The Man Who Cried I Am (17 page)

Dear Mr. Ames:

I am writing to inform you that the American Lyceum of Letters has chosen you as the recipient of a Fellowship to the American Lykeion in Athens for the year June 1947–June 1948, subject to the approval of the American Lykeion in Athens.

The Fellowship carries a stipend of $1,000 a year, payable in monthly installments, transportation ($450), free residence at the Lykeion, $150 for books and supplies, and an additional allowance of $500 for European travel. All Fellows pay for their food at cost and a study will be provided for your personal use. The $500 balance of the $2,600, which is given to the Lykeion in Athens, is kept by the Lykeion for the various services they render you.

Presentation of this award will be made at our annual ceremonial, to be held on Thursday afternoon, May 24, at three o'clock. We hope so much that you will attend the ceremonial and the luncheon that precedes it at 12:30
P
.
M
.

It would be appreciated if for the time being you would treat this information as confidential since it will not be released to the press until late in April.

May I offer you my warm personal congratulations upon the action of the Lyceum.

Max was showered in his own jealousy, he writhed in it. How in the holy hell could anyone get such great news on a day when he felt so rotten, so up against it, so wickedly caught in the Audacious Stink of Americana? Then, lo and behold, old God lettering the tablet with lightning, miracle of miracles, no Audacious Stink at all! America the beautiful, God shed His Grace on thee! It was too much. One minute they really,
really
got it reamed up your ass, and the next minute Miss Liberty is giving you the most fantastic blow job you ever had. How can you make these bastards out? They keep you off balance. They lift while they depress. They take you apart, then sew you back together again and sometimes you don't even want to be the Frankenstein they have made you. Goddamn them! Max looked up and smiled. “Did you make these drinks triple, man?”

Harry, almost ashamed of his luck and now sharply aware that he must mute his joy because of Max's depression, said, “If you don't have anything to do, we can really celebrate.”

“Where's Charlotte?”

“Oh, she's gone to visit her mother. You know, the once-a-month thing, early in the day to keep people from staring when she gets out of the cab with the kid. Her father's not home then, you know.”

“Yeah. Look, Harry, that's great, really great. Will you go?”

“That'll put me pretty close to Africa, won't it?” Harry broke into a smile. “Goddamn it, Max, they're beginning to know I'm here, that we're here. Max, this could be a whole new thing. Keep your fingers crossed. We're coming up, Max. Ain't no stopping us. Who's that boy got such a great review in the
Times
, you know him?” Harry retrieved the
Book Review
. “Marion Dawes.”

“I don't know him,” Max said, amused.

“I'll bet Granville Bryant knows him.”

“One of these days,” Max said, “them people are going to kick your ass for you. Good.”

“Oh, hell. Then I'd be finished in this town, wouldn't I?”

They laughed. “Wait until Charlotte comes home,” Harry said, then, “How's Lillian?”

“We need a doctor.” Max handed Harry his empty glass. Harry took it, nodding. “How far?”

“Little over two.”

“What about the wedding?” Harry was shouting from the kitchen now. Max found it too trying to shout anymore. He waited until Harry returned. “She is not sure.”

“You?”

“Yes. I mean, I guess so. There's always the
Democrat.
”

“And the new book?”

Max scoffed. “What new book?”

“Man, but I told you,” Harry said loudly. “When you have a book ready to come out, as you have in a couple of months, you should always have something in the oven, 'cause they'll forget you in a flash. They wash white writers right down the drain. You
know
what they'll do for us!”

“The doctor, Harry. I just want the name of a doctor. Right now, man, I just can't cut it.”

“Okay, Max. Let me make some calls. Want some soup? It's on the stove.”

Apparently nearly everyone in New York knew the doctor. There was a little history that went with him. It seemed that his only daughter had “got into trouble” and had an abortion by some hack and died. The good doctor thereafter set himself up for the major purpose of providing abortions for young women who had got into similar “trouble.” There was only one hitch, the talk went. The doctor required two visits, one to determine the condition of the patient medically and psychologically, for he would never do an abortion if he felt the couple were good for each other. The doctor was said to have been responsible for more successful marriages than all the marriage counselors, priests, ministers and marriage computers put together. There was a second visit only if the doctor deemed the relationship a detriment.

