The Cosmopolitans (3 page)

When the load got to be too much, she'd set the chair upright and rock for a few minutes on the sidewalk—first at Ninth Street by Trude Heller's nightclub advertising Carmen McRae, and then a block later in front of the New School for Social Research where refugee intellectuals from Europe tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Each task had its place. There was a quiet but eccentric pleasure in rocking one's self outside on the sidewalk. Passersby would smile or ignore as they had other tasks before them. This was her city, after all. And she could be as singular as the lot of them.

Supper was always important for Bette and Earl, a sign of civility and reliance. She used linen napkins every day and always set the table with love. Bette
looked at the clock again. Eight o'clock! Both pillows were askew on Earl's waiting chair, so she prepared them for his arrival. Plumped quietly. Smiled. Normally it was quiet in Bette's apartment and very light. But not at this moment because it was finally night.

Earl was uncharacteristically late. Of course he was a freewheeler and often had adventures coming home. He'd stop off someplace for relief of some kind or be moody and sit out overlooking the river. He'd have a drink alone or with others or just walk off all the frustration of his day. But sooner or later he would show up for supper, and he would always appreciate that it was there. This night, however, the realm of the unusual had come to bear. The stars were coming out, others were completing their dinners and crawling into the evening's embrace. Bette looked, paced, rearranged, turned the radio on and off. She even sat and stared out the window at the street light's yellowed glow, how it cast shadows on a young fellow waiting for the bus. He had changed his clothes and seemed to bounce with anticipation. Was he headed uptown for a look or a meal or a walk or to visit a friend? Was he going to Times Square for a show, or to play Skee-Ball and eat at the Automat or Yorkville for a goulash, or did he have a dance hall or movie in mind? The bus would take him anywhere he wanted to be. So, what did he want? What was he thinking? What song was he singing? The green bus rolled up, illuminated from within, and the boy swung on, tossing his nickel into the basket, and slid onto a yellow seat of woven straw. Now it was the moment for Bette to imagine that something had gone wrong.

Just then, a reversal occurred in which the key
turned suddenly in the lock. That is the most comforting sound in a person's life, isn't it? When the other uses his own key to finally come home. Behind this happiness was Earl himself, a bottle of cold beer wrapped in newspaper, tucked under his arm. He dropped the curative keys into his worn cloth jacket pocket and threw it onto the hook, the one he had installed for this very purpose. He was exhausted. This wasn't the renewed expression of a postwork recovery, Bette saw right away. Instead, Earl's long-nosed, still handsome, but sunken face fronted a tired, depleted fifty-year-old man who had come directly home from working with animal carcasses without a chance to breathe or grieve over what kind of day after day fate had handed him. And how he could not imagine a way for that to change.

Chapter 3

E
arl watched Bette's concern.

“They kept you until seven thirty,” she said, getting it.

He saw Bette take his jacket kindly off the hook and drape it on a wooden hanger, to take better care of it, of him, this particular evening, knowing both he and his poor jacket needed special attention.
They
were the Lazio brothers, the hardworking, hard-driving owners of the meatpacking plant on Washington and Gansevoort where Earl spent his life. Those blocks were greased with animal fat, innards dripping from metal waste drums as hooked carcasses swung in and out of freezer rooms onto smelly, wormy streets. The guys hacked away at pig corpses, sides of cows, and gutted lambs, the human chests and legs splattered with animal muscle and blood as though their days were blades of grass in a field of slaughter, faces coated with the slick, stinking refuse of death. They had to not notice if they wanted to get by, not notice the similarities
between the sheeps' intestines and their own flesh, fading and wasted by boring, brutal labor. They had to go through that mess with their eyes wide shut.

“The best thing I can say is that another day is over,” Earl almost cried. Only those Lazio brothers had enough power to disrupt their supper, and every time they wielded it, Earl almost gave up. He had no other way to react but despair that these men decided when he would eat.

Earl shrugged it off temporarily, placing Bette's mail on the old maple side table, where her new telephone now sat. CAnal 8-0151. The phone and the mail belonged side by side, a neat containment of messages from the outside world in case of emergency. For years there had been an outdated wooden box on the wall of Romanoff's Pharmacy that everyone shared. But now they each had their own. It was like an individual work of art, those table phones, like the Brancusis they had seen at the Museum of Modern Art. Sculpture and appliance becoming one. This concept had tickled Earl and moved him toward his own phone as well, ORegon 7-5676. The awaiting comfort of plumped pillows on a beckoning chair waved to him, and the man settled back into it where he belonged. Ah!

Earl and Bette had long ago agreed that the only reason for him to work in a slaughterhouse, besides the fact that it was close enough to walk, was to have flexible hours. But whenever he came back from doing a play, the Lazios made him stay late. Who did he think he was anyway? An actor? NO! They had to remind him. He was a pig slaughterer. Every time. Punishment! Earl's soul. He wished. Sorting intestines. She
brought him a glass for his ice-cold beer, soon he would relax.

