The Housewife Blues Page 8

  What the hell had happened to his street smarts over the years? He had grown soft, he supposed. Or maybe he was being punished for past actions, which had a logical ring to it. Once he'd had absolutely no conscience in the way he bought and sold. He could rationalize any shady deal. Well, they weren't really shady, just sharp. Buy low, as low as you could get and for as little cash as possible. Then sell high, as high as you could get. Wasn't that the American way?

  He had been damned good at blockbusting, scaring the shit out of the Jews, Greeks, and Italians that the blacks were coming in. Start a panic. Buy low. Then sell to the blacks at inflated prices. Even that was long over. People got wise. Besides, the market was saturated. All right, it was shameful. So now they were paying him back, and he deserved what he got.

  Somewhere down the line he had lost the stomach for it. Perhaps that was his downfall, this development of a conscience. One day he had awakened with scruples. Perhaps he had looked at Teddy and said to himself that this was no legacy to leave one's kid, the memory that his father was nothing more than a street hustler.

  Now what he needed most was to recover some of those qualities they used to call moxie. Once he had had moxie.

  There was good moxie and bad moxie. Bad moxie would have given him the balls to do outrageous things, like blackmail. There was an idea that had blasted into his head the day he saw and recognized Jack Springer, the junior senator from the great state of New York, sneaking up the stairs to the second-floor apartment of Myrna L. Davis.

  The man was wearing sunglasses and a hat pulled low over his face, and he had a mustache, which Barry knew was a phony after he'd taken a look at a picture of the senator in the papers. Problem was the man had a prominent clefted chin that gave him away. He would have done better with a beard. Would make a damned good tip for the tabloids, he knew. Those supermarket rags loved stories about self-righteous politicians dipping their wick in strange places. He wondered how much the tip would be worth to them. In desperation, he thought, a man could rationalize anything, however sleazy. God, here he was sinking again, taking the low road.

  He had passed Myrna Davis a number of times in the hall, offering the usual neighborly noncommittal smile. He wasn't much at mixing with the neighbors. Never did you much good. Besides, who wanted them to know your business? Especially now. He knew that Myrna was an editor at Vanity Fair. Mid-thirties. Cute. Good legs. Snotty look. But then he had caught sight of a familiar face skulking up the stairs to Myrna Davis's apartment. It had taken him weeks to figure it out.

  The guy would hole up with her all weekend, arrive at odd hours, leave at odd hours. Shacking up. That was no secret. They never left the apartment all weekend, sending for carryout two, three times a day.

  The real secret was who the man was. Barry recognized him from a big picture of him on the front page of the New York Daily News. It showed him along with his wife and children on the occasion of his announcement that he was going to run for a third term. He figured that this business with Myrna Davis had been going on for nearly six months when he saw that picture in the paper. Fucking hypocrite.

  Actually, he never told Sally about it. He wasn't sure why, except maybe he did have this larcenous thought in his mind. Here was this family-man, big-shot senator, spending his weekends shacked up with their neighbor. No wonder they didn't go out. Wouldn't do much for the family-man image. Lately it had crossed his mind that that kind of information might be worth something, a great deal, maybe. To the senator. To the senator's opposition. To the media.

  We're talking here of survival, he tried to tell himself. But that kind of an act would put him in that whole other place, the hole he had climbed out of. That wasn't good moxie. That was blackmail, beyond the pale, with the risk of being charged and put away. Then again, desperation was a great motivator. Certainly it pushed his imagination to great flights of fancy.

  Even to robbery. Hell, he had Teddy's key to the apartment downstairs. He could simply walk in and take whatever was quickly convertible to cash. Maybe he'd even find some cash, lots of cash. But that idea quickly sank out of sight. That woman on the first floor, Burns. She had a bird's-eye view of the stairs leading to the apartment. Once he had seen her watching him as he came up the front steps. Of course, he could wait until she was gone on some errand, then make his move.

