The Cosmopolitans (20 page)

“Which building?” she asked calmly. Remembering that she needed all information. Every piece of it.

“The brown brick. On the corner, next to Mr. Moon's Hand Laundry. I spoke to the landlord. Earl says they are always willing to rent to a white woman. After I sign the lease, he'll just move in. That's how it's done.”

Bette knew that was how it was done.

“Maybe,” and Hortense turned very, very sweet. So charmingly soft and endearing. “Maybe, if you could help us get some more money, he would be grateful.” Hortense tried to look blasé, but her desperation was behind the wheel.

Ah
, Bette was gratified to note.
Hortense and I have the same instincts in this regard. A good sign
. Bette had to be able to think like . . .
them
.

It was alarming and yet necessary. Bette knew that if she and Earl could just speak to each other, everything would be all right. Even in their last awful conversation he had admitted that he did not love Hortense. If he spoke to Bette again, if they had a series of conversations until all was resolved, well, he would remember what it was like to be real with an equal. To be loved for himself. For his soul. Not out of envy for his talent or to be used for shock value. For him. As soon as this insanity stopped she would forgive him, immediately. It would take five minutes. She would just tell him honestly how much pain he had caused her, and then it would all be over. After all, Earl was her dearest friend, and she was his. She deserved to be heard.

Bette saw Hortense to the door and listened as she walked down the stairs. Then Bette stepped to the window and watched Hortense cross the street. At that point, she opened her own door and took the seven steps to Earl's apartment.

“Earl?”

“Go away,” he yelled through the door.

“This is not humane,” she said. “You are my dearest friend.”

“Was.”

How does he think of these things?
His instinct was so destructive it was stunning. How can someone be that terrible so easily for no reason? Did he read about it in a play? If Bette were ever to decide to treat someone like that, there would have to be a reason. She would need to plan ahead.

“Earl, don't talk to me that way, please. Can't there be some healing between us?”

“Nothing about me needs to be healed. I'm sorry I ever trusted you.”

He did it again. Escalated. She asked for reason and kindness, and instead he eviscerated her.

“Don't say that,” she crumpled. “I beg you.”

It would be hard for Bette to refuse any human being who said, “I beg you.” Even a hobo in an alley. Certainly not someone she knew.

She waited. Then Bette heard him stomp up to the door, stand there, and refuse to open it.
Sigh
. He didn't want to be bothered. She heard him put on the chain, implying that she would break in. Kick the door down. He was ridiculous. He was recreating her as his own monster.

“What you are doing,” he screamed at her through the wood. “What you are doing to me is
worse
than anything they've ever done to me.” His mouth must have been directly on the peephole. “It's worse than my family throwing me out. It's worse than the racism on the stage. It's worse than those lying boys who broke my heart or beat my head. You are worse than every animal I ever slaughtered. You, Bette, are the worst!”

“Why?”

“Because you are using my confidences against me.”

The truth exists. She knew that. The truth can't be unknown. To speak it is not to
use
it. To speak it is to defeat the lie. To speak it is the responsibility of those who know and love. To pretend is not to love. Not after this.

This was all so difficult, so hard to handle. Bette was lost inside, but she had to find a way. Earl was creating a false logic system. A smoke screen. What
was the “worst” was not the cruelty he had experienced at the hand of others. Or that she loved him in the face of them. Or that they had spoken honestly about these forces and about his desires. But the great crime, in the mind of Earl, was that she would not agree to let him destroy her life. She would not agree to an inauthentic relationship. She would not suddenly play along.

“Earl,” she said. Her cheek up against the door. “Don't shout at the world through me. I can't take it.” This was the truth. “If you deepen the wound, I too will deepen. I don't want to. Don't make me. Speak to me instead. If we work together we can both shift and a solution will appear.”

The door opened then with the force of the tornado that took Dorothy Gale to Oz, and there Earl stood, enormous in its frame. She was so happy to see him. To see his face. She loved him. She missed him all the time. Here he was, everything could be all right.

