Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

“Who’s Spencer Tracy?” Lissie asked.

“—on the screen from Jekyll to Hyde or vice versa. Like that, a gradual metamorphosis, an evolution. Here’s the crudest example of this particular facial type, and here it is getting a little more refined, and here it is getting closer to perfection and here’s perfection itself, this is what we in this day and age consider perfection.”

Connie’s father, surprising Jamie (he was, after all, a retired businessman), said it sounded somewhat like the action photographs Muybridge had taken as a guide for artists, the frame-by-frame pictures of a man running or leaping or climbing or whatever. Jamie said that wasn’t the idea at all, and used the color-spectrum concept as a metaphor once again, the subtle gradation from white to red, if they could visualize that, with each of the intervening shades of pink in between.

“The idea sucks, Dad,” Lissie said, and everyone at the table laughed, except Connie’s mother, who thought Lissie had said something dirty. Sparky was quiet all through dinner. He might just as well have not been there. Early the next morning, he caught a train into the city, “to handle some business in Harlem.” He did not specify what the business was. They all took a long walk by the river, and when they got back to the house Jamie laid a fire and mixed some Bloody Marys. The fire was still crackling in the living room when they sat down to lunch. The day was crisp and clear. Slanting rays of pale March sunlight streamed through the dining room windows, the kind of light Jamie loved for black-and-white shooting. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. There was no indication of what was about to happen. It simply happened, all at once, startling all of them.

Whenever Connie’s mother or father were visiting, Jamie invariably drank too much, the better to dull their numbing effect on him. He had, as usual, drunk one too many Bloody Marys before lunch, and there was a glazed look on his face even before they sat down at the table together. But Lissie’s unspeakable behavior should have penetrated even the thickest of alcoholic hazes. From time to time during the unexpected outburst, as Connie was drawn more deeply into the argument, Peter Harding virtually forgotten in the heat of the daughter-mother exchange, Connie found herself turning to Jamie for support, her eyes flicking to his face, her daughter’s sharp words yanking her back again, Jamie giving nothing. Not support, not admonition, not even seeming notice of anything that was happening there in the harsh wintry sunlight. Silence. Only silence in the midst of a storm as frightening as it was sudden:

PETER: Where’d your young man go, Lissie?

LISSIE: Into the city, Grandpa.

PETER: Ah, the city.

LISSIE: Could you please pass the stringbeans, Mom?

PETER: Is he enjoying his visit with us?

LISSIE: Yep.

PETER: I can imagine.

LISSIE: What does that mean?

PETER: What?

LISSIE: That you can imagine he’s enjoying his visit with us?

PETER: Well, isn’t he?

LISSIE: Of course he is.

CONNIE: Lissie, I don’t like the tone of your voice.

LISSIE: Really? Well, I don’t like the tone of Grandpa’s voice.

PETER: Me? What did I say?

LISSIE: Implying that because Sparky’s black, he should be tickled to death we’re offering him our—

CONNIE: Lissie, that’s your grandfather you’re—

LISSIE: So what? He’s talking like a goddamn fool!

CONNIE: Lissie!

LISSIE: Well, he is!

CONNIE: Lissie, shut up!

LISSIE: Okay.

CONNIE: I said shut up.

LISSIE: And I said okay.

PETER: What did she think? That because her young man’s black...?

CONNIE: Let it go, Pop.

PETER: No, what did she mean? Is she saying I’m...?

CONNIE: Pop, please let it—

LISSIE: He knows damn well what I thought.

PETER: And what’s that, Melissa?

LISSIE: Fuck it!

CONNIE: Lissie!

PETER: That’s all right. I’ve heard the word before.

LISSIE: I’m just sick and tired of this family thinking I’m some kind of six -year-old who doesn’t know what she wants or needs. I’m just sick and tired of it. And of all the innu end oes about Sparky because he’s black.

PETER: Is he black? I hadn’t noticed.

LISSIE: Very funny, Grandpa.

PETER: There’s a black lady in our building — isn’t there, Stephanie? — who’d enjoy knowing how I...

LISSIE: Some of my best friends...

CONNIE: Oh, for God’s sake, Lissie, get off that tired old line!

LISSIE: Okay, tell me something.

CONNIE: Finish your—

LISSIE: No, tell me. Are you glad, or are you not glad that Sparky isn’t here today?

CONNIE: Me? Are you asking me?

LISSIE: I’m asking all of you.

CONNIE: I’m glad he’s not here, all right?

LISSIE: Ah! Why?

CONNIE: I don’t like him.

LISSIE: Ah! Why don’t you like him?

CONNIE: Because he accepts our hospitality without a word of thanks, which may be etiquette down home in Shiloam, Georgia...

LISSIE: His mother’s from Shiloam. Sparky was born in Boston. And that last remark was racist , in case you don’t know it.

CONNIE: Rudeness is rudeness in any color.

LISSIE: You just can’t forget he’s black, can you?

CONNIE: Can you? You’re the one who keeps—

LISSIE: Oh, fuck this! Just fuck it! I don’t have to sit here and listen to this shit, I really don’t. I’m going upstairs to pack, fuck it.

PETER: What did I say, Connie?

CONNIE: Go talk to her, Jamie.

JAMIE: What?

CONNIE: Go upstairs and talk to her, goddammit!

She was in her room on the top floor of the house, hurling clothes into a suitcase when he climbed the stairs. She looked up angrily, and said, “Doesn’t anybody knock in this house?”

“I’m sorry, the door was open, I thought...”

“You’re still supposed to knock.”

“Sorry,” he said, and sat on the edge of one of the twin beds. “Are you really leaving?”

“I am.”

“What about Sparky? He said he’d be back...”

“I’ve already called him. He’s meeting me in Boston.”

“I really don’t think there’s any need to—”

“Well, I think there is.”

“Lissie, you surely can’t believe that whatever Mom and I feel about Sparky has anything to do with the color of his skin.”

“That’s just what I believe.”

“And in any case, you had no right talking to your grandfather that way.”

“Didn’t I? When he was insinuating that Sparky’s a watermelon-eating nigger who should be thrilled to be in white massa’s house? Come on, Dad.”

“He wasn’t suggesting anything of the sort. In fact, I think he likes Sparky.”

“How about you? Do you like Sparky?”

Jamie hesitated. “No,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because he seems distant and remote, and I can’t shake the feeling that inside he’s sneering at us. If you think that’s racist, I’m sorry. I do happen to work with a great many blacks, Lissie, and no one has ever accused me of racist attitudes. And if you knew how many black children Mom patiently helps and teaches...”

“The white man’s burden, right?”

“Lissie, you’re being particularly dense. I’m trying to say that neither Mom nor I — and certainly not your grandfather, who innocently stepped into a buzz saw — was trying to put down your friend Sparky.”

“It seemed that way to me.”