As it turned out, of course, the doctor was nothing like that at in all. He insisted that he did not know the reference Harry had got for them; that he was a legitimate general practitioner operating well within the law and that he felt insulted that they had come to him. Unless, of course, someone in New York City was playing a joke. No, he didn't now anyone who would. Had Max never heard of the Medical Ethic?

Max and Lillian drove back to New York in almost complete silence. The landscape that flashed past them was hard, frozen, as stiff as the black leafless trees. Lillian felt empty. She was almost tempted once or twice to ask Max to stop at the nearest justice of the peace, but she knew that would be no good. He had no job yet, the future wasn't even on the horizon. She had counted on Charlotte's set knowing about these things. After all,
they
were involved in these things more often than Negro girls. But, see? Nothing, not one damned thing. Oh, you just can't trust those people. But it wasn't their fault, really. It was hers. Max felt that it was his too, but it wasn't. She simply had never been much good at counting, that's all there was to it. Well, she'd get back to New York and see about this whole business herself. If you looked hard enough for a thing, you found it. Now Max was saying something about forgetting it and getting married, that things would work out. Good God! Lillian thought. Doesn't he know that those last words are as famous as Lenox Avenue and 125th Street? The cry of Harlem: Things Would Work Out. That was all the white folks ever left, some bedraggled hope. And she answered him with a grunt. What, what was that he was saying, that Negro women had the proud tradition of keeping their children, no matter what? That white people had them cut out of them with no remorse, no nothing. What does this man understand? Doesn't he know that it is all those babies that help create the valley Negroes live in? Doesn't he know that Mister Charlie knew what he was doing when he took away everything except the ability to make love? Max, you are distraught. You aren't thinking. Love? Oh, Max, yes, but love with sense.

She would find a way; someone would know something for sure. Not in Harlem. There were abortionists there, but the women doubled as hustlers, barmaids, distributors of election campaign material, numbers runners, midwives, boosters and baby-sitters. There had to be something else. The men who were either doctors or orderlies or morticians charged too much and talked too much. “It will be all right,” Lillian said when Max let her out at home.

“What do you mean?”

“What I said.”

“Come back here,” he said. “Come here!” She returned to the car. “I want to know what you meant by that, Lillian. I want to know.”

“I meant that I wouldn't let it worry me. We'll come up with something.”

“Look, please, let's not do it. Suppose something happens. It will work out. You're tearing me apart. You're making me think I'm not worth anything, that I don't have what it takes to make it. Let's have the kid.”

“No, Max, I can't.”

Max sighed. “Baby, please don't do anything foolish. I'll call you tomorrow.”

It was painful to call two or three times a day now. There was nothing to say and seldom anything to report in the way of finding a doctor. So the calls were now down to once a day and their voices were low, as if barricaded against some evil word slipping out that they could never recapture and hide away. So many times he had wanted to shout out: “Careless bitch, you, Lillian!” And she had wanted to say that he had been inconsiderate, that they
never
saw each other when he hadn't wanted to make love, and that she had told him she wasn't sure and therefore hadn't her thing and he hadn't wanted to use a condom.

Dully, Max watched her enter her house. There was a finality about her movements that made him uneasy. She didn't even turn around to wave goodbye. She was up to something. Fuck around now and get killed, he thought in a grim panic. C'mon, Shea, he thought; c'mon, Zutkin, one of you goodie-goodie bastards. Can't you see I'm hurting,
hurting
, and my girl, my woman is hurting. My whole motherfucking life is a gaping, stinking hurt!
Give me my share! I am a man. Don't make me take it in this anger!
Hot tears poured from his eyes and blinded him along with his anger. He snatched the wheel and the car spun around, skidded across the street on a patch of ice and ran up on the curb. He started the car again and climbed up the hill in first gear.

