Faith and the Good Thing Read online

  He’d said, “You’ve got class,” then fumbled in his sports jacket, produced a plastic respirator, and sucked on it while awaiting Faith’s reaction. She didn’t quite know what to say. The air in his apartment was stuffy. She opened a window, but that didn’t help Maxwell’s breathing. His eyes watered; he coughed, closed his eyes, threw back his head, and gripped the edge of the table with his free hand.

  Faith stepped behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Can I do anything?”

  “Yes.” He took a deep breath, and threw back his head again. “Let me be seen in public with you—”

  It was an odd way to put it, but she bit. “You want . . . ?” She watched her timing, controlled the tone, the timbre in her voice. “Why?”

  He had seemed to be in some kind of agony, with pain so quick it lifted him from his seat like a puppet. He circled the table, slightly bent, his face pale and sunken with his need for air. She had become afraid then, imagining what it was like to feel one’s chest narrow, tighten, and admit only a thin tunnel of oxygen. Maxwell’s face was blue; he held himself erect by holding the back of a chair.

  “You’re . . . b-beautiful,” he said, coughing violently again and falling back, frightened and weak, fluids bubbling in his stomach like liquid in a shaken jug.

  “Please!” Faith cried. “Don’t waste breaths trying to talk.”

  He waved her away feebly, forcing out the words. “Can you imagine what it’ll be like if I’m seen with you? People—they’ll turn around and stare with admiration when we walk down the street. That’s important—what people think, I mean. It’s the world of business, and you can help me get ahead if—” His wheezing had become horrible, so deep it frightened even Maxwell. He sank into the chair at the table and lowered his head into his folded arms. “I’m just an average guy. . . . I’m nobody—I’m a cripple! I know you know lots of guys, healthy guys. You don’t need me. I can understand that. I’d just like to be seen with you sometimes. That’s all—”

  Standing there, watching him gag and spray the acidic contents of the respirator between his lips, had both embarrassed and exhilarated her. She had power. With one word she could crush him. And, to tell the truth, it did make her feel good. She remembered sitting up with him all night, he lying propped up in his bed with pillows behind his back as she refilled his spray and brought him water. She’d given him what he wanted, smiling when—as he’d predicted—pedestrians turned around to glance at her when they walked down the street. She overlooked his stammering, smiled at his jokes, and approved of his garish ties and gauche sports coats. He, as predictable as a physical law, beamed from ear to ear, fed her, loaned her his car, and swore these ideas occurred to him of his own accord. Yet he was good to her, and though his predictability could sometimes make her scream, she did not want to lose him. Faith looked at her image in the mirror and was pleased. Tonight, if all went well, she would induce Maxwell to propose, pretending to be taken aback, honored, tearful, and left speechless by his proposition.

  Then she broke into a sweat. On the surface of the glass of the mirror and superimposed over her own image were two sad, hazel eyes and a knitted brow that scowled gravely at her undertaking. She grabbed her purse and returned quickly to her table.

  Maxwell was already at the counter near the door, paying the tab and counting and recounting his change. He took her arm, and they stepped out into a soft and flabby mid-spring morning. But Chicago no longer seemed dismal, not quite as lifeless or ominous. The Good Thing, after all, was here—it weighed about one hundred and fifty pounds, received paychecks twice a month, and would do anything she asked. She was so excited she almost squeezed Maxwell’s arm with genuine affection. Almost.

  “You’re wonderful,” she said.

  He rubbed his nose until it was shiny, grinned proudly, and perked up when two young men passed them by and whistled at Faith. Maxwell drew her close. “You’re just saying that.”

  True, she thought. But she said, “I mean—you’re always in control of things. I feel so . . . safe when I’m with you.” She could almost hear the click, click, click of reaction as his chest swelled. She decided to say no more. Once, as they drove home from a movie, she’d overdone it, had overloaded the machinery and brought on an asthma attack that had nearly lifted him out of his skin.

  “I’ve got to run,” Maxwell said at the corner. “There’s another conference this morning.” Then he rolled his eyes at her. “Most of them are pointless—just meeting with the circulation department or the ad boys, but something important might come of this one.”

