A Case of Need: A Novel (29 page)

Afterward, I had coffee with Peter. From the kitchen I heard the sounds of Evelyn washing dishes. It was hard to imagine her washing dishes, but she acted differently around Peter; it was almost possible to like her.

“I suppose,” Peter said, “that it was unfair to ask you here today.”

“It was,” I said.

He sighed and straightened his tie down his massive belly. “I’ve never been in this kind of situation before.”

“How’s that?”

“Caught,” he said.

I thought to myself that he had done it to himself, going in with both eyes wide open. I tried to resent him for that but could not quite manage it.

“The terrible thing,” he said, “is to think back and wonder what you’d do differently. I keep doing that. And I never find the point I’m looking for, that one crucial point in time where I made the wrong turn in the maze. Getting involved with Ev, I suppose. But I’d do that again. Getting involved with Karen. But I’d do that again, too. Each individual thing was all right. It was the combination …”

I said, “Get J. D. to drop the charges.”

He shook his head. “My brother and I,” he said, “have never gotten along. For as long as I can remember. We are different in every way, even physically. We think differently, we act differently. When I was young I used to resent the fact that he was my brother, and I secretly suspected that he was not, that he had been adopted or something. I suppose he thought the same thing.”

He finished his coffee and rested his chin on his chest. “Ev has tried to convince J. D. to drop charges,” he said. “But he’s firm, and she can’t really—”

“Think of an excuse?”

“Yes.”

“It’s too bad she ever named Lee in the first place.”

“Yes,” he said. “But what’s done is done.”

He walked with me to the door. I stepped outside into a gray, pale sunlight. As I went down to my car, he said, “If you don’t want to get involved, I’ll understand.”

I looked back at him. “You knew damned well I’d have no choice.”

“I didn’t,” he said. “But I was hoping.”

W
HEN I GOT INTO MY CAR
, I wondered what I would do next. I had no idea, no leads, nothing. Perhaps I could call Zenner again and see if he could remember more of his conversation. Perhaps I could visit Ginnie at Smith, or Angela and Bubbles, and see if they remembered more. But I doubted they would.

I reached into my pocket for the keys and felt something. I brought it out: a picture of a Negro in a shiny suit. Roman Jones.

I had forgotten all about Roman. Somewhere along the line he had disappeared in the rush, the stream of faces. I stared at the picture for a long time, trying to read the features, to measure the man. It was impossible; the pose was standard, the cocky look of a silver-suited stud, swaggering, half grinning, half leering. It was a pose for the crowds, and it told me nothing at all.

I am not good with words, and it has always been surprising to me that my son, Johnny, is. When he is alone, he plays with his toys and makes up word games; he rhymes or tells himself stories. He has very sharp ears and always comes to me for explanations. Once he asked me what an ecdysiast was, pronouncing the word perfectly but carefully, as if it were fragile.

So I was not really surprised when, as I was minding my own business, he came up and said, “Daddy, what’s an abortionist mean?”

“Why?”

“One of the policemen said Uncle Art was an abortionist. Is that bad?”

“Sometimes,” I said.

He leaned against my knee, propping his chin on it. He has large brown eyes; Judith’s eyes.

“But what’s it mean, Daddy?”

“It’s complicated,” I said, stalling for time.

“Does it mean a kind of doctor? Like neurologist?”

“Yes,” I said. “But an abortionist does other things.” I hoisted him up on my knee, feeling the weight of his body. He was getting heavy, growing up. Judith was saying it was time for another.

“It has to do with babies,” I said.

“Like obsetrician?”

“Obstetrician,” I said. “Yes.”

“He takes the baby out of the mommy?”

“Yes,” I said, “but it is different. Sometimes the baby isn’t normal. Sometimes it is born so it can’t talk—”

“Babies can’t talk,” he said, “until later.”

“Yes,” I said. “But sometimes it is born without arms or legs. Sometimes it is deformed. So a doctor stops the baby and takes it away early.”

“Before it’s grown up?”

“Yes, before it’s grown up.”

“Was I taken away early?”

“No,” I said and hugged him.

“Why do some babies have no arms or legs?”

“It’s an accident,” I said. “A mistake.”