He took a sip. Then he remembered.

“There's a letter for you.”

“Really?” She sounded vague, computing how the words
a letter for you
could have anything to do with her.

“From Ohio.” Earl glanced across the brim of his glass, waiting for some kind of reaction.

“Oh,” she said. Not a flutter.

“Okay.” Earl drank his beer. If Bette were really upset, she would let him know. No need to guess. But she could handle anything, including being upset. It was remarkable. She had perspective and that's what he needed, what he counted on her to provide. Suddenly the bitterness of the brew set in. That refreshing adult sour. Earl leaned back. He was home. And he wished again that there was some way he could make his life better.

Bette served them both a chicken fricassee dish she'd learned from a neighbor, Zelda Glukowsky, twenty years before. It had become a family recipe. Their family, he and Bette.

“I'm painting my place,” she said, spooning out the potatoes.

“Good idea, it's been ten years.”

“Eight.”

“Oh yeah,” Earl remembered. “You had to stay with me.”

That was the week Earl had discovered his mother was gone. They'd packed up all of Bette's belongings into cartons from the liquor store and hauled them
across the hall to his place. And, eight years younger, they were standing on stepladders, ceiling paint dripping on their faces. That's when the postcard came. Into the middle of all that mess. Not even a telegram. And one year after the fact. A three-cent stamp from North Carolina.

              
Mama died last spring. Your sinful ways

              
shamed her through to her final day on earth
.

From his sister. “Sister” in quotes. She didn't act like a sister. Too ashamed of him to take up her sisterly responsibilities. That's when they'd begun the conversation about buying private telephones. To save themselves from the humiliations of postcards coming at the wrong time. They'd discussed it for years. A person could always hang up a phone midsentence and not have to hear the bad news. With a card, that was not an option.

“I'm proud of you,” Bette said, casually eating. Like being proud of him was as normal as a piece of chicken.

“I know.” He was being honest. “You're my family. Eight years? Needs paint.”

They started to talk it over. Should they hire someone this time? They were both older, both worked all day. In fact, they were both starting to
feel
a little older, less gung ho. But Bette hated to spend. Earl offered to help. Did either of them really want to paint at this age? No.

“You know what?” Earl announced. “I just realized that I don't want to go back to work.”

Bette stopped, sat back, and looked at him. She
knew it was important and would listen completely.

Words swirled around inside Earl's heart. They became pictures, weather, sentiments, scraps of paper. They became those new kinds of paintings or some windstorm gone wild. They became the storming sky, the cloudy sky, the sun breaking through, the sun disappearing. They went here and there. They walked, they ran, they ran out of breath, they gasped for air and fell face down in the mud. But now he had created the moment to be listened to. He had created a friend who listened. He had told her he had something to say. He had done it all, and the event was taking place. He had forced himself to admit the truth.

He just said it. “Leon.”

Bette's face registered the severity of the situation. She was disappointed
for
him,
with
him. But not
in
him. She wanted things to go his way and took his side. So, it was clear from her reaction that there would be trouble. That Earl would have to pay. They had different kinds of struggles in this world, these two. He desired to love and she didn't. She did not want to be alone in painting her apartment, and he was there to help. He needed a man to love him, and she was there when the man did not. They both wanted someone trustworthy to talk things over, to have each other's keys, and to eat those precious meals. Nothing worse than eating alone, and that would never happen again. But Earl and Bette let the world in differently, and so each one experienced the world's cruelties and pleasures on diverse planes. The other could only look on helplessly and listen. And yet in some fundamental way, the other could still really, really know.

“I'm sorry,” Bette said. She was listening.

Leon had still not forgiven him. And yet, Earl also felt that he, himself, had not done anything wrong and didn't need to be forgiven. Yet, it was this offering of love to Leon that was the crime and Earl was willing to
be forgiven
if that would bring them together.

“Even though there is nothing to forgive.” He would just do it. That's how much he cared. “How do you handle that?” he asked. “When someone is angry and you didn't do anything wrong? It's crazy making. More than that, it's actually crazy. The truth is . . .”

Earl stopped and was still. His beer beckoned to him as a diversion but he did not touch the glass.

“The truth is that Leon hates me. Leon walks away when I come near. Leon makes me eat my lunch alone. I'm so angry,” he said. “I'm so angry that I'm in this spot again. Why did Leon have to ruin everything? And how exactly did it get so bad so fast? It's just one blind-side after another. The boy is a tease. That's a fact. Since the day Leon came to work for the Lazios he has done
everything
, I mean
everything
, that a randy young fella would do to show interest. He was not
innocent
. He could have wrote that book. The
I want you
book.”

