Horizontal Woman (6 page)

Her caseload covers Boerum Street from Nostrand to Bedford Avenues; on these two avenues she handles two hotels as well, residence hotels filled with old men who must comprise, in their drunkenness and stupidity, almost half her caseload. At the very least she does not have to deal with them: the alcoholics and senile dementia cases are utterly beyond any of her efforts to deal with them and besides that (she is free to admit this) she finds the old men repulsive and frightening, is just as glad to know from her professional point of view that fornication would not help them at all, most of them long since having sunk into impotence, stagnation and regret. Some of the old men have tried to be friendly with her; a few have even attempted staggering, lecherous advances, but she has had no difficulty at all in repulsing them.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stark,” she has said to a particularly and peculiarly repellent old alcoholic, one whose case record indicated that he had been receiving public assistance since 1952 or the utter failure of his area of the garment business in Brooklyn, “but there’s no way you can do that. If you keep on doing that,” she had added, pulling his wizened, trembling hand from under her short skirt, depositing it firmly in his lap where, for all she cared, the disgusting old man could masturbate himself in front of her, “we’ll have to close your case. You can’t do that to a welfare investigator, I’m a representative of the city of New York.”

“Of course,” the old man had said helplessly, picking fibers from his pants, of course, of course,” and so much for Mr. Stark and the rest of them in the
Homeways Residence for Gentlemen:
despite all of her dedication Elizabeth had to draw the line someplace and it would have to be in cases like this. If it had somehow, by a disembodied agency or individual, been proven to her that fornicating with the old men in the greasy, fluorescent lobby (no one except residents was ever permitted in the rooms) would have helped them she would have had a dilemma to confront, a dilemma which (for all she knew) she might have resolved in favor of tentative advances and caresses (because she wanted to be thorough) but there was no way that Elizabeth was going to accept the fact that nothing she could do would aid these old men at all. They were utterly beyond redemption; working out their Old Age Assistance and Aid to the Disabled in the small and intoxicated expanse of the recreation room, lobby and their cells, they were beyond concern. Her services, her dedication would have to be reserved for the younger ones living, to some extent anyway, in the world: for Felipe Morales, Willie Buckingham, Rabbi Schnitzler she could go a long way but not for Mr. Stark in the
Homeway Residence
. Perhaps this was unfair but it was part of the generalized unfairness in the world which all of her clients would have to confront some day; better now than never and she could not do everything.

So much for the clients in the hotels but the management problem was a different question. She handled two hotels; the
Homeway Residence
and
Happy Hour Twilight Home
just three numbers up and across the street and there was no problem with the
Happy Hour
because the manager there was one of the alcoholics himself, a relief client in fact who worked behind the desk and collected the rents to mail on to a disembodied corporation which paid him seven dollars a week, deducted from his check. The
Homeway Residence
, however, was a different situation.

The manager of the
Homeway Residence
was a fat fortyish man named Mel who wore religious insignia underneath his sports shirts and the first time he had met Elizabeth he had been overcome by enthusiasm. “Listen,” he had said, coming from behind the desk to squeeze her shoulders and knee her gently, affectionately in the thigh, “listen, I’ve watched investigators come and go for twenty-five years here and you are really something. You are really magnificent. You are the best. I think that you and I could really go somewhere together. In the meantime, would you take this?” he had said and pressed into her hand a five dollar bill.

