Before My Life Began (63 page)

“Get out. I want all three of you out of here. Do you hear me or do you hear me? Now you move, and move fast!”

Jennifer clutches her shoulder, forces back tears.

“You
hurt
me!”

“Damned right. And I can do worse.”

“Uh-oh,” Susan says to Lucius. “Now children, do you recall that temper I told you about—the temper that can kill?”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Having a good time,” Jennifer says, her eyes defiant. “Or at least I was until
you
got here.”

“Answer my question without being fresh. What are you doing here?”

“She rode chaperone,” Susan says.

Aaron looks at Jennifer's eyes, realizes that she is stoned too.

“I said to move. Do you hear me? Get your butts out of here. Fast.”

“The king hath spoken,” Susan says, and she curtsies. Aaron raises his hand, as if to strike her. She lifts her face toward him, smiles. “Please do. We won't mind. I mean, we're into all kinds of shit, aren't we, Lucius? To hell with the superego, right?”

“You shut your mouth and do what the man says. He may not own you, but he's as close as you can get. Let's move on out, hey—”

Jennifer leans down, tries to kiss Lucius's cheek. Aaron grabs her arm. Lucius grins and Aaron is astonished suddenly by how much of the man's face seems to be taken up by teeth. He is confused, frightened, furious. He looks at Susan, imagines her talking with him later when they are alone, telling him that his problem is ever the same—he continues to idealize women too much, to believe that in
their
love lies
his
salvation—and he finds himself asking why it is that he has often, in his mind, made himself jealous by imagining Susan's past—her years with Paul, with other men—but never her future. If he had already imagined the scene he is now living in, would he be less furious, less frightened, less confused?

“Same old Aaron,” Lucius says. “Don't you like young folks to have fun no more, hey? Fucked up world we living in, friend. Have to take what pleasures we can, like Paul says. Never know when a body's gonna live or die, or if somebody be around after to care. You and me, brother, we know that better than most. You and me and Nicky, sitting on Rose Morgan's porch. How many years gone by was that, hey—?”

“The Movement's dead,” Aaron says.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” Lucius says. “Still, we got some scores to settle, got some asses we want to kick before we go. Paul wasn't
all
wrong. The man made sense now and then.”

“We're leaving,” Aaron says.

“I don't want to.” Jennifer rests her hand on Lucius's shoulder, lets her fingers drift lazily along the side of his neck. “I want to stay with Lucius and Mom. Lucius is my special friend now. He teaches me things. That's part of the revolution, of turning things upside down, see, like Dad said. Instead of me teaching a black, a black is teaching me.”

“You're coming with me and you're coming now.”

Aaron grabs for Jennifer. She slips behind Lucius and Aaron finds that he is holding Lucius's arm. Lucius twists away angrily.

“Hey—lay off. You want trouble, you can get all you want right here. No shortages, man. We can finish
everything
, here and now, that what I you want.”

“He's not my father anyway,” Jennifer says. “I can do whatever I want.”

“Freedom now, baby,” Lucius says, bloodshot eyes glaring at Aaron.

“Freedom,” Susan says. “Freedom is a constant struggle.” She blinks. “Who said that?”

“Made you feel real good to set me free, didn't it?” Lucius says. “Oh yeah. Took you three years before you could do for yourself what came so easy when you did it for me—putting me in school and the rest. You don't think I figured that out way back—that you let me live your life for you so you didn't have to face up to why you couldn't set your own self free? Only trouble is, hey, once you set me free, I free to be free
my
way, and that gonna please you less than you ever think on.” Lucius rubs his eyes. “Freedom now, friend. Freedom now. Oh yeah. Freedom got you paralyzed all to hell, don't it, Aaron? You don't know which way to move, whether to try to take me or not, you sober and straight and poor Lucius strung out on all the good things of this world. You coming? You gonna try to take me now?”

