“You’re making excuses, that’s all you’re doing,” Albert said, again talking tough, but his voice cracked on the last word.
“I’m just saying I love you, that’s all.”
“You’re saying it wasn’t you.”
“Not the real me,” Clara insisted. “I didn’t touch you before I smoked.” She looked past him to me and said, “Explain it to him. I’m not saying I didn’t do it. I’m not saying it ain’t my fault. I’m saying I love him and I wish to God it never happened.” She had moved herself again, fresh tears running over the dried tracks.
“You say it was the drug,” I commented.
“You know it makes you crazy,” she argued with me. “You telling me crack don’t fuck you up? That what you tell him? I’m the same person now? I ain’t the same. That’s a lie too. If you be telling him that, it’s a lie.”
“No!” Albert bellowed. Clara winced. I heard a footstep behind me that I assumed came from the escort. The bass of Albert’s shout reverberated until there was complete silence, except the basketball, whining as it struck the concrete in a pounding rhythm. Only when his yell died away did he continue, in a deep tone of conviction, “You trying to say it was somebody else. That’s all you trying to say. You trying to take away the only thing I got left. People feel sorry for me and they want to help me. That’s the one fucking thing you gave me and now, you greedy bitch, you want that too.” Albert stood up. He was already turning away, obviously scared he was about to lose control. He tossed back at her, “I hope you die.” He walked past me, bumping my chair.
I got up to follow him. As I reached the escort, standing in the patio doorway, I turned back for another look at Clara. Albert’s mother sat up straight on the step, eyes dead, her stained face tranquil. She stared at me as if we had never met.
I got home late. The van leaving for Dorrit House had been delayed. In fact, that was good luck. Obviously, Albert was very troubled by the encounter and, I felt, in grave danger. I had been lax in leaving so little time between these two momentous events in his life. I had misgivings when the shelter gave us Albert’s departure day as his only opportunity to visit Clara; but he insisted he wanted to see her before leaving New York and I decided I couldn’t object to that.
We talked in a coffee shop across the street from where the van was parked. Its driver was checking under the hood for the source of the engine’s cough. Albert sat opposite me, ignoring his slice of cherry pie and glass of milk. He breathed shallowly, his shoulders were hunched, his arms half-raised, like a boxer in a fighting crouch. His barely suppressed rage was electric: the waiter didn’t linger on Albert’s side of the table. I noticed when he returned to the cash register, he kept an eye on us. I tried to get Albert to express himself directly. When that failed, I asked him to describe how he would like to kill his mother.
Most people, I suppose, would react with at least a show of disgust or horror at my question. Albert and I were old hands at these nightmare conversations. “I don’t want to,” he mumbled in his tight-lipped rage.
“Tell me how you’re thinking of killing her. Strangling?”
“Talking ain’t gonna stop me. You kidding yourself. I’m fucking kidding myself. I’m glad I’m going away. When I blow, I don’t want it to fuck you and my buddies.”
“I’m not trying to talk you out of killing, Albert. I know I can’t stop you with talk. I want you to tell me what you’re thinking so you’ll feel better.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“Are you gonna rape her first? Or just choke her?”
“Just let me go, Rafe. I’m gone, man. I’m really gone.” Tears appeared, although he still had a warrior’s pose.
“Choking her would stop the lying.”
“I don’t wanna choke her!” he shouted, much too loudly. I sensed the quiet gather around us. I didn’t look, fearing eye contact with the waiter would imply I needed help.
I spoke low. “What then? A gun?”
“I’m gonna put Zebra down her throat. Okay? I’ll stuff her ugly face. I’ll choke her with my come.”
“You can’t kill her with sperm.”
“No, I can’t,” he smiled. “You’re right. That’s just to warm up. I’ll cut her belly open and take out her stomach. She’ll be alive. That’s how the Japs kill. They hand you your guts so’s you can watch yourself die.”
“Do you know why you’d like to kill her that way?”
“Oh fuck, man. It don’t matter. I’m still gonna do it no matter what the fuck it a symbol of.”
“You’re going to make her pregnant. Make her heal your penis with her mouth, fill her with your sperm, make a new you in her belly and open her womb to bring him out alive. You’re going to be reborn out of the monster and that will kill it.”
Albert stared for a moment and then he shook his head sadly, pitying me. “Man, that is the dumbest shit you ever said. I mean, you’ve said some dumb shit, but that’s the master dumbness.”
“She won’t die in the real world, Albert. She can only die in your head. That’s where she lives. That’s her home. That’s where she gets her mail, that’s where she cooks her meals and that’s where she hurts you.”
“Then I’ll cut my brain out.”
“With drugs? Like she did?”
“She smart. She ain’t hurting. She got them turned around, living in that nice house, showing her stuff. She probably fucking all of ’em. She probably fucking that dyke who opened the door like she was a fucking African princess. Staring at me like it’s me who did it to her. Women, man. They flicking hate us. Clara, she ain’t a monster. She just did what they all want — cut our fucking dicks off.”
He finally took a stab at his cherry pie, consuming almost a third of it in a single gulp. The danger hadn’t passed, yet it lessened with each angry word. As long as he gave the twisting rage a voice, he wouldn’t need to hurt somebody — at least not that day. For Albert, I’m afraid, most people would think all his victories to be no better than King Pyrrhus’s.
It was late when I came home to find Diane in one of my sweatshirts (it reached to her bare knees) waving a pot holder at me with a smile. “I made dinner, can you believe it? A real dinner.” Her smile disappeared. “What’s wrong?”
I told her the story, sitting sadly on one of the two tall stools at our kitchen counter, too exhausted to take off my jacket, soaked through from my travels through the hot day.
“Sounds like he’ll be okay,” she said. She touched my hand, gently stroking it. “You did great work.”
I had reported with little emotion, my voice fading from hoarseness. I felt that I wanted to cry and my legs hurt, aching as if I had run a marathon.
Diane came around and hugged me from behind. She kissed my neck and whispered in my ear. “It must have been hard on you, very hard.”
“I’m scared,” I said and I was crying.
Diane maneuvered to hug me face-to-face. I felt ready to let go of all the tears I had ever wanted to release, when she said, “Oh baby.”
That reminded me of Clara and poisoned the endearment. My tears stopped. And I wondered, since I could be given pause by so slight a contact with Clara, how would Albert ever trust love?
“I love you,” Diane was saying and I listened to her, just her, a woman I could trust. She led me to the couch, urging me out of my damp blazer, and rested my head on her lap.
“I’m tired,” I admitted, as if she had asked a question.
“Take a nap, my sweet man. Close your eyes.”
“I want us to get married,” I said and the tears were back. I sobbed into my sweatshirt, smelling bubble bath. “I want us to make a new baby,” I said in a dopey child’s voice.