Sutton (13 page)

Mrs. Endner says grace. Amen, Willie says, a little too loudly.

Mr. Endner doesn’t touch his food. Instead he makes a meal of his mustaches while watching Willie. Bess warned Willie, her father plays with his mustaches when upset.

Where do you work, Willie?

Well sir. I’m looking for work right now. I was recently laid off from a munitions factory. Before that I worked for Title Guaranty.

And what became of that position?

I was laid off also.

Mr. Endner gives his left mustache a hard tug.

What faith do you practice, son?

I was raised Catholic sir.

Mr. Endner pushes the right mustache up into his nostril. The Endners are Baptist, he says. In fact Mr. John D. Rockefeller Sr. is a close friend—he’s eaten at this table. His son is talking about building a new Baptist church. It’s going to be glorious. Grander than anything they have in Europe.

The last thing Willie heard about old man Rockefeller: Eddie said his father bilked sick people down south, sold them snake oil. Which is ironic, Eddie said, since Rockefeller started Standard Oil. Willie fills his mouth with food, nods. Yes sir, I believe I read something about that.

Mrs. Endner looks at Willie, then Bess. William, she says—where do your people come from?

Brooklyn mam.

Yes. We know. But your ancestors.

Willie chews his lamb slowly, stalling, which heightens the suspense now gripping the table. Ireland mam.

Willie can hear nothing but the pounding of his own heart and the compounding of interest in the Endner bank accounts. Everyone around the table, even the servants off in the shadows, seems to be envisioning the same selective montage of Irish history. Druids performing human sacrifices on oaken altars. Celtic warriors running naked toward Caesar’s legions. Toothless hags hurling bombs from behind the golden throne of the Pope.

The Endners hail from Germany, Mrs. Endner says, looking as though a once-in-a-lifetime migraine is coming on. Hamburg, she adds.

Willie is taken aback at her prideful tone. Even being a Hun is better than being a Mick. He stares at the potatoes on his plate, wondering if he should push them aside, defy at least one cultural stereotype. Only Bess’s steady reassuring gaze keeps him from fleeing the room, the house, Brooklyn.

The next night Willie meets Bess at a soda fountain in Coney Island. Her face is pale. He’s never seen her without high color in her cheeks. He knows what’s coming, but it’s still a shock to hear the words.

Willie Boy, my father has forbidden me from seeing you ever again.

She looks down at her dish of ice cream. Willie does the same. His senses are strangely heightened. He can feel the ice cream melt. He knows what Bess wants him to say, what he must say. And do. When he looks up, she’s waiting.

Okay, Bess. I’ll go talk to him.

They pile back in the Polara. Events were set in motion, Sutton whispers
.

What, Mr. Sutton?

Bess and I had a talk. January 1919. Everything flowed from that talk, that moment. Everything. Look back on your life and see if you can pinpoint the moment when everything changed. If you can’t? That means you haven’t had your moment yet, and you better hold on to your ass, it’s coming
.

Where did this talk take place?

Coney Island. Mermaid Avenue. I was going to put it on the map. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe I couldn’t face it. Is there anything more painful than remembering? And it’s a self-inflicted pain, we do it to ourselves. Ah Christ, maybe you can say that about all pain
.

But you said we
should
remember. That remembering is our way of saying fuck you to time
.

Did I?

Willie, wearing his gray Title Guaranty suit, knocks at the door on President Street. A maid shows him into an office off the vestibule. As planned, Bess is out with her girlfriends.

The office floor is covered with a full bearskin, its mouth about to devour the floorboards, its round snout shiny and black as an eight ball. Above a brick fireplace hangs a gray wolf’s head, fangs bared.

Willie stands before a mahogany desk covered with neatly stacked account books, model ships, letter openers that could slice open a man. He holds his hat by the brim, takes a step back, almost trips over the bear’s paw. He wonders if he should sit. He wishes he could smoke. From a door on the far side of the office Mr. Endner enters. Willie, he says.

Mr. Endner sir. Thank you for seeing me.

Mr. Endner seats himself behind the desk. He’s wearing a blue serge suit with a gray bow tie and his eyes are dull, as if he’s just wakened from a nap. He gestures to a straight-backed chair across from him. Willie sits. They eye each other like boxers at the opening bell.