  No, he decided. Desperation was making him crazy. Besides, it was never a good policy to shit where you ate, which brought his thoughts back to Teddy once again.

  This thing with Teddy was devastating. He could remember the pink little bundle of flesh he had seen through the maternity-ward window and how proud he was to show everyone who passed that this was his kid. He also remembered how much he had fantasized about what his boy would become and how he, Barry Stern, would dedicate himself to building a great financial base so that his kid wouldn't want for anything.

  Watching little Teddy in that maternity-ward window, he was absolutely convinced that this child would amount to something really important, something impressive and wonderful, a person famous throughout the world. He could remember very clearly thinking such thoughts, thoughts that crystallized into a father's dream. He was certain that all fathers felt like that. Yet nowhere in this equation had the idea of homosexuality even entered his mind. His son, a queer?

  Not that he didn't love Teddy with all his heart and soul, but the idea that he would live a life as a kind of exile and, in some circles, even an object of ridicule and defamation was depressing. His son, having sex with other men, with no possibilities of children, a loving wife, a normal life, was, well, face it, pissing on his dream. It wasn't fair.

  Perhaps he was just overreacting to the idea, based on only circumstantial evidence. All optimism had faded. He was on the mat, broke, over his head in debt, on the verge of eviction, his wife ailing and working beyond her strength, his son a possible homosexual. Clearly, even now, he was better off dead than alive, although he was not comfortable with the idea of being a cop-out.

  All this horror pulsed through his mind as he waited for Glover to see him, hoping and praying that Glover would provide him with an opportunity of financial recovery. So far he hadn't been successful in hooking up with another real estate outfit that might be willing to pay an advance. They were all in deep shit. But Glover had stuck it out all those years making a market in Levitt's houses in Hicksville, and in the good years Barry had thrown a lot of business his way.

  Once he got a little financial breathing space, he could direct his attention to Teddy and Sally with a clear mind. It could be that he was just reading things into Teddy's odd conduct. It was a brief flash of optimism, but intruding on it was the memory of what he had done about Teddy's keys.

  Stealing Teddy's keys was a shabby act of which he was greatly ashamed. But he couldn't think of any other way to keep him away from the two queers, acting on the idea that the way people became homosexuals was by being turned on by other homosexuals. He could not bring himself to believe that people were born that way. How, then, did it come about? Older men seducing younger ones, making them like it so much that they could renounce women altogether. He wondered if it was too late.

  "Barry Stern," Glover called from his office. "Come on in. Sorry to keep you waiting. Have a cigar."

  It was an old-fashioned way to welcome someone into his office, and in an effort to keep the mood, Barry took one of the cigars from the humidor and allowed Glover to light it for him. Glover relit his own stub of cigar, then the two settled back on their chairs and studied each other.

  Glover was a short man who wore his pants high, nearly up to his chest. When he was sitting, his feet barely reached the floor. His eyes were set back deep in his face, giving him a hawklike appearance despite his thick, moist lips.

  "It stinks," Glover said. "They fucked us real estate guys good."

  "Better believe," Barry said. "Not that we haven't been through this before. But this one is for the books. Nobody's buying. Nobody's selling. The S and L's
are fucked. The banks are on the balls of their asses."

  He looked around the room. Outside, he could see the rows and rows of Mr. Levitt's ingenious idea for the American family, now individualized, as if the owners were determined to mock Mr. Levitt's method of mass-producing the American dream of home ownership.

  "Maybe it was a blind fluke," Glover said. "But this place turns over. Not as much as I'd like these days, but I think I can get through it."

  "Paid to specialize, Tom," Barry said. "Here you got a following."

  "Forty years in the making, Barry," Glover said.

  "I'm a helluva salesman, Tom," Barry said, hoping he did not sound as if he were gilding the lily.

  "That you are, Barry," Glover said.

  "I sent people your way."

  There it was, Barry thought, the reminder. Pulling on the guilt chain.

