The Third Generation (28 page)

The brothers were happy to be together again. Charles built a crystal radio set with headphones for them both. The sweet lilting music coming from the swank restaurants about the city stirred Charles with a poignancy he couldn’t bear. He’d take off the headphones and walk out in the back garden and cry it out.
Home! It was home!
It was the only house in which he’d ever lived that he could actually see. He loved it with a deep wonderful passion.

William’s friend, Ramsey, was often there, and the Douglas family came to dinner several times. Then there would be a great chattering and laughing as the young men vied to be the wittiest. Afterwards Mrs. Douglas helped their mother with the dishes and the warm, affectionate voices of the women sang above the clatter. The fathers sat in the living room and smoked cigars. Professor Taylor told of his experiences as a teacher and expanded in the pleasant memories. The young men gathered upstairs about the radio. Charles was relaxed, everything seemed to fit. He felt that he belonged.

“What’s got into you, Chuck?” Ramsey asked. “I never heard you talk so much.”

“It’s the spinach,” his brother teased. “He’s drunk off spinach juice.”

Charles laughed. “‘Speech is the window of great thought,’” he quoted from some forgotten source. “If I never said anything you wouldn’t know how wise I was.”

“What Chuck means is he wished he’d kept his big mouth shut,” William said.

“
Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas
,” quoted Ramsey, who was studying French.

“In that case you’d better watch your step,” said William.

Their father contracted a great deal of carpentry work in the neighborhood and employed two helpers. He had an ingratiating manner with white employers. They liked and respected him. He wasn’t servile or submissive, but possessed a profound tolerance for human foibles. Whenever someone said to him, “Well, I don’t know, I’ve never had a colored man do this sort of work,” he assumed his most indulgent attitude and quizzically replied, “Now I doubt very seriously if the work will know the difference.”

Charles did his mother’s nails and often at night she let him brush her hair again. When she decided to wear it short she let him cut it for her. He was careful of each strand and worked hard to get it just the way she wanted it. She let him keep a lock. Quite often he helped about the house. She said that he was as fastidious as a girl. He had a great skill for mending broken china, repairing locks, replacing knife handles and other delicate chores which no one else could do. “If Charles can’t do it, no one can,” his mother was wont to boast.

His friends organized themselves as the Gnothi Seauton fraternity, and felt quite sophisticated when someone asked the meaning of the name.

“Know thyself,” the the proud reply. “It’s the inscription on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.”

“Greg will never know himself,” Marie teased. “He’s his own worst enigma.” Bright sayings were the rage and the remark clung to Greg to his annoyance.

Charles was elected sergeant-at-arms, and when they gave their first dance took his duties seriously and marched about the Y gymnasium ordering fellows to douse their cigarettes. They charged admission, made enough to hire an orchestra for their first formal dance, which they hoped would be a social event of great importance, comparable to the annual formals given by the college fraternities. They had a crest embossed on the invitations and the programs printed in Gothic script. Everything was elaborately planned.

As the date approached, Charles was filled with trepidation. He ordered a correspondence course in dancing and got Harvard to coach him after school. They danced together after Charles had memorized the various steps. But he was stiff and awkward.

“Relax, Chuck, relax,” Harvard cried exasperatedly. “If you move with the rhythm you can’t go wrong.”

“I’m trying,” Charles said stubbornly.

“I believe you’re tone-deaf.”

“No, I can hear the rhythms all right. But they just don’t go to my feet. There isn’t any connection. I hear them with my mind.”

“You’re just self-conscious. Relax. No girl’s gonna bite you.”

“I’m not scared of girls,” he snapped.

His mother bought him a tuxedo and patent leather pumps. He’d need them later, anyway, for the senior prom, she reasoned. It gave him quite an important feeling in the big department store instructing the clerk that he wished midnight-blue instead of black. When the big night arrived the house was turned upside down getting him prepared. His mother tied his bow and William stood by and gave him sage advice.

“Now when the dance starts, hold the girls at a distance.

They’ll be worried about their clothes. But at the end—that’s when you hold them close.”

Their mother laughed. “How do you know so much?”

“I’ve been around.”