Lucius laughs at Aaron, and when he does Aaron imagines the side of his hand smashing upwards against the bridge of Lucius's nose, so that bone pushes in, penetrates brain. What enrages him most, he realizes, is being taken by surprise. But why? Doesn't he agree with what Susan often says—that, like any good story, life is most interesting when most surprising, when what-happens-next is not predictable? Why, then, when he is surprised this way is he also terrified? What he wants, he knows, is to be able to stop thinking so much, to be able to get away, to be able to let his mind wander freely so that it will be able to work out of instinct, habit. Then, he thinks, he will be safe….

Jennifer sits, lets her head drop back, swivel. Her hair, like her mother's, is fine and wild and uncombed. The light from the ceiling catches a patch of its gold, makes it look like spun glass.

“Didn't have the heart to tell you,” Lucius says. “They moving back in, seems. They all back in town for a visit.” Lucius shrugs. “Hard times, man. We need to forget life the best we can sometimes, don't you see? That's what I was trying to tell you all this time.”

Lucius takes Jennifer by the arm, leads her from the house. Aaron and Susan file out behind them, into the darkness, into the cool, spring air. Aaron tries to remember the snow, its feathered softness. He feels his heart pumping hard, imagines rolling balls of blood that surge forward, glide and stop, swell, roll through him as if his arteries have hand grenades inside them.

“It's okay, hey,” Lucius says. “Still love you, Aaron. Love you like a long-lost brother.”

“I just wish to hell you'd fall flat on your face for once in your life,” Susan says to Aaron when they are home. “Jesus! Do you know how god-awful it feels to be married to a man who never falls apart, who's always so damned brave and noble and good? Talk about grace under pressure. Listen. What the hell were you trying to start with Lucius—?”

“There was no danger,” Aaron says. “Everything was under control.”

“See what I mean?”

She lies on their bed, a cold washcloth across her eyes.

“No.”

“No,” she repeats. And then: “There was no danger. Things are under control. The Movement is dead. Sure. Aaron knows everything. Aaron always does the right thing, the brave thing. Aaron trusts his instincts. Aaron protects us all. Malcolm X is dead. Medgar Evers is dead. Martin Luther King is dead. The king is dead, so long live the king, and right here in my own home, right? Right on. Now
there's
personalized service for you—”

“I'll say it one more time,” Aaron says. “If I ever catch you acting that way again with Lucius, or with any other man, I'll—”

She takes the cloth from her eyes, sits up, leans on her elbows.

“You'll
what
, sweetheart?”

Silence. She is, he sees, merely amused by him.

“Come on. Enough bluffing, all right? Just what will you do?”

“I don't know.”

“I figured. Good. It's good you don't know something for a change. It's a relief.”

He turns away, goes to the door.

“Let's just forget the whole thing, all right? You rest up while I make some supper for the kids.”

“But you're not possessive or jealous, are you? Jealousy is the illusion of possession. Sure. Tell me another one.”

He turns, feels the rage surge again. “You will
not
humiliate me, is that clear? Not ever again. You will not degrade me or mock me. Not ever again. Do you—?”

“Do I hear you or do I hear you,” she intones, anticipating his words. “I know all about it. Oh Aaron, don't you see that it's all
right
for you to blow your cool once in a while, that it's all right for you to be jealous and human and angry? Sweet Aaron. My dear, sweet Aaron. For a brief moment there in the country I thought I finally had a flesh-and-blood husband. Even a few seconds ago it seemed that he might actually be angry with me, that—”

“Don't you talk about me as if I'm not here.”

“You're right. But can you understand that it does comfort me to have you yell at me at last, that it consoles me to see you enraged? That it actually makes me
love
you to know that you get frightened?”

“No.”

“I didn't think so,” she says. “Listen then. There's nothing to be afraid of. I
love
you, sweetheart—I chose you and that doesn't mean that all the other men in the world are eunuchs. As a species, men still interest me greatly. Would you have it otherwise? How often have you told me what an attractive man Lucius is, how you yourself were drawn to him at first in an almost physical way—so why shouldn't I be attracted to him?”

“That's not the point.”

