The Man in My Basement (4 page)

There were five empties in the can under a holey T-shirt and a few wads of paper. I found four more under the bed. On the outside of the windowsill, there was one dead soldier, as Clarance called them. That started my journey back through the house. There were bottles everywhere. Some were only half empty. One or two almost full. There were bottles on the front porch, in the backyard, on the patio chairs. On the roof there were a few left over from friendly spring nights when Laura and I made love in my sleeping bag up under the stars.

They were behind the couch and on the inside ledge of the fireplace. By the time I finished, there were fifty-one bottles on the old dining-room table. Those empties would make me two paper dollars. And with them I could keep my pride.

I remembered what I was doing and who I was with for almost every bottle found. The ones in the backyard were from a party the summer before last. It was Ricky and Clarance with some other guys and girls. The police had to come over to tell us to turn the music down.

It was the only time in my life that I had sex with two women in one night. The first was my girlfriend at that time, China Browne. We’d been dancing and got to get kind of amorous. I took her up to my mother’s old room. It was over pretty quickly because I was so excited. China fell asleep and I went back downstairs. There were lots of people there dancing and talking loud. I felt a sweet sense of calm and started putting beer bottles back in a wooden crate. China’s friend Jane Sadler started picking up with me.

We were just talking and laughing about what a good time everybody was having. We filled two crates and were carrying them out to the backyard. Then we heard this noise, a moaning out behind the garage. I winked at Jane and we snuck around the corner.

It was Clarance and this white girl who had come with somebody, I didn’t know who. But she was with Clarance right then. They were kissing furiously in the faint light that shone over the back of the garage. He was moaning in a deep bass and she squealed between their soul kisses.

Jane put her hand on my forearm. At first I thought that she wanted to give the newfound lovers some privacy, but when I looked I could see that she was just steadying herself. Jane had skin my color and bright eyes and long curly hair.

Suddenly Clarance spun the white girl around. She lifted her miniskirt while he pulled down her panties. Jane’s grip on my forearm tightened. Clarance started fumbling with his zipper then. The white girl was waving her butt around and moaning. Clarance kept fumbling.

“Hurry up!” The white girl’s hushed cry was exactly what I wanted to shout.

“I got it now,” Clarance said, throwing down something. The next morning I realized that it was the wrapper from a condom.

He bent his knees and took a long slow slide into his new friend. Her welcoming moan made my heart skip so hard that I thought I might be having a seizure.

Clarance started slamming hard against her backside. The smacking flesh and high-pitched barks from the girl made me sweat.

“I cain’t hold it, baby,” Clarance barked. “I cain’t hold it.”

“Come come come come come,” she answered.

And then they were both silent and rigid. After a moment Clarance made a grunting sound that was no more than the crack of a dry leaf and the girl exhaled through her open mouth.

Jane pulled me by the arm. When we got around to the other side, she kissed me. I led her straight to the basement.

There was no inside connection from the house. You had to go outside and through a heavy trapdoor to get down there. I suppose that it was called a basement because it was under the house, but it was more like a crypt.

I snapped on the light and Jane kissed me again.

“Don’t say a word,” she told me as she lifted her skirt and I dropped my pants. She sat back on my great-grandfather’s oversize traveling trunk.

It should have been safe sex but it wasn’t. I was happy that I just made love to China because I didn’t want those moments with Jane to ever end. I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet while she stroked my other balls and scratched both of my nipples with the long, press-on fingernails of one hand. We were looking into each other’s eyes. Every once in a while she’d lean forward to kiss me, but when I returned the gesture she moved her head back and sneered.

The trunk rocked precariously, but we had the balance of cats in heat. She undulated on her hips and quivered while I pushed and pulled, feeling the veins standing out all over my body. I started to move faster but Jane said, “Slow it down, baby. Slow it down.”

When I finally came I moved back in one small show of responsibility. The emotion on her face while she watched my ejaculation was the deep satisfaction that comes from victory.