He stretched out his hand and looked at it, flexing the fingers.

“Arms are nice,” he said.

“Yes.”

“But everybody has arms.”

“Not everybody.”

“Everybody
I
know.”

“Yes,” I said, “but sometimes people are born without them.”

“How do they play catch without arms?”

“They can’t.”

“I don’t like that,” he said. He looked at his hand again, closing his fingers, watching them.

“Why do you have arms?” he asked.

“Because.” It was too big a question for me.

“Because what?”

“Because inside your body there is a code.”

“What’s a code?”

“It’s instructions. It tells the body how it is going to grow.”

“A code?”

“It’s like a set of instructions. A plan.”

“Oh.”

He thought about this.

“It’s like your erector set. You look at the pictures and you make what you see. That’s a plan.”

“Oh.”

I couldn’t tell if he understood or not. He considered what I had said, then looked at me. “If you take the baby out of the mommy, what happens to it?”

“It goes away.”

“Where?”

“Away,” I said, not wanting to explain further.

“Oh,” he said. He climbed down off my knee. “Is Uncle Art really an abortionist?”

“No,” I said. I knew I had to tell him that, otherwise I would get a call from his kindergarten teacher about his uncle the abortionist. But I felt badly, all the same.

“Good,” he said, “I’m glad.”

And he walked off.

J
UDITH SAID
, “
YOU
’
RE NOT EATING
.”

I pushed my food away. “I’m not very hungry.”

Judith turned to Johnny and said, “Clean your plate, Johnny.”

He held the fork in a small, tight fist. “I’m not hungry,” he said and glanced at me.

“Sure you are,” I said.

“No,” he said, “I’m not.”

Debby, who was barely big enough to see over the table, threw her knife and fork down. “I’m not hungry either,” she said. “The food tastes icky.”

“I think it tastes very good,” I said and dutifully ate a mouthful. The kids looked at me suspiciously. Especially Debby: at three, she was a very levelheaded little girl.

“You just want us to eat, Daddy.”

“I like it,” I said, eating more.

“You’re pretending.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then why aren’t you smiling?” Debby said.

Fortunately, Johnny decided at that moment to eat more. He rubbed his stomach. “It’s good,” he said.

“It is?” Debby said.

“Yes,” Johnny said, “very good.”

Debby nibbled. She was very tentative. She took another forkful, and as she moved it to her mouth, she spilled it on her dress. Then, like a normal woman, she got mad at everyone around her. She announced that it was terrible and she didn’t like it; she wouldn’t eat any more. Judith began to call her “Young lady,” a sure sign that Judith was getting mad. Debby backed off while Johnny continued to eat until he held up his plate and showed it to us proudly: clean.

It was another half-hour before the kids were in bed. I stayed in the kitchen; Judith came back and said, “Coffee?”

“Yes. I’d better.”

“Sorry about the kids,” she said. “They’ve had a wearying few days.”

“We all have.”

She poured the coffee and sat down across the table from me.

“I keep thinking,” she said, “about the letters. The ones Betty got.”

“What about them?”

“Just what they mean. There are thousands of people out there, all around you, waiting for their chance. Stupid, bigoted, small-minded—”

“This is a democracy,” I said. “Those people run the country.”

“Now you’re making fun of me.”

“No,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

“Well, it frightens me,” Judith said. She pushed the sugar bowl across the table to me and said, “I think I want to leave Boston. And never come back.”

“It’s the same everywhere,” I said. “You might as well get used to it.”

I KILLED TWO HOURS IN MY STUDY
, looking over old texts and journal articles. I also did a lot of thinking. I tried to put it together, to match up Karen Randall, and Superhead, and Alan Zenner, and Bubbles and Angela. I tried to make sense of Weston, but in the end nothing made sense.

Judith came in and said, “It’s nine.”

I got up and put on my suit jacket.

“Are you going out?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

I grinned at her. “To a bar,” I said. “Downtown.”

“Whatever for?”

“Damned if I know.”

The Electric Grape was located just off Washington Street. From the outside it was unimpressive, an old brick building with large windows. The windows were covered with paper, making it impossible to see inside. On the paper was written: “The Zephyrs Nightly. Go-Go Girls.” I could hear jarring rock-’n’-roll sounds as I approached.

