He could not blame himself. That was stupid. Besides, he had done everything that had been asked of him, handled it the way it should have been handled — how else could anyone handle it? — and yet he knew he had not done everything possible, but he shouldn’t even have been asked, more should not have been asked of him.
And yet she had become an addict. True, she had broken the habit and that took strength, so how could someone as strong as Helen have turned to drugs, and again he knew the answer.
No, his mind screamed, no!
Problems, sure, problems, and there are enough of your own without having to worry about everyone else’s. What do you owe people? Didn’t I see it through, didn’t I do what I should have done, wasn’t I honorable? Then why ask more of me, Helen, why ask more?
Helen, couldn’t we have left it the way it was? Why did Andy have to come back, and why did he drag you along with him, and why are you both in my life again? I thought you were out of my life, I thought I had escaped it, touched hands, touched minds, crossed lives.
Helen, I loved you, you know that, don’t you? Helen, I loved you with every fiber in my body, but I just couldn’t... I had other things to worry... I had...
I know, I know, I know.
You needed me, but people are always needing, and how much of yourself can you give, and when do you stop giving, and where does it end? Doesn’t it ever end? Are you always face to face with it? Where’s the goddamn doctor? Do you turn around and find life staring at you always? It can’t be that way. How could you stand it if it were always that way, how could you stand it?
When do you rest? When do you find peace and contentment? Is that why Andy tried to take his own life? Jesus, what a hell of a juvenile thing to try, but he wanted peace, I guess, he didn’t want to... to face it... face what?... you don’t know what you’re talking about any more, you don’t know.
Helen, try to understand. Sit there in your big superior strength and understand that I was free — free from that night the navy let me go, free from that moment on, and I wanted to stay that way, I had to stay that way, so understand, understand, please understand
25
sock chorus, i
JULY, 1946
It was very hot, even for July, and the rotating fan overhead only rearranged the thick blue smoke in the place. The smoke hovered like early morning mist over a meadow, swirling up where the fan pulled it reluctantly into its vortex. There was noise in the place, too, thicker than the smoke, buzzing over the tables like hungry flies around a felled horse.
Every now and then a high shrill laugh pierced the smoke and the hovering hum, a laugh that bubbled from the lips of a redhead at a table near the bandstand. The redhead was sitting with a Negro, and the Negro kept leaning over the table with a perpetual small smile on his face, talking in hushed whispers, as if he were confiding state secrets. The redhead would listen carefully, her lips moving ever so slightly as she watched his lips, like an actress anticipating her cue. And then the cue would come, and her laugh would burst into the smoke-filled room like a skyrocket, dripping its incandescent shrillness from the ceiling, and the Negro just kept leaning over the table and smiling his small smile and telling his state secrets.
Bud was sweltering in his blues. He was sweltering, and he also felt a little stupid. He kept cursing his mother for having given away all his clothes while he was gone, and he tried to listen to what Andy was saying, and all the while the redhead kept erupting into the room with that infuriatingly high laugh of hers.
“...started by a guy named Dizzy Gillespie, Bud,” Andy said. “You should see him. He wears a little beard right here under his lip, a sort of a goatee, a little triangular thing. We call it a ‘Dizzy kick’ in the trade. He wears a red beret, too. Those are his trade-marks — the kick and the beret. When all this first started, I bought a beret, too, but you can’t keep your hair combed too well if you wear one, do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” Bud said. “These navy hats are the same.”
“Carol didn’t like it, either. She said it looked silly and affected. She digs bop, though. Bop really sends her.”
“I’m anxious to hear some of it,” Bud said.
“Oh, you will, man, that’s what we’re here for.” He glanced at the bandstand. “The—” Bud heard the redhead’s laugh starting again, and Andy shifted his eyes ever so slightly in the direction of her table, and he tilted his head a little, as if he were straining to hear what the Negro was saying. The laugh ended abruptly, and Andy, liberated, said, “The combo should be back any minute. I think you’ll like this, Bud. You have to get used to it, just like anything else, but you’ll like it. All it is, really, is playing around with chords. Well, you’ll see. Did you do much playing in the navy?”
“A little,” Bud said. “There was another piano player on my ship, and we scared up a piano whenever we could. We played some nice boogie together. We were the hottest thing in Sasebo and Yokosu—”
“Yeah, well, boogie’s dead and gone now, you know that, don’t you? If you play boogie now, the crowd throws stones at you.”
“No, I didn’t know that,” Bud said.
Andy nodded. “It’s a damn shame I missed you on V-J Day. That was after I quit Jerry Black, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I was with a guy named Marv Lipton then — he changed it from Marv Lipschitz — a nowhere outfit, but at least I got to see D.C., and that was a wild town then, man. So tell me, how does it feel to be home for good?”
“You want the truth?”
“Sure.”
“Lousy.”
Andy burst out laughing, and then he glanced quickly at the table with the redhead and the Negro, and Bud got the feeling he was laughing for their benefit, as if to show them he was having a good time, too.
“It can’t be as bad as that,” Andy said, bringing his eyes back to Bud’s face. He had learned a trick with his eyes, Bud noticed, a way of squinching them up in wry amusement, so that it gave the peculiar expression of his eyes smiling while his mouth did not. His mouth had not changed at all. It was still a remarkably immature mouth, a weak mouth, even though the rest of his face had lengthened into angular maturity. And, of course, the muscle ring was still there, stronger now than it had ever been. He was wearing his hair long, and from what Bud had noticed when he’d turned his head, he sported a D.A. in the back.
“Are you listening to me?” Andy asked suddenly.
“Yes, of course.”
“Oh, I thought you were studying me,” he said. “Have I changed much?”
“Not very,” Bud told him.
“Haven’t I grown up?” he asked, and he did his eye trick again, the edges of his eyes crinkling while his mouth remained expressionless, the warm amber-flecked brown glowing with secret amusement.