Everybody Loves Somebody (7 page)

“Gotcha!”

She wipes her lips with the back of her hand, smiles uneasily at all the strangers, and grabs a fistful of her brother’s hair.
“Never, never do that again!” she whispers, releasing him with a shove. There’s still plenty of fun to be had, though Gimp
is smart enough to wait until they’re outside the store, the two of them sauntering through the exit and up Broadway like
flush crooks, feeling ever so proud of themselves, which is only suitable in a city where retailers and restaurants all hang
signs advertising themselves as the world’s best. The Owen children fit right in to this cosmopolitan machine—already they’ve
learned how to take advantage of those who’d like to take advantage of them.

They are inexperienced in the delicate art of shoplifting because the opportunity has never before presented itself. During
these hard times, stores in their town tend to keep anything of value on shelves behind the counter. Macy’s and its ten acres
of treasures offered itself up to them, and they’d taken what they could use—two peaches, candy and cookies, and, voil�a matronly
brassiere, size 36C, which Gimp whips out with a shout from beneath his shirt, looping it into a noose around his sister’s
neck.

So here’s one more lively jest, one more farce to break up the monotony, Jackie galloping along a city street, a brassiere
strung around her neck, her little brother with the buckled reins in his hands.
Giddyup!
But there’s a change in Jackie’s frenzy, so subtle that even Gimp doesn’t notice until it’s too late.
Whoa, wild girl!
This bucking, runaway mare won’t be stopped, and now Gimp can hardly keep up with her, so without thinking he pulls with
all his strength on the elastic strap, forcing his sister to spring backward while her legs lunge forward. She topples like
a tower of blocks, the back of her head landing with a dull crack—sickening sound—on the sidewalk.

The world stands absolutely still, a hush falls over the city, and piles of clouds slide across the sky to shield the sun
from this awful sight. Gimp can’t make himself move to help his sister, and she’s not moving at all. If she is dead, and her
appearance would have it so, then he has killed her. He watches strangers come to his sister’s aid just as he watched the
newsreels, mouth open, eyes wide. History rolls on, and there is nothing Gregory Dexter Owen can do about it.

A man loses his hat as he goes down—genuflects is what it seems from Gimp’s point of view, his beloved sister the object of
worship, a martyr laid out on a warm stone bed, soon to be beatified. Gimp snatches the hat before a woman crushes it beneath
her foot, and from behind he restores the hat to the man’s head, the least he can do for this Samaritan, who in turn restores
life to his sister. She moans while the man cradles the back of her head with his open hand. “That’s quite a lump, sweetheart!”
he murmurs. Two women standing nearby begin to titter, as though the man had said something obscene. Gimp reaches for the
brassiere and unwinds it from Jackie’s neck, not to relieve his sister of any discomfort or indignity but because he’s scared
someone will identify the garment as a stolen article. Anyway, isn’t it time to get going, Jackie? Gimp wishes his sister
would scramble to her feet and tell all the gawkers to mind their own business. But she’s still moaning, unaware of the attention
she has drawn to herself, so it’s up to Gimp, now that he’s fairly composed, to send the spectators away.

“That’s all right, we’re fine,” he says, trying to drag Jackie up by her elbows.

“You wait a minute, half-pint,” a voice advises from the rear of the crowd, which parts to let the policeman through, brass
buttons, billy club, and all, a terrifying sight to a young boy who has just stolen a brassiere from Macy’s department store
and nearly offed his sister on Broadway. It takes all the control he can muster to keep himself from darting away, but he
does more than that, he summons his youthful nerve and manages to stare at the policeman with teary, hound-dog eyes while
he helps his sister to her feet.

“I’m fine,” she lies, finally coming to her senses though her head pounds.

“See, she’s fine,” echoes Gimp, and they start walking away from the law’s scrutiny and the curiosity of strangers. Within
seconds the small crowd disperses, leaving the man with the hat standing beside the policeman, who calls after the children,
“No more funny business, you got me?”

“Yessir,” replies Gimp, stuffing the brassiere into his trouser pocket.