One week later when her school let out, Lillian went downtown instead of up. She was going to take the bus to Paterson, New Jersey. She had found a doctor. It was all arranged. She would be met outside the terminal by the nurse who would drive her to the office. Afterward, she would be driven back across the George Washington Bridge and placed in a cab. Then she would be on her own. No curettage would be necessary. She would be all right. That was the doctor's personal guarantee. The whole business would cost four hundred dollars.

Lillian felt both relief and dread. Relief that she had found someone to do it, and dread that she had to go through it alone. Just once, while waiting for the bus, she thought to call Max and ask him to be at her house when she returned, although she didn't really know what time that would be. But it would be nice to know that he was there waiting for her. She did not call. She had gone this far without him. She would finish it. Then they'd both be more careful, very careful until things worked out for the future. Going over the Bridge, she saw the sullen clouds break long enough for a smear of bright, golden sun to appear, far, far ahead of her in the west. Then she went to sleep, taking that as a good omen. A relieved half-smile came to her small face marked by the high-riding cheekbones. As she relaxed and became as one with the gently jostling bus, Lillian Patch, in an instant's panic, felt that the thing she had seen in her half-sleep months ago was breaking blackly down that long, eerie hill, coming directly at her.

It was eleven o'clock in the morning. Once again the city was in the grip of a long, bitter freeze. The thick ice and snow in the roads and on the walks showed no sign of thawing. Inside his apartment, Max Reddick, who hated rye, poured himself a half glass of it. Everything else was gone. He took his trousers off the bed and stepped carefully into them. Slowly, he zipped up the fly and fastened the belt, staring at himself all the while in the mirror, which reflected the bed behind him. From the bed they had been able to see themselves in the mirror. Now Max flapped the tie around his neck, paused to drink, then knotted the tie. He pulled the jacket on and, in a sullen daze, patted it down his body. Black suit for dress, black suit for death. Still moving slowly, he went to the bed and snatched off its covers. On his knees now, he looked closely at the blankets and sheets. One by one he plucked up her hairs, the tightly curled, dully glowing pubic hairs, the long, thinner, brighter head hairs. He stood and rubbed them between his thumb and finger. He brought them back to the mirror and laid them on the dresser next to the whiskey. He looked up at his reflection and thought, I am as dead as she. Deader.

He had called her that night, at the time she usually was home. Her mother said that she hadn't come home yet, and somehow, right away, Max had known. He called later and still Lillian had not come home. He did not call again, foreseeing that the conversation would be stiff or angry. It was only later that he learned that:

She had come home very late. Her parents heard her moving softly around her rooms. Then, there had been silence. Later they heard her again; she seemed to be bumping into things. They had heard her in the bathroom, then out on the stairs. Later they figured out that she had been trying to call them. They had not heard. But they did hear the noise of her falling down the stairs; they found her at the foot of them. The trail of blood went back up the carpeted steps into the bathroom where it was a wide splotch, neatly marked with splatters, into her bedroom and in her bed. Her parents had called the police who came with an ambulance. But the hemorrhage had been sudden and deadly. The next afternoon when Max had called, Lillian Patch was dead.

It will be all right
.

What do you mean?

What I said
.

Come back here. Come here! I want to know what you meant by that, Lillian. I want to know
.

I meant that I wouldn't let it worry me. We'll come up with something
.

Yeah, something like death
.

Max couldn't get their last scene together out of his mind. If only he'd gotten out of the car and walked to the door with her! If he'd gone in and had a cup of coffee with her! If he had given her just one pecking little kiss, maybe …!

Max Reddick stared back at himself as he fingered Lillian's hairs with one hand and finished the whiskey with the other. I'll never forgive them. Never. And they don't even know what they did!
They don't even know!
He felt a rage growing within him, small at first, like the cyclone on the horizon, and then it came spinning up, blacker and redder, faster and faster. He could break the mirror, the glass he held in his hand; he could smash the chairs, kick in the bed, tear the books off the shelves, snap records in two, throw shoes through the windows.