Читать книгу Nobody's Family is Going to Change - Louise Fitzhugh - Страница 8

Humming “Me and My Shadow,” Willie Sheridan did a shuffle-ball-change and two flaps as he squeezed out the toothpaste, then did a soft shoe and brushed his teeth simultaneously. His older sister, Emma, started her morning complaints outside the bathroom door. He paid no attention to her, finished his teeth, changed his humming to “Tea for Two” in cut time as he washed his face, then slowed as he combed his hair. Finishing that, he put the comb back, turned, did a hop-shuffle step, saw himself in the mirror, and picked up the rhythm.

“Man, if Bill Robinson was handsomer, he’da looked just like me.” He gave himself a big smile and did two pullbacks and a riff.

Emma’s voice came loud and clear through the door. “Get your habeas corpus out of the bathroom!”

The door opened and Willie did a buck-and-wing past her through the door.

“Faggot,” said Emma right in his ear as he went by.

“I’ll punch you right in the hoo-hoo,” called Willie over his shoulder as, never missing a beat, he disappeared into his room.

Emma’s eyes glowed with hatred as she looked down the hall of the East End apartment after her seven-year-old brother. “Revolting,” she muttered to emptiness. She stomped into the bathroom, slammed the door, and gave the same look of hatred to her own reflection in the mirror. She took in, with no surprise, the four brown punching bags that made up her arms and legs, the well-rounded mound of stomach under her striped pajamas, the Afro hair which, for some reason, did not stand up like everyone else’s but grew sideways, reminding her of a bird she had seen in the Bronx Zoo.

“Monster,” she whispered to herself. “Disgusting. You are truly and completely disgusting.” She turned herself sideways to get a better view of her stomach, then advanced to the mirror until her nose touched. Widening her eyes, she tried to take in her own reality. It didn’t help. The fat brown girl with funny hair had the audacity to smile at her. “But you’re smart. You’re smarter than all of them.” Before the idiot in the mirror had a chance to retort, Emma thumped away to the sink. “You’ll show them all,” she muttered through the toothbrush. Brushing as though she had six cars to wash before noon, she began her day.

Willie missed a step as the bathroom door slammed behind him. He didn’t have to see his sister’s face to know what it looked like behind the door. He and his father called her Piggy. He liked her, but he was frightened to death of her. She was smart. When she looked over her glasses at him, she could turn him to jelly.

Man, I better hurry, he thought, looking at the clock. I’ve only got five minutes to practice before Dipsey gets here. One lesson a week. How can I make it on one lesson a week?

He rooted around in the bottom of his closet until he found his tap shoes, jammed them on, threw back the small rug, closed the closet door so he could see himself, and started to work.

He started off real nice and easy with a slow time step, humming “Way down upon the Swanee River,” real easy, cool, slow. He speeded up then, did three breaks, and was doing his first buck-and-wing when the door opened quietly.

His mother’s face stopped him in his tracks.

“Willie,” she said softly, “your father was up until three working on a brief. He goes to court today. You’ll wake him up”.

“But, Mom, Dipsey’s coming and I got to—”

“You can’t have a lesson this morning. It’s too noisy. I know how much you care . . .”

Willie looked at her in horror.

“. . . but it just makes too much noise.” Mrs. Sheridan stiffened against what she knew was coming.

“Mom! Dipsey can only come this one time and if we can’t do it now I don’t have a lesson this week!”

“I know, son, it’s too bad, but—” The doorbell rang. Willie ran as fast as he could to the front door. Mrs. Sheridan followed him. She closed the door to the bedroom hall behind her as Willie let his uncle in.

“Ta, da, ta, da, da, da!” said Dipsey and did a big break at the door. “Here’s your old dancing master!” He picked up Willie and spun him around in a hug.

“Hush!” said Mrs. Sheridan.

Dipsey said, “Hey, man, how’s the old one-two?” before he heard her. “Hi, Ginny!” Then, more softly, he said, “What’s the matter, Sis?”

“William is sleeping. He worked late and he goes to court at ten. I’m afraid we can’t have any noise this morning.”

Two pairs of big brown eyes gave her the same look. “Oh. Can he miss his first period at school? I could wait, we could have a lesson and then he could go on to school.”

“There’s no one to take him there if he misses the bus.”

“Oh, I could drop him off in a cab. How about it, Sis?”

“I think,” she said slowly, “that we had better have a talk.”

“Aw, Mom.”

“Uh, oh, this don’t sound too good, Willie. Come on, let’s go on and get this over with so we can settle down and have ourselves some fun.” He had his arm around Willie and he pulled him over to the couch.

Willie laughed. They both sat down and looked at Mrs. Sheridan.

“Don’t look at me that way, Dipsey, because you know full well what I’m going to say.”

“Uh-huh. Big William don’t like the idea of Little Willie here going on the big bad stage.”

“Dipsey . . .”

“And furthermore, he don’t like it at all that Little Willie even thinking about being a dancer, because being a dancer is something that Big William just don’t cotton up to. Fact, he just don’t see no point in it nohow, at all, any which way!”

“Dipsey. Try to understand what you’d feel like if you had a son.”

“If I had a son that could dance like Willie here, that boy would have been on the road before his mama got him out of diapers. Because this boy’s got it, Ginny, that’s what you and William never seem to get. I’m not just talking about any boy. He’s really got it, and if that big bull—”

“Dipsey!”

“—bullheaded husband of yours could just see that. Scared you, didn’t I?” Dipsey laughed his good laugh.

Willie couldn’t believe his ears. He knew how his mother and father felt and he knew how Dipsey felt, but he had never heard it all out in the open like this.

“He’s not bullheaded!” Mrs. Sheridan was getting angry. “You’re making too much of this . . . this talent Willie has. It might occur to you that it’s looking at you that makes William not want his son to grow up to be a dancer.”

“What’s the matter with me?” Dipsey stared at her openmouthed. He turned to Willie. “You see anything the matter with me?”

Willie laughed, but he was getting nervous. What was the matter with dancing? He had the feeling that if he stuck with Dipsey, Dipsey would win out over everybody—but maybe he shouldn’t be wanting to win this fight. Maybe his father knew something that he didn’t, something even Dipsey didn’t know.

Dipsey got up and strutted around the room. “He couldn’t possibly find anything wrong with me!” He did such a funny little step that even Mrs. Sheridan laughed delightedly in spite of herself. He ended up right in front of her, stopped suddenly, and pointed a long skinny brown finger right at her nose. “You know and I know and even Little Willie knows that William thinks Dancing Is Sissy!”

“Well, I’m not sure that’s the—”

“Don’t you not-sure me this and not-sure me that. You know like you know my name, and I know too, what’s bothering old William. Now I ask you . . .” He hunched his shoulders and towered over Mrs. Sheridan. “Am I sissy? Do I really look to you like I’m swishing round here?”

