Next to Love (37 page)

The two of them move through the house in tandem, Dorothy sometimes leading the way, sometimes stepping back to let Millie enter a room ahead of her. Millie is looking at the house, but Dorothy is taking a tour of her life. They go into King’s study, which still smells of his cigars. “How I hated that smell,” Dorothy says, and turns away, but not before Millie sees the tears welling up. They stand in the archway to the dining room, where Naomi’s mother and then Naomi served them a thousand dinners. She opens the door, and they lean out into the screened-in porch, where Dorothy tells her she once came home early from a ladies’ historical society meeting and found Charlie and Mac and a bunch of other boys smoking. The wistfulness in her voice is like a wrench twisting Millie’s insides.

“I hope you’ll be as happy here as we were,” she says as she walks Millie to the door.

For the rest of the afternoon, as she picks up the dry cleaning, takes Al’s brogues to the shoemaker, goes to the supermarket, and has a prescription for Susan’s cough filled at the new drugstore chain next to the supermarket—she feels guilty because she should go downtown to Swallow’s, but this is so much more convenient—she keeps imagining how happy they are going to be in that house.

By the time she loads her groceries into the car and starts home, it is getting dark, and she has to turn on her headlights. As she passes Babe’s house, they sweep over the front yard and silhouette Babe climbing out of the car. She wonders when Babe gets her marketing done, and her dry cleaning picked up, and Claude’s shoes to the shoemaker. Poor Claude. Babe says that sometimes, when he gets home first, he puts the potatoes in to bake or lights the burner under leftover stew. Al would never do that. But poor Babe too. She pretends to love her job, but if Claude were more of a go-getter like Al, Babe would not have to work.

Millie is past the house when she glances in the rearview mirror and sees a figure coming down the driveway. There is no reason Jack should not be there, but she cannot help wondering why he is. She backs up the car.

“Need a lift, young man?”

He looks startled, but that could be the headlights.

“What were you doing there?” she asks when he climbs in.

“Nothing,” he says, and slides down lower in the seat.

“Nothing?”

“I wanted to ask Uncle Claude some questions.”

“About what?” She has heard him ask Claude about the war, just as he asks Al, but once or twice when he didn’t know she was listening, he asked about Pete.

He skulks down in the seat another couple of inches. “My history project.”

“I thought you had Mr. Dickerson for history.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem. He’s not as good as Uncle Claude. That’s why I need help.”

It’s a perfectly logical answer, but she cannot get over the feeling that he is up to something, and that Babe and Claude are keeping it from her.

MILLIE IS ASHAMED
of herself. After all she has been through—losing her parents, losing Pete—she should not be going to pieces about losing a house. She should be counting her blessings. No woman in her right mind would be sitting on a closed toilet with the mascara running down her cheeks and a wad of wet tissues in her hand, grieving for a house that was never hers. But it is not only the lost house, it is the lost happiness. When Dorothy walked her through a few days ago, filling the house with her memories, Millie could not help peopling the rooms with Al and the children and her. She stood in the living room and saw the Christmas tree in front of the mullioned windows. She looked up the staircase from the front hall and saw first Betsy, then Susan, coming down it in a white dress. Both times she married in a suit, and there had been no staircase, only her aunt’s living room with Pete and a judge’s chambers with Al. She stood in the center of King’s cigar-reeking den, stripped it of the heavy leather furniture and big mahogany desk, and put in a couch made for wear and tear and a twenty-four-inch television. She saw all five of them eating popcorn, toasting marshmallows in the fireplace, laughing, talking, teasing. The house would be restitution. The house would give her back everything she keeps losing. But now she has lost the house too.

There is a knock on the door. “Mil,” Al says, “are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She stands and begins to wash her face.

He opens the door a crack.

“You sure?”

She turns her dripping face to him and manages a smile. “Of course I’m sure.”

“It’s only a house,” he says, but she can tell. He is disappointed too. He loved the house. And he loved the idea of living in King Gooding’s house.

AL SITS ON THE SIDE
of the bed, listening to his wife crying in the bathroom, and makes up his mind. This time he is not going to let them get away with it.

Dorothy said she was terribly sorry, but she had a better offer. When he pointed out that she had already accepted his, she admitted she had but said he had not put down a deposit and she had not signed anything. If a Jew tried to get away with a double deal like that, they’d call him every name in the book. He offered to top the new bid. Now he was angry. He wanted to live in King Gooding’s house because Millie loved it, and because it was beautiful, and because it would make King Gooding turn over in his grave and his good Christian neighbors mad as hell. He wondered if they had really found her another buyer or merely persuaded her not to sell to him.

