The Journal I Did Not Keep Read online

  Five o’clock and Percy poked his head out and looked around the lawn. There were no hostile elements. Ilka did not count. He came and sat by Carter and said, “Anybody’s going to say anything to me about my boy is going to have his head handed to him. We’re not having any of that, not here, not with me around.” He was very ruffled and did not smile.

  * * *

  —

  “Who is Sammy Davis Junior?” Ilka asked in bed.

  “A successful Negro entertainer.”

  “So you agree with Stanley he is not an artist.”

  “No,” said Carter, “I agree with Percy that he is a successful Negro.”

  “The discussion was, is he an artist.”

  “Stanley’s discussion.”

  “But you agree that Stanley was right.”

  “I know Stanley is right, but I agree with Percy.”

  Ilka lay awhile. She said, “She wears a silver bathing suit. Then she’s surprised people are looking.”

  “She’s not surprised. Tell you a story,” Carter said. “First black soldier is getting his medal for bravery. Whole black regiment is standing to attention on the White House lawn. President, he puts the ribbon round his neck, says, ‘There is just one thing, my fine fellow: What the hell were you doing gallivanting above and beyond the call of duty where they shooting to beat the band?’ Soldier says, ‘Well, sir, Mr. President, I’ll tell you. See now, ever since the first day I ever was born I been waiting somebody going to shoot my ass. That day I says to myself, says, “Two things I know to do: I can take my ass AWOL or I can take it where I know they going to shoot it. Onliest thing I cannot is wait one other minute.”’”

  * * *

  —

  “Baby,” Stanley asked his wife at dinner the next day, “why are we eating late again?”

  “Because I was down the village,” replied Ebony. “John sends his best,” she said to Sarah.

  “John?” asked Sarah. “Which John is that?”

  “Hunter. On Main Street.”

  “Dr. Hunter? You went to see Dr. Hunter?”

  “Went to see John.”

  “He must be close on eighty, isn’t he? How is Dr. Hunter?”

  “John is just fine. John couldn’t be better. You know how I know his name is John? I’m going to do it!” she said, looking with mock alarm at Stanley down the table. “I’ve been good, baby, haven’t I? Didn’t beat that boy but twice all week. If I have one more go at him I figure I’ll get through this summer real good! Nobody going to ask me how come I know his name is John?”

  “It says on his shingle, doesn’t it? Dr. John Hunter.”

  “Probably does,” said Ebony, “but that’s not how I know. I know because I asked him what his name was. I walk in. I say, ‘I’m Ebony Baumgarden, doctor. I spoke with you on the phone.’ ‘Oh! yes?’ he says. ‘Ah!’ he says. ‘You did say you were up in the old Highel house. So, Ebony, sit down. What can I do for you?’ I said, ‘Well, first thing you can do is tell me what your name is.’ ‘Dr. Hunter,’ he says, a bit puzzled—not nervous. What’s John got to be nervous about? I said, ‘I know it’s Dr. Hunter, but I didn’t catch your Christian name.’ ‘My name is John,’ says John, looking a liitle bit peculiar, the way people look when they know something is going on but they don’t see it. They don’t know what it is. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘John, ever since I came out here to your beautiful Connecticut, I haven’t slept one wink.’”

  “I think,” Sarah said, “doctors just always call everybody by their first name. Of course he called us kids by our first names, but he calls Abigail Abigail. They are old friends.”

  “That’s right. He does,” Ebony said and nodded. “Said, ‘I heard Abigail’s niece was back at the Highel house.’”

  “I’m surprised he remembers me,” said Sarah.

  “Oh, he remembers. He said, ‘She broke her little finger jumping off Elephant Rock. I set it for her.’”

  “That’s right! He remembers. He did!”

  “So then John says, ‘I heard that little Sarah Highel married a Hamburger. Oh, those Highels! Always have to do everything different!’ He says, ‘My wife told me she saw you walking down the aisle, in the supermarket, with a little girl! So that was little Sarah’s girl, was it! How long have you been working for the Hamburgers?’”

  “Did you get your pills?” Carter asked her.

  “Got my pills.”

  * * *

  —

  Next afternoon Carter said, “We’re going for a walk.”