Elizabeth, who had heard vaguely of departmental corruption but had seen no evidence of it until then on her own caseload wanted to know what Mel had in mind and Mel said nothing at all, absolutely nothing, this was just the routine gratuity which he gave every investigator every time they visited, “just so that we stay friends, to show my respect for you and your position.” Since she was new, however, and this was her first visit to the Homeway, Mel felt that the least he could do was to give her a “little extra right here” he said and gave her a ten dollar bill with an air of curious intimacy, looking at her sideways then and murmuring that she was a lovely girl. “Listen,” Mel said, “don’t worry about a thing; the guy who had your caseload before you, Salant? was that the name? we worked together for six years here and we had a terrific relationship and I’m sure that I can do the same with you. What the hell,” Mel said, “there doesn’t have to be anything personal in this at all; just a way of showing my appreciation,” and had then taken her by the elbow to lead her through the vast lobby of the Homeway, pointing out the various drunks seated in stuporous postures by palms and television sets, giving a little bit of the personal biography of each. According to Mel, all of them were homosexuals who had found themselves in such a condition because they were unable to have a normal relationship with a woman. “And you see?” Mel said, when he had escorted her back behind the desk and insisted that she sit on his high, awkward stool, looking out upon all of this, “there’s nothing that you can do with a one of them. But they’re all perfectly happy: we get along fine here, nine-tenths of this hotel is welfare and I’m always advancing them money. Everything goes right out for drink you understand except what I take right off the top for the rent and by the fourteenth and twenty-eighth of each month they’re desperate. Starving. So I give them an advance right out of the petty cash box, at no interest at all and that keeps them all happy. You see? You see how happy they are here, how we get along?” He stood, waved in the general direction of two alcoholics swaddled together in a single chair, making drunken, groping gestures at the air. “How you doing, Tommy and Mart?” he asked, “how you doing?” The drunks said they were doing just fine, never felt better, as a matter of fact, and hoped he was the same. “This is your new investigator,” Mel called, “her name is Elizabeth Moore.”

“How are you? how are you?” the drunks muttered and settled back on the chairs again. Mel made a brisk gesture of dismissal and turned toward her, his eyes fixed, this time on her breasts. “So you see,” he said, “it’s really quite hopeless, but we manage to keep them happy and do the best we can. I hope you’ll take the fifteen. And there’ll be a little something else for you every time you visit. The only thing and I want to say this frankly is that I hope you don’t turn out like Salant. Always asking for something, always needing a little extra. I think he was a horse player; he was always talking about making payments to the finance companies. Tell you the truth, I wasn’t sorry to see him go even though I never thought we’d get a lovely young girl like you at
Homeway
. That’s wonderful. How about it?” Mel said, putting his hands on her shoulders, “would you like to have a date?”

“No,” Elizabeth said. She had been holding the fifteen dollars all during the lobby walk, now she crumpled the bills and put them back into Mel’s hands, “no I don’t want to go out on a date. No, I don’t want your fifteen dollars. That’s graft. That’s absolutely unspeakable.”

“You see,” Mel said, casually, taking the money and putting it back in his pocket, addressing the ceiling as if it were an auditor, “that’s the trouble with the department. The turnover. The turnover is terrible and everybody thinks they’re going to save the world. Salant thought he could too at the beginning. Okay,” Mel said, inclining his head back toward her, “if that’s the way you feel about it fine. It doesn’t make any difference at all to me what you do. The checks come in on the first and the sixteenth and we cash them and take the rent off the top. Still, would you like to go out with me?”

“No,” Elizabeth said turning from him in some disgust, “I don’t want to have a date.”

“I’m an unmarried man,” Mel said, hooking his thumbs into his belt, shoving his stomach subtly toward her. “This is perfectly legitimate. No graft. I find you very attractive. You look a little bit like Lauren Bacali.”

“No,” Elizabeth said, moving from the desk. “No and no again. I don’t want to have anything to do with you at all,” and had, in some confusion, opened her fieldbook, trying to locate the names of the cases she had come to visit. The alcoholics looked at her in vague interest for a moment, then subsided again into their coma. Elizabeth wondered exactly how far along in her work she would have to get in order to consider the
Homeway Residence
merely another stop in her afternoon’s work.

“I could show you a good time,” Mel said, coming from behind the desk and pursuing her. “You may not think I’m much to look at but this is a responsible job and I make a good salary. Also I’m a college graduate. Being an investigator isn’t the greatest thing in the world you know; you could show a little manners.”

