A WHITER SHADE OF FEAR

By Charles Deemer

 

 

            The day after Eisenhower’s reelection, Joan Edgehill swore off politics. It was really only victory parties she was swearing off, and only until the next election: her present mood was fashioned by an unrelenting hangover, for she had stayed at Republic Headquarters much later than she had told the babysitter she would, cheering the returns, dancing, drinking recklessly past her two-drink limit, finally returning home to find the sitter asleep. After waking her, Joan discovered that she no longer had enough cash to pay her and so had to write the yawning teenager a check. She insisted on driving her home, given the time, which put Joan herself in bed at an hour far past that which would have permitted her the sleep she needed to greet Janet with the oh-what-a-beautiful-morning aplomb the child expected; and sure enough, at quick daybreak Joan recognized at once that something was wrong and tearfully dragged her mother out of bed – and Joan felt like hell, although she never would have used the word herself.

            Coffee didn’t help, nor a cigarette, nor juice, and Joan recalled the saying about the hair of the dog; however, she had nothing in the house with which to test it. Fixing Janet’s breakfast, she remembered that the prospective help was coming this morning. The holidays were approaching – Thanksgiving, Christmas, the Rose Parade – but the only acknowledgment she had given them was to invite her sister Sue and family down from San Francisco for two weeks through Christmas and the parade, preparations against her own panic at spending the season without Tom. Sue, bless her, had replied with an invitation to the holiday at which Joan was expected to give thanks: so the season promised to be hectic and full, the best she could dare hope for. Halloween had almost been a disaster, having appeared so unexpectedly that for the first time she’d had to buy rather than sew Janet’s costume. All her recent energy and attention had gone to working for Ike.

            At ten Millie phoned, and soon Joan was telling herself, Whatever it is – refuse! Millie, the current President of the Foothills Republican Women, never called except on party business.

            The business came after much small talk, including a remark that Joan’s dancing with Ralph Hutton last night hinted at a building romance. Joan denied it.

            “I’m not on the market, Millie,” she said. “If I dance with a man, it’s because I feel like dancing and have been asked. No plots, dear.”

            “What I called about,” Millie began, and Joan knew from this that she preferred innuendo to the truth, “is the last report of the issues committee. I know how hard you worked on the national campaign, we all did, but I’m sure you realize that winning the election is only the beginning. Now we have time to concentrate on issues close to home. Just last night I was talking to Liz, as a matter of fact, Liz Apple, and she reminded me about this music business. Were you at the meeting when she reported on it? It must have been in … well, I forget when, but the gist is that unspeakably filthy records can be bought right here in town and apparently some of our teenagers are buying them. I know you’re probably thinking rock-n-roll but Liz says that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There’s something called rhythm-n-blues that’s performed only by Negroes and these records leave nothing, absolutely nothing, to the imagination, and Liz says you can buy them right at Willow’s Music. Anyone can.”

            Joan said, “I appreciate your calling, Millie, but I really don’t think I’ll have any time until after New Year’s.” She stubbornly waited out the pause, refusing the silent pressure to explain further.

            “I thought this might interest you especially,” said Millie, “since Tom had worked in radio.”

            Joan’s initial response was that this was a low blow, Millie had no right to bring Tom into it, certainly not after having hinted that she was involved with Ralph Hutton. She was too angry to speak.

            “At any rate,” Millie said, “I thought you might still have some connections at the station. If we can make sure the records aren’t played on the air, that’s a step in the right direction.”

            Outside the Trimper boy squealed the tires of his hotrod Mercury, taking off from the curb across the street. Since the accident, no sound on earth upset Joan more, and she closed her eyes until the car was gone.

            “Are you still there?” Millie asked.

            “I’m sorry. We have a hotrodder in the neighborhood. I think he should be banned from the streets.”

            “Good, you’re thinking politics again.”

            “Oh, Millie,” said Joan, in exasperation. Her anger had passed. Millie, who still thought of her as a widow in mourning, was doing her best to bring Joan around again, getting her interested in projects, in men, anything.