  “We are! Where are we walking?” cried Ilka.

  “It do not matter,” said Carter.

  Carter walked beside Ilka. Ilka had the impression that they were walking the wrong way up the backside of the hill and said, “Let’s walk the other way.”

  They turned around and this was another backside of the same wrong landscape. “Are you all right?” Ilka asked Carter, who was tacking like a sailboat going upwind. He fell over. Ilka helped the big man stand up. He leaned his dead weight on Ilka’s shoulder, walking with a wide, slapfooted gait, and fell over. Ilka helped him get up. His temple was bleeding.

  * * *

  —

  Carter took a nap and was in time to make drinks for everybody except himself.

  “I want a drink,” said Ilka.

  “Very fine,” said Carter.

  “You can sit on our blanket,” Victor said to Ilka but Ilka went and sat on the grass. She leaned her back against Carter’s legs. The sky was green and copper. Everybody was here. Ilka rubbed her cheek against Carter’s knee. He said, “Finish up your drink, I’ll get you another.” But the first half of Ilka’s first was turning her chest liquid with warmth for Stanley lying way down in his deck chair; for Doris Mae on her low stool, like the effigy of an Egyptian wife who knows her proper size in relation to her husband, her straight back at right angles with her lap at right angles with her parallel shins. Her face, parallel with her husband’s face, looked out unsmiling and serene. Annie sat on Ebony’s lap. Ebony interlocked her fingers on the child’s bare belly; Annie untwined the thumbs and forefingers and got to work on Ebony’s middle fingers; the thumbs and forefingers relocked. Annie laughed. On their blanket Sarah leaned against Victor’s chest.

  Carter was saying, “Beautiful goddamn bitch! Fouled me up at twenty, fouls me up at fifty. Goddamn New York!”

  The absence of reference to herself struck Ilka and made her eyes water.

  Carter said, “What the hell am I doing here, when I might have stood in California, drunk year-round in the goddamn sun!”

  Ilka said, “I want another drink.”

  “Right you are,” said Carter.

  The warmth in Ilka’s chest turned to lava. Ilka knew the elegant thing was to walk to the cottage and do her crying privately, but what was the fun of that? She leaned against Carter’s knees and silently cried. Carter patted her head. All through dinner Ilka let the strange tears flow down her face. Victor looked sympathetically at her and passed her potatoes; he passed her the peas. Ebony speared a handsome hunk of lamb and walked it personally around the table to put on Ilka’s plate. Carter sipped his soda. Doris Mae piled food on Percy’s plate. Annie kept putting her fork in her mother’s plate, and Sarah told her to stop it.

  Ilka said, “Excuse me,” rose from the table and lay down on the faded sofa in the living room and cried and cried.

  When dinner was over, Carter came and sat beside Ilka and stroked her back and said, “If you don’t stop I’m going to feed you some of Dr. John’s pills.”

  Ilka laughed, which brought on a new paroxysm. She wanted to say, “You never even mention about being married any more!” but did not wish to remind him of a subject that had made her throw up. She said, “What am I crying for?”

  “You’re having a crying jag,” said Carter. After a bit he went away.

  Victor came and said, “Sarah and I are sorry you are feeling sad,” and he went away and came back with one of Aunt Abigail’s afghans an
d put it over Ilka. Ilka cried and cried and cried.

  * * *

  —

  The phone rang while they sat at dinner Thursday. Sarah went to answer, came back, sat down, and with great emotion said, “She thinks they may have a baby for us.”

  “Now, this is a non-other baby?” asked Carter.

  Percival said, “You know the joke about the white lady takes her darky to carry soup down to this poor, sick family. Little pickaninnies running all over. Lady says, ‘The Lord works in a mysterious way! How anything so cute can turn into a big ugly black buck like you!’”

  Sarah said, “You will not take an interest.”

  Imagine the rush of air that would occur if the world reversed direction. There was no such rush.

  Ebony said, “Baby, I got a nice piece of crackling skin for you. Stanley loooves skin.”

  Doris Mae said, “Pass the potatoes.”

  Ilka saw Sarah was about to cry. She said, “You have refused, from the first night, to have any sympathy about this adoption.”