Earl counted transgressions on his fingers.

“Leon stripped in front of me in the locker room every goddamn day. Leon invited me out for beers. He patted me on the back.
Patted
. Many more times than were necessary.”

Bette and Earl had planned it for months. The seduction.

They had worked so hard.

True, Bette expressed concern about Leon's young
age. Twenty-two. And her fears grew after the night that he'd come for supper. He was lovely as a palomino. But . . . when they'd shown the boy that framed photograph of Earl with Eugene O'Neill. He didn't know. He hadn't heard. Didn't know who Eugene O'Neill was. O'Neill!

“O'Neill!” Earl said.

Bette nodded.

Leon did not know the word
understudy
.

“Understudy.”

Bette nodded.

Earl could not impress him with having understudied because Leon had never heard of
The Emperor Jones
. How could a black man not know about that? So what if he was young, he still should know. Now, the boy couldn't appreciate Earl's value. That he was deserving of kindness and respect.

Bette and Earl had been so disappointed, they cried.

Earl should have accepted it back then. The truth. That if Leon had known anything that mattered about this life at all, it might have worked out better. The three of them. A family. Leon for pleasure and Bette, Earl's friend. It would have been perfect. Someone to watch grow. To love. His beauty.

“So, why the hell did he give me
two
photographs of himself?” Earl could not figure that one out.

“I mean,” Bette said.

“I mean, come on.”

“Come on,” Bette said.

Earl took some more chicken.

Leon was dishonest. That was the thing. Wanting it and pretending he didn't. Just like Anthony. Just like
Frederick, what Frederick had done to Bette. Feeling it and then pretending. Yes, that's what they did. Bette had grown to recognize lies a mile away. Why couldn't Earl figure that one out? Earl loved that chicken fricassee.

“Hey.” He had a thought. “Do you think that letter could be from Frederick?”

Bette rose immediately from the table. It was instinct, she didn't have to think. She went to the telephone and picked up the solitary letter lying on the small tray behind the new copy of the
Saturday Review
. She examined the envelope with some critical tenderness, knowing it could be what she had been waiting for, and yet of course it easily might not.

“No, it's a woman's handwriting.”

Bette softly tucked the letter back behind the magazine, sat down, and finished her meal. But she did glance up at the solitary photograph on her sideboard. Frederick's haircut, fresh from the barber.

“I wonder what he looks like now,” Earl said, offering her the last wing.

“I'm sure he's still handsome.” She shook her head no, wrapped up her napkin, and laid it on the table. “Those are looks for life.”

They both knew, for a fact, that Bette would see Frederick again. He wasn't decomposed, like Anthony. He breathed and so what was wrong still could be made right. Not like poor Anthony, whose wrongs could never be corrected. Every day that a person is alive, they can wake up and do what's right. Earl and Bette agreed.

“Leon is a beauty,” Earl sighed, finishing up the last
piece. The beer was finally working.

“I'm sorry,” Bette said. “But he's out. Draw a line through his name. Next!”

“I know,” Earl sighed. He knew the score. “So, who do we hire?”

“For what?”

“To paint your apartment.” Then he grinned. “Ohhhh, I know. I should hire me a man.”

“Don't you do that.” Bette was afraid. She swept the crumbs off the table with one hand into the other and poured them on her plate. “Hiring a man is risky. Anyone who would sell himself that way is too dangerous. You're valuable. Your life matters.”

“Who could be more dangerous to me than I am to myself?” That was the truth. The bottle emptied, he stacked the plates. “Are you going to read that letter? Someone could have died.”

She thought it over for a minute.

“I don't think it would make a difference,” she decided as he carried the plates to the kitchen sink. “Even if some paltry sum was involved, I don't want it. What would I buy? A new plate? There's no place to put it.”

“I'd love to open up my own theater,” Earl said.

“I would like that too.”

“What would you do if you got rich?”

“Give you a theater.”

The last time a letter had arrived from Ohio, they'd both stared at it for a week. Finally Bette read him the note from the neighbor down the road reporting that Bette's mother had passed. That was fourteen, fifteen years now. Her pain was not so much that Mother had died but that she hated to be reminded that she
was alone. When Earl's mother died, he ached for the loss of her, the loss he had already been grieving for twenty-three years. Now it was official. That was the difference between them. They both felt things deeply, but Bette was not sentimental and Earl was.

“You are not alone,” he said. Now it was Earl's turn to read minds.

“I'm so happy you're home,” she smiled.

When a person has to put down and pick up their own plate, cook alone and eat alone and wash up alone, then stare at an empty chair, well, there is no breath. Earl and Bette both breathed. Those sighs of relief required relief. Now for dessert.

“The world is the world of others,” he said. “That's what it's all about.”