Willie laughed. Mrs. Sheridan began plaintively, “Dipsey . . .”

“On the other hand,” said Dipsey in a high, fluting voice as he pirouetted across the room, one hand on his hip, and did a high chorus walk back toward them. “Now some of those gypsies in the chorus, ooooh, Mary.”

Mrs. Sheridan stopped herself from laughing and frowned severely at Willie, who was holding his belly and laughing uncontrollably. “That’s just the kind of oversophisticated thing that William is talking about that you want to go and expose him to. Look at him. He doesn’t even know what he’s laughing at.” She pointed to Willie, who was still writhing around, giggling.

“He knows, oh mama, he knows. He can’t be in school two days in New York City and not know that.” Dipsey flopped down on the couch, giving Willie a shove on the head. “Ginny, what’s happening to you? You and me used to laugh at William and how stuffy he was. Now you getting the same way.”

“Dipsey, I’m warning you . . .”

“Okay, okay, but let’s look at this thing sensibly. What is a man? A man does what he wants to do, and if he does it well, ain’t nobody going to say he ain’t a man. And if what a man wants to do is dance, then he better dance better than anybody. I know, baby, I know because I’ve lived it.”

“You’ve lived it. That’s just my point. It’s your life, not necessarily Willie’s. And he isn’t a man. Really, you’re being melodramatic and absurd. He’s seven years old.”

“And how old was I? You remember? You were there cleaning my ears. How old was I?”

“Three, but Daddy was in show business. Momma and Daddy had an act. It was different! And besides, that’s your life. You think you’ve had a particularly good life? Now, be honest!”

“Honey. It don’t matter a bit what you say. I’m just trying to save you a lot of grief. When somebody has got what Willie here has got, they know just where they’re going and there’s just no point in trying to stop them.” He looked at Willie, who grinned at him. “Where you going, Willie?” he asked.

“Broadway,” said Willie, grinning.

“Oh, this is ridiculous,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “He’s a child. His mind is being formed this very minute. How can you fill him up with dreams that will hurt when they don’t happen?”

“Have you taken a look lately at all those people walking the streets that don’t have any dreams? It’s better to have a busted one than none at all, and his isn’t going to get busted. He’s going to make it. Why can’t you understand that? Let me have him just this one summer—”

“He doesn’t know what he wants, Dipsey. His father wants him to be a lawyer just as much as you want him to be a dancer, and I want him to be happy.”

“One summer, just one summer in stock, and after that we’ll talk again.”

“You know and I know that what his father is worried about has some validity, that if he spends one summer in stock he may never be the same again. Things happen. Think, Dipsey, think!”

Dipsey stood up. He appeared to be leaving. “You know, Sis,” he said slowly. “I just got me an idea. I think old William and maybe you are scared to death that this boy here is going to have more fun in life than you’re having.”

Emma was standing and looking into the refrigerator when her mother, infuriated by Dipsey’s last statement, came into the kitchen.

Emma jumped as though she’d been caught nude.

Mrs. Sheridan looked at the remains of what Emma had already eaten. She looked at her daughter in despair.

“Darling, that’s enough for breakfast. You don’t want to grow up to be a fat woman. If you keep on like this, it’s only going to be much harder when you get older. Why do you do this?”

Emma didn’t say anything. Her mother’s face was worried, but her eyes were loving. She’s looking at me, Emma thought, like I’m a word that doesn’t fit the crossword puzzle.

“My teeth were itching,” said Emma unexpectedly.

“Darling.” Mrs. Sheridan put out her hand to touch Emma’s head.

“Ick. Mush,” said Emma, and thumped heavily back to her room.

That afternoon Willie did a fast shuffle down the aisle of the school bus, then a big leap out the door. The other children laughed and waved at him. He did a time step for them until the bus roared away.

He looked up Eightieth Street. The garbage truck was standing at the corner. Charlie, the big fat guy, waved at him and did a funny little tap. Willie did a little tap back like an answer. Nick, the skinny one, yelled, “Hey! Willie!”

Willie danced over to them, trying to wave his briefcase like a straw hat. Charlie emptied a can into the churning back of the truck, dropped it with a clatter, and started to dance like crazy, flopping around and twirling his arms like big pinwheels.

Willie kept up a fast time step, dropped his briefcase, and clapped his hands, humming “Way down upon the Swanee River.” Nick slapped down another can, ran over to Charlie, and they did an old vaudeville exit like two hoofers with canes. They were all three shouting the song, screaming and laughing.

Nick came running back from around the truck where they’d disappeared, and started shuffling like a mad thing. “That’s a shag, baby, ever seen the shag?” He panted, he was going so hard.

The truck door slammed and the driver came bowling around the side. It wasn’t Frank, the regular driver. It was another man, who didn’t look too friendly. Nick stopped abruptly and grabbed a full can from against the building.

“What the hell is this, the Ted Mack hour? You guys pick up the garbage as fast as you dance, we get New York cleaned up in a week.” He looked angry. Charlie winked at Willie behind the driver’s back. Willie picked up his briefcase.

“Who are you?” asked the driver, hands on hips, looking down from six feet.

Nick was next to him suddenly, and Charlie ran over. Nick put his hand on Willie’s head. “This my boy Willie. He’s going to Broadway!”

“No kidding? This your son?” The driver was smiling now.

Nick laughed. “No. I sure do wish my son could dance like that.”

Willie felt an astounding sensation. He wanted to leap, as high as he could, as high as the building. He couldn’t even look at Nick.

“All right, come on, guys, let’s get it moving.” The driver was bored now. He turned his back and started toward his cab.

“Don’t worry about him,” said Charlie. He jumped up on the back of the truck, his balloon body moving so fast it was surprising.

Nick threw the last can against the building with a satisfactory clamor. “Give ’em hell, Willie!” he yelled as he jumped up beside Charlie. The truck started to move away. Willie stood watching.

“Give my regards to Broadway,” Nick sang above the roar of the truck. Charlie joined: “Remember me to Herald Square . . .” Together: “Tell all the gang at Forty-second Street. . .” They were turning. Now Willie couldn’t see the truck. “. . . That . . . I . . . will . . . soon . . . be . . . there,” came to him ghost-like from around the corner. Silence was there. Willie felt odd. He walked toward his apartment building.

“Hi zer, Villie,” said the doorman, who was of an undetermined Baltic origin. He bore a strong resemblance to Dracula, and his doorman’s cape didn’t help.

Willie barely heard him. Concentrating, he walked in, smiled absently at the doorman, pushed the elevator button, and walked through the opening doors.

“Ess,” said the doorman behind him, breathing through his teeth.

Willie danced wildly, impatiently, by himself in the elevator as it was going up. He felt his feet were making angry sounds.

Old Mrs. Goldstein was waiting for the elevator as he danced out. Tapping in place, he held the door for her. “A regular Fred Astaire,” she muttered as she went past him slowly.