“Now, Charles, be a good boy,” she cautioned smilingly. She looked at him with eyes of pride.

“If he’s too good he won’t get any dances,” William said.

“Anyway, if I can’t be good I’ll be careful,” he quipped.

While in the presence of his family he felt grown up and assured. But on the streetcar, dressed in his new tuxedo and carefully handling the corsage of sweet peas and yellow rose buds which his mother had selected, he felt foolish and conspicuous. Outside the house where Delia lived, stage fright suddenly overwhelmed him and his legs began to tremble. It was his first date. She was a new girl he’d met at Sunday school. He felt such a sense of dread he was tempted to throw away the flowers and go home.

But her parents had already seen him.

“How nice you look, Charles,” Mrs. Lane greeted, opening the door.

Mr. Lane offered him a glass of wine. “Drink it, son, you’ll need it.”

Then Delia entered the living room. She was an exquisite girl with a rose-brown complexion, dark liquid eyes and long, luxuriant hair. She was wearing a beautiful long gown of pale blue organdy. He glowed with pride.

Silently he presented the flowers.

She took them solemnly with downcast eyes, whispering, “Thank you.”

“Oh, you must pin them on her,” the mother said.

He fumbled with the pin, his fingers turned to thumbs.

“Oh, dear, let me,” the mother offered. Her eyes were bright with tears.

It was Delia’s first dress affair also. She wouldn’t sit for fear of wrinkling her gown. They stood apart from each other, mute and wooden, waiting for the taxicab. The parents chattered nervously.

When the horn blew, everyone started as if caught in the commission of a crime. Charles fumbled awkwardly with her cape and she placed her hand shyly on his arm. She wore the cape loosely so as not to crush her flowers and they went down to the taxi and rode in complete silence to the Y. Upstairs she went immediately to the powder room.

Charles noticed that the young men and women stood apart. Everyone seemed solemn and constrained. He joined the group of club members who stood conspicuously aloof. Although everything seemed to be going as they’d planned, they suffered all manner of apprehensions. Greg suggested that Charles, as sergeant-at-arms, go down to the entrance and direct the guests upstairs. Harvard accompanied him and they stood in the cold on the sidewalk and greeted the couples as they arrived. A group of rowdies had collected about the entrance and picked at the pretty girls. Charles wanted to call a policeman. But Harvard said they always hung around a formal dance. The best thing was to ignore them.

One of the girls who lived across the street ran down for a trinket she had left. Charles felt it his duty to escort her. He tried to wear the mantle of Sir Galahad lightly and be secure and poised in his behavior. But he couldn’t take part in any social rite in a normal manner. Inside he was tense lest he make an ass of himself. But he felt impelled to act gallantly, attract attention and be indifferent all at once. His emotions attained a high, explosive quality.

When, on their return, some rowdy touched her arm, he wheeled and struck blindly, releasing all his tension in the act of violence. He hit the man solidly on the bridge of his nose and stretched him his length on the pavement. Sharp bone hurt ran up his arm. He recoiled in violent shock; he’d no idea he’d struck so hard. Then terror overcame him. There was the man lying unconscious at his feet. The girl had fled upstairs. Harvard had run for a policeman. He stood alone, facing the crowd, without the slightest notion of what to do. But no one took the rowdy’s part.

“That’s Dick Hanson,” he heard someone say.

The younger men looked at him in awe. Shortly Harvard returned with the officer who dispersed the crowd. The man regained consciousness and the officer helped him to his feet. Charles and Harvard went upstairs. Everyone was talking about his feat. The girls made a great fuss over him. Soon all semblance of his terror left and he expanded with emotion. The driving excitement returned. He felt as if his head would burst. For a time he felt himself vested with supernatural powers, dipped in the river of invincibility. He danced and talked as he never had before. All of his dances were taken with the most popular girls. He soared in delirious ecstasy and found himself saying the most extravagant things.

“Where have you been all my life?” he whispered in their ears. “You dance so heavenly in my blue heaven.” He chanted in a low caressing voice, looking deep into their eyes:

Where’d you get those eyes

Where’d you get those ears

Where’d you get that hair so curly

Where’d you get those teeth so pearly…

They danced the Charleston and the one-step and the waltz; and they fox-trotted and cakewalked and did the old collegiate crawl. And he excelled in all of these.