China stopped seeing me after that night, and Jane never returned one phone call. Maybe they compared notes; I didn’t care. That night was a highlight for me. Two women and a chance to see the Master—that’s what we called Clarance when it came to women—in action. I was at peace for a whole week. I didn’t do anything except pack the trash into bags and put the crates of empty beers in the basement.

That’s why I thought about the basement. It was Jane and China Browne that jarred my memory.

It was a large, dark room crowded with stuff from the Dodd and Blakey families. A little something was there from every generation. I had one great-auntie, Blythe, who considered herself a painter. There were fifty or more of her awful canvases leaned up against the walls and behind a useless coal-burning stove. Her trees and houses and people looked like a child’s pitiful attempts. There was my great-grandfather’s traveling trunk and stacks of old newspapers that were yellow and brittle from fifty years or more before. We had old furniture and rugs and straw baskets filled with two hundred Christmases of toys. The cobwebs looked like they belonged on a movie set, and it was cold down there too.

Eighteen wooden crates of empty beer bottles were stacked in the middle of the cobblestone floor. They were all I was interested in. It meant twenty-four dollars at the beer-and-soda store at the Corners. I dragged the boxes out into the light, rubbing my face now and then to get off the tickle of cobwebs. When I got all the crates, I looked around some more to see if there might have been something else of value there.

It
was
a big basement. Thirty feet in either direction. The ceiling must have been ten feet from the floor. Anniston Bennet was right: it would have made a nice apartment without all that junk. It was a well-built hole. Dry as a bone and cool year round because it was deep in the rocky earth. I used to think that ghosts lived in that cellar, that the spirits of my dead ancestors came from out of the graveyard behind my house and played cards or talked all night long in the solitude of that room. I left them Kool-Aid and lemon cookies in the summer. When the food was still there the next day, my father would tell me that the spirits had eaten the ghost food that lives inside the food for the living. He told me that it was like a blessing and now the food left over had to be buried in the trash like the dead.

L
ate the next day I was in my newly cleaned kitchen, ready to cook.

Twenty-four dollars can buy a lot of canned spinach and baked beans. I also got rice and polenta and a big bag of potatoes. One whole chicken with celery and carrots could make a soup to last me a week if I stretched it.

I’m not a good cook, but I can make simple dishes. That’s because I used to love spending time with my mother in the kitchen. She never made me work. All I had to do was sit around and make her laugh. That was until eighth grade. Then, when she got sick, I helped out a lot. Brent said that my mother had to work through it, that being sick was all in her head. He was healthier than she was and still expected to get waited on.

My chicken was boiling and I was cutting celery into slantwise strips and suddenly it came to me. I dug Anniston Bennet’s card out of my pocket and dialed his Manhattan number. It wasn’t until the fourth ring that I remembered it was Saturday. I thought that at least I could leave a message. He didn’t give me a home phone anyway. His name, in lowercase blue letters, was centered on the white card, and the phone number was in the lower right-hand corner in red.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice said. I almost answered but the surprisingly natural-sounding recording continued, “You have reached the Tanenbaum and Ross Investment Strategies Group.” Then there was a click and the same woman, in a different mood, said, “Mr. Bennet,” then another click and she was back on track saying, “is not in at the moment but will return your message at the earliest possible time. Please leave your name and number after the signal.” Then there came a complex set of tones that sounded something like a police siren in a foreign film.

“Mr. Bennet? This is Charles Blakey from out in the Harbor. I guess I’d like to talk to you about what it is you want exactly. I mean, maybe uh, maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement. I don’t know. My number is…” Leaving information on an answering machine always seems useless to me. Most of the messages I’ve left have gone unanswered. I didn’t have much hope that anything would work out. Anyway it was early May and all I had was a pocketful of change. A summer rental wasn’t going to do much for me right then.

So I called my aunt Peaches. That was her real name. Her mother was Clementine and her father was actually named Apollodorus. My father used to say, when we were going to Clemmie’s for Thanksgiving dinner, “Well let’s go over and visit the mouthful.”