The door closed. Willie practiced dancing up the wall as he’d seen Donald O’Connor do in an old movie. It was hard. He went to his own door, fished around for his key, and let himself in. “I’m home!” he yelled.

“Ter-rif-ic,” he heard Emma say from her room in a deep, sour voice. She slammed her door.

He went into the kitchen, started looking for cookies. “Well, if it isn’t Bill Robinson.” It was Martha, the maid. She was white and wildly freckled, but Willie liked her. Sometimes she had a sharp tongue that could make him feel like a worm, but she was there to come home to every day, and friendly most of the time.

She gave him a toothy grin. Her teeth stuck out. He jammed a cookie in his mouth and started tapping down the hall to his room. “Here, now, get this book satchel out of my kitchen.”

He danced back and got it.

“Can’t you even say hello?”

He stopped. He usually said hello. I am going to do something, he thought. I don’t know what it is that I am going to do, but I am going to do something and I am going to do it soon.

“Hello.” He smiled, then danced out. “Helloooo,” he wailed like a ghost as he ran down the hall.

“Between you tappy-tapping and your sister the district attorney, a person could go starkers around here,” Martha called after him. Martha was always talking to herself. Martha talked all the time, whether there was anybody in the kitchen or not. He closed the door on her voice.

He flung down his briefcase and ate his cookies to a slow soft shoe in front of the mirror. “If Nick were my father” raced through his head and was stopped like a car at a light. A vision of summer stock rose in his mind, as firm and as sweet as the cookies, pictures of him and Dipsey having dinner at four o’clock because they had to go on at eight and it didn’t do to be too full when you danced, pictures of backstage, pictures of footlights blinding and—suddenly he saw his father sitting in the audience, ashamed of him.

Emma trudged home heavily, her books seeming to weigh more than the day before. She was having a running argument with herself about the consumption of a cream horn, an additional, unnecessary cream horn, at lunch that day. The argument went through her head like this:

THE STATE OF NEW YORK AGAINST EMANCIPATION SHERIDAN

DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Your name is Emancipation Sheridan, otherwise known to your friends and family as Emma Sheridan?

EMMA: Yes.

D.A.: Yes, sir.

EMMA: Yes, sir.

D.A.: Now, Emma, tell the jury what you had for lunch today.

EMMA: Hot dogs and sauerkraut.

D.A. (snidely): And what else, Emma?

EMMA: Chocolate milk.

D.A. (insinuating): And?

EMMA (looking down and whispering): A roll.

D.A.: Now, Emma, you’re evading the question. You realize that you’re under oath. Are you going to swear under oath to the honest, upstanding ladies and gentlemen of the jury that that’s all you had for lunch?

EMMA (whispering even lower): A cream horn.

D.A.: What? Speak up. We can’t hear you.

EMMA (a bit louder): A cream horn.

D.A. (greatly irritated): Your honor, will you please direct this witness to answer my questions loudly and clearly so that the court and the jury can understand her?

JUDGE: Miss Sheridan, will you please try to speak up?

EMMA: Yes, sir.

JUDGE: What?

EMMA: Yes, sir.

D.A. (swaggering around): Now, Miss Sheridan, will you please tell the jury what else you ate for lunch.

EMMA: A cream horn.

D.A. (slyly): Do you want to leave it at that?

EMMA (yelling): Oh, all right, two cream horns.

Emma almost walked into a parking meter. She stopped herself just in time and trudged along, back in the real world now. Oh, the shame of it. Two cream horns.

Still, when she finally passed her bar exam and she finally had a case and she was cross-examining the school dietitian, it would go like this:

EMMA (prominent young New York trial lawyer): Did you or did you not put out a tray of forty cream horns—and don’t say there weren’t forty, because there were, because I counted them—did you or did you not put that tray out there to tempt and lead astray and in particular to ravage the diet of one Emma Sheridan?

DIETITIAN (meekly): I did.

EMMA: If it please the court, this witness refuses to speak up and I have failed in all my efforts to get her to speak louder.

JUDGE: We will have no more of that. Dietitian of the Gregory School, you will speak up.

Emma gave a smile of satisfaction. She watched the dietitian cringe and wiggle around for a minute, then own up to her crime. Her mother’s voice broke through her dream: Just because there were forty, that didn’t mean that you had to eat forty, Emma. It didn’t mean that you even had to eat one.

The shame of it. It was nobody’s fault but her own that she ate like a horse and looked like a pig, so much so that everybody called her Piggy. At first she hadn’t minded. There was a friendly sound to the name. As she got fatter and fatter, however, she realized that there wasn’t anything friendly about it. It was merely a descriptive term for that most shameful of all things, a FATGIRL.

Emma gave a little shudder. Rounding the corner, she saw Willie up the block dancing around the garbage men.

How my father ever thinks he can make a lawyer out of that dancing faggot, I can’t imagine. Here I am, with one of the best legal minds in the state . . . She drifted toward another courtroom scene but was stopped by her rage as she stood like a lump watching Willie shuffle around with the garbage men.

As she watched, Emma was remembering the conversation with her father that had taken place the night before. Mr. Sheridan had been sitting in the living room reading the paper. Mrs. Sheridan was knitting and watching television, with the sound turned so low that Emma could barely hear it even when she was in the room, standing in front of her father’s chair.

“May I discuss something with you?” she asked abruptly. Emma had a fairly deep voice. It made almost everything she said abrupt.

Mr. Sheridan put down the newspaper. “Certainly, certainly,” he said jovially. He folded the paper, took his feet off the ottoman, and indicated that she sit down. “What have you got there? History? Algebra?” He was smiling.

“Torts.”

He stopped smiling. He didn’t look angry, just paler.

“Have you finished your homework?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“Where did you get this book?”

“From the library.”

“What is your question?”

“In New York State, do you feel there is adequate legal protection of women in cases of rape?”

“Emma!” Mrs. Sheridan put down her knitting.

Mr. Sheridan ignored his wife. “What are you asking?” He looked at Emma.

“The burden of proof seems to be on the woman. She has to have a witness. How many people are going to rape somebody when witnesses are around?”

“That law has been repealed.”

“Oh?”

“Didn’t know that, did you?” Mr. Sheridan looked immensely satisfied. “At any rate, there was a good reason for that law. The accusation of rape is very grave. A man is being accused of a heinous crime. It cannot be done lightly.”

“But he’d have to do it in broad daylight in the middle of the street to get enough witnesses to say—Anyway, rape is very grave.”

“As I said before, that law has been repealed. Any other questions?” His voice was cold.

“Yes. If a woman is raped by an FBI man, does it come under federal law?”

“I don’t believe the question has ever come up. You would have to look up the law on that.”

“Thank you.” Emma had said this politely, had picked up her book and thumped away. She had heard her parents’ short exchange as she went down the hall to her room.

“Why are you so cold with her?” asked Mrs. Sheridan. “Her questions seem reasonable enough.”