“All my life,” he said, shaking. “I have been the person that no one wants to be.”

“So have I,” said Bette.

“Well, I'm not going to be like you anymore,” Earl sneered. He was filled with hate. There wasn't a molecule of light. “You don't matter.”

Then the door slammed shut.

Chapter 20

B
y midnight Bette had established her goal. She had to keep Earl in the building at all costs.
If he moved, it was over
.

She heard sirens, police cars or ambulances pulling up to her corner, the swirling red glare illuminating her hands in rotation.

She would live in silence forever, she would live in the unbearable state of being unjustly shunned, and she could not let that be so. He had to stay next door so that they could talk.

There were voices in the hall and heavy steps.

Only if they spoke could the healing process begin. Now she had to determine her first course of action.

There was a heavy, authoritative knock.

“Police department.”

Bette opened her front door to a trio of police officers, ambulance drivers, and a nurse.

“What's the matter, officer?”

“Did you hear anything strange going on at the
O'Reilly residence?”

“No.”

The young cop, already fat, already disconnected, had already been through too much with no way to process it, and he was only at the beginning.

“When was the last time you saw the mother or the child?”

“I usually see them every day . . . out the window. We both lean on the windowsill at the same time. 6:00 p.m.”

“Every day?”

Two medical technicians carried out a stretcher with a large body bag.

“Usually. I mean, lately I . . . I haven't been looking out the window.”

Bette glanced up as a nurse emerged holding a creature in her arms. Not a girl, not a person, but a shrunken, trembling, staring, starving . . . not an animal . . . not an alien . . . but something between death and hell. Too weak to walk, protest, or register her own experience.

“Miss, how long has it been since you last looked out the window?”

“Two weeks. No, longer. Three weeks. Maybe a month? Perhaps two.”

“And why is that?”

“I've been . . . busy.”

“And you didn't hear a child crying next door.”

“No. If she had cried, I would have heard her.”

“All right.”

“Margaret's not a crier.”

“Well, if she lives, she'd better learn,” the cop said.
“'Cause she's got a damn good reason to cry.”

Bette looked at Earl's door, but no one was stirring. Those two weren't going to acknowledge that something grave had taken place. Jarred from her own dilemmas, Bette stood in the hallway until the parties dispersed, and then slowly backed into her foyer and locked the door. There she crumpled. She had no idea. She didn't see. That poor little girl. If only Bette had remembered other people instead of having to be the object of all of Earl's rage. Bette sobbed, she felt her limbs tingle. That girl suffered because no one was watching. The person who should have been watching was Bette, and yet she had been too absorbed. In her own happiness. In her own sorrow. Bette cried from regret for this other person's pain. Her helplessness. It was so unnecessary to be helpless. It was a state of mind. Beyond being a child. It was being a defeated child. Defeated by your own home and the inability to escape. To not see that someone else's trouble is taking your life away.

Bette stumbled to the bathroom and took off her sweater. Her dress. Her underpants and brassiere. Her slip and her stockings. Garters. She took off her glasses and stepped into the shower. It was cold or it was hot. That was up to her. She had control. She had running water. She didn't need someone else to feed her. She had a body. She had arms and muscles and a belly made of steel. She had two soft breasts that she held in her hands. She had a neck to carry her busy, busy mind. She could do it. She could find the right course of action that would bring this chapter to a positive resolution. She would not be Margaret O'Reilly.
Bette would not be the victim of someone else's pain.

And then it all came upon her. She comprehended exactly what to do.

Bette arrived at the office at seven forty-five, knowing she had to make the call first thing after eight. It could not wait until lunch. She would have to sound crisp, businesslike, corporate. Sitting in the office, receiver in hand, she felt shaken to her bones. Terrified. She was a novice mountain climber swinging alone from peak to peak. It was dangerous, she knew, to be this bold. But many others played chess with people's lives. Most players opened with the pawn, carefully developing the center of the board. And there were many staunch advocates of this approach, in theory. Careful development of the blockade, protecting the power center at all cost. Now that he was at the helm, Earl led with his queen. Risky, threatening, exposed. So she was forced to endanger her own queen, just to stay in play. Bette reached to dial and felt a contortion so deep that her feet clenched, gripping her shoes. Earl had underestimated her, he had left no thread of decorum. She dialed and listened to the heralding ring.