So the children are on their own again. They keep wandering, but Jackie’s aching head makes it impossible for them to have
more fun. They eat the two peaches and pause to contemplate the displays in bakery windows. Toward four o’clock the sky darkens
to the color of asphalt and a few plump raindrops fall. The children don’t hold hands as they walk—they will probably never
hold hands again, since they no longer care enough about each other to offer comfort. For no precise reason, they have lost
a crucial bit of interest in each other and prefer their inward selves. And somehow they both suspect that they will lose
more interest over the weeks and months to come, until they are strangers to each other, their sympathies as different as
their personalities.

They feel bored rather than sad. At Jackie’s suggestion they return to the train station and explain to one of the conductors
waiting near their gate that all their money has been stolen—which isn’t quite true, since they still have two pennies. The
conductor motions them onto the train, and later, after the train has left the station and the conductor is collecting tickets,
he winks at the children and walks past them, clicking the money changer on his belt as he goes.

They ride in silence. When the train emerges from the tunnel, they expect daylight but are greeted with a low cloud bed darkened
by dusk. Gimp falls asleep, his head bobbing forward on his chest. Jackie rests her face against the window and wonders with
unfamiliar melancholy about all the people she will never meet.

C
OULD BE
—
NO
—then what about—about what? Never mind all that, the possibilities, just the possibilities, will kill her, but wouldn’t that
be a relief, heaven the antidote to worry, how she hates to worry when there are so many possibilities, none of them comforting,
though she’d much rather find out that the children have run off instead—instead of what? Never mind about that. This: the
possibility of their disgust? Oh, they have every right to be disgusted with their mother, it’s her fault they’re missing,
and she should hack away at herself with a cleaver until her blood fills the streets of this quiet American town. Then she’ll
never have to know what she doesn’t want to know, coward that she is, a failure, and her children will suffer for—but no,
don’t say that! Having been born, they must live, all children must live, except they won’t, not all, and her children may
be among the few...now there’s no use thinking the worst, Helen Weech, no use thinking at all, and if she could she’d lock
the door against the possibilities, though the worst has a way of waiting around to avail itself of the right opportunity,
so she mustn’t let that happen, mustn’t give any of those awful stories a chance to be told, as if she were in control of
what might have already happened and could go back to that moment when she held them both in her arms, the last time she held
them, the day that unlucky drifter over in Huntington burst into flames, her children in her arms squirming to free themselves.
If only she had taken a knitting needle and stitched them to her, skin to skin, then they wouldn’t be missing—ridiculous,
Helen Weech! You should listen to your husband, who has pointed out that most children get themselves lost, and most of those
children are eventually found. Leaving the few possibilities allowed by God...and then there are the causes to consider, all
of them unthinkable until they are revealed, while for the time being there’s the worry, thunder in the sky portending nothing
more than possibilities, darkness closing in on her from all sides, her voice like the chirp of a lone cricket when she calls
out into the night for her children, such a weak, useless noise, though Dexter doesn’t want to hear it and is asking her to
please stop, stop, stop it, Helen! holding his hands over his ears while Mrs. Parsons and Mrs. Raymond are busying themselves
putting away dishes left to dry in the dish rack, pretending that such an effort will help. Here, this will help! Crash of
china on the tile floor—but you see, Helen, it doesn’t help, the sound disappears into the silence of their false pity, poor
dear, why don’t you sit down, but sitting only makes it worse, at least when you’re up and on your feet you can kick out if
need be, or you can bolt, escape from the premier possibility, the one that squelches its fellows and becomes real, like a
toy in the nursery brought to life by the power of a child’s affection, tender fingers caressing, little lips curled around
first words, everything ordered to carry on the process of life, a slow, ordinary turning, no accidents, no interruptions,
flesh displacing the air, life miraculously sustaining itself—until something stops or falters or something else intrudes,
obstructs, strikes, turning meaning into nonsense, hickory dickory, and the children are suddenly missing, the space around
you squeezed by darkness, danger crushing you until you can’t bear the pain of it, so you swallow the syrup offered by the
doctor—where did he come from?—without feeling yourself swallow, your throat numb beneath the weight of the night, and don’t
you know about the possibilities contained within the night? You, Helen, are an expert, a nocturnal archangel who can find
what others can’t in the dark. Minute by minute.