“But it is, damn it. It is! And you're such a child you can't even admit it.” She turns onto her side, rests her cheek on her palm. “Is that why I love you so, because you're so much of a man and so much of a child all at once? My sweet, serious Aaron. My little orphan boy. Lucius has a point, you know, about how serious you are—”

“I don't need lessons from Lucius.”

“My God—you really
are
jealous, aren't you?”

Silence.

“Well—aren't you?”

“I suppose.”

“I suppose.” She smiles, sits up, hugs her knees. He wants to say something about how young she looks—how much like Jennifer—about how he loves her for a parallel reason, because of how much of a woman and a child she can seem to him sometimes. But he says nothing. “Listen, Aaron: sure I was flirting with Lucius and he was flirting with me and we both loved it. But what in heaven's name is wrong with a little harmless flirting? I got high and he got high and there he was and there I was and he's a man and I'm a woman—life's
like
that, sweetheart—I mean, do you think that
ever
stops? Just because you and I were married once upon a time? Do you think the glands and hormones have gone into a state of permanent rest, of—”

“That's not what this discussion is about. You won't fool me by getting into that man-woman talk. Into all your psychological crap. You just listen to me for once and lay off Lucius, do you hear? You don't know what his life was like—what it means for a beautiful white woman like you to show kindness toward him, to tempt him. You weren't there. He's about to get married to a fine—”

She sits up, waves his words away. “Oh come off it.” Her voice is hard. He imagines her putting on the black wig, stepping out on stage: a daughter becoming a mother, a mother becoming a widow. “Lucius can take care of himself. Damned well too, believe me. He's no innocent.
You're
the innocent one, if you ask me. You're the one we need to take a long, hard look at.”

“Forget the whole thing.” He starts for the door. “You're after me for something, and I don't like it or understand it or have to take it. What do you want from me? Come on! What is it you
want?”

“Everything,” she whispers. She laughs, runs her hands along either side of her neck, lifting hair.
“Everything.”

“See what I mean?” he says. “This is all so crazy, you and Lucius out there, and Jennifer in the woods, and then Jennifer with her ridiculous talk all the way home about Malcolm still being alive and how she saw him—how the F.B.I, sank him and gave him a new life, how Malcolm was too smart to die young—I mean, did I dream it all? Did you—?”

“Did Jennifer really say that?”

“Yes.”

“I must have been asleep.”

“She said she saw him in downtown Northampton—-that he had put on weight and had a beard, but that she recognized the red hair in the beard and—”

“Aaron?”

“Yes?”

“Lucius agrees with me about you, that the rage is there and that it's something you need to do something about. You were ready to
kill
the two of us out there, don't you think we saw that? And for what? Out of what childish fantasy about men and women and sex? Lucius is a good friend to you and he loves you more than he loves anyone in the world and I don't blame him most of the time, but where in heaven's name, in an otherwise mature and trusting man, does such rage and fantasy
come
from? You were right about doting Jewish mothers, about not having had one. I forget sometimes, you're so good at
pleasing
. Who doesn't like and admire Aaron Levin? And yet, never having had one of them to teach you to worship and idealize women, you do idealize me, and I'm just so tired of it I could die sometimes. I am just so tired of it.”

She crosses her arms, smiles sadly. He says nothing.

“I'm just a woman, Aaron,” she says. “Beautiful, talented, loving, perceptive. Sure. But just a woman. Human and imperfect. Don't make me out to be more than I am. Please? Promise me that, for all the rest of our years together. The favorite son of a doting mother goes through life with the feeling that he is a conqueror. Who said that—Freud, right? Well, Old Sigmund was wrong once again. That son goes through life with the feeling that he must
become
a conqueror—I read that recently and I buy it. That son goes through life with the feeling that he must conquer the whole damned world and lay it at the feet of that mother or she won't love him, don't you see? He must be a good little orphan boy and lay the world at the feet of an insatiable woman, thereby hoping to win her love, a love nobody can ever win, in truth. A love nobody should ever
want
to win.”