“You don’t understand. Her questions are those of a law-school student. I sometimes get the strange idea that she could pass the bar exam right now—”

“But aren’t you proud?” It was one of her mother’s rare interruptions.

“—and she thinks she’d get a better mark than I did.” Her father finished on a note of despair.

Afraid of me, is he, thought Emma, progressing down the street toward her apartment house, having decided that the best thing to do about Willie was ignore him. Anybody who worked that hard for applause ought to be shook up not getting any.

“But if your daughter is bright and will be a fine lawyer someday, I should think that would make you very happy.”

“Women lawyers!” her father had answered with a sneer. “Why couldn’t it have been Willie?”

Emma let her mind sift around the pain this had caused and, like a forty-niner panning for gold, came up with a familiar stab. She let herself give way to the stab for a fleeting second as she walked into the elevator, but with the change of light and the motion of ascension she let this turn, as it always did, into the just as familiar but far more comfortable feeling of determined anger.

As the elevator rose from floor to floor, she felt her resolve mount too. I will show him. I will make it clear to him that he has made a mistake.

I will bring it all out into the open, she said to herself, as the elevator stopped at her floor, and as the door rolled back, I will do it tonight. I will tell him that I want to go to law school and that, if he won’t send me, I will get a scholarship and how will that make him look to his fat friends in the Bar Association?

After the vision of his father looking ashamed, Willie stopped dancing. He collapsed on the bed, chewing thoughtfully. He felt terrible. He felt unfaithful to his father. He didn’t want to be with his father at all. He wanted to be with Dipsey, or Nick, or anybody who liked dancing. He would have gone off, at that moment, with a perfect stranger. If only a perfect stranger would come to the door, would knock, would enter, would say, “You have a job. Come with me. We can use a dancer like you. These people don’t understand. These people are not your kind of people. Come with us,” and take him by the hand and lead him away.

There would never be any perfect stranger at the door. He would never come. Dipsey was the only hope he had, and this morning that hope had been pushed right out the window.

He squirmed around on the bed, put his feet up against the wall. He started tapping a little. His mother hated him to do that. There were little black marks where one time he had gotten carried away and tapped like crazy. He did it softly now. It helped him to think.

He hated school with his whole body. He didn’t see any point in it at all. He was bad at everything.

When he thought about summer stock, everything made sense. He understood everything about that kind of life. You did your best, your very best, and you worked hard, harder than anybody. Dipsey said that theater people worked harder than anybody else. Dipsey said all those people working in offices didn’t know what work was. I’m not afraid of work, he thought. Work was just doing it over and over again until you had it just right. He wanted to work, so it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair when that stupid teacher said that he was just lazy and didn’t want to work. He did want to work. What did she know? Dumb broad. He got madder and madder. His feet tapped faster and faster.

“Cut that out or I’ll come in there and cut your feet off!” Emma’s voice came through the wall.

Jerk. He swung his feet down. Rats. Between his father and Emma, there was no place to go. Only his mother gave him a little smile now and then as though she knew what he was about, and even she this morning, even she had turned out a fink, just working for his father.

He remembered the guy in the hall at school. He’d been running, dancing and running, tapping a little and running from one class to the other, and this guy had minced past him saying “Get you, Mary,” and wig-waggled his ass on by like a dame. Willie lost his temper altogether and tackled the guy, downing him, punching him a good one right in the nose. A teacher had come by and picked them up off the floor. She had threatened to send them to the principal if it happened again.

Thinking about everything, Willie got madder and madder. He never got mad. This wasn’t like him, and he realized that, as he continued, nevertheless, to get madder. He got so mad he stood up. My life is being ruined, he thought furiously, and I can’t do anything about it. I have no control over it whatsoever. I never get mad. I go along and I take everything anybody gives me until I can’t take it any more and that’s the way it is today. I can’t and I won’t. I just won’t. I don’t know what I’m going to do about it, but I know one damned thing and that is that I am going to do something about it.

The rage and the turmoil and the fury began to express itself and he felt his body turn and he felt his body leap. He felt his body do things he didn’t know it could do. He felt a release that was like nothing that had ever happened to his legs before, his arms, even his face; his body turned in a way no body had ever turned. In midair, defying gravity, he turned and soared and jumped and leapt and winged up like a porpoise. He leapt so high his head felt the brush of the ceiling, and even this did not stop the flow, the turning of his body. Faintly, he heard Emma begin to beat on the wall, but it did nothing to his leaping. His body went on and on, inexhaustible, doing everything that he had ever wanted to do and everything that no one had ever been able to do before, and then he was in mid-air, he turned in midair and he was before the window of his room and he soared once again. Gravity almost forgotten, a useless thing, his soul pushed his body until the space before the window no longer had anything to do with the window, but was a space, a space so beautiful, so clear, so completely his that he took it. He conquered it and made it all his own.

Emma heard all the noise next door and beat on the wall a couple of times, which produced, finally, silence. She went back to her work, her research in children’s rights. Emma was drafting a Children’s Charter. It was a Magna Charta, a Bill of Rights, a Constitution, and a Declaration of Independence rolled into one.

Mrs. Sheridan opened the door to Emma’s room. Willie was hanging on to her arm, looking in at Emma as though he were at the zoo.

“Emma?”

“Mmm.”

“Emma, your father and I are going out to dinner. Martha will make supper for you. Emma?”

“Mmm.”

“She don’t hear nothing,” said Willie.

“She doesn’t hear anything,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “That’s right,” said Willie complacently. “Not a thing.”

“Emma?”

“Yes.”

“Emma, look at me when I talk to you.”

A pair of eyes as glazed as doughnuts moved up to rest near her left earlobe.

“We won’t be out late.”

“Have a nice time,” said a voice lost in 1776.

“She don’t hear nothing,” said Willie again as Mrs. Sheridan closed the door to her daughter’s room.

“Anything,” she said absently as she rustled up the hall, the wide, flowing legs of her silk pants suit making a noise that enchanted Willie.

“Beautiful! You look so beautiful!” he said happily, bouncing, skipping, jumping along behind her.

They both admired Mr. Sheridan when he appeared in his tuxedo. “I feel like a panda,” he said gruffly.

“You look beautiful!” said Willie.

“Oh, for . . .” Mr. Sheridan was through the door and in the hall, ringing for the elevator.

“Goodbye, Martha, we won’t be late,” called Mrs. Sheridan. “Goodbye, darling.” She bent and kissed Willie.

“Come on,” said the bear in the hall.

“Bye, Mommy!” yelled Willie. He closed the door behind them and skipped to the kitchen. “Hi!” he said wildly to Martha.

“Did you wash your hands?”

“Nope.”

“Wash.”

“Yep.” Willie ran down the hall, colliding fiercely with Emma as she floated out of her room.

“Were you listening at my door?” She clutched the front of his shirt.

“To what? The pages turning?” Willie squirmed.

