Fatherland, p.1
Fatherland, page 1
Fatherland
A Novel
Victoria Shorr
To B.W.
In Memoriam. Infinite Thanks.
What was the rock my gliding childhood struck,
And what bright unreal path has led me here?
Philip Larkin
Contents
Chapter I: A Wedding Party
Chapter II: Howard and Electra
Chapter III: Margaret Cauley
Chapter IV: Bishop Maguire
Chapter V: Lo
Chapter VI: “Volare”
Chapter VII: Harriet and Elizabeth
Chapter VIII: The L-Shaped Room
Chapter IX: “Six One Seven One”
Chapter X: Suzie
Chapter XI: Pink Champagne
Chapter XII: Golf
Chapter XIII: The Movie Star
Chapter XIV: Shipwreck
Chapter XV: “Time and Space Do Not Exist” —August Strindberg
Acknowledgments
– I – A Wedding Party
It was almost surreal, he thought, looking out over the whole group, all of them smiling, happy, none of them knowing. He’d even been part of the wedding party, one of the ushers for his brother-in-law, who wouldn’t, he figured, be speaking to him in the morning. He’d smiled for the photographers, posed with his wife, posed with her family, for the last time.
Unless he didn’t go.
That possibility had crossed his mind, as he watched Josie walk down the aisle with her little basket of flowers. She looked particularly sweet and touching, so serious, her sweet face almost angelic, and he’d wanted to pick her up and hug her, and his wife too, a bridesmaid, looking pretty again for the first time since the baby. Her hair had gotten longer finally, and she’d lost the weight, and it had occurred to him that he could still stay put. Make a call and come up with something, anything, some good reason he wouldn’t be there tonight.
But he wasn’t making that call. He was going. First of all, because he wanted to go. Had a need to go, a taste in his mouth for that pale skin, that tall, cool remoteness—former remoteness, but there were still traces. He could still call it back.
He glanced at his watch—she would already be there, waiting. Had already taken a shower, just as he liked, and put on the cotton nightgown. Or not, it didn’t matter. He would throw her in himself, if it came to it. Like the last time, when they didn’t get out of bed for half a day.
He looked up—into his mother’s eyes. Worried eyes—about what, though? Did she know? Sense something? No one knew, but why did she have that look? Why was she watching him? Why was she even here?
Still, it had been nice of the family to ask his parents, to always ask them, though they never really fit. His father, in his cheap striped suit, his mother in that dress with the faded silk flower pinned to the shoulder. Lora had wanted him to give her a nice pearl pin for Christmas, and he should have, he would. Next year.
Not that she’d need it then, because this would be the end of these invitations. Too bad for his mother, but he’d already done plenty for her. Made her proud, first in high school, where he was everyone’s friend and was voted most popular boy in the class, though the others had more of everything else. Cars, spending cash—their fathers made money, were shopkeepers, lawyers, druggists. His father drove a cab, but despite that, he was the one with “all the charm,” as the yearbook had put it. And then college and the Navy in the War, and med school. All good, and then his marriage, the three children, the house—for his parents, now that he thought about it. For all of them, and what about him?
They were lining up for another photograph. The whole family, together, smiling. Him too. Ha, ha, a little voice inside was saying.
Wait for me, he was whispering, to the other side of town.
Shortly after that, he went to his wife with a worried look. He’d just called in to the Medical Dental Bureau—the sick child he was treating had been taken to the hospital. They’d been calling him, he told her. He’d swing by now, to check, and be home later, if everything was okay. Meanwhile, his father would drive her and Josie home in his cab.
Years later, Josie came upon the photograph of that night, from her uncle’s wedding. The family were seated at a table, her grandparents smiling, her mother beautiful, despite the bridesmaid dress. She herself was standing behind, next to her father, but blocked from view by someone. Only the side of her head was visible, one ponytail and a ribbon, and her shoulder, but you could see his arm around her. For the last time maybe, she thought, looking at the picture, caught, fatefully, on camera. The last hug from him that she would have taken naturally, for granted, without desperation, without hunger or thirst.
– II – Howard and Electra
“You didn’t tell her.”
Howard could tell from the sound of her steps, trudging up the back stairs. Her face confirmed it.
“I couldn’t. She was down there with the baby, happy and all—”
Electra lay down on the bed. It was April, but already stuffy up here on the third floor. “She loves that man.”
Howard nodded. Sad to see up close, the way she looked at him when he was home, which wasn’t often these days. Sad too the way she still believed. But he, Howard, no longer believed. The man was moving out, little by little, like a sneak. He had Howard carrying out his suits, one by one, every time he came home, as if he needed them at the hospital, and some of the shoes, spacing the others so it looked like he still lived here, in this house that he’d taken so much trouble to put together just the way he wanted it, not even a year ago.
And then he’d hired them, Howard and Electra, to run it that way. Serve him breakfast on a silver tray in the dining room, away from the children, and keep the carnations he liked to pin in his buttonhole in a vase in the hallway. Freeze peaches for him in the summer, so come January he’d have them for his cornflakes.
