away with murder.”
“That’s Daniel. He can always find a woman to tell him anything he does is all right. He was so beautiful to look at when he was young. Such a wonderful dancer.”
“It’s a curse, that kind of beauty.”
“You should know.”
“I know.” They were silent then.
“Blessed and cursed,” Crystal said finally. “All of us. Well, maybe things are looking up. For some of us. I don’t give a damn what happens to Daniel now. I’ve had it with Daniel. That was the last straw.”
“I think this was all my fault.”
“Helen, it wasn’t your fault. That’s how alcoholics make people feel. Like they did something wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong. You just said it to the wrong person, you said it to a drunk.”
“Where did you learn all this, Crystal? You’re getting so wise. I think of you dancing in that white dress at the Christmas cotillion that year you came to visit us in Charlotte and everyone fell in love with you. Anna said you were the prettiest girl who ever lived. I wish she could know you now. Anyway, that’s embarrassing. I don’t want to embarrass you.”
“I’m going to a psychiatrist, Helen. I’m trying to find out what went wrong so I can fix it.”
“What went wrong?”
“Good and bad. It isn’t only me. It’s the whole family. All of us. Starting with my father’s mother and my great-grandfather’s slaves and going back to when my father’s father beat him and then he beat Phelan and turned Phelan into a killer. The way Phelan adores women, loves women to death. That’s because Daddy was such a tyrant and Mother was the only hope he had. All those old bastards in north Alabama, those beautiful, powerful old Scots. They beat their sons and scared their daughters to death. It’s worse than the Victorians and I had that too on Mother’s side. It’s the same for all of us. Why do you think Daniel drinks?”
“He had asthma when he was a child. He used to get sick before basketball games. He couldn’t breathe.”
“Did you hear what you just said?”
“What?”
“Before basketball games. I bet your daddy was standing over him expecting him to be a star.”
“Yes.”
“Helen. I have to go. The baby’s crying. I’m taking care of K.T. He just woke up. But I’m glad you called. Come and see us. Come see Jessie. She really loves you. She misses you.”
“Should I call her or not?”
“What will you tell her?”
“What Mike tells me. We live in a rich country and we have roofs over our heads and a Constitution that works and food to eat. This is not a tragedy no matter how much we want to believe it is. He always says that to me.”
“He sounds wonderful.”
“He is. He reads Yeats out loud to me. He knows most of it by heart.”
“Food to eat and a poet to love. How’d you get so lucky, Helen?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s some sort of mistake but I don’t want to give it back. Like someone gave you too much change and you feel good when you give it back. But this isn’t like that, is it?”
“I’ll ask my shrink. Love you, Helen. I have to go and get the baby.”
Helen hung up the phone and went into the kitchen to see what she could cook for supper. There was a quotation stuck with tape on the refrigerator door. Every day Mike put a new one there. Yesterday it had said, “WRITE AS IF YOU WERE DYING.” Today it was lines from a poem.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.
Later that night, much much later, Helen lay in Mike’s arms and tried to tell him the things Crystal had said. She tried to make him see the plantations in North Carolina and Alabama. Told him about the old wills that they had seen as children leaving the slaves to one another. Been cursed by seeing. Told him about the dogs and horses and the fox hunts and the field trials. The antiques and rings and chandeliers and the huge houses. “The niggers, as they were called,” she ended. “All we ever heard anyone call black people, but my grandmother called them darkies. It’s so complicated and it began so long ago and we have inherited so much sadness, but also, the sort of minds that made Anna a great writer. So I don’t understand. But I want to understand. I want to be like Crystal and spend my life trying to understand.”
“Have you ever been to Scotland?” Mike asked.
“No.”
“Then you must go. The next time I go to Dublin I will take you. It started before you think it did, Helen. It started long ago in those Orkney Islands, if that’s really where your people came from.”
“They say it was. Half Irish, half Scots, part Welsh, you can’t blame things on the past. That’s the problem, blaming things on other things. We have to take our lives now, and do something with them now. I’ve been thinking about it all day and that’s the main thing I believe.”
“I thought you said you wanted to spend your life trying to understand the past.”
“No. I didn’t mean that. I want to spend my life like this, with you.” She snuggled down into his chest, lay her hand upon his arm. What had she read that day? “We have some happy days and some unhappy days, some great loves and barren spaces. We have this life, this instantaneous blossoming. Will I ever learn not to choose among its moments, will I ever learn to walk its hollow lands and hilly lands?”
“You know that thing you put on the refrigerator today? About silver apples and golden apples?”
“Yes.”
“It’s very strange. I was reading some of Anna’s essays. And she said that too, about hollow lands and hilly lands. I thought when I read it, I’ve seen that somewhere and there it was, on my refrigerator.”
“It’s from a famous poem. It’s a vast metaphor for me, for the muse and also, the richness of life, the thing we overlook from day to day, the feast we forget to partake of.”
“That’s what the essay says. That’s what Anna thought it was about. I want to see the rest of the poem. Will you show it to me tomorrow?”
“I will sing it to you while you go to sleep.” And he did and she did and the night passed and it was another day.