“You were, you little rat, I’ll—”

“Emma.” Martha stood at the end of the hall. “Stop that and wash your hands. Go into your parents’ bathroom. I don’t want the two of you at that sink at the same time.”

Emma dropped Willie like dirty laundry and stomped down the hall.

Willie stuck out his tongue at her silently, felt himself all over to see if he was maimed and, finding that he was whole, danced to the bathroom.

At dinner they sat opposite each other, with Martha in between.

“Pass the butter,” said Emma. Martha took it from Willie and passed it to Emma. There was silence after that.

“Pass the butter,” said Willie. Martha took it from Emma and passed it to Willie. More silence.

“Pass the butter,” said Emma.

“What is this?” said Martha.

“What?” They both looked up at her in surprise.

“Are you two aware that I have done nothing but pass the butter back and forth for half an hour?”

Willie giggled.

“Why don’t you seat us next to each other and put the butter in between?” said Emma humorlessly.

“Because you hit me,” said Willie.

“What are you talking about, you little idiot? And what were you doing in your room all afternoon?”

“Practicing leaps.”

“Hah! The nigger Nijinsky!” said Emma ferociously.

“Emma!” Martha was appalled. “Emma, that’s the worst thing I ever heard in my life. Now you apologize, right this minute!”

“It’s better than faggot,” said Willie, eating his peas.

“You will leave the table, Emma, if you don’t apologize,” said Martha.

That did it. Emma had no intention of leaving the table until she finished. “I apologize.”

“Sincerely. I want you to mean it.”

“Oh, little brother, friend of the white man, I meant you no harm. I would not hurt a nap on your nappy head.”

Martha wasn’t quite sure what to make of this, so she let it go.

Willie laughed. “Big Chief Loony Lady Lawyer,” he crowed.

Emma gave him a murderous look, but kept eating steadily.

“You two are too much,” said Martha. “I’m glad my kids don’t carry on the way you do. I’d go right out of my mind if they did. Do you want some of this fresh custard I made or do you want ice cream?”

“Both,” said Emma.

“Neither,” said Willie.

“Now look, you two. You have to lose weight, Emma, and Willie here has to gain. I’m going to give Willie both, and you neither one.”

“I’ll explode,” said Willie helplessly.

Emma regarded Martha with a steady eye. “You can be put in jail, you know, for depriving children of food.”

“You look deprived,” said Martha.

“Ha ha hee hee.” Willie felt hysterical. He hated for people to fight, and particularly Emma. It terrified him. Emma glared at him, then at Martha.

“It’s called maltreatment. You could get maybe five years.”

“Your mother put you on a diet and you’re staying on a diet. You can have one cling peach. Do you want it?”

“Custard,” said Emma, trying to seem casual. Actually, she wanted the custard so much, she was trembling.

“One peach. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it.”

The deal completed, Martha put bowls in front of them and started to clean up the kitchen.

Emma ate the peach without thinking, staring at Willie, who dawdled over his custard. He seemed to eat one bite, then fall into a dream. As she watched the custard slide into his mouth, Emma tasted it mentally.

“What are you looking at?” Willie asked uncomfortably. He knew what she was looking at, but he said it hoping to stop her. He was taking his life in his hands, however, and he knew it.

Emma leaned toward him and whispered, “The ugliest little boy I ever saw in my life.”

Willie wailed one long cry and burst into terrible tears. He pushed back his chair and ran from the room. Martha turned, said, “What—” and ran after him down the hall.

Emma grabbed the custard, ate it, and put back the bowl and spoon. Martha came back into the kitchen. “What did you do to him?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t tell me that.”

“What?”

“Don’t roll those eyes at me. If you’ve finished, get out of my sight. The way you hurt that child is disgusting to me and I don’t like to look at it.”

Emma got up and left the room. She thumped with dignity down the hall. There was no sound at all from Willie’s room. She closed her heart to the silence, preferring to forget the custard and to return to her usual put-upon feeling. She flipped on the television set as she entered her room, picked up the heavy book she had been reading, and went back to her work, plunking herself down in her armchair, which was so torn, rubbed, and washed out that it looked as though it had fleas.

Willie lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, fat tears running slowly down his cheeks. He cried silently, not wanting Emma to hear, not wanting to talk to anybody ever again about anything. The television, which he had left on through dinner because he hated coming back into a silent room, was softly going through its tricks. Horatio Selby, MD, was telling everybody how to live, as usual. Willie watched the complacent white man explain how simple everything was if you just did such and such. He’d never had Emma for a sister—that was clear. He’d never wanted to be a dancer, either.

The thought of this skinny white man as a dancer made Willie laugh. He thought of Dipsey with joy, Dipsey with his neat body moving so good, moving around, just slow and easy. He tried to imagine Dipsey on a stage, but then he had seen a stage only once, when Dipsey had taken him into a theater.

All Willie had seen was a darkened orchestra pit and an enormous empty stage lit by one light, but then he had looked up and his heart had soared with him, up and up, and he had run up onto the stage and looked out into the audience and felt like his pants were falling off. The whole thing did something to him and he couldn’t say what it was, but the question of living with Emma became unimportant. Emma became, in fact, boring. Emma, next to whatever was in that place and the life that went on there and the way it all felt to him, became a heavy old frump, meaningless.

The knock surprised him, and Emma’s face, when he opened the door, even more. He had become caught up in Dr. Selby’s easiness, lulled into dreams of the stage and the life that went with it, a life that meant to him, essentially, a life without Emma.

“I’m sorry.”

“What?” He looked genuinely puzzled, but memory pushed at him. “Oh.” He stared at her. To say the wrong thing at this moment promised a worse horror.

“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” He laughed at her. “I know I’m not ugly.”

A look of fury came over her face, and, too late, he knew he had said the wrong thing. Why could he never say anything right to her? She turned on her heel. He closed the door.

She marched into the bathroom. “Little rat,” she muttered. She sat on the john with a thud. “Little creepo rat. Hates me. Laughs at me. Thinks he’s beautiful. An entire Sidney Poitier.”

She looked across to the mirror on the door, at the vision of herself on the john. “Blech,” she said loudly.

Before she flushed, she examined her productions with earnest horror. “I guess his have ribbons on them,” she said as she flushed enthusiastically. She laughed as she washed her hands. She had a silent laugh. Her shoulders shook, but no noise came out.

She gave herself a particularly murderous look in the mirror. “Burn, baby, burn,” she said ominously. Laughing silently again, she watched herself laugh silently. Suddenly she thought of the ceiling of the bathroom gone, as in a dollhouse, and people looking in on her, in there wagging her head and laughing at herself in the mirror.

“Into the booby hatch, right?” she yelled up to the ceiling. The flat bathroom light looked back at her blankly.

She opened the door, let it crash behind her against the sink, and marched down the hall. There was something to look up, she remembered, something that had to do with the legal rights of, for instance, brothers, little brothers. She could hear Willie in his room, dancing wildly.