“I won’t,” Elizabeth said, “I won’t do anything for you; I don’t want to deal with you,” and her control had snapped, she had turned then and guessed that she had done some screaming at Mel (although this was hard to verify and her memory of that is gone) and he had retreated, apologetically, showing her his palms while the alcoholics twitched like fish in their chairs and looked at her with large, solemn eyes. Whatever went on in front of them seemed to make no impression at all. Elizabeth had found who she was looking for eventually and had taken the three of them off to a corner of the lobby for a confidential talk about their situation (respecting, as she must, the right of the recipient of public assistance to privacy and continued confidentiality about his condition) and as she looked at the three of them, Stark and two others seated like animals in a circus act, their dull, stupid beaten eyes radiating disinterest and fatigue she understood that there were limits to her dedication, she had found them right now and she was never, never going to be able to deal with the tenants of this hotel in the manner she wanted. It was the one small respite she had allowed herself, the one dead spot in her dedication but she felt that she was entitled to this. Later on, when she had found out that fully 50% of her cases by number were domiciled in those two hotels she had felt guilty about it — it was as if she had cut down her potential for achievement by exactly that much — but there was no way whatsoever in which she was going to be able to switch caseloads (no provisional worker could) and there was certainly no way in which she was going to be persuaded to fuck those disgusting old men so that was that.

Mel had pushed the issue of going out with her the next few times she had visited — and the nature of her statutory visits brought her in there twice a month — and then with disgust had dropped it. “The trouble with you,” he said the very last time they talked when she had turned down a fifty dollar bill and an offer to go with him to a clubhouse box at Belmont racetrack the following weekend, “the trouble with you is that you’re a cold bitch, that’s your problem. You have no sense of life. You bitches come out of Vassar and put in your six months in the Department of Welfare and then go off to marry and have no idea ever of what kind of place this is, not that I want you to take my calling you a bitch personally,” and then had abandoned her forever, only sitting at the desk to sullenly peep from newspapers at her subsequent visits.

Elizabeth had thought of laughing and telling Mel exactly how much of life she knew, how seriously she took her job … but she knew that this could only lead to complications and difficulties later on and so she had said nothing whatsoever.

She feels, the next day, that she should return to Felipe Morales and try to augment their new-found relationship as quickly as possible but she is unable to get there. Oved has her seated at his desk for an hour, going over entries in her case-records and proving that she has no idea of verification procedures, then there is a full staff meeting called in the welfare center and Elizabeth, surrounded by two middle-aged men in her case unit, finds herself seated on a row of chairs set up in the front where they are lectured by a Mr. Grey, dispatched from Central Office to fill them in on the latest policies and procedures.

“The latest policies and procedures are classically simple,” Mr. Grey says in a high bleat, rubbing his hands together and running through some memoranda on the desk set up before the rows. He is an extraordinarily fat man in his fifties who Elizabeth envisions as a welfare case himself: Home Relief probably or maybe aid to the disabled for a psychological condition, but he is highly possessed of procedures and necessities and does not seem aware of his disastrous limitations. “Classically simple,” Mr. Grey says, “we are going to come to grips with the root problem for the first time and eliminate the causes of the public assistance problem at the point of origin. You are all aware that the relief recipient is a sick person, socially unintegrated and in a state of psychic background: now we will resolve this. The procedures which you will be handed today will explicate the method of attack but briefly stated it is this: we have a three month program. Next month we will diagnose the condition of the various clients; you will go out into the field and interview all of your recipients and identify exactly those reasons and that psychological disability which put him on relief. This should be simple; the case records have ample background information. The month after that you shall initiate efforts at rehabilitation, drawing upon the diagnoses and working in conjunction with the Medical Social Worker who is standing by to assist you in these coordinated efforts. And the third month you shall totally rehabilitate the client and put him in contact with the social mores and imperatives of the larger culture. Is that clear?” Grey says and stands before them, still rubbing his hands, his eyes dazzled by the fluorescence, the sound of flush toilets working in the rear of the loft. “Are there any questions?”