  “Mmmm?” She hadn’t heard a word. The warmth of the morning was reaching into her and she suddenly wanted to be free of him.

  “We’re starting a series on the prison in Joliet. It’s not my idea, you understand. Those characters belong right where they are. But it occurred to me when the idea came up that this just might be my big break. The editors want to feature a column on day-to-day life in prison, but they’ll need someone to organize it.” He swiveled his head toward her, smiling, twirling the edge of his mustache. “Whoever gets that assignment may be moved up a couple of notches.”

  Faith was about to speak when she started at a fingertip touching her arm. She turned, stepping back and seeing an old man behind her, his right palm outstretched. In a croaking voice he said, “Can you give a little something, lady?” Cocked over his right eye was a shapeless hat; his shirt was wrinkled as though he had slept in it, and his trousers were loose and baggy and hid his shoes. If he had a face, she couldn’t tell. His nose rested between his yellow eyes as shapeless as a kneecap, his hair was dusty and drawn up into tight little balls like gnats and mayflies caught on flypaper. Two clear streams ran from his nostrils into his mouth. He licked at his lips and presented the pink surface of his palm to her again, his hand trembling. “It’s been four days since I et, lady. . . .”

  “Leave us alone,” Maxwell said almost under his breath. He stepped closer to intimidate him, realized he was a full head shorter than the man, then stepped back, making a great show of reaching into his pocket as if to find a gun.

  The old man ignored Maxwell, turning to Faith, his hat off now. He twisted the brim around in circles and looked at her feet. “I just need a dollar to put something in my stomach for a little while.” He sniffled, looked at Maxwell out of the corners of his eyes, and chaffed his face with his slimy coat sleeve. “I can’t lie to you—I got a habit. Do you know what it’s like to be sick and—”

  “You make me sick!” Maxwell snorted. He stepped behind Faith, said, “Get going before I call a cop,” and then he went silent and clenched his fists when Faith withdrew a ten-dollar bill from her purse and handed it to the old man. He took it without a word of thanks and turned away, never looking back, and walked a few paces down the street into a bar.

  Maxwell’s mouth hung open. “Why didn’t you let me handle that?”

  Faith played with the tight elastic band beneath her dress. She felt a headache beginning on the left side of her brow. “I felt sorry for him.”

  “I don’t mean that!” Maxwell shoved his hands in his pockets, his nose wrinkled like a puppy’s as he glared at the sidewalk. “You always do that to me—override me when I’m the man.” He glanced up at her, then looked away when their eyes met. “I don’t like it! I don’t like it at all—it’s not natural. You did it at that party last week when I was telling a joke and you said I got it wrong.” He thought about it, colored, and stomped his foot on the ground. “I hate that, Faith. It makes me feel small when you or anybody else does that. I was mad enough to hit you upside your head for embarrassing me in front of all those people.” For a moment he was silent. Then: “And I would have been right if I’d hit you. Women have less Will than men—that’s a fact of nature; they’re less rational and more emotional, and they need to keep quiet until spoken to and let men take the lead.” And, as if to demonstrate this general principle, he walked faster so Faith remained two steps behind him.r />
  She didn’t want to hear it. The sunlight broke between two skyscrapers overhead and seemed to focus on that part of her brow burning with pain. The elastic in her underwear felt as tight as a corset and (she was certain) was ruining her digestion. Holding her head, she said, “I’m sorry, Isaac. I suppose I stepped out of line.” Something inside her laughed but she kept her face straight. “You’re right.”

  “Sorry don’t help.” He scowled, trying to breathe as slowly as possible. His throat rattled. “Don’t feel sorry for anybody from now on, especially for lushes like that one. He gave you a line, honey! People like that’ll use you!” He chewed the corner of his mouth, watching the streetlight on the opposite block turn green. “You’re just lucky you’ve got me around to watch out for you.” Then he kissed her for the benefit of anyone who might see by holding her shoulders, pushing his face against her and tipping her slightly over backward. That done, he wiped his lips and crossed the street with a slight swagger, forcing other pedestrians to step out of his way.

