The Journal I Did Not Keep Read online

  The young woman turned serene wire-rimmed eyes to Ilka and said, “Doris Mae.”

  “It is interesting,” said Ilka, “how always, after I have sat beside a new person ten minutes, I think I have known them from childhood. You are not by chance born in Vienna?”

  “Oklahoma,” said Doris Mae.

  “I don’t believe Oklahoma!” Ilka smiled. “There is not such a place.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Doris Mae.

  “So,” said Ebony. “And how does Ilka like our Connecticut.”

  Ilka was grateful for the opening and said, “I always have a difficulty. I see that the American landscape is green and beautiful, but I have a difficulty to feel that it is.”

  “You and me both,” said Ebony, using her bread to backstop the piece of meat little Annie was trying to spear onto her fork. “Always have difficulty with the American landscape.”

  “It always looks to me as if something is wrong.”

  “Always, always something wrong with the darn thing!” said Ebony, nodding her profound agreement.

  “But what is wrong, I think, is my way to look,” said Ilka.

  “We’ll teach you the right way to look at the American landscape,” said Ebony.

  “That is what I would like!” cried Ilka. “I want to see everything!”

  “There are some lovely walks,” said Sarah, the baby’s mother. “There’s a swimming hole we kids used to go to when we stayed with Aunt Abigail. I’ll show you the rock we used to jump off. We called it Elephant Rock!” she told Annie.

  “Abigail,” Carter turned to explain to Ilka, “is Sarah’s aunt. This is Abigail’s house. She’s lent it to us for the summer while she goes around the country organizing the revolution. Which revolution is Abigail organizing these days?” he asked Sarah.

  “She’s in Washington working for school desegregation,” replied Sarah. “There is a nice old place, where she used to take us to lunch, called the White Fence Inn.”

  “I’ve never been to an American inn,” said Ilka.

  “There!” said Ebony. “We’ll swim in Aunt Abigail’s hole and have our lunch at the Black Fence Out, genuine Wasp cooking. Oops,” said Ebony and gave her pink husband down-table an extravagant version of the classic look of the child caught with the forbidden cookie. “Stanley don’t like me beating the boy—not while he’s having his dinner, baby, do you! And I was doing so good!”

  “‘Beating the boy,’” Carter explained to Ilka, “is a Negro phrase. It means sitting around comparing our bitty triumphs and monumental defeats in the white world.”

  “And I was going to like everything and everybody,” said Ebony. “Going to make a project out of it! First week,” she said, “I was going to like the slope, just in front of our house. Second week I was going to like Thomastown, third week Connecticut…” Ilka looked and saw Ebony’s little nubbin of a husband sitting with a sweet smile of enjoyment, his hands locked behind his head, watching his wife talking. Ilka began to like him. “Fourth week I was going to like the whole of New England. God only knows,” said Ebony, “what all I might have ended liking!”

  “Where are you going?” Carter asked her.

  “Going to clean up the kitchen,” said Ebony.

  “Can we all sit a moment?”

  Ebony sat down again and so did Sarah, Doris Mae, and Ilka, who had risen with her.

  * * *

  —

  Carter said, “I propose that we constitute ourselves a forum for this little polis.” Everybody looked at Carter.

  Carter said, “Has anybody policy to propose, questions to ask, gripes to air? Speak now or forever after hold your peace.”

  “I have a question,” said Ebony. “Does everybody have the room they want? Stanley is supposed to sleep on a hard mattress, so we took the hardest. I mean because we came ahead…”

  “And put in a lot of work,” said Sarah. “I can tell. I know Aunt Abigail’s housekeeping.”

  “I will entertain a motion for a vote of thanks to Ebony for all the work she put in,” said Carter. The motion was unanimously seconded.

  Ebony compressed her lips and dipped her head in something between a profound nod and a shallow bow and said, “Thank you, thank you. There’s nothing sacred about these arrangements. Carter, would you and Ilka prefer to be in the big house? There’s a perfectly good spare room. We just thought you might enjoy having the cottage to yourselves.”