When she got to her room, there was a program on television that made her drop everything and watch. Gloria Steinem was interviewing some women prominent in the women’s liberation movement. One of the women was a lawyer.

Wow. The woman said that her father had been a lawyer and that he hadn’t wanted her to be a lawyer and that he had, in fact, taken her to court when she was seven years old for stealing a dime from her mother’s purse. The judge had told her father he was crazy to bring a kid into court like that and ought to have his head examined.

Emma nodded sagely. The woman said that it hadn’t changed the way her father was, even having a judge say something to him hadn’t done a damned thing. Emma nodded again, feeling friendly. She watched Gloria Steinem’s face as she talked and wished that she looked like her. There was one black woman on the panel. She was a producer in the theater. Emma dismissed her, after taking in her clothes, as not as serious as the other people. What the hell was the theater compared to the Law and other important things that got changes made in this world? What was the difference between the theater and singing and dancing on the levee? Fools. Running for Congress, now that meant something. They were talking about male mentality, about it causing wars. Wars? They ought to have a talk with Willie the Flit. He couldn’t even rouse a good battle, never mind a war. Emma thought they were all wrong. The trouble with men was that they were butterfly-headed, not dangerous, just silly; then, suddenly, she thought of her father. She had never thought of her father as a man before. She thought of him rather like one thinks of Boulder Dam. He was something to scale or go over in a barrel.

In thinking of her father, she changed the way she listened. Yes. Was this thing, this male chauvinism they were talking about, what made him treat her that way? Is that why he ignored what she said, squirmed around, and looked embarrassed? Although he looked embarrassed when he looked at Willie, too. But then, who wouldn’t look embarrassed looking at Willie? That was understandable, but what was embarrassing when she, Emma, asked a perfectly reasonable question? Why did their mother seem proud of them both in that ineffectual way, and their father seem to hate them both?

Jealous. They were saying that men were jealous and didn’t want competition. Jealous? Her father jealous of her?

Wouldn’t that be nice!

Wasn’t that the kind of thing he indicated last night when he said to her mother that he thought Emma would get a better grade on the bar exam than he did?

Okay. It was clear what to do then, just get a better grade on the bar exam than he did.

But who would get her in to take the bar exam? Eleven years old. Had anybody ever taken the exam at eleven? Here was something to look up tonight in his law books before he got home. If anybody ever had, even at twelve, then she would write a letter to the Bar Association. Naturally, it would help to have him back her up, but it was not impossible to do without him.

Getting up quickly, she went into her father’s study. She began to look through the law books, but was soon frustrated because, in truth, she did not know where to look. She expected to find a book which said something like “Requirements for Passing the State Bar Exam” on the cover, and when she didn’t, she wandered among the books like a dog lost in the snow, turning in circles and walking up and down, then turning again.

She sat down at the desk and went into a trance of pretending. She pretended to pick up the phone and rail at her secretary. “Where are those contracts? What do you mean, you don’t have them? Your baby lost one of its arms? What does that mean, Miss Googler? Be more specific if you can. That is, which arm, and where did she lose it? In Bloomingdale’s? So? I don’t see that that’s any reason for not getting back from the hospital in time to type those contracts. Get them in here on my desk in fifteen minutes . . . What’s that? Each contract is fifty to one hundred pages long? So what, Miss Googler? You’ll never think like a man until you get rid of all this emotional nit-picking. Fifteen minutes. Is that clear?”

She pretended to bang the phone down, then leaned back in the swivel chair, on her face an expression of sublime, besotted joy.

Bored with that, she began to look through the papers on her father’s desk. One stack was topped by a note which said “Old Cases—Put in Dead File.” Obviously these were cases he had tried before becoming an assistant district attorney. Under the note was a small book with Bible-thin pages entitled Merck Manual.

Emma opened it up. It was a medical book. As she flipped through, reading parts of entries, she began to marvel at it. It seemed to be a book you could take into the jungles of Africa. You could stay for years curing people right and left without even being a doctor. It even had directions for operating. You’d have to take along a dictionary, of course, for half the words were gibberish.

Emma looked up menstruation, which was new to her, an addition to her life activities which she could not be said to have welcomed.

The index referred her to Menstruation, disorders of, and the first one on the list was Amenorrhea, under which it said Absence of menstruation.

“Wow!” Emma spoke loudly to the room. “How can I get that?”

She read on: Physiologic amenorrhea occurs before the menarche [Who is he? the King? the King of the Period?], after menopause [The pause that men take?], during pregnancy and lactation [I have so many lacks that now I have a severe case of lactation?].

She decided she’d better look up a few words, but first, it occurred to her to wonder why this book was on her father’s desk.

She rummaged around. It had been lying neatly on a stack of papers.

In this stack she found the legal pad on which her father had sketched out his brief. She began to read, picking through his handwriting as through a dark closet.

From what she could gather, her father had been the attorney for a man who had had an operation during which the surgeon had been forgetful. He had left inside the man’s stomach a large rubber glove, a pair of forceps, and a small sponge.

The man had, needless to say, become uncomfortable and had submitted to another operation at another hospital, wherein the lost objects were found and reported. The man had retained Emma’s father as attorney and was suing the first hospital and the doctor who had so carelessly misplaced his tools.

Emma felt slightly ill. She looked at the medical book and saw that there was a piece of paper marking a place. Turning to that place, she read what her father had evidently been reading, a passage entitled Obstruction, and felt even worse.

It became important to see if the man operated on was a black man. He was.

“Typical,” Emma said aloud. “If it had been a black woman, they would have left fourteen scalpels and a coat hanger inside.”

She put everything back into the stack neatly and leaned back into the chair.

Musing, she reviewed things she had heard her father say about doctors. Sifting through various comments, she realized that even though there had been a lot of grumbling, her father seemed to have a grudging respect. Even when the doctor was a woman?

Yes! She remembered now. A friend of her mother’s was a doctor. She had come to visit a couple of times. Yes! Her father had seemed afraid of this woman.

Emma felt a surge of greatness. Oh, to make her father afraid. What a feeling that would be. Not only to impress him but to have him actually afraid of her, Emma!

She sat up abruptly and grabbed the medical book. Deciding that there was something bothering her about the small mole on her left ear which had been there since birth, she looked up moles in the index. She found: Nevi (Moles, Birthmarks). Moles vary in color from yellow-brown to black. [Just like us darkies, thought Emma.] They may be small or large, flat or raised, smooth, hairy [hairy!] or verrucous [what?], and have a broad or pedunculated base. [I’m going to tell Willie he has a pedunculated base.]

Emma stopped reading. She went off into a dream. She was in medical school. The men made fun of her, but she persisted. She was a drudge about her studies, she made all A’s. She was then a resident. Finally, she was a doctor. She sat behind her white desk, in her white office, in a white lab coat. She pushed the buzzer for her secretary to send in her first patient, her very first patient. The door opened and in walked her father.