“Lot of bullshit,” Oved says, turning from the row ahead and muttering to his case unit and the two middle-aged men surrounding Elizabeth dig their elbows into her and yelp enthusiastically but when Oved turns back toward Grey his face must be quite bland once again for he does not move in his seat. “Are there
any
questions?” Grey asks but there seems to be no question whatsoever. Grey begins to look pained, struggles in his place. “This is a complicated procedure,” he says desperately, “there have got to be some questions. Aren’t there any professionally-oriented social work objectives in this room?”

“I have a question,” Elizabeth says as those surrounding her look at her with hatred. Phones squall in the background; there is a murmur which can only be the clients in Intake below conferring among one another, preparing a murderous assault upstairs. “Assuming that we can effectuate rehabilitation and put them in contact with the mores of the outer culture, they’re going to need a middle-class income to sustain that new compensation, aren’t they? But most of them because of their psychic deficiencies, are capable only of finding lower-class employment and very few will be able to descend to the middle-class. I mean
ascend
to the middle-class of course. So renewed decompensation may begin as they find that their goals are irretrievably beyond their means. What would you suggest that we do then?” Elizabeth says, running a hand across her forehead, clearing the itch from her eyes. “This is something we must enter into at the point of rehabilitation,” she adds.

“That’s an interesting question,” Grey says. He begins to rub his hands once more, his eyes dancing up and down the procedures. “That is a very interesting question. Would anybody have any answers?”

“My worker has been with us less than six months,” Mr. Oved says, not standing. “She doesn’t understand departmental procedures too well as of yet. She’ll learn.”

“Well,” Grey says, “of course. Of course that’s true, still our, uh, new workers often can give us a fresh insight into our problems. I’d say that the answer to those questions young lady will be found right in the procedures. Wouldn’t you think so?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t read them.”

“Well, then that’s the answer. You’ll find that the procedure contains a complete explanation of possible complications,” Grey says happily and bounces away from the desk, merges into one of the doorways and nods to them from there. “I have to hit several other offices in Brooklyn,” he says, “to go into this procedure with them as I have with you. I’d love to stay and discuss this further but we’ll have to adjourn.

“Adjourn,” the administrator, a stolid, heavy woman in a flowered dress says, standing from the front row and clapping her hands. “Meeting is adjourned. Clerks to the phones, please. Workers back to your case units. Intake, find out who’s been waiting downstairs the longest and get those clients in touch with the case unit immediately.” She moves away slowly, staggering back toward her office and Elizabeth, stretching, finds that the two middle-aged men — they are really quite indistinguishable, one might be fifty and the other forty, one might have a brown suit and the other a blue one but they have been in the case unit together for two months for reasons, they have said, of business failure — are nudging her and looking at her with triumphant grins. “That’s putting it to them,” one of them says, “that shows them.”

“Shows them what?” Elizabeth says with some confusion.

“Shows them what fools they are, of course!” the other one says and nudges her harder, nothing sexual in the touch but it suddenly irritates her. “Rehabilitation! Diagnosis! This department is full of craziness. It’s going to be this way until the day they die and they won’t even admit to it. But you showed them.”

“But I meant it,” Elizabeth says, “it was a serious question. I think that diagnosis and rehabilitation is a very good idea, it’s the only way to solve the problem of social decompensation; I’m just worried about the attendant problems as a rise in socioeconomic status is not accompanied by one in the lifestyle. That’s what I wanted to ask,” she says and swings ahead of them, trying to put them out of her mind, noting that they are looking at her strangely and beginning to mutter between themselves but she can barely be concerned with this, so much is she occupied with the news of the new procedure (which so well dovetails with her own recent thought and experience as to be astonishing; the department and she are really as one) and the events of the past couple of days.

