When We Argued All Night (9 page)

Harold had lost all his confidence. We don't have a formal arrangement, he said. We're not
promessi sposi
.

—Ooh la la, Artie said, his usual response to any foreign word. So that gives you the right to lure little girls into your cave? Did you tell this Naomi about Myra?

—I didn't do anything wrong, Harold said.

Artie said nothing. His silence was more effective even than his sarcastic speech, and Harold had an uncomfortable sense that something he had believed to be true was not true. He even glanced around as if Naomi might not have left after all. Sometimes, in the shower or late at night, Harold understood that the game he played was indeed a game: he pretended he did no harm to the women he slept with, that he was such a clown, such an oaf, that at best they pitied him. But this was pretending. Then the thought passed.

—Myra's not the girl for you, Artie said.

—Why, because she's not Jewish? Because her family has money?

—Myra's trouble, that's why, Artie said. You don't want to spend your life with Myra, and that's why you run around with all these Naomis. Tell Myra good-bye and keep Naomi. I like Naomi.

—You don't know a thing about it.

—I have eyes, Artie said. There's a lot I could tell you that you need to hear.

—Such as what? Harold said mildly. Don't you think you'd better solve your own problems first?

—Such as your job.

—My job? Harold still worked for the Writers' Project, though many people had been let go.

—I'm telling you, there's no future. Sooner or later you'll not only be fired, but you'll be in the paper as a Commie Red.

—I told you, I tore up my membership card.

—You think anybody will care about that? Artie stood, put his cup down in the alcove, picked up a kitchen towel, and began playing with it, twisting it and snapping it loose. He said, You think the American people are going to check the expiration date on your membership card? This stuff is getting worse and worse, this Dies and his committee. You don't need it.

—I don't want to teach children, Harold said. He knew what Artie thought he should do. He wanted to teach, but in a college. He wanted to get a doctorate in English literature. He couldn't teach until he'd done that.

—What's so terrible? Long vacations, you're home early, the kids are funny.

—I don't think so, said Harold.

—
I don't think so,
Artie mocked, making the words sound weak and uncertain.

Myra had made the same suggestion. You like the sound of your own voice, she had said. If you teach, you'll hear it all day long. Nobody had much respect for him, Harold reflected, but remarks like that kept him with Myra. This Naomi—all these good women. They didn't have the nerve to say things like that.

—I'll think about it, he said, feeling as if by some kind of elaborate logic he owed it to Naomi, the teacher he'd just seduced and would probably never see again, to think about teaching. He could take education courses at night. It was true that the Writers' Project wouldn't last. He stood up. I'll see about it, he said.

—You won't be sorry, Artie said.

—I said I'll see about it. Now what about all this stuff? He pointed.

—Just for a week or so, until she calms down?

—You want to leave it here? For God's sake!

—What's so terrible? I didn't bring the baby and leave
her
for a week.

—What's she like?

—Come see her. She's smart. She's driving me crazy, but she's smart. Artie replaced the kitchen towel on the table, furled into a long cloth tube. Come back with me. Come eat with us.

—You're in the middle of a fight.

—Evelyn will be nice if you come with me.

—It's trouble for her.

—She won't care. What's trouble? Another plate? I'll set the table. I'll wash the dishes. Come on.

They left Artie's beloved photography equipment in a tangle on the floor and took the subway to Brooklyn.

2

O
n November 25, 1942, the
New York Times
reported that Dr. Stephen Wise, the chairman of the World Jewish Congress, had confirmed that half the estimated four million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe had been exterminated. The story was on page 10. Harold had bought the paper on the way to work, read the first pages, and put it aside. He picked it up that evening to read on a subway ride to Brooklyn.

Artie's photographic equipment had now been sitting on Harold's floor for more than a year and a half, and Harold had phoned to complain about it. He didn't complain, but he did mention it to Evelyn, who had answered the phone. She invited him to dinner. She liked him and often invited him. On his way, Harold read the story about the Jews.

—My God, he said to Artie and Evelyn, carrying the paper in, folded back to page 10. My God. He had intended to demand the retrieval of Artie's belongings once he was there, but now that he'd read the newspaper story, his wish to clear his floor had become selfish and trivial. He put down the paper to take off his overcoat. Brenda stood in her overalls in the middle of the room. She had a chunky, square face and her lips looked as if she might cry or complain, but she was quiet, holding something. When Evelyn turned away with the coat, Brenda came toward Harold and held it up for him to see. It was a stuffed horse. Is that your horse? he said.

