The Meeting Point

  They were sitting on the balcony of a coffee house on Avenue Road, Estelle and her man. It was a cool night, one of the first of the summer. They were drinking iced tea. The inside room was crowded, mostly with young people. The men were wearing beards, and the women, mostly, were wearing their hair long. A few were barefoot, Estelle noticed. As they were walking along Yorkville, they met the owner of the coffee house, a European gentleman with long Jesus-like hair and beard, an old bowler hat covering the bald spot of his head, and a cane in his hand. He had a plaster cast on his right foot and leg. “Welcome to Zee Place!” he was telling everyone; and giving out handbills advertising The Place, which was the name of the coffee house. Below and across the street from where they were sitting now, they could see the owner, still hawking his club.

  “Beautiful night,” the man said, without looking up at the stars.

  “Reminds me of the West Indies, of Barbados,” Estelle said. “Stars, stars, stars.…”

  “Like northern Ontario, too. In summer.” Earlier, they had been talking about going to Muskoka, or Timmins, for the summer. But she disregarded the suggestion, until, at least, it became a firm invitation.

  “Twinkle, twinkle, little star …” She recited the line, and then sang it, softly. “Twinkle little Estelle.…”

  “… how I wonder what you are!” He touched her hand, ever so softly; and then he squeezed it, and together they laughed. They had forgotten, in their happiness, that others were on the balcony with them. It was summer. It was lovely. For some time, neither of them said a word. At last, Estelle said, “What’s going to happen, when she finds out?” He pretended he hadn’t heard; but when he saw how childish that was, he pretended he didn’t know to whom she was referring. “Your wife.” There was nothing he could say to this; there was no pretence he could put up. He had learned early in his relationship with Estelle, that she was a very straightforward woman. Blunt, almost. “You know something?” she said, knowing he wasn’t going to answer the previous question. “If I was your wife. And if it was me, in this situation I find myself in now, you know what I would do?” He touched her hand again, expecting kindness, understanding, love even. But Estelle said, bluntly, “I would kill you, Sam.”

  “Do what?” The tables nearby turned to listen. He had shouted, inadvertently.

  “I said I would kill you,” she said, much softer, with a whisper of a smile on her beautiful face. The candlelight was shimmering. “Come, let’s go. I’m beginning to feel bad.” She did not talk to him, until they had come within walking distance of the house on Marina Boulevard. Normally she would get out just before reaching the house, and walk, with him driving behind to guard her. And returning home very late, normally, nobody saw them. (Once Mrs. Burrmann was looking out, from the sitting-room, with the lights out, but she only saw Estelle going in through the side entrance; and although Mr. Burrmann drove up ten minutes later, she suspected nothing.) This time, just as she was about to get out, he said, “Well?” — thereby asking a million questions in that one word: but really trying to find the answer to one question, which had been bothering him for about three weeks, and which he was terrified to ask, in case the answer was what he had suspected. When she didn’t answer, he moved closer to her. She stiffened her body against his embrace. He was sensitive to her feelings. He was vexed with her. And he forced his lips over her lips; and although he could feel her teeth against his lips, he still didn’t stop. He was beside himself this night, with desire: a brutal, rough, rapist desire. “I know, I know,” he said, trying to make his voice and manner coincide with what he thought was the James Cagney approach to romantic manliness. I could kill you right now, Sam, she was thinking, as he rubbed his tongue on her teeth, forcing her mouth open. (Suppose this bitch was to bite off my goddamn tongue; and he saw blood on his expensive suit, and it splattered all over his car. That made him stop forcing himself upon her. He hugged her; and he kissed her cheek instead.) You make me feel so cheap, she was thinking, as he passed his hand over her smooth skin. I must have been mad to let you do the things you did, all that you have done, and now, you don’t have the decency nor the understanding … (He was forcing his hand against her brassiere and her breast: he was making his hand crawl like oil on a piece of glass) … and look what the hell I got myself into! Christ! if Bernice finds out that I let this, this, this-this-bastard treat me like a whore, take me on Jarvis Street … He was very close to her now; and his face was buried in the crook of her neck. He could taste the salt in her perspiration. Estelle remained very quiet. She even rested her hand on his neck. The neck was very smooth. The skin was very smooth. It was oily, too. There must have been too much grease in his hair. She closed her eyes under his hands, and for one second, she squeezed hard on his swallow pipe; and she could see the blood pumping through veins in his neck; and then she opened her eyes, and in her imagination, removing his hands, and she reached up and kissed him on the mouth; and she opened his mouth with her mouth, and talked very personal things, very provocative things to him, alone, with a twirling and articulate tongue. She knew she had him within her power. She knew his weaknesses. He was that kind of a man. Be-Christ, Sam, you’re going to pay through your arse, man, for the things you done to me, you hear? She could see him laughing with his eyes, weakening in her arms, as she tantalized him with the words of her tongue. “Darling,” he said, as if he was panting, and not talking. “Dar-ling.”