The floor is yours, Willie.

Well sir. I came to ask you to please reconsider your decision. I think if you’d give me half a chance, you’d see that I’m a good and decent person, that I care for your daughter very much. And I think she cares for me.

Mr. Endner spins a fountain pen on the desk blotter. He moves a few envelopes, sets a letter opener atop them, picks up a silver dollar and raps it on the mahogany desktop. What’s the most valuable thing you own, Willie?

Willie thinks. This must be a trap, since every answer that comes to mind sounds wrong. He looks at the silver dollar. Sir, I don’t own anything valuable.

Mr. Endner rocks in the desk chair, causing it to squeak. Well that’s part of the problem right there isn’t it? But let’s say you did. Let’s say you owned a diamond as big as this silver dollar.

Yes sir.

What would you do with it?

Do sir?

How would you treat it? Would you swap it for a root beer?

No sir.

A ten-cent cone?

No sir.

Of course you wouldn’t. Would you give it away for nothing?

No sir.

Well then you understand my position. God Himself placed Bess in our hands and she’s worth more than any diamond. It’s our job to take the utmost care in choosing who gets her. No easy task. It keeps Mrs. Endner and me awake nights. And Bess, much as we love her, doesn’t make it easier. She’s a willful little girl, with a fondness for trouble. As you well know. That’s why she’s fond of you, I suppose.

She says she loves me sir.

I would take that
cum grano salis
, son.

But sir.

Look, I have nothing against you per se, Willie, but let’s be frank. You can’t possibly think in your heart of hearts that you’re a suitable match for Bess.

Willie suddenly finds it difficult to breathe. He tugs at his collar.

Mr. Endner, sir, I’ve had a few tough breaks, it’s true. Losing two jobs. I’ve stumbled out of the starting gate in life, I guess. But still. My luck’s bound to change.

How do you know, son? How can you be sure? None of us knows what bad luck is. Or where it comes from. Maybe it’s temporary, like an illness. Or permanent, like a birthmark. Maybe it’s wild and random like the wind. Maybe it’s a sign of God’s displeasure. Either way. Let’s say through sheer bad luck you’re out of work, on your uppers—is that supposed to ease my mind? This is a country for lucky people. Do I want my little girl to be with someone prone to bad luck?

To address your earlier point sir. I know Bess is a diamond sir. No one needs to tell me. But it seems like you’re saying she should be with a fella who can afford diamonds, and wouldn’t a fella like that be liable to take a diamond for granted? Wouldn’t a fella who’s never so much as seen a diamond until a few months ago be more liable to cherish one? And sir I wish I’d thought to say this when you first asked, but I’m very nervous, and it hits me just now that if I had a diamond I wouldn’t have any trouble figuring what to do with it. I’d give it straightaway to Bess.

Okay, Willie, I see how it is.

Thank you sir.

What’s it going to take?

Sir?

To make you disappear?

I don’t. What?

I’ll have my attorney draw up a paper this afternoon. Legally binding. Sign it, agree to stay away from my daughter, and I’ll write you a check with more zeros than the scoreboard when Walter Johnson pitches. You’ll be able to live quite well until you secure another position. You’ll be able to live well if you don’t find work for years.

Willie stands, turns his hat in his hands, one full circle.

Mr. Endner, sir, I don’t want your money. You can draw up a paper saying I can’t ever have one red cent of it. That paper I’ll sign.

So you’re ethical then?

Yes sir.

You have
character
.

I do sir. If you’d just get to know me—

Then surely you wouldn’t do anything to damage the relationship of a young girl and her parents. Surely your ethics, your
character
, will prevent you from interfering in a private family matter.

Willie blinks.

I’ve forbidden Bess to see you, Willie. Whether or not you agree with my decision, should you violate my wishes, should you transgress the rules of this household, you’ll confirm my darkest fears about you. You want to show me who you really are? Stay away.

Willie can hear the wolf and the bear snickering.

Goodbye, Willie. And good luck.

Sutton: Did you boys know that when the astronauts got back, and they were under quarantine, someone broke into the building where they were housed and stole the safe full of their moon rocks?

Reporter: I did see that in the paper, yes
.