            Joan said, “I really want nothing more than to get ready for the holidays. Call me again after New Year’s. I’m sorry, but I won’t have time until then.”

            But Millie wouldn’t give up and now tried flattery, telling Joan what an asset to the party she was, and against such odds, widowed, raising a child alone, the large house and grounds to manage, the demands on her time from other interests, the new hospital fund, the air pollution hearings, the displacement of neighborhoods by the freeway construction – Millie was still talking when the doorbell rang.

            Through the window, Joan saw a young Negro woman on the front porch.

            “Millie, excuse me, but I really do have to run. Someone’s at the door.” To Janet, who has rushed forward to pull on her skirt, Joan said, “I know, Pumpkin.” And back to Millie: “I’ll try to stop by later in the week.”

            On her way to the door, Janet close at her heels, Joan automatically reached up to arrange her hair. What was the use? She hadn’t showered this morning, let alone combed her hair or fixed her makeup. It had been all she could do to get herself and Janet dressed.

            At the door she whispered, “Now be a good girl and let mommy and the nice lady talk.” As incentive she gave Janet the chocolate bar she had saved for this very purpose. Then, with the child’s eager help, she opened the door.

            “Mrs. Edgehill?”

            “Yes. Are you the one who called?”

            “Diane Washington.”

            “Please come in.”

            Joan stopped at the edge of the foyer, not sure where they should set themselves to discuss the employment. She noticed, to her dismay, that Janet was staring in absolute fascination at the woman. There were no Negroes in Foothills, of course; and although several of her friends had housekeepers, it occurred to Joan that perhaps her daughter had never before seen a woman whose skin was the color of chocolate.

            She scooped Janet up in her arms, excused herself, carried Janet into her room, fixed her up with a coloring book, closed the door, and returned to find the woman waiting in the foyer, right where Joan had left her.

            “Please make yourself at home,” Joan said, smiling. “Shall we have some coffee?”

            “That would be fine. Thank you.”

            Joan led the way to the dining room table. Speaking from the adjacent kitchen as she prepared coffee and English muffins, she told the woman in detail about the help she was seeking: she had been campaigning for Ike since the convention, she allowed, letting the house and grounds take care of themselves. Now she wanted to get everything ready for the holidays. She loved yard work herself, so what she was looking for was a housekeeper, someone who not only would keep the house spotless but also do the windows (unwashed since summer) and fix up the guest cottage behind the garden (unused since her husband’s death) and be reading and willing to do whatever else came up. Joan was thinking of three days a week to begin, but perhaps only two once the house had gotten a good initial scrubbing. She would pay a dollar twenty-five an hour and provide lunch on workdays.

            Bringing their coffee and muffins, Joan said, “So tell me something about yourself.”

            “Well, I work for Mrs. Zachary on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She don’t live but around the corner.”

            “I know Mary very well,” said Joan. “I should think you’ll work out fine, then.”

            Immediately she regretted saying this. She really should talk to Mary first and see if she recommended the woman. Joan was as worried about getting someone who was honest as someone hardworking and dependable. She had never had a housekeeper before: until recently she had still thought of herself as a housewife, perfectly capable of maintaining a beautiful home without help. At the same time, with widowhood had come such a fixed determination to keep busy, almost to keep out of the house, that she found herself doing anything but yardwork and housework, abandoning both, and Janet to a sitter as well, in order to do an increasing number of volunteer projects. Alone, she would never get ready for the holidays.

            She smiled. There was nothing more to say until she talked to Mary but they still had their coffee and muffins to finish. The woman was pleasant enough – polite, quiet. Of course, Joan knew nothing about her at all.

            To break the silence, she began to talk about the election but stopped when she noticed the woman’s attention had strayed. Perhaps she was a Democrat.

            “Well,” Joan said, smiling. She got up from the table, and the woman followed. “Why don’t you phone me tomorrow?”