“. . . Yes, Mister. So you understand, he . . .” She thought back to Anthony. How his pale skin made it possible for Earl to have that apartment. “The man in question . . . he is . . .”

“He is what?”

“He is not . . .” Suddenly she changed her path. “They are not legally married. . .”

“I see.”

She waited. She had hedged. Was that a flaw?

“I don't want that in my building.”

Her heart opened. “Yes, of course you don't want that in your building . . . Yes, of course.”

She hung up, exhausted. The universe buzzed around her and then the panic set in. She was so excited her bones ached. Was it
panic
, after all? No, it was a kind of breathless thrill. It was the sheer energy of daring to exist. She could exist. She did not have to be blamed for everyone else's weakness. That was not the purpose of her life. If Earl and she could talk, none of this would be necessary, but he made it necessary. He expected her to disappear, but she could not because she was a living being. She had rights. The right to not be blamed—again. She could respond. Actively. Doing something to defend one's place. To improve one's life. To take control. It was going to the edge of her capacity. Soaring.

The office door swung open and Hector strolled in. So, she had to rally a pretense of the ordinary, quickly, in preparation for the next chapter of achieving her daunting task.

“Good morning, Bette.”

“Good morning, Hector.”

Determination gathering, she took a deep breath and began practicing her lines for Step Two.

Darky savage. Darky savage
.

Bette had a secret life.

As he hung his hat, Hector looked at her with little boy eyes, the way he had run to her as a child coming to visit his daddy in the office. When old Mr. Tibbs realized that his only son was not the brightest bulb in the shop, he mercifully lost interest rather than try to humiliate the child into improvement. But a sidebar
to the benevolent ignorance was that he noticed almost nothing more about his son beyond the boy's limitations. Ever. Including when he was hungry. The mother rarely made an appearance and was never mentioned. For all Bette knew she was in a lunatic asylum or on an international bridge tour indefinitely. So, more than once, Bette had rescued the tiny growling stomach of little Hector with half her sandwich brought from home or half a homemade sugar cookie. More than once she had listened to some question or tale normally relayed to a parent.

“Beth,” he'd lisped at the age of four. “If the dinosaurs come back to earth, are we all gonna get thwashthed?”

“No, Hector. We won't get squashed because the dinosaurs are extinct. That means they are never coming back, because they no longer exist.”

“Okay.”

Here he was now, before her, a man. And yet he carried that same wounded expression of simply and utterly having no idea what to do. Ever worried about getting squashed, but now not knowing for sure, by whom.

“Bette?”

“Yes, Hector?”

“Has Valerie come in yet?”

Bette looked at the clock. It was eight twenty-five. “No.”

“Bette?” Something was troubling him.

“What is it, Hector?”

“I like her.”

“I like her too.” Then Bette thought a bit. “I also admire her.”

“So do I,” Hector said, a bit overenthusiastic. “I love her. I mean, I'm in love with her.”

There it was.

“What about Sue?”

“I know!”

Hector Tibbs, who had never broken a rule on purpose in his entire life, was not only harboring adulterous feelings but was confessing them to the one person alive who had known him the longest. His dead father's secretary. Obviously, the situation had reached a state of emergency.

