The Caveman's Valentine (20 page)

“Just come on. Jeremy, where’s your hat?”

But Romulus didn’t launch. Apparently the Moth-Seraphs were all dozing.

He sat. On a stone by the beech tree. He shut his eyes. He felt Lulu come close to him.

“Daddy? Daddy, are you all right?”

He opened his eyes just to look at her face. All his kin were staring at him.

She said softly, “Daddy, you’re supposed to lecture us about Stuyvesant and Y-rays and selling our divinities and all.”

“I’m sorry, Lu. Have I spoiled the party? I’m just very tired. I haven’t had much sleep.”

“But you still believe it? The Y-rays and all, you haven’t stopped believing—”

“I’m not worried about Y-rays anymore.”

“Really?”

Romulus shook his head. “I’m too busy worrying about
Z-rays.”

Somebody’s wife murmured, “Oh Lord.”

“But no speeches. Not now, anyway. No, you know . . . you know . . . would you all mind if I just lay down for a while? I mean, go ahead and eat, this is your home, too, and you’re welcome to stay here as long as . . . you like . . . but if it’s OK I’ll just lie down. . . .”

“Come here, Daddy.”

Lulu led him to the mattress in the cave and shooed away the nephews who were sprawled out on it. Romulus lay down and she shook out one of his blankets and put it over him.

He heard the squeaking of wheels and then the voice of Cyclops. She was coughing, and saying, “Well. I got up that hill. Soon as I could. Have I missed? All the fun?”

Romulus looked up at Lulu, into her eyes. Those ragged irises, and the scaffolding of bone above the cheek. Incomparable. Except of course you could always compare her to her mother. She leaned over and gave him a kiss on his forehead. Then she sniffed the air.

“Hey Daddy?”

“Yes.”

She said, “Have you . . . have you been with a woman?”

“Do not tell your mother, right?”

“Oh Dad, this is a little weird for me. This is—you’re not supposed to—I mean . . .”

“Do not tell your mother.”

“Do you think she’d mind?”

“Probably not. Still.”

Lulu came close to his ear and whispered, “Not that one-eyed woman?”

“Cyclops? No.”

A great many kin-faces had gathered around.

“Rom, you just go on to sleep for a while.”

“You’re fine, you’re just tired.”

Said Romulus, “Folks, I went to a party last night and I stayed out too late.”

“That’s right. Have a nap.”

Romulus said, “But you’re still all Stuyvesant’s slaves and lackeys, and if you’d open up your damn divinities a little, you’d know it.”

“Uh-huh. Catch some winks, brother.”

He shut his eyes. Plenty of worried murmurs. He was holding Lulu’s hand and he listened to those murmurs, and then they faded away. He wondered why they’d stopped, and he wanted to take a look. But it took him a while to get his eyes open, and by the time he did, all his brothers were gone and it was cooler and the sun had dropped close to the river.

B
ut he still felt Lulu’s hand in his. He looked over, and she was right there, stretched out on the mattress beside him. She was wide awake.

“Baby?”

“You feel better Daddy?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“There’s still some fried chicken and beet salad.”

He looked away.

“Come on Daddy. I’m just going to throw it out. In fact maybe I did throw it out. I threw it in that can by the path but then I dug it out again. So that makes it kosher, doesn’t it? I won’t tell anybody.”

Romulus was very hungry. He said to her, “OK, the fried chicken. Not the beet salad.”

“Maybe Mom had nothing to do with the beet salad. Aunt Jane might have made it.”

“No, not the beet salad.”

“The potato salad, is that OK?”

“Yeah.”

He ate. Three pieces of chicken and a pint of potato salad and he drank half a liter of ginger ale. Then he asked her:

“Lu, did you bring your car?”

She nodded.

“Did you have trouble parking it?”

She shook her head. “It’s Sunday.”

“Would you take me for a drive?”

“Are you serious? Daddy, you never go in cars. You haven’t been in a car since—”

“Since last night. Come on, take me for a drive.”

D
own Payson Street to Dyckman Street to the Harlem River Drive. The High Bridge. Golden light of sunset, which was trying to work its sleight-of-hand on the Harlem River. But to no avail. It was still the most disconsolate river in the world.