“Hi, Aunt Peaches. It’s me—Charles.”

“Yes, Charles?” She wasn’t sounding generous.

“How’s your family?”

“Everybody’s fine.”

“That’s good,” I said and then waited for her to ask after my health.

She did not.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen you, Peaches.”

“Has it?”

She knew full well that it had been more than three years since I had been by, and I was only allowed in then because her husband was at work. We didn’t live more than two miles apart, but the only time I ever saw her was if we happened to bump into each other in town. That was because of her husband, Floyd. Floyd Richardson was a lawyer who practiced in Long Island City. When I dropped out of college, he hired me—
to make something out of me,
he said.

Well, I was only twenty-one and not really ready to work that hard. I didn’t like the law or research. I wanted to be a sailor. Floyd and I had a rough time of it. When he finally fired me, he told me that I was a shame to my race. That reminded me of Uncle Brent, who always added, “The human race.”

After that I wasn’t a welcomed guest in their home. Floyd rarely gave me a nod if we passed in the street. I didn’t mind much. Floyd wanted to act like he was my father, like it was him who did for me. Aunt Peaches was nice, but she was so formal that talking to her was like being read to from a book of etiquette.

“I needed to ask you something,” I said, having given up any hope that we could be friendly.

“I really don’t have much time, Charles. Floyd’s coming home soon and I have to get his dinner.”

“Well, you know I lost my job,” I started.

“Oh?”

“I had some money left over from that T-bill Mom left for me when I turned thirty, but that’s all gone.” I paused but Peaches had no consolations to give. “And, well, I kind of borrowed some money on the house. I’m looking for work, but I still have to come up with the payment. It’s already two weeks overdue.”

Peaches didn’t say a word, but the quality of her silence had changed. I could almost feel her growing anxiety.

“Peaches?”

“Why do you want to do this to me, Charles?”

“What am I doing to you?”

“You’re thirty-nine years old —”

“Thirty-three,” I corrected.

“— thirty-three years old and you don’t even have two nickels to rub together. What would your mother say?”

“My mother is dead. Maybe you could leave her alone.”

“Rude.” She said the word like it was a club to blud-geon me with. “Rude. And then you want me to write the check. I’m sorry, Charles, but I have to agree with Floyd about you. There’s no helping someone who can’t help himself. I just hope you don’t lose our family home with your foolishness. But maybe it would be better in someone else’s hands anyway. I can see you don’t have a gardener anymore and from what I hear it’s a pigsty on the inside.”

I hung up. It was the only way I could get her to feel the pain that she was inflicting on me. I knew she was right. I knew that my life was messed up. But what could I do about it when I couldn’t get a job or pay my bills?

I spent the entire night cleaning. I collected eight big plastic bags of trash. I swept and dusted and mopped and straightened. When I’d get tired I’d stop for a little chicken soup and black tea. Then I was off again, up and down through the three floors. At 4:00 in the morning I dragged the bags out of the house and into the street. I wasn’t going to let Peaches and Floyd defeat me. I’d put the house in perfect shape. I had plans to wax the floors and mow the lawn. I’d trim the hedge too. After that I’d paint the house. This last thought almost defeated me. How could I paint with no money? I couldn’t even buy a roller or brush, much less all the gallons of paint that I’d need.

Outside I noticed a spark. At first I thought it was a firefly, and I stopped to catch a glimpse of it again. Fireflies were a miracle to me. The fact of their light seemed somehow to prove that there was a God.

After a moment the light appeared again. But it wasn’t a firefly at all. It was Miss Littleneck smoking a cigarette in the dark. At first I was mad, thinking that she was spying on me. But then I thought that if she was really spying, she wouldn’t be advertising with an ember. It was almost as amazing as a firefly—that old woman sitting out on her porch all night long, smoking one cigarette after another, waiting for either a miracle or a heart attack.

The next day was Sunday. I’d fallen asleep on the sofa in my father’s library. After three hours’ sleep I was out in the front yard with a scythe.