As they settle her on the sofa, she is the first to see her children, unharmed and unconcerned, scuffing up the drive, slumped
and disheveled like bums, bums who come to rifle through your trash bins and camp in your own backyard,
godless bums!
If she didn’t see them with her own eyes she wouldn’t believe it. But already she’s too tired to announce their arrival,
too tired to call out to them, and certainly too tired to beat them, which she’s never done before but would do now if she
had the strength, for she is furious, or would be were it not for this artificial tranquillity that distracts her from the
rage she wants to feel, forcing her into a dreamless sleep and leaving her to wake the next morning to a household restored
to order, everything in place, and she, devoted wife and mother, more dependent than ever upon a serenity that she is certain
will fail her.

I
n a sunlit room overlooking Riverside Drive, Sir Maxwell Smedley-Bark, retired major general of the British army, is reading
about himself. In Sir Maxwell’s decided opinion, reported correctly on the front page of the newspaper and continued on page
twenty-six, “Propaganda is a mighty weapon, especially in the hands of the Spanish insurgents, who have hoodwinked the international
community and cast Señor Franco as the villain, when in fact he is very quiet, unassuming, and congenial.” That’s what he
had said to the reporter during the interview yesterday, and here it is printed word for word. The public trusts him to know
what he’s talking about. After all, he spent two months in Spain, covering 3,200 miles, from Málaga to the Bidasoa. “I look
upon General Franco as the champion of Christianity against communism in Western Europe,” the quote continues. And for those
who might wonder about his sympathies, there’s this: Sir Maxwell secured a promise from Franco himself that “no Protestant
in Spain will ever be molested for his religion.” How about that for a diplomatic plum!

As the direct descendant and namesake of Sir Maxwell Bark, the renowned Scottish poet, his inherited gift with language has
served him well in the public realm, and he is spending the golden years of his life traveling around the world in pursuit
of peace, a rare treasure indeed! In Spain he spoke with civil authorities, prisoners and soldiers, priests and military personnel
on up to Franco himself, who proved a remarkably agreeable fellow as well as a tobacco connoisseur, which made for a delightful
after-supper smoke.

Here in New York on business relating to the Bank of England, Sir Maxwell was laid up in the hospital for nearly a week with
an intestinal infection. As soon as he had sufficiently recuperated, he’d moved into this bank-owned flat and agreed to an
interview. As it turned out, a parade in honor of veterans had thumped and trumpeted along Riverside Drive all morning long,
sending up fanfare through the open window while Sir Maxwell held forth.

“The churches are full. There is absolute law and order and peace behind Franco’s lines.” At some point, perhaps before this
last declaration, perhaps afterward, he’d wandered over to the window to peruse a military band passing below, and with his
back turned to his visitor he’d recited one of his great-grandfather’s verses:

Come, Mother, lift your wee treasure high,

Innocent aloft glanced by the flashing eye

Of he who urges our good men to war...

But poetry apparently meant nothing to the journalist, who had omitted the lines from his transcription. Like most journalists,
he’d wanted controversy and slogans. Sir Maxwell had given him both. “The world is fooled! Propaganda is so frightfully clever.
Franco is no dictator, nor is he a fascist. You can see the light of understanding in his eyes.” The light of understanding!
Sir Maxwell has a way with words, and if he can’t devote himself entirely to poetry, he can, at the tip of a hat, use poetry
to enhance his opinions.

He imagines General Franco’s pleasure when he hears about the interview. He imagines his own name spoken with admiration around
the world.

I
N THE KITCHEN
of the Brown family house on Rogers Avenue in Marwood, New Jersey, two old women drink their thin coffee laced with Schenley’s
Supreme and chatter about yesterday’s adventures: they had gone into the city to watch the parade and then to meet the French
liner
Normandie
in hopes of catching a glimpse of Gloria Swanson, who was said to be returning from Europe. Well, they hadn’t seen the grande
dame herself, but they’d had plenty of fun matching three longshoremen dime for dime in craps. Then they’d gone to the matinee
at the Booth, two hours plus spent in such scientifically cooled comfort that both sisters had promptly fallen asleep at intermission
and slept through to the end.