—Baby, said Brenda.

—Your baby.

They sat in the living room. He lit a cigarette and Evelyn brought him a drink. When he tried to talk about the story, Artie and Evelyn shook their heads and looked shocked but wouldn't speak. Brenda was surely too young to understand, but they didn't seem to want to talk in front of her about such a thing. Evelyn was pregnant again, and when Harold spoke of the newspaper story, she put her hand over her protruding stomach.

—We haven't seen you, Evelyn said. It had been a few weeks. You're all right?

—I was rejected, Harold told her. Pearl Harbor had turned war and the draft from discussion into fact—as if frightening figures on a movie screen had stepped into the theater, three-dimensional. Artie had expected to be rejected because of his nearsightedness, his fatherhood, or both, and was glad about it. Death? he had often said to Harold. Who needs it?

But Harold had always told himself he'd go and fight. True, since the day the police had beaten him up in the Union Square riot in 1930, his right hand trembled at times and became weak. Sometimes it hurt. His hand made him drop things and kept him from doing anything precise—he couldn't have drawn the fine, shapely lines in Myra's illustrations, even if he had the talent—but he could almost control it if he tried. He hadn't thought it would keep him out of the army. He'd imagined being drafted, even enlisting. Then, when the war started, he was startled to find himself hoping to be rejected: afraid. Soon enough, he'd received a draft notice, but he failed the medical exam. His hand was too disabled. He thought he might have exaggerated the weakness on purpose. Were the doctors smart enough to detect that kind of deception? He was afraid to be a soldier, but when he'd received his 4-F notice, he'd been depressed for days. He'd told few people he'd been turned down, not Myra.

—That's
good
news, Artie said.

Harold shrugged. Not really.

—You've got better things to do with your life, Evelyn said.

—But with this going on? Harold pointed at the newspaper.

Artie waved his hand dismissively, but Evelyn nodded.

A few weeks later came a front-page story. The members of the United Nations had issued a joint declaration protesting the Germans' cold-blooded extermination of the Jews. This account was full of detail. Jews were taken to camps in Poland; nobody returned. Healthy people worked as slaves, and the rest were systematically exterminated. The United Nations, the paper reported, was making plans to bring the perpetrators to justice—which wouldn't bring dead people back to life, Harold pointed out. This time he said it to Myra. The story was two days old when he met her in the garment district on a Saturday. She had to see someone in an office. Harold had waited in Herald Square; he liked watching the iron statues on the big clock that had recently been installed there. Mechanical men lifted their arms and struck, and their hammers crashed against the big iron bell. At last Myra came along, annoyed at her assignment. A few days earlier, he had finally told her he'd been rejected from the draft. I assumed, she had said.

They went to see
Casablanca
for the second time. The war was going badly in real life, and the movie first cheered Harold, then depressed him: the French national anthem, the courage of the characters, his own cowardice. Later, they sat in a luncheonette and he began to talk about the extermination camps.

—Do you think it's true? she said. Her lipstick was a new color, darker, and it or something made her skin look dark and flushed, healthy with purpose but a little brutal. She rarely read a newspaper.

—Of course it's true. They've been investigating for months.

She considered. She had ordered only coffee—though he urged her to eat, as he always did—and had drunk it quickly, getting lipstick on the rim of the cup, and now she took out her compact and lipstick, blotting her lips on her napkin, stretching her mouth open and then pressing her lips together like a fish. Harold watched her, sipping his coffee and eating a cheese danish. He didn't like the way she repaired her lipstick, but he wanted to see her do it.

—Do you remember how I used to get? she said now.

—How you used to get? You mean, upset? When you and Virginia—

He wasn't sure he was allowed to speak of it. Sometimes, even now, she'd panic as she had at the cabin, but she never referred to these episodes later.

—When we met, she said.

—I remember.

—Well. That's the kind of thing I'd think about. You know.

—What kind of thing? He didn't know what she meant.

She sighed, putting her compact and lipstick into her purse, closing the clasp with unnecessary attention.