It was ten
P.M.
Thursday night, a slow night. Very few sailors, a couple of hookers, down the block, standing with their weight on one hip, their pelvises thrust outward. One cruised by in a little sports car and batted her mascara at me. I entered the building.

It was hot, damp, smelly, animal heat, and the sound was deafening: vibrating the walls, filling the air, making it thick and liquid. My ears began to ring. I paused to allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room. There were cheap wooden tables in the center booths along one wall, and a bar along another. A tiny dance floor near the bandstand; two sailors were dancing with two fat, dirty-looking girls. Otherwise the place was empty.

On stage, the Zephyrs were beating it out. Five of them—three steel guitars, a drummer, and a singer who caressed the microphone and wrapped his legs around it. They were making a lot of noise, but their faces were oddly bland, as if they were waiting for something, killing time by playing.

Two discothéque girls were stationed on either side of the band. They wore brief costumes, bikinis with fringes. One was chubby and one had a beautiful face on a graceless body. Their skins were chalky-white under the lights.

I stepped to the bar and ordered straight Scotch on the rocks. That way, I’d get Scotch and water, which was what I wanted.

I paid for my drink and turned to watch the group. Roman was one of the guitarists, a wiry muscular man in his late twenties, with a thick head of curly black hair. The grease shone in the pink stage lights. He stared down at his fingers as he played.

“They’re pretty good,” I said to the bartender.

He shrugged. “You like this kinda music?”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

“Crap,” the bartender said. “All crap.”

“What kind of music do you like?”

“Opera,” he said and moved down to another customer. I couldn’t tell if he was kidding me or not.

I stood there with my drink. The Zephyrs finished their piece, and the sailors on the dance floor clapped. Nobody else did. The lead singer, still swaying from the song, leaned into the microphone and said, “Thank you, thank you,” in a breathless voice, as if thousands were wildly applauding.

Then he said, “For our next song we want to do an old Chuck Berry piece.”

It turned out to be “Long Tall Sally.” Really old. Old enough for me to know it was a Little Richard song, not Chuck Berry. Old enough for me to remember from the days before my marriage, when I took girls to places like this for a wild evening, from the days when Negroes were sort of amusing, not people at all, just a musical sideshow. The days when white boys could go to the Apollo in Harlem.

The old days.

They played the song well, loud and fast. Judith loathes rock ’n’ roll, which is sad; I’ve always kept a taste for it. But it wasn’t fashionable when our generation was growing up. It was crude and lower class. The deb set was still fixed on Lester Lanin and Eddie Davis, and Leonard Bernstein hadn’t learned the twist yet.

Times change.

Finally the Zephyrs finished. They hooked a record player to their amplifiers and started the records going. Then they climbed down off the stage and headed for the bar. As Roman walked toward me, I came up to him and touched his arm.

“Buy you a drink?”

He gave me a surprised look. “Why?”

“I’m a fan of Little Richard.”

His eyes swept up and down me. “Get off it,” he said.

“No, seriously.”

“Vodka,” he said, sitting down next to me.

I ordered a vodka. It came, and he gulped it down quickly.

“We’ll just have another,” he said, “and then we can go talk about Little Richard, right?”

“O.K.,” I said.

He got another vodka and carried it to a table across the room. I followed him. His silver suit shimmered in the near darkness. We sat down, and he looked at the drink and said, “Let’s see the silver plate.”

“What?”

He gave me a pained look. “The badge, baby. The little pin. I don’t do nothing unless you got the badge.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“Christ,” he said, “when they gonna get some bright fuzz?”

“I’m not fuzz,” I said.

“Sure.” He took his drink and stood up.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me show you something.”

I took out my wallet and flipped to my M.D. card. It was dark; he bent down to look at it.

“No kidding,” he said, his voice sarcastic. But he sat down again.

“It’s the truth. I’m a doctor.”

“O.K.,” he said. “You’re a doctor. You smell like a cop to me, but you’re a doctor. So let’s have the rules: you see those four guys over there?” He nodded toward his group. “If anything happens, they all testify you showed me a doctor’s card and no badge. That’s entrapment, baby. Don’t hold in court. Clear?”