And they did it just right, kept it all humming for him, and she did too, even put on a smile, nights when he came home, though other nights they heard her crying. And she smiled too through the parties he liked to throw, though she still looked exhausted, the baby was only a few months old then. But he’d liked showing off his house, his life, bringing in Alonzo Wilson, the policeman, to tend bar in a white coat, like he must have seen in some old movie, because it wasn’t as if he’d been born to any of this.
She had, or closer, anyway, and was nice, easy to work for. Only time she got nervous was when he did—his steak was underdone, the shirt he wanted was still in the laundry basket. Then he’d criticize not them but her. Electra told Howard that she’d overheard him complaining because he’d had to drive her old Chevy the other day, when his fancy new Buick was in the shop.
He’d come in, thrown down the keys, and said to Lora, “Your car drives like a truck!” As if it were her fault.
And she’d smiled and half apologized, said something like, “Oh, it’s not so bad, I like the old thing.”
Electra shook her head. “I’d have had a different answer for him!”
“I know it,” said Howard, and they laughed. “The good doctor,” they called him, with increasing irony.
“Because what kind of a man drives better than his wife?” asked Electra.
On the other hand, he was the one who paid them—more than the going rate for a couple, but that wouldn’t last, if he really was moving out. There was no way she’d need a butler to carry her frozen peaches to the dining room. She didn’t even eat them, didn’t even give them to the children. Saved them all for him.
Alonzo Wilson was the one who’d told him that he had another woman, “not for the first time,” but this one was said to be “in the family way.”
“Rumor has it,” said Alonzo Wilson.
Howard’s heart had sunk when he heard it. They’d known that there were girlfriends—wasn’t Electra the one washing their lipstick off his collars, like in a bad song? Different colors too, cheap pink, cherry-red—“How many women does that man have?” she’d fume to Howard. But a pregnant one was another story.
And the worst part was that his wife still didn’t know—“Out cold in the Seven Sleepers den,” was how Electra put it. Lora was still smiling brightly when he came home, rushing the children away from him—“Daddy is tired, he works so hard!”—and then making sure Howard fixed his drink just right, and Electra carried his steaks and casseroles to the table, where she’d sit with her smile, and her hair nicely brushed and a new dress on, one she’d dieted and exercised to fit into, all those sit-ups and stretches on the floor. And then, just as she was telling him about the children, the cute things they’d done and said, he’d get a call, and, finishing his supper, explain that he had to go back to the hospital.
But Electra was the one who answered the phone, and “it wasn’t any hospital calling,” she would say, shrugging, to Howard.
Which was why she’d got Howard to apply for the job at the community center, as soon as she heard they needed both a man and a cook with good references. “That’s you and me,” she told him. “The good doctor” would give them the reference. He never said no to anyone, except his wife and kids.
And they’d got the job, but hadn’t been able to face giving her notice, and now there was no more time. They felt bad about that, bad about everything, nothing good about it—and when Electra went downstairs to tell her just then, she’d found her on the floor, doing her stretches, and lost heart. The baby was nearby, playing with some toy horses. He had just started crawling. Eight months. Very cute. Never cried.
Electra made an excuse—asked if she wanted some coffee or anything—and then went upstairs and told Howard he had to do it. It was Wednesday. They were leaving this weekend. He took a breath and went downstairs.
“Sorry to bother you,” Howard started, and she looked up, knowing something—sensing that something was up, and just nodded when he told her about the job at the community center. He had some excuses, but didn’t need them. She told him right off that she could see it was a step up.
“Does Dr. Brier know?” she asked. Worried, first and foremost, about his drink, his peaches.
“Uh, I’m—uh, not sure,” he lied. He didn’t tell her that it was good Dr. Brier who had given them their reference.
“Problem is, we have to leave on Friday.”
“This Friday? Couldn’t you stay one more week? Till I find someone?”
“The job starts Monday. I’m sorry—”
And that was true, both parts of it. But it wasn’t as if he had any choices here. There weren’t many jobs in 1956 for Black men in this town. The steel unions were closed to them. The railroads were shedding conductors and porters. True, you could find work at the wrecking yards and garages, hard work at low pay, where you’d come home covered with grease and dirt, but Howard had moved on from that. This wasn’t his first job as a butler. He’d done some bartending too.
But for him to work at a community center meant he was no longer a personal servant. He’d probably have more hands-on work than here, since Lora had an old handyman she called in when something needed to be fixed—Simeon Richardson, a minister in one of the Baptist churches. The little girl, Josie, had seen the cross on the old man’s car, and asked Howard what “clergy” meant. He explained, and saw the child processing the fact that a Black man who was a minister of the church could still be up a ladder in old blue overalls at her house. Already knowing at age six—or was she seven?—that any of the white “clergy” she knew would never be up anyone’s ladder, except possibly their own.