            Joan feared that she’d hurt the poor woman’s feelings by not offering her the job on the spot but this couldn’t be helped. She couldn’t risk hiring someone who would pilfer jewelry and fail to pitch in at something unforeseen. As soon as the woman had gone, Joan took a step toward the phone, then remembered Janet and checked on her, staying long enough to admire the chaos of colors the child had scribbled in her book, coloring the people purple and blue and brown. She asked Janet what she wanted for lunch and left the room to call Mary. Her neighbor gave Diane Washington the highest compliments and recommendation, so Joan asked if Mary would tell her she has the job then, in case Mary saw her before she phoned. Joan admitted that she may have given the young woman the impression of not liking her but this couldn’t be helped, she hadn’t been feeling well all morning.

 

            “I saw your car,” said Millie.

            Joan, at the hardware store to buy cleaning supplies, had feared as much. The shopping area of Foothills comprised only four blocks, and Republican Headquarters was near the middle, giving Millie just the right vantage point from which to keep a watch on things.

            “Jumping right in, I see,” said Millie. “I thought you were going to come by headquarters.”

            “I’ve been so busy I forgot.”

            “If you have a moment, I can show you something that will shock you to pieces.”

            “Millie, really, you know I do all I can but I simply have to get ready for the holidays. I’ve been living in a slum. I’m expecting house guests.”

            “Willow’s Music is right down the street. It won’t take a minute for me to change your mind.”

            “I don’t want it changed,” said Joan.

            “If your daughter were old enough to walk in there, would you want her buying records that … well, you’ll have to see for yourself. In two minutes you’ll have your answer.”

            Joan followed Millie out of the hardware store and into Willow’s Music, knowing that this was the quickest way to get rid of her. At home Diane was waiting for the supplies. Having made the decision to hire her, Joan found her to be conscientious and energetic and warm, so that the first-name basis came naturally to her, although she still had to remind Diane to call her Joan.

Millie told a clerk that they were just browsing and led Joan to a bin of records that was labeled Rhythm-n-Blues. Millie pulled out a seventy-eight record and handed it to her.

            “Read this,” Millie said.

            Joan felt like a fool until she read the title of the song: Baby Let Me Bang Your Box. Then she blushed.

            Millie exchanged the record for another: Big Ten Inch. And a third: Sixty-Minute Man. Joan was red and speechless.

            Seeing the clerk approach, Millie returned the records and, taking Joan’s arm, hastened in quick retreat to Republic Headquarters, where she drew two cups of coffee from the huge percolator.

            “The tip of the iceberg,” said Millie. “Any boy or girl in Foothills, your daughter if she was old enough, can walk in and buy one. Or buy them all.”

            Joan said, “I don’t understand it.”

            She had read, of course, about the rock-n-roll concerts at which teenagers rioted and behaved like hoodlums but somehow Foothills, snuggled peacefully below the San Gabriel mountains, with the strictest zoning code in Los Angeles County and a proud sense of well-to-do civilized camaraderie, had seemed impervious to what surely was only a fad, a new generation of teenagers screaming for its Frankie. She hadn’t thought that all this chaotic energy, the loud incoherent music and hysterical responding, was associated in any way with sex beyond the normal anxieties of puberty, not even by the gyrations of Elvis Presley, the assumed lasciviousness of which seemed to her to be greatly exaggerated. But now to learn that songs were being titled Baby Let Me Bang Your Box: the directness there was terrifying.

            “But I see what you mean,” Joan admitted.

            “I don’t know of anyone else who could organize a protest better than you,” said Millie.

            “Let me think about it.”

            “You can hire help to get ready for the holidays.”

            “I already have.”

            “So there. All we need is proof and a pattern. You should listen to the records, I suppose. I’d be embarrassed to tears to buy them but I don’t have your determination, once you settle on doing something.”

            “Let me think about it,” Joan repeated, and she escaped leaving it at that.

            Working in the yard while Diane worked inside, Joan remembered what Millie had said on the phone about the music – she already had forgotten what the music was called – that only Negroes performed it. Then would Diane be familiar with the songs? She refused to believe that her housekeeper would purchase records with such obvious filthy content. She trusted her first impression that Diane was not the type. Yet Joan wondered if she should mention something about the songs to her: since Negroes sang them, and Diane was a Negro, well, perhaps she would know something about them, even if Diane herself had never heard the songs. Certainly Joan knew nothing at all about the kinds of records Negroes bought and listened to. The day ended, however, without Joan’s bringing it up.