“Yes, what can I do for you?” (Emma, well-known and respected young New York doctor.)

“Doctor, it’s this enormous mole—”

“Ah, yes, no doubt verrucous”—nods head wisely—“and probably having a pedunculated base. Take off your clothes.”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

Too late, Emma realized that reality was presenting itself to her in the form of her real father standing in his real doorway to his real office after she, in his real swivel chair, had just said to him, “Take off your clothes,” like an ass.

“Hi, Dad.” She jumped up and started for the door like a runaway horse. Only casualness could save her now, casualness and quickness—the quick and the dead.

“Oh, no, you don’t! What did that mean?”

She wasn’t quick enough, so she wished she were dead.

“Sir?” All innocence now. Try to make him think he’s nuts. Last-ditch-stand time.

“What were you doing in here?”

“Sir?”

“What did you mean by saying to me, ‘Take off your clothes’?”

“Sir?”

A certain stillness in her father signified the change in him that she feared the most, the switch from father to prosecuting attorney.

His eyes became darker, flatter, colder. “You stated as I entered the room, stated clearly, ‘Take off your clothes,’ did you not?”

“I did.” Hopeless.

“To what purpose did you state this?”

“I was a doctor.” No hope except for truth.

“Make yourself clear.” Was there a hint, the lightest touch of a feather brush of fear in his eyes?

“I was pretending I was a doctor.”

His grip on her arm relaxed. He swung from district attorney back into father quicker than Wolf Man. He smiled.

“Daydreaming?”

“Yes.” What a baby thought, what a baby word, day-dreams; but it worked. It got her off the hook, and today the hook hurt more than most days.

“I’m thinking of becoming a doctor.” She said it flatly because she couldn’t help herself. Something inside her said it when she had planned to say nothing.

“Oh?” Touch of the feather again, the white feather? He had been moving toward his desk and now he looked back at her, a large, thickset black man with a weary face. “I forgot some papers,” he said, opening a drawer.

“Yes.” She said it too loudly. Even more loudly she said, “I’m going to be a doctor!” She looked him hard in the eyes and went out, slamming the door in his face.

On the way to her room, her knees shaking from delayed fear, she wondered at her own courage and wondered even more why the whole thing had taken courage and wondered even more than that at what in the world she was doing or saying. She didn’t want to be a doctor. Blech. Touch people. Ick.

She wanted to change. She opened the door to her room. She relaxed, seeing the familiar mess. She wanted to change, but there must be some other way.

The next night, Emma sat contemplating the infinite boredom of family dinners. Martha was serving Mrs. Sheridan the green beans. Mr. Sheridan was cutting his steak left-handed in that curious roundabout way of his. Willie was pushing his food around, trying to hide it under his knife, separating it to make his plate look empty when, in reality, he had eaten nothing.

For a moment it seemed to Emma they were caught in a time tunnel. She saw them reeling through space, Willie pushing his food, her father cutting, her mother taking green beans, and herself looking sullenly at them, all of it happening endlessly, never going forward, never going back, just hurtling on forever through parting stars.

“No, thank you,” said Willie to Martha.

“Finish the beans on your plate,” said Mrs. Sheridan.

“Some dancer you’ll be,” said Martha. “If you don’t eat, you’ll be too weak to stand up, let alone dance.”

“He’s outgrown that, anyway,” said Mr. Sheridan, taking an enormous second helping of beans. “People outgrow things, don’t they? Isn’t that right, Willie?”

Willie kept pushing, looking down and saying nothing.

“How was it downtown today, dear?” Mrs. Sheridan hurried to cover Willie’s silence.

The talk droned on over Emma’s head as she thought about Willie. Rotten little weasel—his mother protecting him all the time. Doesn’t have the guts God gave a banana peel.

“Dad?” Willie looked at his father.

“Don’t interrupt,” said his father. He was getting to the best part of his story, the part where he won the case.

“Dad, I want to go away to summer stock.”

“You want to what?”

“Go away to summer stock.” Willie seemed to be holding his breath.

“What’s the kid talking about?” Mr. Sheridan turned helplessly to his wife.

“Summer theater. He wants to try being a dancer for one summer.” Mrs. Sheridan looked as if she’d swallowed a fork. “Dipsey knows a theater that’s doing Oliver this summer and they need a lot of children for that.”

“Dipsey? What’s that no-count got to do with this?”

“Dipsey’s a great dancer!” Willie said excitedly. “He’s not no-count. He works all the time. He’s teaching me and he says I’m good enough right now to work with him!”

“Out of the question.” Mr. Sheridan returned to his food.

“He’d be there with me, Dad. I could make money!”

“Don’t even think about it.”

“He says I could make two or three hundred dollars.”

“I don’t want to hear any more about it.”

“I’d give you the money, Dad.”

Mr. Sheridan put down his fork. He looked right into Willie’s eyes.

“He doesn’t mean anything bad, William.”

Mr. Sheridan put his napkin on the table. He leaned back, staring at Willie as though he’d never seen him before. “Just what kind of a guy do you think I am? Look at me, son. What kind of a man you think your father is? You think I’d send you out to work at seven years old and take the money?”

“No, sir.” Willie was examining his belt buckle.

“You think I’d send a child out to work so I could live off him? You don’t think much of me, do you?”

“William, he’s not thinking anything like that.”

“I think it’s time we found out what he’s thinking. He’s making plans right and left and—”

Mr. Sheridan was interrupted by Martha’s entrance. She passed hot rolls and they all shut up while she was in the room. This always irritated Emma. Martha probably heard every word in the kitchen, so why couldn’t they just keep talking? They sat, instead, in phony silence, each in turn saying “No, thank you,” until it was Emma’s turn and she took three. Nobody noticed.

“I think what Willie wants to do in life should be given some consideration,” said Mrs. Sheridan gently. Willie’s eyes were wild with hope.

“Wants to do in life? That’s absurd. He’s seven years old.” Mr. Sheridan turned to Willie. “You want to work? If you want to work, why don’t you sell newspapers?”

“Or swimming pools,” said Emma.

Everyone looked at her in astonishment. “There’s a lot of money to be made selling pools. I read it in the Sunday paper.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” said Mrs. Sheridan absently. They all turned away again. She ate another roll.

“Just what is it you want to do?” asked Mr. Sheridan.

“I want to be a dancer.” Willie was so quiet and scared they could hardly hear him.

“Son.” Mr. Sheridan pushed back his chair, crossed his legs, and lit a cigar. “I want to tell you something and I want you to listen. There are many jobs in this world and some are good, decent jobs for good, decent men to have. Others are jobs that aren’t even to be thought about. Now, these people who spend their lives running around a stage are just trash. You don’t want to be trash, do you?”

