Faith and the Good Thing Page 16

  “It’s television!” he fumed at the dinner table. “People think they can get their news off the television sets.” He scowled and exhaled heavily, hurtling food from his teeth across the table at her. Looking around the room at the cause of their debts—a six-hundred-dollar stereo, expensive furniture, and Wedgwood-pattern wall-to-wall carpeting—enraged him. It brought on an attack; he grabbed at his chest and frantically pumped his respirator. “You’ve got to stop buying so much. Goddamn it, Faith! We’ll go bankrupt!”

  Then the fights began. They were all one-sided. “I don’t argue,” Maxwell said, which meant he turned his back to her and dammed his ears after laying down a law. In turn, Faith hurled furniture at his back, tore the gossamer-thin silk curtains from the wall, and started to break, one by one, their china. If all else failed, she could scream to shatter his silence. “If you don’t care about me,” he’d roar, “then think about the neighbors!” She would scream louder, and Maxwell, in frustration, would shake her until her teeth rattled. “Then think about the landlord!”

  It was a nightmare. Faith climbed out of bed and went into their electrical U-shaped kitchen. Wainscoted wall cabinets formed a continuous line around the corners of the room, and here and there were electrical appliances which, she realized, saved her time but failed to tell her what to do with those extra hours. She pulled back the curtain of the room’s single window and looked down the sixteen stories to the street. Pedestrians were below—as tiny as chinches on a pillowcase. And wasn’t that view what she’d wanted, searched and lied for? Wasn’t Maxwell, after all, the good thing Lavidia told her to find? The words turned sour on her tongue. She bent over the sink, feeling old, knowing that accusing him would be easy. Also, wrong. Maxwell wasn’t evil, just disillusioned, not malicious, only disappointed. She knew she’d destroyed something important in him when she confessed her past in a moment of depression last Christmas. It had been a mistake. A sense of melancholy had enveloped her like a sheath, a nagging sense of dread that had no location, and she’d turned to him, spilling her memories of the hotel. The realization shook him horribly; he moved his pillow and bed clothing into the living room to sleep as far away from her as possible after that night. On the sofa. He slept there still, sulking, uncomfortably pinched between the armrests. She tried not to think about it. It wasn’t her fault that no one had told him what life was about—the degradation, the death of great dreams.

  Now she felt queer again, a muscle beating in her forehead, her hands burning on her wrists. Faith began to busy herself in the kitchen: she dropped two slices of diet bread into the toaster and removed a carton of eggs from the refrigerator. One she set on the counter to boil for her breakfast, then, remembering her daily struggle with IT, she took two, broke them in a saucer and separated the white of the eggs from the yolks. She took the saucer into the bathroom and smeared the white of the eggs on her face, staring at herself in the mirror until her skin began to tighten and draw up. Her thoughts slipped back and forth between memories, and though she faced the mirror she did not see herself for a while, not until the egg facial hardened and the surface of her skin appeared to crack, the lips turning white, the lines in her face becoming deep like those in clay baked by the sun. The facial made her look old and ossified, as brittle in her bones as Lavidia had been. She squinted, knowing she wasn’t old, knowing her life was not already at an end, but unable to convince her uneasy stomach of this.

  Came smoke from the kitchen. She hurried there, her face drawn up tight, and found the toast burning—it hadn’t popped up and the room was full of the sharp smell of smoke. Now she wasn’t hungry. Faith dumped the toast into a cellophane-lined waste can and stumbled into the living room, feeling raw; she left the curtains drawn and sat down in the middle of the floor, crying until the tears ran down her cheeks and washed off a good deal of her facial. Something had gone wrong a long time ago. It seemed that she wasn’t out of bondage, not one bit. But that made no sense. What had been days of destitution and a destiny-driven life on the streets were now days of leisure. What had been a life of need was now a life of relative ease. Her closets were filled with custom-made clothing. She had more than ample food, a purse bulging with special plastic cards to purchase, on the spot, anything that caught her eye. She had everything, children, all the good things.