            Millie phoned the next morning. Joan had just gotten out of the shower and talked with a towel wrapped around her, her hair straight and wet, as Janet lingered nearby, regarding her mother as someone temporarily insane.

            “Unfortunately I have icing for the cake,” Millie said. “The Newcomb girl, I believe her name is Maggie. She’s in the family way.”

            Joan bit her lower lip.

            “This is not public information, of course. I wouldn’t know myself except that Flo Westwood is Peggy Newcomb’s confidante, they were sorority sisters, and Flo and I are bridge partners. I found out last night. I know I can trust you not to say anything.”

            “Of course,” said Joan.

            “I imagine they’ll send her off to a relative during the holidays. The only reason I’m telling you is so you will understand how serious the problem is. Maggie has a collection of those records. Or did until Peggy destroyed them.”

            “Are you sure?”

            “Flo was at the house when Peggy discovered them. In fact, it was the same day Peggy told her the rest.”

            Joan wanted to insist that surely this was a coincidence, no one ever got pregnant by listening to music, no matter how obscene the songs were, but shock confused her and she didn’t know what to think or say. Again she managed to beg off drafting a petition, though she did admit that someone must do something.

            In the yard later, trimming the rose bushes in the garden, she worked at a furious, even angry, pace, as if exhaustion alone would put her mind at ease. She clipped and clipped, working her way toward the guest cottage. She worked steadily for almost an hour before exhaustion won out. But it had worked: now the cottage was on her mind, and she put the shears on the stone wall that divided the cottage grounds from the garden and went to see how much work it would take to make the cottage livable.

            The wind had blown open the door, which had no lock, and she stepped inside. It was hopeless. Her plan had been to let Sue and Bob use the cottage, giving them privacy, even a kind of second honeymoon by putting up their two children, Joan’s only nephews, in the house. Tom’s dream had been to convert the building into a small recording studio, giving him an opportunity to make a hobby lucrative, but he had barely started the remodeling when the accident occurred, the unfair and obscene intrusion of a drunken driver into her life, accomplishing what the war in Korea had failed to do, taking her husband from her. Presently the small building was neither cottage nor studio but a storehouse full of tools and lumber and debris and dirt and cobwebs. What had made her think she could have it ready by Christmas? Depressed, she turned and went outside, swinging the door shut behind her. She crossed the garden and walked down the driveway to pick up her mail at the box.

            Bills, bills – but Tom had had foresight and her father was helping her, too. No one had ever suggested that she should get a job but sometimes she thought about it, prostrate at the end of a week of too much volunteer work.

            She was going up the front steps when she head it, first the squealing tires, then the engine backfiring as the green Mercury approached in rapid deceleration, the skidding stop that brought the Trimper boy home. Usually the slamming of a door ended it but for a moment Joan, having turned masochistically to watch this spectacle, heard something else, a bit of lyric from a blasting car radio, a frenzied voice singing – she was sure this was it – I’ll let you hold it tonight if you hold it real tight – and then silence, the green door slamming, and the Trimper boy presuming to wave at her, calling, “I need a turn-up!”

            Inside Joan phoned Millie first thing and told her that she would draft the petition as soon as she could document their case.

 

            On Monday morning Joan showed Diane the guest cottage, documentation of another kind, supporting her decision to require a housekeeper only two days a week after all.

            “I don’t see how it can be ready by Christmas,” she said. “I don’t know where I’d put all the lumber.”

            To Joan’s relief, Diane did not seem terribly disappointed about losing a day’s work. They went back into the house together, where Joan dressed Janet for the sitter’s so she could have the afternoon to herself. For all Millie’s faith in her determination, Joan knew she would blush at the counter of Willow’s Music. They would think she wanted the records for herself.

            “I’ll be going now,” Joan told Diane. Janet was trying to tug her to the door, having been promised a new toy in exchange for spending the afternoon at the sitter’s.

            “Mrs. Edgehill? I mean, Joan? I been thinking,” said Diane.

