Anna Solomon - Leaving Lucy Pear

Dear Bea, I’m so sorry

Dear Bea, I’m not sure exactly what I’m writing to say

Dear Bea, I’m not even sure that this will upset you, what I have to say, which makes it all the more confusing — to know how to say it, or even to know why I should bother saying it

Albert was hungry. This was another problem; he hadn’t left the house all week and was very, very hungry. He rubbed his calf. He traced the ridges the table leg had left in his skin. He was asking for a divorce, he supposed. But the word was so dramatic, and final; it seemed to belong to another marriage than theirs. He could imagine Bea reading it and bursting into laughter.

He released his calf, winced, took up another piece of stationery, made for Bea’s confirmation ceremony fourteen years ago. Lillian had chosen the shade of pink, and the embossed initials: BTH. Beatrice Theodosia Haven, Theodosia for Feigel, who had been Lillian’s or Henry’s grandmother, Albert couldn’t remember which. He also couldn’t remember how they’d gotten Theodosia out of Feigel (they had drawn the T from the Hebrew equivalent of Feigel, Tsipporah) but the distance between the words represented for him part of the problem. Bea was so attached, on the one hand, and so utterly unattached, on the other.

Even when they met, at Congregation Adath Israel’s Purim Ball, where Albert played one of Vashti’s handmaidens with such gusto and so much chest hair that he found himself attacked afterward by a herd of young women, Bea was not among them. It wasn’t until the party was winding down and Albert, having extracted himself, was walking toward the men’s room, that he felt a hand on his elbow and found himself being steered toward an out-of-the-way window by Beatrice Haven, who wasn’t known to bat her eyelashes at a man, let alone touch him. She started to introduce herself, but Albert smiled and said, “I know who you are. No Booze Beatrice. I’m Albert Cohn, who likes to drink.”

Bea did not blink. “But do you like women, Mr. Cohn?”

He unhooked himself from her arm. “Excuse me?”

“Do you prefer us?”

“That depends on the context.”

“In the context of marriage, Mr. Cohn.”

“I don’t prefer to be married.”

“And what if the woman, hypothetically, didn’t want to be married either?”

Albert, looking around the room, lowered his voice. “And why wouldn’t this hypothetical woman want to be married?”

“Let’s say she was strange. Or lonely.”

“If she were lonely, wouldn’t she want to marry?”

“That would depend on the nature of her loneliness.”

“I see.” Albert nodded, trying to look sober, but he’d drunk a lot of whiskey and the conversation was so far from anything he’d ever participated in. A kind of giddiness swept through him.

“Forget loneliness,” Bea said. “Let’s say she’d simply had enough of men.”

“She’s a man hater.”

“If we must call her that.”

“She hates men. Except for a man like me.”

Bea didn’t answer.

“But her mother wants her to marry,” he said. “Her mother has wanted her to marry since she could walk.”

“Her mother must be like his mother,” she said.

Albert took off his wig. He’d forgotten he had it on. “Is this a proposal?”

“I’ve never known a woman to propose.”

“And I’ve never heard of a woman who wanted to marry a fairy. Not knowingly, anyway.”

“Well, then.” Bea flushed. “Consider me down on one knee.”

He scratched behind one ear, then the other. The wig had made him itchy, and the scratching was straightforward and satisfying. He kept at it, needing more as he went. “I barely know you.”

“You know of me.”

“I know you spend a great deal of time trying to rid the world of my second-favorite vice.”

“That’s only politics.”

“If that’s only politics, you’re quite an actress.”

He watched her watching him, her eyes taking in his tutu and his woman’s shoes.

Nothing more had been said that night. Albert took her hand as if he’d done it a hundred times before, and turned them to face the room.

Dear Bea,

Out the window, just visible through the budding tree that flanked the opposite townhouse, was Lillian and Henry’s house one block over on Chestnut Street, their windows turning purple as they caught the sun. Albert guessed Henry would hate him, and Lillian would act as if she hated him, too, while secretly she would soften toward him, relieved. Albert didn’t think he should care what his in-laws thought, and yet he did, which was yet another problem, not what they thought but his caring, or it was emblematic of his largest problem, which was, he supposed, if he was going to be honest — he took out a fresh piece of paper — what he really wanted to tell Bea.

There was a secret court

Albert’s senior year at Harvard, there had been a secret court. It was convened after the suicide of a student named Cyril Wilcox, who had been involved — according to his brother — in homosexual activities. (Cyril’s brother informed Harvard’s acting dean of this only after he’d gone and beat up Cyril’s lover.) Thus the court, consisting of the dean, a professor of hygiene, and several others, began interviewing reputedly homosexual students about their practices of masturbation, habits of cross-dressing, uses of slang, parties attended and with whom, etc. After thirty such interviews, the court reported its findings to President Abbott Lawrence Lowell and, based on the evidence, expelled eight students, one of whom, Eugene Cummings, killed himself in Stillman Infirmary a few days later.

I was not called in

It could be said — it would be said — that no one knew what had gone on. But the court knew. President Lowell (the same man Governor Fuller had just appointed to sit on the Sacco and Vanzetti commission) knew. And the boys knew: the ones who were refused positive references by Harvard and therefore rejected by other colleges; the ones who had perjured themselves before the court and denied all kissing, mutual masturbation, fondling, and dancing; and the ones like Albert, who had stayed so far away, kept his head so low, and pretended so earnestly to himself that he was nothing like Wilcox or Cummings that he never got called in.

I watched

A wretchedness had flattened Albert when he heard about Cummings, a spine-wracking fever had forced him to bed for a day. But then he’d stood up, moved on, watched his back, gotten his job at the bank, accepted and framed and hung his indecipherable diploma, married Bea a year later, and so on and so forth. Then last year he’d run into one of the boys who’d been expelled, Tederick Whitlock III, onetime champion sailor and heir, tending bar at the Green Lamp (an underground coupling of the establishments formerly known as the Lighted Lamp and Green Shutters). Albert didn’t recognize Teddy at first, changed as he was, fluid and toothy where he’d been stiff and grim, his shirt open to his bony, aristocratic chest. Older. But Teddy recognized Albert. He took Albert’s money, rose on his toes to lean across the bar, and said, You fuck.

They’d taken up together. Teddy beat on Albert, screwed him, bit him, called him names, and Albert, so much bigger than Teddy, took it as his punishment. For months this went on and Albert thought it would continue going on, a mutual convenience. But then Teddy had questions. He wanted to talk. He wanted Albert to say why he’d lied and when Albert said he hadn’t lied, Teddy said of course he had, and when Albert said he’d had to, Teddy refused to hit him — he said calmly, We all had to. Albert said Teddy’s breeding afforded him leniency in the world, that he didn’t know what it was to be a Jew, and Teddy reminded him that he’d been disowned. He hadn’t seen his siblings in years. Albert said, At least you’re free, and Teddy laughed a quiet, mean laugh and Albert realized he’d fallen in love with Teddy, which had never happened to him before in such an appalling, unfixable way. But Teddy was done. Teddy said he’d met a boy, and I really mean a boy, and then he said it wasn’t the boy at all, actually, it was Albert he didn’t want any more to do with because Albert was despicable and Albert shouldn’t go to the Green Lamp anymore either, because that was Teddy’s livelihood. Albert worked at First National and Teddy worked at the Green Lamp, because I’m so fucking free, and Albert should at least respect that.