The Truth According to Us (25 page)

“Much beloved,” said Felix. “Is that right?”

“He was!” Minerva said. “He was much beloved, Felix.”

Felix laughed. “Depends who you're talking to, I guess.”

Layla glanced at him in confusion. “Miss Betts remembered him fondly. He gave her a penny for candy once.”

“Ah,” said Felix.

“That's
just
the kind of thing Daddy would do,” said Minerva. “He was always doing things like that.”

“He sure was. Handing out pennies to the friendless night and day,” said Felix.

“Miss Betts wasn't friendless,” Layla said. “He just gave her a penny.”

“Maybe she said she was friendless,” suggested Bird, “so he'd give her a penny.”

Jottie laughed. “I bet you're right,” she said to Bird. “She's crafty like that, Miss Betts is. I can see her now, lurking on a street corner, waiting for Daddy to come by so she could say she was friendless and get herself a penny.”

Felix glanced up from his coffee. “If she did a clog dance, he'd give her two pennies.”

“Daddy couldn't resist a clog dance,” Jottie said, shaking her head. “It was like strong drink to him.”

“You don't see much clog dancing anymore,” offered Minerva.

“It's a shame,” said Felix. “Miss Betts clogged with the best of them.”

“Where'd she get the clogs?” asked Willa, looking between her aunt and her father with sparkling eyes.

Felix looked pained. “I'm sorry to say it. She stole them.”

Jottie grimaced. “Don't tell me. Just don't tell me anything about it.”

“From a child.”

“A little Dutch child?” asked Jottie. “A little lost Dutch child?”

Felix nodded. “Took 'em right off her purple feet.”

Mae choked, and Jottie reached out to thump her on the back. Mae nodded, her eyes watering, and Jottie glared around the table. “Now, don't you-all go passing judgment on Miss Betts.”

“Clog dancing exerts a powerful fascination,” Felix murmured.

“None of us is beyond it,” Jottie said sternly.

“If a lady like Miss Betts can fall, what hope is there for the rest of us?” asked Felix.

“Prayer is my armor!” cried Jottie.

Felix dropped his face into Bird's curls and laughed.

Jottie smiled. “I win.”

He nodded, acknowledging her victory, and turned his eyes to Layla. “See, now, I wouldn't trust that Miss Betts as far as I could throw her.”

“How could I?” Layla giggled. “Now that I know her secret vice.”

No, thought Jottie, watching Layla's dazzled face, you win, Felix, as always. Tired of her brother's invincibility, tired of her own lack of it, she scraped her chair roughly away from the table and stood. I wish Sol had seen me the other day, she thought. I wish he'd come into Statler's and seen me. Then I'd know if he still cares. As the circle of eyes turned to her, she slid Willa's plate beneath her own, placed the forks on top, and made a decision. “I'll take you over to the mill on Thursday, Layla. If you like.”

Felix's eyebrow rose, questioning.

Jottie looked away.

Layla pushed back her chair and began to make a replica of Jottie's neat stack. “That would be grand, Jottie. Thanks.”

Felix watched the two of them for a moment and then pulled his cigarette case from his pocket and settled himself back in his chair.

Willa, too, remained at the table, watching the women move competently from the table to the kitchen. She waited them out, ignoring their slim arms reaching and worn heels tapping back and forth; she waited until there was nothing left for Layla to carry and then she waited as Layla put one foot on the bottom stair and turned back to see if Felix was looking. She waited until Layla slowly climbed the stairs, and then she waited for Felix to draw a cigarette out of his case and glance at her. She waited for the swift scratch and the waft of sulfur and the smoke coiling upward, and then she pushed back her chair and stood. “Guess I'll go out and play now,” she muttered.

Felix laughed quietly. “I guess you will.”

She stopped at his chair and bent swiftly to kiss his shoulder. Then she went out into the falling blue evening.

July 2, 1938

Layla Beck

47 Academy Street

Macedonia, West Virginia

Layla,

I ran into Denton at Fiske's last night—it was a seat-of-the-pants party in honor of Larry's latest,
Noose around the Moon
(real stinker of a title, I think, but he insisted). In between diatribes about the Non-Intervention Committee and the decline of Amalgamated Meat Cutters, Denton let loose a headline about you. He claimed that you were an
employee of the Works Progress Administration
(italics mine, of course; Denton loves only meat-packers). He didn't know anything else—or, if he did, he was too pickled to convey it—so I telephoned Lance from the party and asked him where the hell you were. He didn't want to tell me, the old protective-brother routine, but he didn't stand a chance against the Antonin bloodhounds and I got it out of him.