  "And you never screwed me."

  Barry was encouraged by Glover's response. "That's very important to me, Tom," he said, seeing the opening. "My reputation is everything." He took a deep puff of the cigar, too deep. He was growing nauseated. He was not a cigar smoker. Sweat began to creep down his back. It put a damper on his salesmanship.

  "I know what you mean."

  "I'd like you to put me on," Barry said, watching Glover's face. The man's eyes had drifted away, and he was inhaling and blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth.

  "Long trip in from Manhattan every day," Glover said.

  "Oh, I'd move. Get an apartment somewhere out here. I need this, Tom." It felt as if desperation were flowing out of every pore of him along with the perspiration.

  "Worth considering, Barry," Glover said.

  "You don't know how grateful I'd be," Barry said, suddenly finding the courage to put the cigar down on the glass ashtray. The nausea was still there, but the sudden optimism had a calming effect on his guts.

  "It's slim pickings, though," Glover said in a cautionary way, as if he had noticed the effect his consent had had on Barry.

  "Tom, I promise you I'll sell the shit out of this place."

  "I know you will, Barry. That's why I'm taking you on."

  "A couple a thousand a month will tide me over until the commissions roll in. Maybe sixty, ninety days at the most." Barry felt oddly relieved. There it was. Out in the open, and his throat hadn't tightened.

  Glover shifted his weight on his chair and puffed deeply, this time blowing the smoke directly in front of him, enveloping Barry until it dissipated.

  "Wish I could, Barry," Glover said. "Unfortunately the phrase cash flow doesn't exist in this business anymore. But, hell, there won't be any grass growing under your feet, Barry. I'd say ninety days max you could be pulling down two, three thou a month."

  Barry felt his stomach churn. "I'm tapped out, Tom," he mumbled, his eyes watching his restless hands as they massaged his thighs. "If two thou is too much, say one thou and more if the sales roll in."

  "Nothing rolls in anymore, Barry. There's only two salesmen able to make a living on this turf now. This bullshit about the recession being over is just that. I got a feeling that the real estate boom is gone with the wind for you and me, Barry. I'm sorry. But no advances."

  "Sure, Tom, I understand." Barry stood up. His head was spinning, and the feeling of nausea had surged back. He managed to put out his hand. Glover took it, pumped.

  "I wish I could, Barry. You know that," Glover said.

  "Sure, Tom," Barry said, forcing himself to be pleasant in the time-honored way of salesmen who hadn't sold their wares on the first pitch. It was the rule of the game never to burn your bridges. He managed to make his smile last until he got to the anteroom.

  He held on to his nausea until he reached the station platform, then he threw up in one of the litter cans. In the midst of his retching he had the sensation that the process was ridding his being of the last vestige of hope.

  5

  TEDDY'S afternoon visitations with Jenny became somewhat of a routine. On most weekdays he would arrive at Jenny's apartment with Peter in his arms. She would provide Teddy with a snack and Peter with a saucer of milk. Then Teddy would proceed to do his homework and Peter would curl up in a ball at his feet and she would proceed with her household chores.

  Just before six o'clock, as if it were a silent agreement between them, Teddy would leave with Peter and go downstairs to Bob and Jerry's apartment. Jenny knew that having Teddy in each afternoon would be contrary to Larry's wishes. It was, after all, an involvement with a neighbor.

  But to Jenny it was more than that. She viewed it in far more complex terms. Teddy was a troubled boy, an adolescent living in a shadow world, unsure of himself and vulnerable. What was wrong with people helping each other, sharing, confiding? She wished she had someone to confide in, someone wise and objective. Of course, she had her mother, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that her mother's experience was aeons away from life in Manhattan.

  Bedford, Indiana, might as well have been in another solar system. There was no way that she could present Teddy's dilemma to her mother for advice and counsel, and both her mother and Larry would have objected to the relationship, each in her or his own way.