They passed Coogan’s Bluff, up on the right. Great skirts of Manhattan schist, in purple shadow.

“See there, Lulu, back there’s the polo grounds. Where the Giants used to play. Was a woman owned the land in those days—old widow Coogan. Your great-grandfather worked for her. Run her messages for her. Have you heard this? Once a month he ran downtown to pick up her rent check from the Giants. Everybody thought it was something that she trusted a
Ne
-gro with that. Old bitch. Paid him shit wages. One of them rent checks could have carried his wages the rest of his life. That was my father’s father. They say he was raised on a little farm across the river somewhere.”

Somewhere over in the Bronx, where it was all hell-gray ghetto now.

“Jesus, I’m getting as bad as your grandmother, Lulu. This is what
she
used to do. Run on all the time about all the folks that have passed on. Your great-
grand
father, Romulus. Your great-
great
-grandfather. Your second cousin’s great-aunt Hattie. Like they were some kind of
weight
you just had to carry around. Or you were no good. My Lord. And please pass the weight on down to your children.”

He looked over at Lulu to see if she had anything to say, but she didn’t.

He said, “Been living in a
cave
to get out from under that weight. Now listen to me. My . . . Lord.”

After a while she said, “Where did you go yesterday, Daddy?”

“What? Nowhere. Little drive. Little pre-birthday party. Why didn’t my brother Augustus come today?”

“I guess he had business in Washington.”

“I guess he thought it wasn’t worth it anymore, right? Just not worth it trying to make sense of his baby brother.”

“That’s not true.”

“No?”

She came out with it then. “I think he’s sick, Daddy.”

“What kind of sick?”

“They think he might have stomach cancer.”

“Oh. No. Augustus? No.”

“They don’t know yet. He’s going for more tests.”

“Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

“They all think you’ve got your own problems.”

They rode in silence.

“Oh Jesus.”

Under the Willis Avenue Bridge.

“My brother is dying? Augie is dying?”

“Daddy, they don’t
know
that.”

Under the Triborough Bridge, and onto the FDR Drive.

Then they saw the footbridge over to Ward’s Island, and Romulus said, “You remember that little park on the other side over there?”

“When I was little, yeah. When we were living in the East River Project.”

“Right over there. There was a sandbox. You think it’s still there, Lu?”

“I don’t know but I think so.”

“I used to make these big castles for you.”

“Yeah, and you said that Ward’s Island was once a pirate island and they’d left buried treasure. And I used to dig in the sandbox for the treasure.”

“Aha! Yes, I remember that.”

“Once I found a balloon.”

“You
thought
you found a balloon. It was a condom.”

“No!”

“Yes. You cried when I wouldn’t blow it up for you.”

“You did blow it up for me.”

“I bought a balloon on the way back and I blew that up. I wasn’t blowing up any used condom.”

“Where am I taking you, Daddy? Am I taking you to Cole Street?”

“I just want to drive by.”

“You can come in, you know. Mom won’t mind.”

“She won’t mind, ’cause she’ll have a chance to cure my brains with a fry pan.”

Over the Queensboro Bridge. In the rearview mirror he saw the sunset, which was giving up now, just letting itself go the color of rotten egg yolk.

“Daddy, if you don’t want to tell me where you were last night—that’s OK. None of my business. But don’t go there again, all right? Promise me that? That you won’t start wandering?”

“Good to get out of the city once in a while.”

“Around here, they know you. They might not understand you somewhere else.”

He said, “You know, once when I was a kid, my uncle died and Mama took me with her to North Carolina for the funeral. Did I ever tell you about this? That was my mother’s brother, George— your great-uncle. I guess he was about the age that Augustus is now. Not nearly old enough to die, you know? Mama decided to go see him. Left all my brothers with Grandma Ledbetter, but me she took with her, because—I don’t know why. Maybe because I wasn’t old enough to be in school. I guess that was it. Anyway we went down on the bus, and I had Mama all to myself, which I liked. Except she never stopped worrying about my brothers. My Lord I remember that ride. We left New York and it was winter and we rode all night and when I woke up it was spring.