            “Yes?”

            “If you really want that place fixed up, maybe my boyfriend can help. He been looking for a Saturday job. I think a man could handle it by Christmas.”

            “Well, maybe that’s an idea,” said Joan.

            The more she thought about it, the better it sounded. Just thinking about it had proved something of a blessing, for she had walked into Willow’s Music, selected a dozen suspicious rhythm-n-blues records, paid for them and left before she quite realized what she had done. She very much wanted to put up Sue and Bob in the cottage, for her own privacy as well as theirs. Once, visiting them in San Francisco, she and Tom had heard their bed squeaking in the rhythms of lovemaking and, giggling, had entered into their own embrace. It would kill her to hear them from an empty bed.

            After asking Diane to have her boyfriend come by, Joan removed herself to Janet’s room, where the portable phonograph was, rather than listening to the records in the living room. She puttered through enough preparations that one would have thought she was trying to put off listening to them as long as possible – fetching a spiral notebook, sharpening a pencil, writing the name of each song at the top of a page. Finally she put the needle at the beginning of Baby Let Me Bang Your Box and with an unconscious grimace waited for music.

            Within the hour, she was unsettled. Some of the songs were nothing like she expected, others were worse. Many were double-entendres, jokes in very poor taste to be sure, more suitable for adults than teenagers, but at least not the direct assault on common decency that she had imagined. Baby Let Me Bang Your Box, for example, was about a teenager who wanted to play his girlfriend’s piano. In Big Ten Inch a boyfriend asked his girlfriend over to hear his new ten-inch long-playing record. Aimed clearly at teenagers, these songs seemed innocent enough except for the expressions used in their titles. Here, of course, was the catch, the double-meanings.

            But other songs were unexpurgated smut. The Sixty-Minute Man bragged about his endurance at rocking-and-rolling, able to kiss and tease and squeeze and blow his top all night long. But the worst record was one called Work With Me Annie, by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. What working meant became clear enough by the male chorus panting in the background as the singer begged Annie for his meat, but for those obtuse enough not to get it, a sequel had come out called Annie Had A Baby, which condition prevented her from working as before, since she was too busy caring for the baby to give the singer-boyfriend his meat as often as he wanted it. These records belonged in no household in Foothills, nor in any place Joan would choose to know about.

            On the other hand, a few of the rhythm-n-blues songs she had selected could have been sung by Frank Sinatra. Please Love Me was a bluesy ballad; Good Rocking Tonight was a big band number, though perhaps the use of rocking was in questionable taste, given its connotations in Sixty-Minute Man. Joan concluded that some but not all rhythm-n-blues records should be banned, and this conclusion raised a question: what machinery would make the decision?

            That the entire matter was more menacing than she suspected came to her by accident. She was listening to the radio while doing the breakfast dishes several days later. She had decided to tell Millie what she had learned, no more, no less, and let her carry the project from there. Diane’s boyfriend, Leroy, had claimed he could have the cottage ready within a month, and Joan wanted to be around to supervise.

            She was not really listening to the radio but it was on, background music to the random darting of thoughts. Suddenly she stopped, alerted by something. It was as if someone had entered the kitchen and she turned from the sink, almost frightened; but she was alone. Then she noticed the radio, consciously began to pay attention to it, and what she heard playing absorbed her. It took her a moment to place the tune. When the DJ announced the song’s name, she wrote it down before she forgot and later that morning she went to Willow’s Music and bought the record.

            The song was called Dance With Me Henry. Listening to it in Janet’s bedroom, having chased her daughter to the den, Joan discovered that her concern was justified. For all practical purposes, Dance With Me Henry was identical to Work With Me Annie. There were changes of lyric and the point of view was a woman’s but the tune and arrangement were identical. However, a popular white singer performed it. This was what disturbed Joan most, that popular music should be influenced by the worst example of rhythm-n-blues she had found.