  From Jenny's own vantage, she was simply being kind, a good neighbor. In some ways it brought out her maternal instinct. She wished she could offer Teddy solid advice, but she was not exactly an expert on the problems of teenage boys.

  Her teen life, compared with Teddy's, had also had its moments of uncertainty and angst, but she had not experienced any massive gender identity crisis. In Bedford teenagers lived within understood boundaries on the issue of sex, and accepted silent conspiracy between parents and children.

  Parents of girls, naturally, prized the idea of virginity, while the girls themselves prized a monogamous relationship with a member of the opposite sex, with virginity considered an old-fashioned concept. Most of her friends had had their first sexual intercourse experience before they were sixteen. Even getting pregnant did not carry with it the stigma of an earlier generation, although it was considered inhibiting to one's ambitions and future, and those girls who allowed it to happen to them were looked upon more with pity than with scorn.

  There was, therefore, nothing in her own experience that she could draw on to deal with Teddy's dilemma. Larry, she was certain, would have been shocked to know that Teddy and his problems had become a part of Jenny's daily experience. Such involvements, she assured herself, were simply part of being in the life of a community. The apartment building encompassed this community, a kind of mini-Bedford. Something in Larry's city upbringing, she decided, had made him overly frightened and distrustful about other people, almost to the point of paranoia.

  She understood, of course, that city life was not without its crime and violence, and that security precautions had to be observed. She read the papers and watched the news on television. Her apartment door had a dead bolt and a chain lock, and people had to be identified before she buzzed anyone inside the building. But, surely, such reports and precautions didn't mean that everybody was suspect and had to be automatically feared and distrusted.

  The danger of physical violence was no excuse to keep yourself hidden from your neighbors. She hoped that someday she would persuade Larry to be more open about people, especially those in their immediate community. Human beings weren't meant to be isolated and fearful of their neighbors. That attitude made for unhappiness. Sooner or later, she was certain, she would get him to understand. Now, while they were still adjusting to each other, was not the time. She knew that this meant withholding any mention of her relationship with Teddy. Nor would she put it in the category of keeping secrets from Larry. Well, not deliberately. But not mentioning was very different from telling lies. That would have been contrary to her concept of marriage.

  Besides, where was the harm in it, especially since she was certain that Teddy wouldn't tell his parents about his afternoon visits and risk their finding out that he hadn't any school chums. That also meant tha
t there was less chance of Larry finding out.

  Of course, it soon became apparent that the relationship with Teddy was not without its responsibilities. But wasn't that, too, the price of friendship? It was natural for people to need other people. Teddy apparently had no one who could understand, and what was wrong about his using her as a sounding board?

  The pressure on Teddy from his father was causing him a great deal of unhappiness, and the distance between them was widening each day. Events in his household were making things worse. His father's business had fallen apart, his mother's health was failing. Arguments between father and son were increasing.

  She noted, too, that Teddy seemed to come to her apartment less to do homework than to talk, and the subject matter was taking on a more and more intimate tone.

  Despite the fact that he was half a foot taller than she and his seriousness made him seem older than his sixteen years, she had never broached the bounds of propriety by allowing him to call her anything but "Mrs. Burns."

  "Funny," he told her one day. "You look so much younger than you are. Sometimes it feels strange calling you Mrs. Burns."

  "The fact is, young man, that I'm nearly a decade older than you."

  "You're twenty-five, then. God, that's old." He lowered his eyes. "I didn't mean like old old."

  "Just remember that. Older is wiser."

  "But you don't seem that much older. Maybe it's because we're ... like friends."

  "Yes," Jenny told him. "I guess we qualify on that score."

  "I think your husband is a very lucky man, Mrs. Burns."

  As time went on, Teddy grew more and more curious about Larry.

  "Does he make you happy?"

  "Of course he does."

  "How?"

  "By being a good husband, a good provider. In fact, he's good in every way." She felt a blush heat her cheeks.