"We're not in that courtroom to judge the value of the two works, are we?" Driscoll said. "That's why I don't approve of what you were trying to do."
"What was I trying to do?"
"Make him ashamed."
"No," Jonah said.
She had never been ashamed of what she'd done, though of course she lied in her letters home, even in her letters to Miss Benson. And yet she always felt a pang of regret at not having told her the truth, because she was certain Miss Benson would have been the only one to understand. Wasn't this what she and Miss Benson had really discussed on that waning afternoon, wasn't this what Miss Benson had meant by a capacity for giving? In February, when Donald stopped using the cane, she thought she must have known how that Negro lawyer in Atlanta felt when he began sleeping with Miss Benson. If a nigger in the South (and she stopped calling them niggers the moment she realized Donald disapproved of the expression) if a Negro in the South could just once in his life stand up and be counted as a man, be accepted as a man by a woman like Miss Benson, why then maybe he could think of himself as a man from that day forward. And maybe, if they had let him alone, if they had allowed him to give this woman love and to accept it from her in return, if they had not been so desperately threatened by the notion, then maybe he'd have walked proud the rest of his life, without dragging his leg, without limping. But of course they couldn't allow that to happen. No, you see, we can't allow that to happen, Missie, standing in the driveway and talking in low voices to the schoolgirl in her cotton pajamas and robe, we cannot allow it, Missie, you had better get the hell out of Atlanta. Maybe that's what Donald was all about, because she knew without question that she did not love him, and yet she gave him love. And in February he threw away the cane, said the streets weren't as slippery, but she knew. She would watch him combing his hair in the morning, whistling as he studied his own face in the mirror over the sink, and she knew. And she would nod silently, a small smile on her mouth, and think of Miss Benson, and think she should write to her and tell her, thank her, say something to her. But she never did. It would have been too difficult to explain, the way it was impossible to explain later on. Oh not Donald, you could always explain the lovers of your past, especially if they were not really lovers. Though even then, there'd been a scene, my young James Driscoll laying down the law, you will not do this, you will not do that, yes my darling, yes my darling, yes, I love you.
"… that the work is unworthy of piracy, that's all."
"How do you know it is?"
"What are you talking about, Jimmy?"
"Let's suppose for the moment that I did steal his play, okay?"
"I would rather not suppose that."
"It's entirely possible."
"It is not possible," Jonah said firmly.
"I could have seen it in 1947 when they gave out those free tickets to Pratt."
"I don't believe they gave any free tickets to Pratt."
"Constantine testified to it under oath."
"Better men than Constantine have lied under oath."
He's lying now, Ebie thought. He doesn't believe a word of this, he's teasing you, Jonah, playing a game and enjoying every minute of it, the way he enjoyed that first afternoon in Bertie's on DeKalb Avenue, teasing the little Southern girl who had just cut her hair, the way he teased the world with his book, I know what that book is about, James Driscoll.
"Even if I didn't see it at any of those preview performances, why couldn't I have caught it on Broadway? I was eighteen years old in '47, why couldn't I have seen the play? I started going to the theater when I was twelve, you know, used to go every Saturday with my father. Isn't it plausible that a play about the Army might have appealed to me?"
"Not a flop play."
"Maybe I've got a mind of my own, Jonah."
"I'm sure you have."
"Maybe I wanted to form my own opinion, despite what the critics had to say."
"That isn't the Way it works, and you know it."
"Or maybe I read the reviews and decided there was the kernel of something good there. Maybe I went to the theater with a notebook, intent on stealing whatever—"
"And then waited fifteen years to write your book, is that it? You're really an arch-criminal who entered Pratt Institute under the guise of studying art, though really wanting to be a writer all along. You searched the daily reviews to see what you could steal, and your imagination was captured by what you read about Catchpole. So you went there to copy it, realizing you would have to wait fifteen years before you could use the material. Is that it?"
"It's a possibility."
"Dris," Ebie said, "I wish you wouldn't talk this way. Even in jest."
"Ebie thinks I did steal it, you see," Driscoll said, and grinned.
"I think nothing of the sort."
"It's what she thinks, Jonah."
"Not at all."
"Tell the truth, Ebie. You think I stole that play, don't you?"
"You know I don't."
"Come on, Edna Belle, 'fess up."
"Stop it, Dris."
My name is Jimmy Driscoll, he had said. The tables in Bertie's were long and scarred, and she could remember looking away from him, down at the table top, initials in hearts, a group of engineering students singing at the other end of the room, November light filtering through the stained glass behind the tables, the room smelling of beer and steam heat, wet garments hanging on wooden pegs, his eyes were blue, she dared to look up into them. He teased her about her short hair and about her age. He imitated her Southern drawl, and then bought her a second glass of beer, the last of the big spenders, he said, and asked her out for Saturday night. She promptly refused.
You'll be sorry, he said. I'm going to be a famous artist.
Yes, I'm sure.
Come out with me.
No.
"There are good things in that play," Driscoll said. "It's not a good play — but there are things worth stealing in it."
"I wouldn't advise you to say that on the witness stand," Jonah said.
"Why not? I'll be swearing to tell the truth, won't I?"
"Yes, but…"
"You wouldn't want me to lie under oath, would you? Even though better men than Constantine have lied under oath?"
"I'm not enjoying this, Jimmy," Jonah said.
"That's too bad," Driscoll answered. "What am I supposed to do, pretend Constantine is an ogre? Well, I can't. I feel closer to him than I do to you or anyone else in that courtroom. He made something with his hands, he pulled it out of his head and his heart, that play of his, that terrible play, oh yes, unanimously panned and reviled — well, that play is Arthur Constantine, and not just words for lawyers to argue over and judges to decide about. He thinks he was wronged, Jonah, first by all the critics who sat in exalted superiority the way McIntyre is sitting, completely on the outside, the external critics who could find nothing good to say about his ugly'little child. And next by me, who took his miserable bastard and combed its hair and shined its shoes and made a million dollars on it. That's what he thinks and believes, Jonah, and I can understand him better than I can this cold contest between professional assassins, or this almighty judge who may murder him yet another time. I weep for him, Jonah. Don't try to shame him again."
"Do you want to lose this case?" Jonah asked flatly.
"It might matter more to Constantine than to me," Driscoll said.
"Why?"
"Because I'll never write another book as long as I live."