  “We do,” said Carter.

  “We do,” said Ilka.

  Ebony said, “I know the bed is okay, because I tried it. First night out I couldn’t sleep, what with Stanley snoring and the old New England moon standing right outside the window, glaring at me. I woke poor Stanley, didn’t I, baby? and made him switch sides. Stanley went on snoring. Damned if that old moon didn’t switch sides! Right in my face! So the next night I tried the bed in the cottage.”

  “Well, we tried the bed,” reported Carter, “and it’s first-rate.”

  “Third night, I tried your mommy and daddy’s bed, in your room,” Ebony said to little Annie. Annie sat on her father’s lap and pressed herself into his chest and watched Ebony’s face. “There’s another terrific bed for lying awake all night and not being able to fall asleep in!”

  “Insomnia is a bitch,” said Carter. “I happen to hold the North American indoor record for insomnia! Anybody else want the cottage? Anybody want the cottage any part of the summer? Does anybody want anything that they do not have, or want not to have anything they do have? Amazing!” said Carter.

  A honeymoon of mutual accommodation carried them through the division of labor, which, in the fifties, was a comparatively simple matter: The men constituted themselves into a lawn-mowing, garbage-disposing detail. Ebony volunteered Stanley as a maker of superior fires.

  “Bags the cocktails. Making, not drinking,” Carter said.

  “About the cooking,” said Sarah, the baby’s mother. “Everybody has to get their own breakfast and lunch and we take turns making dinner.”

  “If nobody minds,” said Ebony, “I’ll get Stanley’s lunch. Stanley loves to be waited on, baby, don’t you?”

  Ilka was appalled into speech. “I don’t think I can cook dinner for so many! I am not a good cook.”

  “Well, I am,” said Ebony. “I am such a good cook I’m terrible at eating anything anybody else cooks. I’m real mean that way, so I’ll be glad—I’d prefer, if it’s all right with everybody—to just be let to do the cooking.”

  Well, it was not all right. “That wouldn’t be fair to you,” said Sarah. “Why don’t we all do it together?”

  “Fine!” cried Ilka. “Then I can help and I can learn how!”

  “It’ll be fun!” Sarah said.

  “Fun, fun, fun,” said Ebony, nodding and nodding her head.

  “We’ll play it by ear. See how it works.” And so that was settled as well.

  “Any other business?” Carter asked.

  “About the damn agency woman…” Victor, little Annie’s father, said to his wife, Sarah.

  “I was telling Ebony,” Sarah said, “Victor and I have decided to adopt. There are thousands upon thousands of babies in institutions, so Victor and I decided instead of having another of our own we’re going to adopt a little brother for Annie.”

  Victor said, “And the stupid agency woman wants to come to look at us.”

  “What they really want,” Sarah said, “is to tell us their idiotic reasons for quote matching us unquote with the quote unquote right baby, when there are literally thousands upon thousands of nonwhite babies sitting in institutions.” Sarah was breathing hard. She said, “Victor and I feel they’re giving us the runaround.”

  Ebony said, “Could I have a drop of your seltzer, Carter, or will you run out?”

  “I bought a whole case,” said Carter. “Do you want a little ice in it?”

  “I’ll take it neat, please. Thank you,” said Ebony.

  “Anyway,” said Sarah.

&nbs
p; “The question on the floor, as I understand it,” said Carter, “is policy in regard to having friends up.”

  “Not friends,” Sarah said. “The agency woman is not a friend.”

  “In regard to guests in general, then.”

  “We have the spare room,” said Ebony.

  Guests in general were voted in, Carter stepping down from the chair to offer an amendment that prior notice be required for sleepovers to avoid the coincidence of potentially hostile elements, and stepping back, passed the matter with every parliamentary minutia of procedure. He was having a lovely time. “Any other business? Do I have a motion to adjourn? A second? A show of unanimous hands. We are adjourned. I am very happy to be here.”