  . . . five, six, seven. Faith let the smile fall from her face. He was across the street, strutting like a rooster toward the bus stop. As she stood there on the crowded street, people parting and passing her on either side, she wondered, and not without a sinking feeling in her stomach, Who was Isaac Maxwell? What, after all those evenings sacrificed in snaring him, after all the times she’d tasted the interior of his mouth made bitter by his asthma spray, did she really know about him? Perhaps it wasn’t important. Perhaps it was only important that he was pliable, like soft clay, and at least thought that he loved her. Her own feelings were more nebulous. She remembered that it took three days of looking in department stores before she found the Valentine card she wanted to send him. Not that she wanted to send it, but he considered such things as greeting cards and ties at Christmas to be important. Most of them had said something wholly unacceptable like “I love you.” The thought of it made her shiver. Another had a cartoon figure of a girl with a caption that read “Thinking of you.” Which was a lie. In the end she had made him a card, cutting it out herself and writing her own noncommittal message. “You couldn’t afford to buy me one?” he asked, holding it away from him as if it were a bit unclean. “That’s what you think of me?”

  What she did think of him, she could never say to his face. If she loved him—and she had by no means made up her mind—it was the way a Confederate and Union soldier had to love each other, as adversaries who unwillingly draw closer in conflict. The scene of battle was his bedroom (a horrible affair in her mind; there were Ebony pinup girls pasted over the head of his double bed and patterns describing a hundred and one positions for sexual congress on the bedspread). It was touch-and-go, a chess game. The first night she had allowed him to kiss her, there on the battlefield, he felt somewhat victorious. Then he turned sour and stepped across the room from her. “Who the hell taught you to kiss like that?” His face was pinched and sad, like a child’s ready to cry but not wanting to. “I didn’t teach you to do that,” and he demanded to know who did. And so it went each weekend, he trying to possess more and more of her, and she trying to squeeze a proposal from him. He was her object, pure and simple, and she was his, and between them this twirling exchange for supremacy of wills, as he called it, built a tension or bond that she was willing to call, for want of a better word, love. You took what you could get. Somehow it was all right. It worked out even fine (the bills were paid and the worst part of her bondage had passed), even though, late at night when she stood before her apartment’s picture window, barefoot on the thick carpet Maxwell had nailed down himself, and looked at the stillness of her neighborhood, she thought she heard Barrett’s voice just above the wind, telling her all this was horribly wrong. And she would feel grief build in her chest, and for no apparent reason at all, except that she felt filled with some oceanic painful-pleasurable awareness of her own self-betrayal in contrast to her life’s half-forgotten promise. Laughing, she’d wipe away these tears, calling them foolish and feeling astonished by her own weakness of will, which Maxwell so deplored. Weakness, sympathy, faith, love—all these were stupid, surely. She knew she was in bondage (the image of a frog caught in the mouth of a snake came to her, only one of its green legs visible and wiggling in the air), knew herself to be encrusted with the filth of a past beyond her control. The filth of the present beyond her control was understandable then. But at those hollow, lonely hours her thoughts would return to Barrett, then to Reverend Brown, and the terror and closeness she had felt and felt still in the depths of the cave. She would purse her lips, her eyes shut tight to close out even the light of the moon, and whisper, as in days of yore, “Thank You. . . .” Chills crawled along her spine and a sense of dread or fear stuck in her throat like a cotton hook. Even for this, Thank You, for this confusion and pain because, through pain, I know I can still feel; for this chance to persist, even if in deceit as Todd had done. . . . Thank You—for this clownish, pitifully genuine, but cowlike lover, this good thing of mine. . . .

  Tired, though she had only been up a few hours, Faith went home to sleep, certain Maxwell would propose and bring the battle to an end. She could feel it in her throat.

  • • •

  After a time she awoke in her bedroom, stretched out, and checked the electric clock on her nightstand. Six-thirty. She’d slept late, as much as eight hours, but felt she deserved it. She could have passed the morning in reading her shorthand book from the Mueller Vocational College on the North Side, but why study when she might soon be able to avoid work altogether? Maxwell believed that men were the providers and women should stay at home. Fine, she thought, glad he was so foolish. The idea of work, she remembered, had affected Big Todd in this way, too. Long ago, on one of their walks, he’d told her about the time he worked in a cotton mill. The work wore at his spirit. In a week he’d lost nearly seven pounds from the heat alone. They expected Todd to work five days a week, but he came only three, Monday through Wednesday. This went on for five weeks straight until Todd’s foreman could stand it no longer.