Everything turned out perfectly. Delia was a great hit with the men because he’d brought her. When he took her home she let him kiss her in the taxi. Their eyes sparkled with excitement as their sweet hot breath glowed on each other’s mouths. In the dim light he noticed a film of perspiration on her upper lip. Her body felt hot and damp in his arms. They touched the tips of their tongues. Hers was like a small hot rapier. Then the taxi drew up before her house. She ran up the steps. He caught up with her and held her hand. And suddenly he was inarticulate.

He could scarcely mutter, “Good night.”

“Good night,” she whispered softly.

He turned abruptly away. At his back he heard the door click shut. He felt the urge to run, but the taxi waited. He paid it off and walked toward Harvard’s house where he’d planned to spend the night. Young swains couldn’t afford to taxi home after delivering their girls. Following every formal dance the nearby streets were filled with tuxedoed dandies wending their way home, many walking in their stocking feet, carrying the too-tight pumps.

Suddenly he was assailed with the feeling of having funked out in the end. After all the high excitement, the passionate responses and his own overwhelming sense of invincibility, he’d walked off right at the very climax. Always it was the same, he fumed inwardly. No matter how intense the build-up, what ardent heights he’d reached, always at the climax he failed to carry through. He should have taken her, he told himself. If not that, made her promise to give herself at some other time. Now he knew she’d expected him to ask; now—after it was over. He wondered what she thought of him, if she considered him too young to know. She must have been keenly disappointed, sick with letdown from her hot passion, he thought. Unbearable chagrin tormented his very soul. He cursed himself bitterly and without mercy.

Soon the moment passed and he was filled with exquisite sadness. It was the emotion of one who has lost in love and carries on in heartbreak. Strangely, the sorrow stimulated him. He reveled in an ecstasy of self-torture, assuming the pain of one who’s been deserted. His emotions were vividly alive and hurting. Rivers of heartbreak ran through his soul as he experienced this poignant moment of adolescence. Shortly he began to sing:

Me and my sha-had-dow

Not a soul to tell our troubles to…

Farther on he ran into Bert and Clift.

“Where’d you find such a pretty chick?” Bert greeted.

The sorrow vanished instantly and he was happy and excited again. “Never you mind. You just keep your hands off. She’s private property.”

“I’d like to make her my property,” Clift said.

Pride flamed in him and all the chagrin of failure was forgotten. He felt only a sense of conquest.

“Confidentially, Chuck, you ever get any of it?” Bert asked.

“That’d be telling,” he replied, slyly insinuating that of course he had.

Harvard was waiting down the street. The four walked abreast in noisy exuberance and began to harmonize:

Now how in the hell

Can the old folks tell

It ain’t gonna rain no more…

Harvard lived with an uncle and aunt who were childless. They were asleep. The young men talked in whispers as they prepared for bed.

“Yvonne lets me kiss her and play with her bubbies till she gets so hot she cries. But she won’t let me go any further. I don’t see how she stands it.”

“How do you stand it?” Charles asked curiously.

“I don’t. When I leave her house I go straight down on Hawthorne and spend two dollars.”

Charles laughed self-consciously.

“How do you make out?” Harvard asked; then teasingly, “Visit with the widow?”

“Old widow five fingers,” Charles supplemented knowingly, but a hot blush covered his face. “Me? I’ve been lucky.”

“Don’t kid old Doctor Harvard, son. I know Delia won’t go. I can tell from just looking at her. She’s just like Yvonne. You can get right up to it and no further.”

“Not with me,” Charles lied. “I don’t go for that. There’s too many girls that will.”

“You mean you’ve scored with Delia?”

“Sure, what do you think? I’d take her to our dance if I hadn’t?”

Harvard didn’t press it. For a time they talked about the rowdy Charles had struck.

“There was another guy there I just wished had said something. I was going to let him have it too,” Charles boasted.

“Come off,” Harvard said. “You were just as scared as me.”

“Hell, scared of what?”