The fact was that Hector, though married since the age of twenty-three, was finally, for the first time in his life, truly and passionately in love. He'd steadily experienced Sue as a conveyor belt of domesticity and had realized long ago that if they ever stopped discussing details and arrangements, they would have nothing left at all to say. One day he even tried to not participate in any conversation about pickups, drop-offs, dates, times, menus, tasks, errands, money, or decisions. And he quickly discovered that the only other material between him and his wife were reports of each of their activities. Sue would report on her conversation with her mother, what Sally did, what Stevie did, what the neighbor said, and what the gardener billed. Hector, in turn, would describe the new events at work, Valerie's new ideas, the new paint on the office walls, and Sue would give an opinion, an evaluative statement or advice even though she knew
absolutely nothing about any of it
. She didn't ask questions, so she couldn't understand, and whatever it was that was in her soul or her head, she either couldn't bring it to her lips or was
as unaware of her own interior life as he was. Twice now, he had almost just come out and announced, “I'm in love with Valerie,” really just to give them something meaningful to talk about, but he wouldn't dare. What would she do with that? And more importantly, what would he?

Hector had found Valerie to be the most delightfully, willfully, and singularly charming woman he had ever encountered. Of course, he didn't get out much. Besides Bette, waitresses, and the other society wives in Connecticut, he hardly met any women at all. He spoke to his colleagues' secretaries and receptionists, but there were so few women in any position of authority or autonomy that he really had not been this close to one before. And he found her a marvel. If that's where women were going, he was all for it. Alive, engaged, displayed, and at the helm of every craft. If only women were allowed to be as good as they could be, well then, chaps like Hector would be allowed to take second place, which is really where he knew he belonged. It would be better all the way around, and he hoped other men would hurry and wise up, so he could take off that damn tie and be able to stop having to make decisions he would never be equipped to make.

Valerie was changing his life on a daily basis. For the better. But that was the problem. Alimony, too, would change his life on a daily basis. All this talk about
marketing
had made Hector realize that there was a better life out there, waiting to be grabbed. But for a price. There, he'd finally admitted it. His happiness boiled down, like everything, to the price of the ticket. Was there any way out?

Bette listened to these confessions. Truthfully, she could empathize. Valerie had changed her life as well, it was undeniable. How else would she have been able to begin to grab the reins, to try to have some say in how her own time was spent? Stop being acted upon and start being part of the action? Well, without Valerie it never would have been. She could see why Hector wanted to be closer to her. Bette felt the same. Strangely, Hector and Bette, who all their lives had been on the opposite side of every social, cultural, and characterological divide, were suddenly united by marketing. They were both at a crossroads. They were both deciding not to be what others wanted them to be but to brand themselves for the world to see. To do their own packaging, so to speak, and to direct their powers to their specific target audiences. Instead of being doormats for the rest of time, they had both decided to become themselves.
LUX
.

And yet, Bette was intelligent and Hector was not.

“Hector,” she warned. “Be careful. You do not yet know how Valerie feels about you. Don't you dare make a pass at her unless you're sure. It will jeopardize the business.”

That was practical advice. And it dovetailed with the one significant doubt that Hector had been carrying around for weeks. It was the sneaking awareness that his sweet Valerie not only had no interest in the likes of him but actually had a taste for street toughs.

“I think she prefers convicts to regular working stiffs.”

“Why?” Bette asked.

“Well,” Hector stammered. “This realization came to me one evening about a month ago.”

“What happened?”

Valerie had persuaded him that part of his job was to go out for drinks with clients. There was more business to be done over dinner than there was in the club car of the commuter train, and Hector had better get used to both the camaraderie and picking up the check.

Hector had found it excruciating. He didn't know what to order, didn't know what to talk about, and rarely seemed to laugh on cue. After shaking hands, convinced that he'd done more harm than good, Valerie had suggested that the two go out together for one more drink.

“Just to
postmortem
,” she'd said with a wink.

Of course he was secretly delighted, but also fearful that she would tear him to shreds for his miserable performance. Valerie chose a bar on Christopher Street, a side street he had never seen or heard mentioned. After arriving at the dive, which was called Julius's, Hector excused himself to go to the men's room. Well, the back of the bar around the urinals was filled with some very unsavory characters. Hector did not know exactly what was going on, but whatever it was it did not feel legal.