Kevin recovered first. “I’d best be gettin’ out o’ here before he comes to,” he said, starting for the door.
“But you can’t just go and leave us holding the bag,” Bob protested. “Come on, Bruce, help me stop him,” he added when Kevin kept going toward the door.
He grappled with the boys as he waited for the elevator to come up. The door opened and the operator peered out, astonished at the commotion. “Help us with him, Albert,” Bruce called out as Kevin tried to lunge inside the elevator. “He’s attacked a man in my apartment."
But Albert was too slow. Kevin whirled around behind him and propelled him into the two boys. The force of the maneuver carried them out of the elevator, and Kevin slammed the door shut after them. He pushed the elevator’s lever and shot down to the lobby. He got out, ran past the startled doorman, and kept running across Park Avenue. He made straight for the shelter of Central Park, and didn‘t slow down until he’d emerged on the west side of it. Then he strode toward Broadway, his mind in a turmoil.
Despite the exertions of his flight, Kevin was still possessed by violent rage. At first it was the face of Phil, the detective, which served his mind’s eye as the tar- get of this rage. But as he turned down West End Avenue and felt the full force of the storm assaulting him from the Hudson River, the rain whipping his face stirred a memory and his vision changed.
Now it was his mother’s face he saw. That Irish lady who should have been a spinster, damn her immortal soul! It was her fault he was what he was! It was she, with her cuddling and her hands always on him and her pressing him so hard to her breasts that he felt he must suffocate, who had turned him away from women. Yes, his mother, taking her revenge against his unknown father on her bastard son by twisting at his very body until he felt she’d twisted the manhood right off him. He saw her face and felt his fist strike it with the blow he’d loosed at the detective.
But his mother was dead and he couldn’t punish her. Oh, but now he had another mother. Yes, that he did. Kevin’s rage dissolved the image of Brigid Connery and summoned another face in its place. Retracing the steps he’d taken in the early evening, marching down West End Avenue through the thunder and the lightning and the explosive blasts of wind, Kevin held fast to this new vision with the fists clenched at his sides. And he saw himself destroying it, blasting the life from it he would have blasted the life from his real mother if her death hadn’t robbed him of the chance. But now he had another chance, and death was his to deliver if he chose. This face he saw in the rains-pattering of the paddles was alive and waiting, available for him to destroy.
And the face that Kevin saw was the face of Dr. Mavis Golden!
CHAPTER 7
Hot Stuff in Cold Storage
“. . . NAME: GLORIA ANDREWS. Age: twenty-eight years. Color: shiny black. Problem: people think it might rub off. . . . All right, Dr. Golden. At least I didn’t come on shuffling my feet and spitting watermelon pits. But let’s face it, if you’re colored you’re got a problem to start with. For instance, I can’t help thinking the good doctor here only asked me so she could say she had an integrated group and brag to her colleagues how far-seeing and liberal she was. Or maybe just so she’d have a catalytic agent for all you white folks to bounce your aggressions off. Or maybe just for scenery like a white girl I used to know who always asked two tall Negro boys to her parties and then tried to position them on either side of her snow-white couch for all the world like a pair of book-ends. . . . Well, that’s enough of that. I’m a research chemist at Columbia University. I’m married. My problem really is that l can’t make it in bed with my husband, although I love him very much. . . . Which is pretty funny when you consider that us black girls are well-known to be real hot stuff. Only it’s not funny to me at all. It tears me apart! . . .
“That you, Gloria?” Her husband was in the back of the apartment, in the bedroom, when she reached home that night.
“Yes, Frank. What are you doing in there?”
“Closing the windows. It’s blowing up a storm.”
“You’re telling me!” Gloria brushed a few raindrops from her hair as Frank joined her in the living room.
“How’d the silly session go?” he asked.
“Wild. Interesting.”
“And did the therapist’s nigger do her bit for the integrated psyche?”
“Why do you have to always be sarcastic about it, Frank?” She’d been primed for some kind of remark from him and when it came her reaction was more explosive than she supposed was warranted.
“It gripes me to see you throwing out good money trying to wash the black out of your subconscious."
“But it’s not like that! I’ve told you often enough. You’re just trying to get my goat.”
“I know what you tell me. And I know what I know. Which is that the only way a Negro can make a Freudian adjustment in this society is to either Uncle Tom it, or Rinso-white his whole memory-bank.”
“Frank, that kind of talk just proves how warped your mind is. Color has nothing to do with it. I’m going there to face my problems—our problems — which you’re just too plain scared to face.”
“I knew you’d get around to that sooner or later. But I face it, baby. I face it all the time."
“What do you face?” Gloria felt wretched. Once again they were trapped into the same old argument; once again they were picking at the canker-sore of their life together, the canker-sore with its pervading pus that spread over their hours together and poisoned each of the moments. She’d hoped they wouldn’t tonight, but here they were going at each other again.
“I’ll tell you what,” Frank said, his voice low and measured, biting off the words. “I face the fact that I’m not capable of making my wife respond to me in bed. I face the fact that I’m just as much of a failure at night in the sack as I am all day and every day out in Mr. Charlie’s great big wide world.”
Gloria tried to sidetrack the main issue. But she was angry enough so that her words were cutting anyway. “Frank,” she said, “Lord help you if people ever really do get color-blind. Because if that happens, you’ll have nobody to blame for not succeeding in life. And then you’ll have to face the fact that it isn’t the white man, but you, yourself, who are your own worst enemy.”
“Well, hear, hear! Thanks for the vote of confidence!”
“Oh, I‘m sorry. I didn’t mean to come on that strong. I know a lot of it isn’t your fault. It’s just that I can’t stand the idea that you’ve just plain given up.”
“That I have! And why not? Happiness, after all, consists of recognizing your station in life and being content with it. And I’m the most smiling, head-bobbling, good-natured spade elevator operator in all New York. See, baby, I’ve learned my place!”
“Don’t hand me that guff, Frank. I’ve sat through as many protest meetings as you have. You don’t have to mouth integration platitudes at me. We’re not talking about the Negro race, or the ‘problem’, or ‘mass injustice’, or any of those great big wrongs that have to be righted. We’re talking about you, Frank Andrew, a college graduate who runs an elevator because he just doesn’t have the guts to face up to the rebuffs and keep trying to better himself in spite of them.”
“That’s me. Frank Andrews, gutless wonder.”
“Only because you let yourself be. What’s happened to you, Frank? You used to take some joy in life, have some faith in yourself, some hope, some willingness to fight the system for what should rightfully be yours.”
“It was knocked out of me. I just accepted the fact that there’s no place in a white world for a black architect. They’re building white house for white people and a black face around the office might make the customers nervous. I had to accept it. Either that, or flip my lid from sheer frustration.”