            The more she thought about it, the more she sense and worried about a conspiracy: it was as if the expression dance with me, Henry was in code, an esoteric message that translated to mean work with me, Annie, to the knowledgeable, one leading lasciviously to the other – and she had heard the Henry song on the most popular radio station in Los Angeles! As if to prove the conspiracy thesis, another trip to Willow’s Music turned up a record called Henry’s Got Flat Feet. As Annie’s baby had stopped her from working, so Henry’s flat feet stopped him from dancing. Since the tunes and arrangements were again identical, working and dancing became effectively synonymous. The clincher was that Henry’s Got Flat Feet was recorded, not by Georgia Gibbs or some other popular singer, but by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, the same Negro group that did the Annie songs. This proved to Joan’s satisfaction that Annie and Henry were the same, the latter a twin of the former, one aimed at the rhythm-n-blues market, the other at the popular market, but both with the lascivious meaning of the former.

            Her notebook was filled with lyrics and conclusions and lines connecting one part of a page to another: looking at it, she questioned the sanity of someone who could find a conspiracy of such visible complexity. Perhaps she had been working too hard after all. She’d sit on it a while.

 

            On impulse, Joan took the records and notebook with her to San Francisco. She left in good spirits, more excited than Janet about the child’s first flight, confident now that the cottage would be ready when she returned. Diane had been helping Leroy each Saturday, and together they’d made surprising progress. Joan had insisted on paying Diane for her time, although Diane claimed she was just coming along to be with Leroy. That they were in love was clear enough: they did as much touching and teasing and laughing as working, it seemed to Joan. But Leroy, who came by some evenings after his regular job, worked steadfastly ahead. He had stacked the lumber neatly behind the garage, and Joan couldn’t have been more pleased.

            On Thanksgiving morning she had her long cry, as she knew she would. She did this alone, in the bathroom, after Sue and Bob took Janet with them on a manufactured family errand. A single long cry was all she needed. Praying before the meal, Joan was able to keep her composure.

            She didn’t bring out the records until the night before her departure. Hearing them again, she worried that she was drawing too much from too little: although she was still convinced that the innocent-sounding popular Henry record was a coded reference to the filthy Negro Annie one, in the same way that to say heck was to mean hell, she had no confidence that her argument would convince others.

            Bob almost gave her confidence. He was outraged. He had never heard anything like the Annie records in his life, and although he had heard the popular Henry song on the radio, and had rather liked it, he now felt betrayed, feeling that he had been duped into supporting obscenity without knowing it. The songs were identical, no question about it. Cleaning up the words was a camouflage, not a difference. Same tune, same arrangement, and the same Negro group singing the second Henry one – Bob thought Joan should take the material straight to her Congressman. Sue disagreed, saying that Henry was perfectly innocent and that no one had to know about Annie through it, they themselves wouldn’t have known except for Joan. She expressed her opinion once and kept quiet, as Bob was demanding the floor again.

            So Joan returned home no better off than she had left. She decided once again to throw the whole business into Millie’s lap and let her do with it as she wished. Joan had done the research, contribution enough to a project she had been browbeaten into taking in the first place.

            The next morning she was up early, glad to have slept in her own bed again, happy to see a familiar sight through the window as she perked coffee. She took her cup into the garden, walking leisurely to the cottage. Regarding it from the outside, she was satisfied.

            She stood in the doorway, admiring the clean floor, the webless beamed ceiling, the windows that sparkled. In her mind she was already redecorating: with still weeks until Christmas, she could paint the cottage and restain the interior; she must provide a bed, too, as well as a chest of drawers, chairs, a desk, lamps, space rugs. She began to see it all more clearly in her mind. She stepped inside and noticed something.

            At first she though it was a piece of plastic, something that Leroy had overlooked or perhaps something that had blown in the door. There was still no lock on the door, something else she must get done, and perhaps a wind off the mountains had swung it open before slamming it again. A piece of trash had blown in. She reached down to pick it up.

            Touching it, she recoiled; her hand drew back as if from an electric shock. She stared at it, unbelieving. She went outside, found a stick and came back to knock it onto the porch and down onto the walk, using the stick like a mallet. She didn’t pick it up until she had fetched her gloves from the shed, then hurried to drop it into the garbage can behind the house. She gave a final look of revulsion before placing the lid over it: a condom, and one that had been used.