He can imagine the scene. Did it happen last night, or did she need a few days to get up the courage to tell him? He can even guess the players. Cox, who lives across the street from her and runs the bank now that King is gone. Swain of Swain, Swain, and Dobbins, Attorneys-at-Law. Fearing, who came close to being indicted for some insurance hanky-panky, but at least he is not a Jew. He sees the three men, solid citizens, good Christians, walking up her path through the autumnal dusk, their feet crunching the acorns from the oak that isn’t sick. She is surprised to find them there, but she invites them in and offers them a drink, and they accept, because this is, after all, a neighborly call. He can imagine the conversation too. They talk about property values, and the neighborhood going down, and—here is the kicker—what King would have wanted. And so this morning she called him and said she was terribly sorry but she had a better offer. Her voice was thin and a little embarrassed. He had to give her that.

Millie is still in the bathroom, crying. He is damned if he’ll let them get away with this. He will not say anything to her yet. He is not sure he can pull it off. And he knows his wife. She will swear secrecy, but in a moment of weakness or excitement, she will let something slip to Grace or Babe, and that will be the end of it.

He gets up, goes to the door, and opens it a crack. “It’s only a house,” he says. But he knows it is more than that, for him as well as for her.

NINETEEN

Babe

MAY 1962

B
ABE ARRIVES AT THE RESTAURANT BEFORE CLAUDE. THEY DROVE
in to Boston together this morning, but when he went off to the state teachers’ meeting, he warned her he might be late to dinner. She does not mind being first. She just wants to get off her feet and order a drink. She spent the morning at the Boston NAACP office and the afternoon shopping with Grace and Amy for Amy’s trousseau. The word strikes her as a hoary nineteenth-century anachronism, but Grace loves it. She is also a pushover for any song that has the words
young
and
love
in it. “Younger Than Springtime.” “Hello, Young Lovers.” “Too Young.” Sometimes Babe envies Grace her starry-eyed innocence; sometimes she wonders if Grace has ever really been married. How can she still work herself up to such a pitch about engagements and weddings and happily-ever-afters?

She crosses the plush carpet of the entrance hall, gives the maître d’ her name, and says they have a reservation. He consults his book, finds the name, looks up, and tells her Mr. Huggins is not here yet.

“That’s all right,” she begins, but he has already moved on to a couple behind her. She glances around for a place to sit, but there are no chairs, only lots of gilt mirrors and overblown flower arrangements.

When Babe decided she would drive in to Boston with Claude, he said they ought to splurge on a celebratory dinner.

“What are we celebrating?” she asked.

“My not getting the principal’s job.”

The fact that he can joke about it does not make her feel less guilty. “That’s my fault.”

“You helped,” he admitted. “Rabble-rouser, pinko, and a hyphenated term beginning with a word I won’t use and ending in lover are just a few of the more endearing names you’re called around town. But I like to think I had something to do with it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. I’d like the extra money, though we’re doing all right with both our salaries. But let’s face it, I’d be lousy at the job, not to mention miserable in it. The way things are now, every so often—not regularly, I admit, but every so often—a smart kid with a curious mind rears his head in that crowd of juvenile delinquents I’m supposed to be turning into useful members of society. And, believe it or not, I still get a thrill out of it. But in the principal’s office, all I’d be doing is disciplining the juvenile delinquents and listening to teachers’ gripes.”

She is not sure whether she envies his equilibrium or disapproves of it. In his place, she could not resist going after the job, even if she knew she would be miserable once she got it.

A man comes in and gives the maître d’ his name. The maître d’ tells him he is the first to arrive and shows him to a table.

She stands shifting from foot to foot, gazing into the dining room. Groups of twos and fours and sixes sit eating, drinking, smoking, talking. Here and there a lone man waits for a companion. She wants to know why she cannot sit at a table waiting for Claude.

She approaches the maître d’ again and tells him she would like to wait for Mr. Huggins at the table. He apologizes and says the table is not yet ready, though beyond his brilliantined head, she sees several empty ones scattered around the room.

A moment later Claude arrives, and the maître d’ shows them to a table, pulls out her chair for her, and says he hopes she enjoys her dinner.

“That’s an about-face,” she murmurs to Claude, and tells him about having to cool her heels in the entrance area while everyone else was being seated. “I know I’m not exactly a fashion plate. I spent the afternoon watching Grace spend unconscionable sums of money for clothes I can’t believe Amy will ever wear. But I didn’t think I looked that down-at-the-heels.”

“You look fine. It has nothing to do with that. He just can’t seat a lone woman.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because the assumption is that a woman alone in a place like this is a hooker.”

“You’re not serious?”

“Dead serious. You can’t really blame him.”

“Want to bet?”

“He’s trying to run a business, and there are laws against soliciting.”

She leans back in the chair, looks around the room, and brings her gaze back to him.

“You know what I ought to do? I ought to take everything I’ve learned at the NAACP and put it to work getting women into fancy restaurants. And everywhere else they’re not wanted.”

TWENTY