  When Todd appeared Monday morning, the foreman cornered him in the locker room. Said, “Cross, what the hell is this? For a month you’ve been comin’ in three days a week! You got an explanation?”

  Todd leaned close to him, picking his teeth with a straw. “Listen, I come in three whole days of the week because I really need the money. . . .”

  It was that simple. But Maxwell already earned enough for him and Faith to live on, and that was what it—life—was all about, to hear him tell it. Getting by. No sooner had she thought this than she heard a whisper in her bedroom: “Consider, child . . . your Good Thing. . . .” Rattled, she rose to her feet, pulled on her bathrobe, and went to her mirror, angry and refusing to acknowledge the suggestion of Barrett’s sad eyes staining a corner of the glass. “I don’t need advice!” she said to herself. “And I certainly don’t need the Good Thing anymore.” She brushed her hair for one hundred slowly counted strokes, showered, rubbed cold cream on her ashy ankles and legs, and dressed in the living room. At exactly eight she heard her door chimes and, since Maxwell had a key, he let himself in. He staggered into the room, his toes pointed outward as he took long strides to the sectional sofa where he dropped his trench coat.

  Something was wrong. Faith waited, playing with a button on her dress.

  Maxwell threw his arms around her waist and said, “They went for it!” His eyes were glazed and dilated, two tiny dots in a head swollen, she realized, with alcohol. Also, he had an erection, which he attempted to hide by sticking his right hand in his pocket.

  Faith looked him dead in the face, frowning. “You’ve been drinking.” When he exhaled she smelled a good amount of gin on his breath. “What happened?” Then, because she was afraid of the situation, she sat down on the sofa. “Isaac, I said you’re drunk!”

  He spoke quickly, clipping off the ends of his words and sliding articles into nouns as though he were speaking French. “Guess who’s g
oing to handle that column and at a raise in pay and starting next month!”

  Her eyes were on his ridiculous attempt to keep his profile turned from her. It slowly dawned on her that he wanted her to share his enthusiasm. All right. She stood up, still playing with her button, turning over phrases. Before she could decide on one Maxwell said, “Ragsdale—he’s the publisher, he went for it in a big way.” He was breathing heavily and paced the room, waving his arms and oblivious to the bulge in his trousers. “I didn’t think he would, not with the hell they’ve been giving me for weeks. Hey, I didn’t even think he liked me, you know?” He remembered his condition and turned to give Faith a three-quarter view of himself. “He’s shelved every idea I came up with since I got there. Great ideas! Like switching from their nine-column format to magazine style. Nobody uses nine columns anymore!” Maxwell crossed the room, placed his hand in his pocket, and managed to shove his erection down his right pants leg where it was less noticeable. Then he hurried back toward Faith. “The whole day started off wrong, what with that drunk this morning. And I missed the bus and had to walk the rest of the way to work. Jesus, I must have looked terrible, I mean, unprofessional! There were these big sweat rings under my arms and I was breathing hard and there was dirt under my nails. . . .”

  Faith sat silent, watching him pace like Socrates before the Court. She tried to listen, but there was a pain in her right foot, which had fallen asleep. She’d crossed her right leg over her left; the blood rushing back made her foot feel leaden. She lowered it to the floor and wiggled her toes until feeling returned.

  “So they’re all waiting for me, right. When I came in they were looking over my proposal in the conference room—Ragsdale, Cummings, the evening editor, and Lowell, he’s copy editor. Faith, lemme tell you—I was scared enough to pee in my pants. A chance to get over comes, maybe, only once in a man’s lifetime! And if you’re black, it may never come at all!” Maxwell gave a short, knowing laugh. “I mean black folks have been down so long, on the bottom, that our Will’s been weakened. We don’t know how to think big like other people. You know what I’m saying: poverty is a state of mind,” he pointed at his temple, “and I just wasn’t born to be poor, you know?”