            Through the morning an explanation swelled in her, one she kept fighting off, something she didn’t want to believe but yet which wouldn’t go away, the recent weeks pointing like fingers at it, and only her disinclination to believe it, but no real facts, rising in challenge. By the time Diane arrived, it didn’t seem to matter if her suspicions were groundless or not. They left the same taste in her mouth; they demanded the same resolution.

            But as soon as she let Diane in, Joan knew that she’d never be able to face her without preparing for it, without rehearsing what she would say and then reciting it without looking her in the eye. Finally she had to get out of the house, taking Janet with her to visit a neighbor, to window shop, later giving in to buy Janet ice-cream and letting her pick out an inflatable beach ball, returning home only when Janet had become cranky and unmanageable.

            To her shock, Leroy was out front, shaping the hedge that ran parallel to the driveway. He waved, smiled, and went back to work.

            She let Janet out and pulled into the garage. Coming down the driveway, she saw that Janet already had Leroy under her thumb, he was blowing up the beach ball for her. The question was what was he doing here, doing chores Joan had not given him, if not trying to mulct her for all she was worth?

            Joan asked, “Why aren’t you at work?”

            “Day off,” said Leroy. For Janet’s sake, he pretended to be out of breath, and the child held both hands over her mouth, loving it. “I do shift work and go on nights now. That’s why I wanted to get the cottage done early. My sleeping gets all messed up, working nights.”

            He continued to blow up the beach ball, eyes bulging, gasping, often stopping to catch his breath, huffing into a fist, clutching his heart. Joan marveled at how quickly Janet had changed her attitude toward him. Leroy was as black, Joan supposed, as a human being could be, and Janet had met him with the same fascination she had given Diane. But this time before Joan had had time to remove her, fearing that the child’s staring would upset him, Janet was reaching out to touch him, then was rubbing his arm as Leroy kneeled to talk to her. Leroy told her it wouldn’t come off, he was black because his daddy was black, just as she was white like mommy. Janet laughed, and Leroy laughed. Joan, smiling, intruded to change the subject.

            Now she reached to take Janet’s hand but the child pulled it away. The beach ball was almost inflated; Leroy as her playmate for the moment. Joan went inside.

            Diane was vacuuming in the living room. Joan began so quickly that she didn’t realize she was being heard. She had just started ahead, eager to get it over with.

            “What?” Diane yelled, and then she turned off the machine.

            Joan caught her breath.

            “You want something, Mrs. Edgehill?”

            “Joan,” she snapped. Joan was shocked to hear herself say this.

            “Joan,” said Diane. After a pause she asked, “Is something the matter?”

            “Something is very much the matter,” said Joan.

            “What is it?”

            Joan’s purse was on the table and she went to it, avoiding Diane’s puzzled gaze. She opened the purse, took out the checkbook and began to write a check.

            “I won’t be needing your help any more. Since I haven’t given you proper notice, I’ll pay you two weeks in advance. That should give you time to find something else without unnecessary hardship. There’s no need to finish the vacuuming. You can leave immediately. Here.”

            She held out the check. When Diane didn’t step forward to take it, Joan put it on the table and started away.

            “Now wait a minute,” said Diane.

            Joan reached the doorway into the kitchen.

            “Wait a damn minute, you hear me!”

            Joan stopped, stunned by this, and slowly turned. She had tried to avoid a scene; this wasn’t her doing.

            Diane said, “I’m sorry about that. But I think I deserve an explanation.”

            “I think you know what I’m talking about.”

            “I don’t!”

            “It’s not something I want to discuss.”

            “Listen, Joan, I don’t know what’s bothering you but I been working just like I always work and you can’t fire me without no reason. I don’t want your damn two weeks’ pay. I only want what I earned. I earned your respect, is what I’m saying.”

            “It’s about the cottage,” said Joan. “You and Leroy have found it very convenient.”

            “What the hell are you talking about?”

            “I don’t permit that kind of language in my home.”

            “Shit,” said Diane. She undid her apron, pulled it off, and threw it on the floor. “Let me grab my purse, lady, and I’ll be gone.”