  But Faith jumped to her feet, floundering around the spacious living room, afraid and pulling at her fingers. She wandered from room to room and finally stopped when she passed the bathroom again. For an hour she soaked herself in the tub, still feeling somehow unclean and uncomfortable at the pit of her stomach, thinking: whenever she tried to pin this feeling down to a specific thing, such as something Maxwell had said or done, or anything that irritated her regularly, it escaped, slipping away as buoyant as the soap in her tub when it was pushed under water. As she toweled herself dry Faith knew she had experienced nothing like this until she came North. Yet it had nothing to do with locality. She and Maxwell had traveled through the Carolinas and had stopped for a few days in Georgia during their honeymoon. Even then she had felt it. Just to make sure the malaise was within her and not in the world, she coaxed Maxwell into driving through Hatten County. At first sight of the hills, the familiar scenery, she’d grown excited. She directed him to her parents’ old farmhouse, pretending to be in search of a good fortune-teller in the backwoods who could foresee their future. The farmhouse was burned to the ground. Dark as satyr droppings. The stones that once supported it were strewn around the yard; only two walls, those on the sides, and the black stove of the kitchen kiln still stood, like lonely rocks at Stonehenge. Nothing remained of the furniture inside. All was ash. And around her parents’ graves thick weeds had grown. In town she learned from a feed-store merchant new to the county that lightning had exploded along the farmhouse roof months ago and, within hours, the building was gone. It was so far off the road that the firemen had been unable to come within a hundred yards with their trucks and hoses. So blackened wood, skeletal foundations, and the stench of sulfur were all that remained.

  When Maxwell left the store for a moment, Faith leaned over the counter closer to the proprietor and asked, “Do you know if Dr. Lynch still lives in town?”

  “Lynch?” The proprietor rubbed his chin, then snapped his fingers. “Sure! You mean that loony old doctor that used to—”

  “Yes,” Faith said, wringing her fingers. “Is he here?”

  “Nope.” He yawned, his mouth as wide as a pit. “I heard tell he started research into plant life ’bout six months ago, and found out that rutabaga and philodendrons had feelings jes like people. Don’t that beat all? It really shook him up—blew his brains out with a forty-four on Christmas Eve. . . .”

  Faith’s stomach sank. She thought for a moment, then said, “What about Oscar Lee Jackson?”

  “We got us a new undertaker,” the proprietor drawled. “Old man Jackson retired, went to California, I hear. . . .”

  “Then Reverend Brown,” Faith said, “do you know him?”

  “Sho.” He laughed. “At least while he was alive I did. That pain he was always havin’ in his side finally got the best of him. He passed away right in the middle of a sermon ’gainst hoodoo and conjurin’. . . .”

  Faith held her breath, staring at him, though her mind was miles away. “What about the Swamp Woman? Is she still here?”

  “The Swamp what?” He removed his tiny silver pince-nez and stared at her. She dropped the question.

  “What’re you crying about?” Maxwell asked as they headed south for Florida. “You’re always whimpering and whining about something.” He craned his neck around and glared at her. “What is it now?”

  She told him the change in climate was affecting her eyes. But the wreckage of the farmhouse never left her mind. There was nothing left of her old life. Nothing but tall tales. Perhaps Todd and Lavidia had become trees, which was well and good for them. Their release couldn’t help her one iota. If she was to free herself from bondage, she
needed help.

  Faith drained the bathtub water, pulled on her bathrobe, and went to the kitchen to prepare for Maxwell and his guest. Children, this sister was low, lower than a whale’s belly at the bottom of the China Sea. And that’s low. She fixed a soufflé with vengeance, knowing that Maxwell would never be able to help her. She didn’t doubt for a minute that he was part of her problem, and that this was why she reacted toward him as Lavidia had to Todd, but in exactly the opposite way; whereas her mother chided Todd for dreaming, she lost no opportunity for riding Maxwell for not dreaming enough. The office party last Christmas had done it. She couldn’t keep it out of her mind.