My god, Layla, has the Earth stopped in its gyre? When you said your dad was tired of supporting you, I figured he'd land you a cozy
little sinecure with one of his bureaucratic toadies—Secretary to the Delaware Perfume Board, something along those lines. But the WPA? Is it a plot hatched by Senator McNary to kill your father? Are you a mole for Father Coughlin? What are you doing down there? Lance told me you were on the Writers' Project and said something about a history book. I said, That's preposterous, Lance. Layla doesn't know enough history to carve on the head of a peanut. He got sore and told me you were a fine writer. He might be right about that. You can write—it's
what
you write that's absurd.

I've been practically living in the office while Teutzer's in court. They've brought out every damn argument in the book, including moral turpitude and providing aid and comfort to the enemies of the state, but he's going to get off. It's free speech, and even the fascists at the D.A. can't find a way to get around that. The upshot is that I'm writing almost every issue of
Unite!
single-handed and spending most of my nights here, on the sofa. I can't remember what my apartment looks like, but perhaps that's just as well. At least the windows here open and—maybe you remember?—the sofa is accommodating.

Nonetheless, I'm due for a few days off and I want to get out of the city. I'd travel a long way to see you on relief, my luscious Layla. What say I come down to take in the sights of West Virginia, including that one? I'd like to get a firsthand look at how FERA is organizing coal-worker relief, and the Arthurdale settlement could be good for a laugh. If I get two stories out of it, Marlon may even pay expenses. Unlikely, but worth a try. Are you staying someplace where my presence would go unnoticed, or do you have an old lady in a lace collar barricading your virtue?

I've missed you. Remember those last two words I said to you? I want a retraction.

Love,

Charles

July 5, 1938

Charles Antonin

c/o
Unite!

7 E. 14th St.

New York, New York

Charles,

Surprised to hear from you is putting it mildly. Didn't you issue an irreversible diktat of banishment at our last meeting? Or had the bourgeois fog that clouds my reason (a direct quote) got into my ears as well? Perhaps I am mistaken and you
didn't
say that our relations were founded upon decadent individualism and that I was nothing more than a whore of the upper class.

No, I remember it clearly. That is what you said. Those bourgeois fogs come and go.

How dare you write me such a letter? You, with all your cant about humanity and the elevation of mankind, are as coldhearted and inhumane as any of the fascists you claim to despise. If you really had one thought about me, as a laborer or a person, you would have been ashamed to mock my work and boast about your own. Your arrogant delusion that your motives are hidden from me is an insult to my intelligence. It's perfectly plain that you want to come here to go to bed with me, nothing else, but what I find most insulting is your assumption that the flyspeck of charm expended in your letter would be adequate to achieve that end.

It may be of some passing and, I hope, deterrent interest to you to learn that I have met a person so far your superior in manner, morals, and feeling that I can hardly believe you belong to the same species, much less the same sex. After I had been cast out—it's not too strong a phrase—by everyone I had supposed would stand by me, and I arrived here absolutely friendless and bewildered, he welcomed me, he helped me with my work (rather than ridiculing it), and he made me feel at home. All this without hidden object—he's gentlemanly and intelligent and considerate of
everyone around him. In every little action, he achieves what you, with all your bombast and posturing, fail to achieve: He makes the world a better place for the people around him by showing them courtesy and kindness.

And now, to quote you once again and irrevocably, good-bye.

Layla

P.S. There are no coal mines in this part of West Virginia. Your presumption and ignorance are typical of the effete intellectual class.

July 5

Dear Ben,

If I murder a Communist, will I get acquitted for justifiable homicide?

Layla

July 5, 1938

Dearest Rose,

I'm so mad I could spit.

Charles Antonin has had the gall, the insuperable gall, to write me a letter inviting himself to Macedonia—after casting me out not two months ago on the grounds that I was a superficial, uncontrolled whore (that's the abridged version). And now comes a letter, laughing at me for working on the WPA, sneering at my ability to write history, bragging about his essential contributions to that rag
Unite!
, and then,
then
, suggesting that he come down here, provided he wouldn't be kept from my bed by an overscrupulous landlady.