  Stanley said, “I’m going to bed.”

  “Don’t!” Sarah said. “Please…”

  “I’ll take Annie up,” said Victor.

  “No!” cried Sarah. “Stay, please, everybody. I want to talk this out.”

  “Everybody stay,” Carter said. “The forum is in session. Sarah, what do you want to talk about?”

  “Everything!” said Sarah. “The bedrooms.”

  “Your aunt’s house,” said Ebony. “You should have had the master bedroom.”

  “Not,” cried Sarah, “because it is my aunt’s house, but to each according to his need! There are three of us, with the baby’s crib, in the smaller room!”

  “I explained,” said Ebony. “Stanley has to sleep on a hard mattress. However, mattresses can be moved. You should have had the master bedroom.” She nodded.

  “It’s not the room!” Sarah sobbed, recovered herself, and said, “You know I don’t care anything about the room.”

  “Would you hold it there, before we move on,” said Carter. “The business of rooms, beds, et cetera, was opened for discussion at our first forum. Ebony brought it up. Why didn’t you say your piece then?”

  “Because…that was my fault. It just seemed such a chintzy thing…and I didn’t even know I minded. I didn’t mind. I don’t mind. I don’t even know what’s the matter. It’s just I wanted to talk things out before the whole summer goes all wrong….I wanted this summer so much! I want these friendships, your friendship,” Sarah said to Ebony, “as much as I ever wanted anything.”

  Ebony nodded profoundly, as if she were bowing, and that seemed to be the end of the revolution, but Sarah said, “That is why I couldn’t bear your not being sympathetic about the adoption.”

  Ebony nodded as if she were making an obeisance to her right toe and said, “We thought we rallied. We thought we behaved rather well to your Mrs. Daniels.”

  “Why my Mrs. Daniels?” cried Sarah.

  “By the by,” said Carter, “didn’t we vote to announce guests ahead of time?”

  “We did!” said Victor. “We asked the first night about having her up.”

  “And we tried to phone ahead. I thought we told you,” said Sarah. “The phone was off the hook.”

  “My fault,” said Ebony.

  “You didn’t announce your Sunday guests!” said Sarah.

  “They weren’t sleeping over,” said Carter.

  “Mrs. Daniels wasn’t going to sleep over, except dinner got so late,” said Sarah.

  “My fault again,” said Ebony.

  “It was not your fault at all!” shouted Sarah. “You were not well. It was my fault for leaving you with all the cooking—except I couldn’t help it.”

  “No problem,” said Ebony.

  “Don’t say that!” shouted Sarah.

  “Oh, all righty,” said Ebony.

  “It is not all right! That’s what I mean! That’s what I want to talk about,” said poor Sarah.

  Ebony nodded with compressed lips.

  “I believe,” said Ilka, and everybody looked at her, “Ebony has been so generous doing all the whole cooking.”

  Ebony made her obeisance and said, “Thank you, thank you.”

  But Sarah cried, “I don’t think it’s generous!” and bolted out of her chair and walked to the wall and leaned her forehead against it and wept. They waited. When she turned around she said, “I don’t want her to do my work for me! It makes me very uncomfortable not to do my share. I don’t want to be cooked for and I don’t want to be served by Ebony. And I don’t know why Ebony and Stanley always sit at the head and foot of the table! Why not Percy and Doris Mae, or Victor and I, if this is a democracy?”

  “Forgive me for bringing this up once again,” said Carter, “but shouldn’t this have come under the headings of policy, grievance, or gripe? That was the purpose of our first forum.”

  “Of which,” cried Sarah, with her hands on the table, leaning her face toward him, “you appointed yourself president!”

  “President? Oh, please! Chairman. Tyrannous.”

  “Whichever,” said Sarah.

  “No no. Not the same thing.”

  “The point is, I didn’t vote for you!”

  “That is a point,” said Carter.

  “And I would have! I would have nominated you and voted for you, but you didn’t give me the chance! You play at democracy and deny me my vote!” she cried and, in her passion, approached her face, over which the tears were freely running, close to Carter’s face. And this was the first time, since she had known him, that Carter’s face did not please Ilka. It was tilted to offer its great, flat surfaces to the young white woman’s anger. His mouth was shut in a determinedly neutral line, the eyes were open and unblinking, as if to demonstrate the wish not to miss whatever more she might have to lay against him—the arrogant look of one impenetrable to anything that any Sarah might have it in her power to say.