“But I don’t remember the funeral.

“Maybe I didn’t go to it. What I remember is being on the porch of somebody’s house out in the tobacco fields. Like a sharecropper’s shack? You know? And there were already fireflies, that early in the year, I remember that. And there was somebody had a guitar and somebody had a harmonica, and I think that’s the first time I ever heard anything like the blues.

“My uncle’s cousins. I never saw them again.

“And I remember on the way down, one other thing, I remember in the bus, Mama was going on about my brothers and then she said, ‘What are you making those little bird chirps for, son?’ And I didn’t even
know
I was making them, till she told me. These little squeaks, about every five minutes I’d make one of these little squeaks in the back of my throat, and I
had
to make them because they were back there, and they just had to get out. And then when I woke up later and it was spring I wasn’t making them anymore, but that’s the first time I remember doing anything like that. I mean the kind of craziness that someone might notice.”

Queens Boulevard to Woodhaven. Woodhaven to Pitkin. Darkness coming on, neon getting a hold. Left on Cole. Third house on the left. The ratty brick facing. The sills had been painted pink. New fence around the postage-stamp yard, where the grass was in fair trim and the forsythia ready to bloom. She had ceramic ducks. She had got herself a flag. Sheila, she was trying to do it up right, this “just another neighbor” deal.

“You want to come in, Daddy?”

“Just wanted to see it.”

“
Rude
if I take you all the way here and you won’t come in.”

“Another time.”

“But it’s
your
house.”

“No thanks,” he said.

Then after looking at it awhile, he said, “Never was.
My
house. By the time we got this place I was pretty much an invalid—just hanging around watching the goddamn TV. Don’t you remember? This place, this was your mama’s doing. Except I
was
the one planted that forsythia there. And there were one or two times I paid the mortgage. You know what I remember? I remember coming home from a gig in Astoria, Greek place, middle of the night. Made good money there—took a cab home—that was all right. Then I felt like maybe this was going to be my home. But that’s all. Rest of the time, I was out in . . . oh, space.”

He looked up at the house again. He said, “Jesus.”

Sheila had come to the window. She must have known the sound of Lulu’s car. She was looking right at him. He couldn’t see her very well. Mostly he saw the outline of her, silhouetted by the lamp behind her. He had known she’d put on weight. He hadn’t imagined that the weight would be pulling down her shoulders that way.

He turned away from her and looked dead ahead at the street.

“Daddy, is Mama looking at you?”

“Yes, she is.”

T
hey were quiet on the way back until at last he asked her, “Will you give me a birthday present?”

“For you? Not for the birds? Of course I will. What do you want, Daddy?”

“You know what I’d truly love?”

“What?”

“What I’ve got my heart set on?”

“What?”

“What you could get me and then it would be like a true birthday for your old man?”

“What? Tell me.”

“The autopsy report on Andrew Scott Gates.”

First she gave him a six-block serving of black silence along Dyckman Street. Then she told him to go to hell.

Then she told him she’d like to just shake him, just
shake
all the paranoia and scheming out of him.

Then she started to cry.

D
etective Jack Cork was out on the front steps of the church. Sitting to one side, contemplating his knees. Romulus spared him no more than a glance. He climbed the steps and headed resolutely for the front door.

The plan was to meet in the confessional. This was their custom, after all. Had the man no respect for tradition? What was the point of meeting in a church if you had no feeling for tradition?

“Hey!”

Cork’s tone was harsh.

“Out here this time, OK? There’s people in there.”

Romulus asked, “What are they doing?”

“Jesus,
I
don’t know. Looks like some kind of religious ceremony. Bizarre, huh? Hey, I’ll call in the feds, we’ll bust their freaking asses. First I gotta talk to you. Come here, would you? Have a seat.”

Romulus shook his head. “It’s not safe out here.”

“Come. Here.”

Romulus went and sat beside him on the steps. Cork was looking gone to seed. Wearing an oil-stained parka and one of his shirt buttons was missing and he had a day’s growth of beard on his sunken-cake face.

Romulus supposed that together they looked like a couple of winos enjoying their evening libation.