Mrs. Sheridan looked outraged. “William! My father wasn’t—

“I’m not talking about your father. Your father came along there in the Depression where a black man couldn’t get a decent job. Singing and dancing were all they let him do. Everything’s entirely different now. What do you think I work myself to death for? My kid’s got every chance in the world. He doesn’t have to run around dancing, making a fool of himself, laughing and scratching to make honkies laugh. He’s got the whole world ahead of him. He’s going to a private school. He’s going to college. He doesn’t need to do the kinds of things your father did.”

“But he wants to. He’s like my father. He’s just like Dipsey when Dipsey was small. Don’t you think that what he wants to do ought to be given some consideration?”

“He’s seven years old, woman. He doesn’t know his left ear from his right. What does what he want got to do with it? Four years ago he wanted to be a rabbit.”

“That’s different!” Willie looked angry. “I know now what I want. And I’m going to get it, too!”

“You shut up, Willie. You don’t talk like that to your father, not now, not ever, do you talk to me like that. You understand? You’ve got other people to consider besides yourself. You’ve got to think of all the people who have bled and died so other people don’t look at you and see nothing but a minstrel show. You want to take all that and throw it in their faces and say, ‘Look at me, yassur, boss, you right, I ain’t good for nothing but singing and dancing and picking cotton’?”

“William, really!”

“I think that’s true,” said Emma. Nobody had asked her and nobody paid any attention to her. She ate another roll.

“I don’t care about them!” Willie jumped up. “I only care about one thing.” He started running. “I’m going to do it, too!” His voice came back at them from down the hall.

Mr. Sheridan blew a large puff of smoke. His big face looked more like a walrus than ever.

“He doesn’t know anything about all that.” Mrs. Sheridan was looking at her husband with something like pity.

“How much that Dipsey been coming round here?”

“If you’re finished, Emma, you may be excused.” Mrs. Sheridan smiled at Emma.

“There’s chocolate mousse,” said Emma.

“He coming round here every day?” Mr. Sheridan blew more smoke.

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “He’s given Willie a few lessons, that’s all. He’s just trying to help.”

“Well, tell him to stop coming round.” More smoke.

“I can’t do that. It would break Willie’s heart.”

“He’s giving the child ideas. Can’t you see that? We don’t need him round here filling the kid full of fancy thoughts.” Mr. Sheridan was puffing so hard there were clouds of smoke all over the dining room.

“Look, William. I can see your point about summer stock. I think he’s too young for that too, but I don’t see why he has to cut out dancing altogether, and I don’t agree with you about people in show business being trash. I should think you’d think about my father being in show business for forty years before you say anything like that.”

“You do, huh.” Mr. Sheridan rolled his cigar in his mouth in a way that made Emma think of gangster movies. “Well, I’ll tell you something, woman. This is my son I’m talking to. Don’t you think a man knows a little bit more about what to say to his son than you do? Seeing as how I’m a man and he’s going to be a man? I know what’s right for my son, so don’t you worry your head about this.” He got up and moved toward the living room.

“Don’t you want any dessert?”

“No. I’ll take my coffee in the living room.”

They heard the rustle of the newspaper as he unfolded it. Martha came in and put the chocolate mousse in front of Mrs. Sheridan. “Only two of us, I guess, Martha. You might take this to Willie and see if he’ll eat a little.” She handed a bowl to Martha, who took it down the hall to Willie’s room.

Emma ate silently, watching her mother out of the corner of her eye.

Mrs. Sheridan seemed nervous, fluttery, and not altogether herself. She saw Emma looking at her.

“How was school today, dear?”

“What do you feel about women’s liberation?” Emma fired at her.

Mrs. Sheridan looked amused. “As you know, I do volunteer work for the day-care center.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

“It was a rather general question. What is it you want to know?”

“Are you going to let Dad push you around like that, or are you going to fight?”

“Fight?” Mrs. Sheridan looked surprised.

“Fight for what you believe in.”

“And what is that?”

“You believe Willie ought to go to summer stock?”

“No. I don’t. He’s too young.”

“But you believe he ought to keep on dancing?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Sheridan sounded tentative, as though she were listening to herself. “Yes, I think . . . I don’t see anything wrong with dancing.”

“Well, he sure does.” Emma helped herself to more mousse.

“Yes, that’s true.” Mrs. Sheridan sounded far away. “Well, then. You going to fight or not?”

“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Sheridan.

“While you’re at it, I’d like to be a lawyer and he doesn’t like that either.”

Mrs. Sheridan looked at Emma and burst out laughing. “You’ll get over that, dear.”

“Oh, swell,” said Emma.

Mrs. Sheridan kept on laughing. Emma kept on eating. She finished off her chocolate mousse. She scraped the bowl. She sat back and looked at her mother, who was now sitting quietly, with an amused expression.

“You think I’m funny?”

“What, dear?”

“Am I funny?”

Mrs. Sheridan looked at Emma. She saw a round face trying to look brave, expecting the worst and on the verge of tears. “No, dear, of course not. Where did you ever get that idea?”

“You laughed.”

“Did I, dear? Well, yes, I guess I did. It was funny.”

“What’s funny about being a lawyer?”

“It’s not that being a lawyer is funny. It’s the idea of you as a lawyer. Why in the world would you want to do that?”

“You think I’m too stupid?” Emma found she was holding her breath.

“I just can’t imagine why you’d want to do that.”

“You do think I’m stupid.”

“Of course you’re not stupid. You get straight A’s in school. It’s the life of a lawyer. I think you’re too young to realize that the life of a lawyer is very rough. If you knew more about it, I don’t think you’d choose it. I don’t think you’d be thinking about it at all.”

“What would I choose?” Emma began to feel crafty. She felt as though she had her mother on a witness stand.

“I think you’d choose marrying a man you loved, marrying a lawyer perhaps, and raising two lovely children—”

“I’d put a bullet through my head before I’d marry a lawyer.”

“—but I can’t see you doing what a lawyer has to do, hanging around a hot courthouse, interviewing a lot of criminals. Sometimes it’s even dangerous.”

“I don’t even want to get married, much less have children.”

“Of course you do. You’re only eleven. You don’t know what you want yet.”

“I know exactly what I want.” Emma was in control now. “And I know what you want. You want me to be you! You want me to be exactly like you.” She felt triumphant. The secret was out.

“Oh, no, dear. I know you’re not like me.” There was sarcasm in her mother’s voice. “I know you’ve had a totally different life.”

Emma began to feel uncomfortable, as though she were losing in some mysterious way. She turned into a prosecuting attorney. “You said, did you not, that I should marry a lawyer and have two lovely children. That’s what you said!”

“Your life is totally unlike mine. Look at the advantages you’ve had, a nice home, a private school, your mother and father with you every evening. I played backstage in a dressing room and slept in rotten hotels with cockroaches. My mother was dead, and my father half drunk all the time. I had to take care of Dipsey, raise him when I wasn’t even raised myself. Oh, no, I see your life is different!”