  Before leaving for The Sentry’s Christmas party she’d tried to explain her quest to Maxwell. She hid nothing, not even her encounters with Tippis and Barrett, and the months in Hotel Sinclair. Maxwell listened in horror from the front doorway, his mouth open. He jerked his plaid muffler around his neck as though trying to strangle himself. Then he leaned in the doorway, wheezing, his head hidden in the crook of his arm.

  A chill swept across Faith’s shoulders. She wanted to hide, to take back every word. She was not ashamed of what she’d experienced; she had even thought there was a kernel of tragedy and strength in it. But her narrative, finally framed in her own words, had sounded shocking even to her own ears. Obscene. She was afraid to move or say more.

  “How could you do this to me?” Maxwell whimpered. He jerked up his head and stared. His face fell away; beneath it was a grimacing demon deprived of its gold. “Are you trying to tell me I married a—”

  “I couldn’t help it!” Faith hurried toward him; she encircled his waist with her arms. Maxwell shoved her away, disgusted, and went into the long, quiet hallway where he began shouting at the top of his voice, “Did everybody hear that?!” He spread his arms as Christ had on the Cross. Unlike Christ, he laughed bitterly. “Does everybody know what life’s done to Isaac Maxwell this time?”

  “Stop it!” Faith screamed.

  Maxwell shook. He assumed his arrogant stance again, right foot forward, left knee locked, his hand in his pocket. And already his underarms were moist and his face shiny with sweat. Down the hall a woman opened her front door and stuck a head full of grenadelike curlers out, gawking. Maxwell balled his fists at his side and groaned. “Let’s go. . . .”

  At the Christmas party, Faith’s inner feeling of numbness was so great she couldn’t drink. She tried, but found she was too tired to keep lifting her cup to her lips. Once inside the newsroom, decorated with a large ornamented tree and blue-and-gold streamers hanging from the ceiling, Maxwell, though still in a pique, replaced his sour expression with a broad grin. He kept filling his cup, gravitated from Ragsdale to Cummings, and finally cornered Lowell by the tree. She could hear him pleading for the commencement of his prison column.

  There seemed to be no way out of her bondage; her condition, her past were apparently a mark on her brow, because that entire evening people approached her with their problems. A young black from the circulation department singled her out minutes after she and Maxwell arrived, sashayed over to her, swinging his hips, and perched himself in front of her on the edge of a desk.

  “I don’t plan to be here forever, sister,” he said, as if she’d asked. “I’ve got plans for my own business. . . .”

  “Is that so?” It was very, very hard for her to stay awake.

  “That’s right.” He leered knowingly at her, reeking with self-confidence, Brut, and alcohol. “I figure I can raise a little front money here, then invest it in a newspaper distribution service—just as soon as I learn the ropes here.”

  . . . five, six, seven. Just as soon as she’d released her smile, Ragsdale replaced the boy. Tilted to one side of his squarish head was a red, white, and blue party cap; around his neck was a string of Christmas-tree ornaments he’d made into a necklace. His breath, she noticed, smelled like a brewery.

  “I’m a hippie!” Ragsdale roared.

  “Sure.” Faith reached for her drink. Though she didn’t want it, she forced down its contents, and tried to smile. One, two, three. . . .

  “Isaac’s doing fine,” Ragsdale said, trying to pull himself together. He blinked myopically at her through two glazed green eyes. “He makes mistakes sometimes, but overall he’s okay.” His eyes wandered over her breasts, to her face, as he swayed back and forth on his heels. “Did I ever tell you what happened to the last black reporter we had?”

  The sides of her face and cheeks were aching. Faith released her dimples, paused for respite, then forced them back. “No. . . .”

  Ragsdale downed the rest of his drink in a single raw-throated gulp. “He’s with the New York Times now, I think. Oliver Lewis, our first bla—” He paused, narrowing his eyes and sucking at his cheek teeth. “Which do you prefer, Mrs. Maxwell—black, colored, or Negro?”