            For a moment Joan thought she was going to be physically attacked, Diane’s approach was so sudden and urgent. Then she realized that Diane wanted into the kitchen and she was in the way. Joan quickly stepped aside,

            From the kitchen Diane shouted, “You want me to tell Leroy he’s canned or you want the damn pleasure for yourself? Whatever you want, Joan. Just let me know, I don’t want to ruin your appetite or nothing.”

            “I’ll tell him,” Joan said, but more to get away, too gingerly to be heard over the volume of Diane’s anger, which continued as Joan hurried off.

            Then everything seemed to happen at once, a collage of events her mind would always hold in suspension together, beginning with opening the door and ending with guilt: that began with the sunlight that streamed over her face as she started down the front steps to find Leroy, shading her eyes with one hand, dizzy in anticipation of confronting him. She became aware that her anxiety was not solitary, there was anxiety in the air itself, a foreboding in the same screaming engine she hated whenever she heard it but which her anxiety had embraced and momentarily hidden, a whining deceleration that sounded different somehow, that sounded ominous: yes, ominous, for it had caused Leroy to sprint down the driveway toward the street, which Joan’s glance reached first, reached and was paralyzed by, even as she understood what was happening because what was happening was out of her control, leaving her no alternative but to match noise with noise, meet threat with complaint, and she cried out the single shrill word that explained everything and accomplished nothing: Janet! Joan ran forward and fell down, tearing her nylons on the brick steps, and from the ground she looked up in time to see the beach ball bounce in front of the Mercury, whose tires squealed hopelessly to become still, silent; and Joan’s eyes swelled over the image of mingling flesh and metal, white and black and green. Up on her feet again, she reached the street and found Janet crying hysterically in the gutter, her knees bleeding, her face contorted in fear and confusion, but alive, alive, and Joan lifted her daughter in her arms and started for home, past neighbors who had risen all around her, ignoring them, ignoring everyone but Janet, ignoring everything but her own determination to convince the child that everything was all right. At the bottom of the steps she passed Diane, who was as hysterical as Janet had been, bleeding in the gutter. Joan carried her daughter up into the sheltered safety of home, and by the time the ambulance arrived – its siren startling her with the knowledge that her daughter could be dead now, then with the guilt that Leroy might be – Janet was telling Joan everything she wanted for Christmas.

 

            By noon the next day Joan admitted to herself that she’d made a terrible mistake. It wasn’t only that Leroy was a hero, as one neighbor after another had reminded her on the phone last evening, but that she had no real reason to presume Leroy and Diane would use the cottage that way. They were young adults. They could go to a motel if they were so inclined, or use their own beds. Breaking into the cottage, albeit through an unlocked door, seemed more the work of hoodlums, teenagers – and if the Newcomb girl was an example, likely the work of local ones.

            Joan had gathered her nerve to phone Diane, to apologize and offer employment with a raise, when it occurred to her that she didn’t have her number. She had no idea where she lived. The nearest Negro community was in West Pasadena, ten miles into the valley.

            She phoned the hospital, thinking she could get Diane’s number through Leroy. The evening newspaper had featured a photograph of him in bed, smiling and bandaged, but not badly hurt. Leroy had already checked out, Joan was told, and the hospital did not have the liberty to give out his address.

            She called Mary Zachary. It was Tuesday, the day Diane would be working for her.

            “May I speak to Diane if she’s handy?” Joan asked.

            “What happened, she leave you in a bind, too?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “She phoned last night, and drunk by the sound of it. Told me what I could do with my housework in no ladylike terms, I’ll tell you that. What’d she tell you?”

            “Nothing,” Joan said softly.

            “She said Foothills could go to you-know-where for all she cared, and hung up. So much for my recommendations. I don’t even know what I did.”

            “I’ll talk to you later,” Joan said, and she lowered the receiver.

            She took her cigarettes to the table and sat down. She drew a cigarette from the pack. She struck a match and raised it: only then, in the uncertain struggle of the flame to stay lit, did she realize how much she was shaking.

 

/end