  * * *

  —

  Ilka’s happiness brought her to the edge of tears. She had it in her heart to envy herself for being alive, here, in this beautiful house on an American hill carrying dirty dishes into the kitchen with these variegated Americans. She crossed paths with Victor, the child’s father, coming in with a tray. He said, “Also du bist aus Wien. Ich bin ein Berliner.” Ilka kept walking and knew that she had known it all along—had known by the blueness of his eye and his naked chest at table—it was just that it happened not to have occurred to her to say to herself that Victor was German. “I put these down here?” Ilka asked Ebony.

  “Wonderful!” said Ebony. “Except I just swabbed it off for the clean dishes.”

  “Sorry,” said Ilka.

  Sarah said, “Victor, get Annie off to bed, will you?”

  “Where are her pajamas?”

  “In the car.”

  “Where in the car, Sarah?” Victor presently hollered from outside.

  “In the trunk, in the back, Victor!” Sarah shouted back.

  Upstairs the sleepy baby began to wail and Sarah said, “I’m sorry, I better go up and give him a hand.”

  “Oh, do do do do do,” said Ebony.

  Ilka heard the imminent shriek in the woman’s voice and said, “Sometimes help is more a trouble, no?”

  “You can say that again,” said Ebony. “Why don’t you go in the living room? Go and sit by Stanley’s fire.”

  * * *

  —

  “Come, sit by the fire,” said Carter.

  Ilka dropped into the surprise depth of an upholstered chair, its springs relaxed, its stuffing broken and molded by decades of American backsides that had rubbed the cretonne primroses, tulips, lilacs to a gentle monotone. The eyes of generations of beholders had connected the heads of the bluebirds in the vines on the wallpaper into blue stripes. Sofas, chairs, the standing lamp had put down roots into the carpet, which might have been gold once, or rose. A small table sprouted by Carter’s elbow to hold his seltzer bottle.

  In his chair Carter laughed. The blue-black man with the mustache sat on the other side of the mild summer fire and said, “Mother used to tell us boys, said, ‘Why you got to always hang around those black next-door children I never will know, you black enough yourself, Lord knows you don’t get it from my side of the family. Why can’t you play with those light-skin Jones boys can make something out of themselves one of these days?’ A good woman, my mother, wanted the best for her children.” Underneath the outsize mustache his long yellow teeth smiled subtly, and Ilka’s heart gasped with the little pain of falling a little in love.

  Carter laughed and laughed and rose, picked up his glass, and said, “Ice anybody?” He walked out of the room.

  Ilka ignored her racing heart and the absence of her breath and spoke: “I like it so much to see old friends talking together.”

  The mustachioed blue-black man looked at Ilka with surprise and stopped smiling.

  Ilka persevered: “I traveled so much to and fro Europe I have always lost all my friends again.” The black man said nothing. Ilka asked, “Where did you all meet each other?”

  The man stared into the fire. He was thinking. He said, “Stanley I know I know from the CP, but Carter was never CP….Carter was a Wobbly and Abigail was into everything. She was CP treasurer—that’s how I know Abigail, and I met Carter with Abigail—that was it.” He mused into the fire.

  Ilka was glad when Carter came back. Ilka wished they would all come in and sit down. Where was everybody?

  The German walked in and said, “So!”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Carter.

  The German’s wife, Sarah, came in and said, “Darn, darn, darn, Victor! You know what we forgot!”

  “To call the agency!” Victor actually slapped himself on the forehead. “Tomorrow in the morning!”

  Ebony came from the kitchen with the bespectacled blonde with the two names, who wiped her hands on the seat of her neat short shorts and went and sat down on a low stool next to the mustachioed man—what was his name?

  Ebony sat on the ottoman in front of the fire and asked, “Did Stanley go up?”

  “Is Stanley all right?” asked Sarah.

  “Stanley hasn’t been right all spring—all year.”

  “Maybe he should see Dr. Hunter,” said Sarah. She looked so concerned Ilka really liked her. “He’s a good doctor and a dear man. Aunt Abigail used to take us when we smashed ourselves up. His office is right on Main.”