I spent half an hour utterly incapacitated by fury. I just stood in the middle of my bedroom floor and shook with rage. Then I sat down and wrote a masterpiece of a reply, telling him exactly what I thought of him. I include a copy for your delectation—isn't it brilliant? I am beginning to think I have a knack for writing. Oh, I hope Charles is absolutely floored—he seems to think that all he needs to do is announce that his interest has revived and I will swoon with delight.

Unfortunately, I know where he got that impression. I blush now when I think of the way I trotted up to New York every time he whistled. You were right, Rosy, when you said he was incapable of caring for me as much as he cared for the proletariat—except substitute the word himself for the word proletariat. He likes to hear himself use such words, and he loves the idea of himself as a revolutionary, but if the revolution consisted of tedious, repetitious tasks performed before no one, he'd be a counterrevolutionary in a second. He wants attention and parties and fist-waving arguments more than he wants the classless society. It's all so painfully clear to me now. I don't know why I believed in him before. Yes, I do—I believed in him because, every few months, he condescended to favor me with his undivided attention for a few moments, and, desperate as I was, I'd pretend that those moments were a glimpse of our future. Delusion, delusion—I'm no better than a chambermaid in a Victorian novel, seduced by the rakish son's promises of respectability. I was led astray, first by Lance, who said Charles had a fine mind and was worth twenty of my usual swains, and then by Charles himself, who said I had a passionate—though latent—intellect. Could you withstand that? I couldn't. You've met Lance, so you can imagine what a heady thing his approval is. Being the sister of a genius is dreadfully thin gruel, I'll tell you. The last time Lance praised me outright was when I threatened to tell the newspapers the disgraceful wage Father paid the gardener. “Stupid,” Lance said. “But brave.” On the strength of those three words, I telephoned the
Star
and was immediately shipped off to Miss Telt
for four years. So you can see how Lance liking Charles would turn my head—in fact, I expect that accounted for nearly two-thirds of his irresistible charm. The remaining third was lodged in that passionate-intellect line.

I've spent far too much time on Charles already. He doesn't deserve to occupy my mind or yours any longer. Thank you for your lovely letter, Rosy dear. I'm sorry to hear about Paris, but I think your mother is right. This Sudeten affair has everyone on edge, and no matter what Daladier says, it seems clear that France can't go on much longer pretending that Hitler doesn't exist. Get out a map and count the number of miles between Paris and the German border; there aren't many. Imagine how you—not to mention your mother—would feel if you found yourself in the middle of a war. Father's aunt Emily was caught out in Belgium in 1914 and had to come home via Shanghai with only the clothes on her back and a pair of opera glasses, her lorgnette having fallen overboard at Port Said. Father said she shook like a leaf for years afterward at the slightest mention of wurst. It was sweet of you to invite me to go on the lam with you, and for a moment I thought desperately of Montmartre, but I can't. I have a
job
. Until now I never understood what people meant when they said that. A job seemed to me something you'd want to escape. But I don't. I want to finish this book. It's true that Macedonia is lacking in cafés and brasseries, but I'm wrapped up in this odd little town and its history. I've encountered more lurid characters and strange doings here than I could possibly find in Paris, sewers included, and I'm beginning to think that I have a responsibility to bring them all to life.

Next item: Mason. I think you should listen to him. I don't think it's ridiculous to marry someone you've known since you were seven, not if you love him. Marrying someone who first saw you in a playsuit is only superficially different from marrying someone who first saw you in an evening dress. When I think of Mason, I don't think of him at seven (though I do remember Lulu's party, the one where he threw the ice cream). I think of Mason at
twenty-two, when he found out you were sick. You should have seen him, Rose. You wouldn't have any doubts at all if you could have seen him that night. He didn't say one word about Louis or anything—he just wanted to know if you were going to be all right. I never told you how jealous I was, did I? When he left, I sat down and cried, because no one cared about me as much as Mason cared about you.

My Lord, look at the length of this letter! The last rays of sunlight are filtering through the leaves of the dogwood in the front yard, which means it must be nearly eight. Have I turned naturalist? No. I don't have a clock in my room, and I'm forced to rely upon trees to tell the time. When the moon rises above the maple across the street, I go to bed.

In preparation for which epoch, I herewith set my seal. Plus love.

Layla

P.S. Don't forget what I say about Mason. Unlike Paris, he's not eternal.

P.P.S. Are you, with your keen powers of detection, able to discern the identity of a certain mysterious person mentioned in the final paragraph of my letter to Charles?