  “For myself,” she said testily, “Mrs. Maxwell.”

  Ragsdale lowered his eyes; his face colored. “Anyway, he ran off from us to the Times, and the other people we had of your, eh, persuasion, took choice government jobs. It’s damned hard to keep a black newsman with competition like that!” Ragsdale sighed and studied the inside of his empty cup. “Do you think Isaac will stay with us?”

  Her head was splitting; someone, she was certain, had split her skull with an ax and left it there. “Do you—do you want him to stay?”

  “Of course! Why, if it wasn’t for Isaac, the Daily Defender would have our coverage on the South Side beat by a mile.”

  “Then,” she groaned, “he’ll stay, I guess.”

  Satisfied, Ragsdale excused himself and crossed the room. Faith was certain she was going to be sick. The constant repetition of “Jingle Bells” on the scratchy record player in the corner, the eruption of laughter from the blanched wives of the employees as they tottered around the room, and the slow but dulling effect of the alcohol—all this had her at her tether. Toward the end of the evening, Maxwell returned to her and led her to a corner of the room beside the sweet-smelling Christmas tree.

  “Lowell’s got his nose open for you,” he said. He fished into his pocket and handed her the car keys. “I’ll take a cab home,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” She had never seen him like this. He was so drunk his lower lip was hanging like an oven lid. He must have left and vomited somewhere, perhaps in the employee’s bathroom, because gray kernels of undigested food—cheese crackers and chips—were caked in his skimpy mustache and spotted his white collar. His eyes, despite all this, were frighteningly clear.

  “It means you’re going to carry the ball for once.” Maxwell hiccoughed and winced. He held his chest as though in pain. “You owe me something, Faith! And it doesn’t make much difference since you’re a goddamn wh—”

  “Isaac!” She wanted to hit him, to tear at his red eyes and scream until the intensity of her voice or shame caused him to dissolve, fade away or disappear. She looked over her shoulder. The city room was almost empty. Crushed paper cups, some smeared with lipstick stains, were scattered across the floor between the even rows of desks and buzzing wire-copy machines. Standing by the door, sipping from his cup, was the old copy editor: Lowell—thin, with knobby tree-limb arms. The lower half of his face, to tell the truth, looked like the impression made by a horse’s hoof, sunken, shapeless, and slipping into the collar of his shirt as though his chin and collar were made in the same mold.

  “I don’t wanna argue,” Maxwell said. “I don’t wanna fight no more. . . .”

  Neither did Faith. She took the car keys from his open pink palm and walked toward the door as Lowell turned toward her. He was incredibly drunk, his shirttail was outside his pants, and his trousers bulged with an erection as hard as Chinese arithmetic. He smiled.

  Six-fifteen.

  Faith sped up her preparations. Maxwell would be back at precisely seven. He was usually punctual, never a moment late unless he’d been drinking after work. There was really no way to hate him. For he, too, was dead liv
ing, and went through each day, not bumping into other things in the darkness of the cave, but swinging at them. The deferral of his column had nearly ruined his morale. The day after it was tabled indefinitely he came to work an hour late. He told her over dinner that night that the telephone on his desk had rung and he’d taken a story about the marriage of the daughter of one of Chicago’s most powerful city officials. Lucius Bitch. YOUNG BITCH MARRIES was the way Maxwell wrote the headline for the evening edition. Nothing came of that until the following morning when he arrived at the office to find every telephone extension in the building screaming. Ragsdale had already yanked out half his gray hair, Cummings was champing aspirin and tranquilizers like candy.

  “Didn’t you know we endorsed him last year?” Lowell shouted across the room from his desk.

  Maxwell shrugged his shoulders. He’d already had three drinks that morning, but wanted another. “Yeah,” he said, “I wrote the editorial, remember? SENTRY SELECTS BITCH, right?”