Oved is already waiting for her at his desk; he has many things he wants to discuss he says “and diagnosis and rehabilitation are none of them; you put that bullshit out of your mind, Miss Moore, because as long as you and I are here it’s going to be a matter of getting out a good W664 and W532, you listen to me, Miss Moore” but before he can get fully launched the unit clerk says that she has a call for her, her caseload number,
340P
and Elizabeth, nodding in a conciliating way at Oved — he is a frustrated man, after all; she must have some tolerance for his projectivity — picks up the phone and finds Willie Buckingham on the other end.

“I got to see you,” he says when she has identified herself, “no, don’t tell me
no
Miss Moore, I got to see you, it’s really important but I can’t leave the house. Mama is downtown doing some shopping and I’m stuck here babysitting so you’ve got to come out here. You
have
to come out, Miss Moore,” he says, “that is, if I mean anything to you at all,” and there is nothing, in terms of the investment she has made in their relationship, to say in protest.

“All right, Willie,” she says, “I’ll be out.” She hangs up the phone and turns to Oved. “I have to go to the field,” she says.

“Field? On what?

“The Buckingham case.”

“Buckingham? You leave that pack of phonies stew in their own juices. They been collecting relief three generations of them for twenty-five years; they can hold out a little longer this time. What did the old bitch want now?”

“It wasn’t Sadie. It was the boy.”

“Which boy? They got a lot of boys. They got eight dependent children in that house.”

“It’s none of the children. It’s the home relief case. That Willie.”

“Willie? Willie? That bastard? What does he want?”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth says. “He said that something was wrong. I’ve got to go and see.”

“You aren’t going nowhere, Miss Moore,” Oved says, laying a heavy, sexless hand on her shoulder. “You are staying in the office. Don’t you remember that you’re the emergency worker today?”

“I have to go,” Elizabeth says. “He says that it’s important.”

“Who you listen to? You listen to some eighteen-year-old teenage pimp or you listen to your supervisor? Who you taking instructions from anyway?”

“I have to, Mr. Oved,” Elizabeth says. She adjusts her handbag, looks toward her coat which is slung, ready for use at any time, across her chair. “It’s my caseload and my case. He needs me and I’m going.”

“You’re the emergency worker!”

“I can’t stay in the office all day and take phone calls when someone on my caseload needs me,” Elizabeth says. She moves away from Oved, adjusting her glasses, reaching for her coat, balancing her fieldbook. “I’ll be back in just a couple of hours.”

“You are pushing me. You are pushing me very far, Miss Moore.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You are pushing me
very
far, Miss Moore. You are the emergency worker today. You have responsibility today. You are to stay in.”

“No,” Elizabeth says, “no.” She is already in retreat. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” she says. “Even less than that. I have to go. I’m going.”

“I’ll be damned,” she hears Oved say behind her as she moves past all of the desks in the loft, heading quickly toward the stairs, “I’ll be damned; I bet she’s fucking that coon,” but what Oved says about her does not matter (or matters as little as anything else outside the center of her caseload). She moves down stairs, past Intake, through corridors, into the street and toward the Fulton Street bus imagining that she hears telephones still shrilling in the distance and she would not be surprised, in fact she is convinced that this must be the case, if all of the telephone calls were from Felipe Morales and all of them were for her. She has failed him. Their relationship has not even begun and yet she has failed him already. One in an endless succession of exploiters who have misused poor Felipe, brought him to feeling, and quit him but she vows that she will break the pattern: tomorrow she will have Willie settled down and will have somehow made her peace with Oved and will have read all of the new procedures and the very first thing she will do will be to call Felipe Morales herself, reach him through the candystore downstairs from his apartment and
mi señor
she shall say and
Felipo, Felipo
she shall say and
Felipo amor
until she has overwhelmed him with her need and then she shall head toward his apartment and see him. Just the two of them together, the wife and children displaced. She shall do that.

The trouble is that so many people need her.