—That's what I used to think about. I didn't know how to stop. People killing other people. Not like wars, but just like this. Deciding to kill people and doing it. Maybe smiling.

He put down his cheese danish. What made you think things like that?

—How should I know? Maybe I read something when I was a kid, heard something. Scary stories. Most kids laugh.

He had so many questions he couldn't speak. He wanted to know what her thoughts were like, why she couldn't stop, how it was for her—for a woman—to have these thoughts.

—So I know it's true, she said. People can do that. Hitler—he's not like one of the bad guys we have around here, you know?

—No.

What did he want to say? He had to say something large and loud to Myra Thorsten, but they were in the third booth of a crowded luncheonette, with people at the counter, people walking by. He had half a cup of coffee left and part of his danish. His fingers were sticky. Will you marry me, Myra? he said.

—You mean that? She had reached for her bag again, and she held it in front of her like a shield, or as if she displayed it.

He didn't know if he meant it. They'd known each other for more than six years. He kept returning to Myra. He loved taking her to bed, but just as much, he loved waking up, late on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, to discover she was gone, and he was free to think of other women, other people, other topics. His parents were baffled that he'd know a woman as American as Myra.

They left the coffee shop and walked holding hands, his sticky hand in hers. They scream at me all the time for seeing you, she said.

—Who screams?

—My mother, my sister. My father doesn't know I sleep with you. He'd kill you.

—Really?

—He might. Or he might kill me.

—They don't trust me?

—They say you'll never marry me.

Harold had often thought that he would never marry Myra, but it was new to consider himself a potential villain for that reason. The idea pleased him, but he was offended, though they had guessed right about his intentions. Of course, he never intended the drama of abandonment they apparently believed possible of him—and now he couldn't say just what he had thought would happen. Myra would get tired of him and disappear—that must have been it.

—They don't care that I'm Jewish?

—They figure you'll make money.

Instead, weeks after their wedding, early in 1943—it seemed to happen immediately, as if a dress, a dinner, bridesmaids (Myra's two cousins, including the one who had spoken to Harold at the party) had been lined up waiting—Harold lost his job. He couldn't find steady work as a reporter. If he hadn't been married, he'd have gone to graduate school at last and become an English professor, making a scanty living writing reviews and freelance stories, but now he finally took the exam to become a teacher. Meanwhile, they lived mostly on Myra's earnings. When they married, he'd given up his apartment (he didn't know what Artie did with the cameras and tripod, when at last he had to insist they go) and moved in with Myra, whose place in the West Village was slightly bigger. But now they couldn't afford even that. On a tip from somebody, Artie found them an apartment near his own in East New York. Artie, with his years of marriage, his children—Evelyn had given birth to another girl, Carol—seemed older, though he'd always look boyish compared to Harold.

—We can play tennis again, he told Harold. I'll show you a thing or two. Suddenly Harold was living a mile from the neighborhood he'd grown up in, teaching in a nearby high school not very different from the one he'd attended. He'd attempted to flee into Manhattan—into adulthood—and had been captured and returned.

3

O
n a Saturday afternoon, Artie stayed home with Brenda, who was taking a nap, while Evelyn took Carol along in the baby carriage to the grocery store. It was spring 1944, and when Brenda woke up, Evelyn instructed Artie, he should take her outside. Evelyn's hair was pulled back with barrettes, and her eyes looked large and weary. He maneuvered the carriage down from their second-floor apartment while she carried Carol. When he heard Brenda talking to herself a little while later, he went into the children's room and found her sitting up, frowning deeply. She put up her hands to be lifted, and he took in her urinous baby smell. She was trained but often wet the bed. He changed her and gave her a snack, but he wasn't wearing his shoes and didn't feel like the major nuisance of getting himself and Brenda out the door, so he decided to teach her to play golf, showing her how to use her push toy to knock small toys into a box he placed on its side in the kitchen doorway. Brenda was entranced. She shoved things with the push toy, yelled I win, I win, and ran back and forth, becoming wilder. Artie found her delectable, with her disorderly light brown hair flying, her clothes hanging out, her voice loud. She had a bellow and she indulged in it now. They ran together. When she fell, he picked her up and pretended to eat any part of her that might have been injured, each limb, her neck, her ears. He set her down again. He was tired, and now it seemed that Evelyn should come home, but not much time had gone by.