  “Maybe I’ll go see the dear man, get myself a pill or something,” said Ebony.

  “Pills! What pill?” asked Carter.

  “Something to make me sleep.”

  Sarah said, “Victor and I were saying, before you came in, we have to call the damn agency in the morning. Did I tell you we think they’re giving us the runaround?”

  “You did, you did.” Ebony picked up the poker and worried the little fire.

  “We think it’s not the fault so much of the woman,” Sarah said. “It’s the idiot agency.”

  “Sarah refuses to understand,” said Victor, “that the idiot agency may have the idiot law on its side.”

  “Idiot, idiot, idiot law,” said Ebony, poking and poking and poking the fire.

  “We intend to go through the courts if that’s what it takes,” said Sarah. “Meanwhile thousands and thousands of little nonwhite babies are sitting in institutions.”

  “Only thing under the circumstances,” Ebony said, “is to go to bed,” and she planted her feet wide, placed her hands upon her thighs, and pushed herself up. “Are you okay for blankets?” she asked Sarah.

  “I’ll come with you and see,” said Sarah. The two women went out.

  After a small silence, the Berliner said, “So. I know who does not need a pill to sleep after so much driving.” He stood up, said, “Good night,” and went out.

  “Well,” Carter said, “what do you think?” and he grinned.

  The mustachioed man said, “I think exactly what you think,” and looked so charming and malicious Ilka really liked him.

  Carter laughed. “Are we going to make it through the summer, do you think?”

  “I will make it.” The mustachioed blue-black man stood up. The bespectacled blonde stood up with him. “About anything or anybody else,” said the mustachioed man, “I would not wish to speculate. Good night.”

  “Good night, Percy!” Carter roared. “Good night, Doris Mae,” and he kept laughing. It did not seem to Ilka that there could be, in the world, anything funny enough for such enormous and protracted hilarity.

  * * *

  —

  In the cottage Carter put on his green-striped pajamas and said, “You don’t happen to have such a thing as an old nylon stocking, do you?” Ilka happened to have such a thing. Carter tied a knot six inches from the top, wet his head, and drew on the stocking cap, flattening the hair against his skull. Then he got into bed and said, “Come,” and raised the layers and layers of threadbare blankets; they warmed by the pound.

  Ilka said, “I have questions.”

  “Shoot,” said Carter.

  “The railway stationhouse—it is made out of what?”

  Carter said, “Brick.”

  “That is what I though
t,” said Ilka. “What is the name of the man with the mustache?”

  “Percival Jones. He is a writer. He is famous.”

  “The woman with the two names is his wife?”

  “Very much so. Doris Mae.”

  “You know Aunt Abigail?”

  “Very, very, very well,” said Carter.

  “What is CP?”

  Carter explained.

  “What is Wobblies?”

  “Oh, Jesus!” said Carter. He explained.

  “What is Wasp?”

  Carter explained. Ilka thought it was the wittiest thing she had ever heard.

  Ilka said, “Ebony is wonderful.”

  “Ebony,” said Carter, “is a hostile bitch.”

  “You don’t think that she is beautiful!” cried Ilka.

  “She’s a beautiful hostile bitch,” said Carter.

  “I like her so much!” said Ilka.

  “I love Ebony,” said Carter.

  * * *

  —

  “I don’t believe this!” Ilka said, next morning, when she opened the door and saw a bush arched to the ground with the weight of blossoMs. “This was not here last night. Did you do this?”

  “Yes,” Carter said.

  “There is a bird on top of the top branch.”

  “I did it,” said Carter.

  Ilka walked across the grass toward the big house. Stanley, in a deck chair in the sun, waved his New York Times.

  The Berliner stood smiling in the doorway. Ilka pressed past, avoiding contact.

  At the table in the sun-filled kitchen, Sarah was feeding little Annie breakfast. Annie was crying and saying, “I want to stay with Aunt Ebony.”

  Ebony brought Ilka coffee and said, “Coffee, Doris Mae?”