  Sarah sat down and reached for Annie and pulled the little girl onto her lap and held her and pressed her wet cheek against Annie’s head. The child was frightened and howled.

  Exhausted and forlorn, Sarah said, “Maybe we should just pack up and go home.”

  “Not tonight, heavens to Betsy! I mean, look at the time,” said Ebony. “Why don’t you wait till morning?”

  “Any other business?” asked Carter.

  “About Victor,” Ilka said into the general commotion. Everybody was rising. Stanley sneaked off to bed. Sarah, bitterly weeping, carried the screeching Annie up the stairs. Ebony and Doris Mae took dishes into the kitchen.

  “About me?” Victor asked Ilka across the table at which they found themselves face to face, alone.

  “You make anti-Semitic remarks!” Ilka said in German.

  “I? How anti-Semitic? I speak as a Jew to another Jew.”

  “You are Jewish!” said Ilka.

  “But I told you, the first night. Don’t you remember, I told you, I’m from Berlin!”

  * * *

  —

  “What did Sarah do so wrong?” Ilka said in bed to Carter.

  “The lamb lay down with the lion to induce the coming of the Peaceable Kingdom. The Kingdom didn’t come. The lamb got eaten up.”

  “But why eat up your friends?” cried Ilka.

  “Friends the only ones get close enough to get your teeth into. I ever tell you the story about the indignation meeting? Niggers in this two-bit Alabama town are holding an indignation meeting out in the back barn. Young buck name of Roy, he sees the old drunken white lawyer, only friend the Negroes got in town, coming in the door, says, ‘You, Dave Dougherty, get out of here. Don’t you know this is a indignation meeting?’ Everybody says, ‘Roy, you shut your mouth. Dave, sit down.’ So they commence indignating, just beating that boy. Fellow name of Joe says, ‘Sheriff put me in the slammer all of Saturday night. Said I was falling down drunk! He is one mean white bastard.’ Dave he listens, says, ‘Now you hold on there on
e little old minute.’ Says, ‘You right, sheriff always was a real stinker and getting worse, but you sure were drunk Saturday night, and you know it and I know it ’cause you and I, we tied one on together.’ Roy stands up, says, ‘I tell you whitey going stick up for whitey?’ and they get ahold of old Dave Dougherty, is already out of his seat and halfways through the door, and they beat him up but good.”

  “But that’s not fair!” cried Ilka.

  “Damn unfair!” said Carter and he laughed and he laughed.

  * * *

  —

  Carter refused to wake up next morning. Ilka, who wanted to see what was going to happen, made her way across the grass to the big house. Stanley, collapsed down into his deck chair, looked asleep. Under the trees Victor was fitting the folded crib into the trunk of the car. Ilka, who was embarrassed to have mistaken him for a Nazi, slipped into the house.

  “D’you have time for a cup of coffee?” Ebony called to Sarah, who was bumping the last suitcase down the stairs.

  Sarah came into the kitchen. Her face looked raw.

  “I’ll take a cup for Percival,” said Doris Mae.

  “Say goodbye to Percy,” Sarah said and wept and embraced Doris Mae.

  “Goodbye,” said Doris Mae.

  “I made you a chocolate pie to take along,” Ebony said to Annie.

  “Where are we going?” asked Annie.

  “You shouldn’t have done that! When did you do that?” Sarah asked. She had begun to cry again.

  “Made the crust last night. I knew I was never going to shut an eye.”

  “Neither did I,” sobbed Sarah.

  “My mother always used to say, ‘Ebony gets upset she starts baking.’”

  “I want to stay here,” said Annie.

  Sarah said, “Call me, Ebony, when you get back in September. We’ll have lunch and we will talk.”

  “Ab-so-lutely,” Ebony said, and nodded and kept nodding. “I don’t know what I’m going to be doing this fall—see how Stanley is doing. I just might take off from teaching so I don’t get so rattled. I do get rattled, don’t I? Coffee, Victor?”