Sutton: Stealing the moon. That’s what I call a heist
.

Reporter: Did anything particular bring that to mind, Mr. Sutton?

Sutton: No
.

Reporter: Mr. Sutton, your handwriting is just, wow. This map. Um. As best I can tell, our next stop is the middle of—Meadowlark’s Ass?

Sutton: Meadowport Arch
.

Reporter: Oh. Yes. That would make more sense
.

Bess tells her parents that she’s going to meet her girlfriends and instead she meets Willie at Meadowport Arch. Set at the edge of Long Meadow, the arch leads to a hundred-foot-long tunnel with a vaulted ceiling and walls made of pungent cedar. Our tunnel of love, Willie calls it. Our moors, Bess says. They spend hours and hours there, holding hands on a bench, making plans, listening to their plans reverberate.

If another couple, or raccoon, is already under the arch, they retreat to a different arch, the one in Grand Army Plaza. They huddle among the statues of Ulysses Grant, Abraham Lincoln—and Alexander Skene?

Who in the world? Bess says.

Willie reads the inscription. Says here, Alexander Skene was a renowned—gynecologist?

How that makes them laugh.

They talk obsessively about what life would be like if they had complete privacy, if they could be alone whenever and wherever they wanted.

I’d let you put it in me, Bess says.

Bess.

I would, Willie. If we could be alone, I’d let you do whatever you want.

Whatever you want
. The phrase runs through Willie’s mind night and day.

If it’s raining or snowing they meet Eddie and Happy at Finn McCool’s, a bucket of blood with a picture of Ben Bulben over the bar. The barkeep knows they’re underage and doesn’t care. He’s an old cuss in a gray felt hat and canary yellow suspenders who believes that if you can pay, you can drink. He also believes that opening an umbrella indoors causes years of bad luck. Every time a customer opens an umbrella the barkeep turns three times in a circle, then spits on the ground, to head off the jinx. Bess opens her umbrella several times a night just to see him do it. It makes Eddie and Happy howl. One hundred years from now, Willie thinks, we’ll all be able to recall the sight of Bess at the bar, twirling her umbrella, taunting the barkeep. And fate.

At the end of January 1919, Eddie and Happy sit at the bar while Willie and Bess stand before them, lamenting their situation. Happy smirks. The Romeo and Juliet of Brooklyn, he says.

We’re not Romeo and Juliet, Bess says. Willie’s family isn’t against me.

They’re just against
him
, Happy says.

Knock off the Romeo-Juliet talk, Willie says. They die at the end.

At least their families build statues to them, Bess says. Like Alexander Skene.

She laughs. Willie doesn’t.

Eddie insists there are solutions. You two kids should just
elope
, he says.

Bess gasps. She looks at Willie, joyful, expectant. He sees twice the number of golden flecks in her blue eyes. He shakes his head. Bess, honey, where would we go? How would we live?

She has no answer. Sullen, she lets the subject drop.

But she brings it up again the next night at Meadowport. She has an idea, she says. Her father’s shipyard. They can break open the safe. Then they can run off, anywhere they want, and they’ll have enough to live on for years.

Willie wonders if she’s testing him. Maybe at her father’s suggestion.
See how he reacts. See if the boy has a pure heart—or an Irish heart
. Willie tells Bess he’s not about to commit grand larceny. She says it’s not larceny. That money is her dowry.

He waves her off. Out of the question, he says.

Bess raises the idea the next night, and the next. She says they have no choice. Her father suspects that they’re still seeing each other—he’s threatening to send her to Germany to live with his family until their romance dies. The thought horrifies Willie, but he still can’t agree to commit such a bold crime.

But why not, she says.

No. I just couldn’t. No.

Finally, February 1, 1919. Bess loses all patience. Well! she says. If I don’t mean enough for you to stand up to my father—

You don’t want me to stand up to your father. You want me to
rob
him.

She blanches. He pulls away. Then quickly apologizes. She leans against the wall of Meadowport. Look what this is doing to us, she says. Oh Willie.

He takes her in his arms. Ah Bess. She puts her hand on his cheek, his lips. Willie, I don’t know what I’ll do if he sends me away. Please don’t let him send me away from you.