And even that was unlikely, with good men like Sim Richardson to show up and do it for them, so as to get through his week and pay his light bill. And then go down on Sunday, in his own suit, to a church that could barely pay him, which meant he and the rest of the Black clergy in town did it for love. Which was probably the difference, why when you sat and listened to them, it rang true, you found yourself feeling something, but when those well-paid white ones started preaching, best anyone could do was stay awake to sneak a peek at their watches. He knew. He’d been a janitor at a couple of white churches.
Well, he’d miss Sim at his next job—he’d probably be the one up the ladder there, at least at first. Ordered around, subjected, depending on who was calling the shots, but he knew too how not to dwell on it. To dwell instead on how he’d slowly make it work out for him and Electra. Work his own way into trust, and then indispensability. Into organizing the center’s dinners, their bingo, their family nights, with Electra, indispensable too, in the kitchen. Maybe even move up to helping in the office with billing and purchase orders, if they’d let him. He could do it. He’d done well at school, taken the business classes, and the math.
This was his chance, maybe—possibly. But even if it wasn’t, if he couldn’t work his way up to a spot of dignity, at least he could earn enough there, and steadily, so he and Electra could buy a small house on the South Side. One bedroom would do it, since there weren’t any children.
Just as well.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the woman, Mrs. Brier. Lora.
“I understand,” she said. “I’ll have your wages on Friday.”
Would she? he wondered. Only if her husband came back between now and then. If not, maybe he’d go by the hospital, or around to his office. He’d get him to pay, one way or the other. He owed them two weeks.
Lora got up from the chair and picked up the baby. “We’re going for a walk.”
“You want me to call Electra to take him?”
“No, thanks, I’d like a walk myself.” She managed a smile and put the baby in the buggy and wheeled him down the drive. Howard picked up the toys, looked around the room. A nice place, with the bookshelves, and then the bar, in the back, with a sink and running water. “A wet bar,” Alonzo Wilson called it. Said it made his job a lot easier. Most folks just had one of those carts on wheels. You had to go back and forth from the kitchen to wash the glasses.
Well, Alonzo Wilson wouldn’t be back here anytime soon. Until she got herself married again.
But that wasn’t even in the cards, said Electra. She was still in love with her no-good husband. Still telling herself that he’d be back.
How could he not? she, Lora, was wondering right then, as she pushed the buggy down the sidewalk. Toward the park—she didn’t want to go by the school and pick up Josie, she needed a breath, needed not to have to talk. Needed to figure out how to run the house for him without Howard and Electra. She could cook, enough anyway, and she could get her mother to make some things, and she could mix him a drink, although she couldn’t sit with him and have the children out of the way. She needed help for that.
Or not—that was the irony, she guessed. She knew why Howard was leaving, or why Howard thought he was leaving, but there was no way her husband could walk out on her, on them. His three children, whom he loved, surely, even if he didn’t love her? He had to love them—what man didn’t love his children? And theirs were beautiful, they were good and smart and fun and lovely. All good, and the baby wasn’t even a year old and never cried, smiled all the time. Even at him, when he hadn’t been home for a week, with the worst excuses in the history of the world. They needed him “at the hospital.” One “emergency” and then another, although he wasn’t that kind of a doctor. He was a general practitioner, the kind you went to in the morning with the flu.
But she was all right with it, with any of it, as long as he didn’t move out. As long as it didn’t become official. As long as there was hope, the chance of him coming through this, whatever it was, especially for the children. She’d watched their daughter the other morning, snuggling up in bed with him, her head on his chest. A smile on the child’s face that was never there when he wasn’t home.
But then he’d shrugged her off with impatience, told her not to breathe in his face. The girl was only seven years old, but she’d seen her take it in. Seen it bewilder her, and Lora had a moment of wondering then if it might not be better if he did leave. Before much more of that.
But no, it wouldn’t be better, it was inconceivable. No one got divorced. They figured it out, and she would too. They would. She’d go to him next time he came home, ask him what she could do, she would do anything. Even accept whatever it was—yes, another woman—because she knew it wouldn’t last. It was her he loved, her and the children, and beyond that, his life. His house on a tree-lined boulevard, on the principal street in town. He’d grown up on backstreets, but now that was over. He’d brought in Molly Waldhorn, the top decorator, to put it together the way he wanted it, and had hosted parties to show the world.
And the world had congratulated him, clapped him on the back and told him that he’d married well, he had a lovely wife, beautiful children. Surely that was something to him. To her it was everything, their life together. He couldn’t just kick it all to pieces.
He wouldn’t. She took a breath. It was a beautiful day. Spring. The baby had fallen asleep in the buggy. She turned for home.
The children saw Howard and Electra carrying their things down the back steps.
“Are you leaving?”
“Just for a little bit,” said Electra. She fixed the girl’s ponytail. She needed a haircut. Her mother must not have noticed.
Josie was a pretty child, would probably have a good life, all in all. Electra would sometimes sing her “Summertime,” when she put her to bed, and it had seemed true, there, in that nice bedroom. Her daddy was rich, and her ma was good-looking. “Don’t you cry,” Electra had sung, and meant it. Nothing to cry about.