  Estelle traced small circles on his neck, with the compasses of her first finger and her second finger. The circles confused and excited him; and he drew still closer to her. She hated him more deeply, the closer he came. As he embraced, and kissed her, he thought: goddamn, look what I picked up off the street! look at me, Sam Burrmann, screwing about with this big black nig- Negro woman, goddammit, but baby, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I know a lot of men who lay their domestics, screwing and being screwed-up by them; but that’s not my scene, baby. I bet you’re soon going to tell me you’re pregnant. Am I going to feel bad! and weep? Or get the best goddamn abortionist in Toronto, and put you in his goddamn hands? That’s a scream! … put you in his goddamn hands, with a little expense, everything’ll be fine … so, you’re not fooling me, baby. One thing about Jeffrey, that goddamn idiot: he told me a long time how to lay you black broads. You all like a piece of white prick. And he spoke to her, and said, “I love you, Estelle.”

  “I love you, too, man.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, how you mean? How you could ask me a foolish thing like that, eh, man?” And she continued to trace circles on the back of his neck; and he continued to hold her close to him. His excitement, and his ecstasy made him reconsider what he had been thinking about her. Shit, that would be hell for this poor bitch! A man just can’t breed a broad and leave her, even if she’s a … But he couldn’t call her a Negro, this time; not even in his mind. He thought of his friend the abortionist (unknown to him, his own wife had been treated by this same abortionist; and Brigitte used to work for him, as his cleaning-woman, before she got the job on Marina Boulevard when she was learning to be a Canadian citizen) … and if Paul plays the ass, there’s always the Children’s Aid Society! there’s always some poor guy looking for a child, so there shouldn’t be much trouble to place a Jewisho-Africo-Westindico child! hah-hah! what’s one more Negro bastard in this goddamn world? One more mixed-up, mixed kid? But I’m sure Paul’ll play ball and help out, or if not … His excitement was climbing a small wall at the top of which he thought he would reach some kind of manual consummation. But she knew when she had him: and just before that point of arrival — or departure — she withdrew her hand, and ran out of the car, leaving the door open. She knew he couldn’t shout after her (he was too near home), that he had to be silent, and self-effacing; silent as he had been with Jeffrey. “You are a white son-of-a-bitch!” she told him. But she didn’t know whether he had heard.

  Summer was doing something awful to Estelle. It was bringing her closer to Bernice; a
nd it was taking her further from Sam. Apart from her own experiences of arrival, and her taste of summer and fire, she was having her own problems. It was fortunate for her that Bernice escaped downstairs to the kitchen every morning before eight o’clock; the moment she was alone, with the door locked, she would rush to the bathroom, and engage in the violent motions of vomiting. Nothing came up. But she knew that one morning, something was going to come up. This daily dry vomiting had been coming on, more regularly, for about three weeks. Bernice neither witnessed it, nor suspected it. Lately, it was coming at the same time, each morning. In spite of all this, Estelle refused to think too much about it, and refused to interpret it as a symptom of pregnancy; for by so doing, she would be confessing to a defeat of her schemes against the man. But she was frightened. And fear was like a paralysis which kept her in the apartment during the day, allowing her to go out only in the late afternoon. This was one time when being alone did not depress or exasperate her. What exasperation she suffered came through the heat, and the thought of the butterflies in her stomach, and of the man who had put them there. Since winter had turned to spring, she had been going out with Agatha more often; and she had visited many places, and was brought into a wider, more mixed circle of friends in her stay than Bernice had known in three or more years.

  The kind of relationship that sprang up between Estelle and Agatha was that of a woman trying to find out everything about her rival, her enemy. On Agatha’s part there was more sincerity. She told Estelle many close things, personal things, about Henry: she was angry because he didn’t go to night school, and then university, and “raise himself”; he had such “natural ability, it is a shame he does nothing but hate all white people”; and drink himself in a stupor almost every night, either in the Paramount, or in the Pilot. “You know, Ess, sometimes I feel he is so inferior, you know what I mean? There are many things I can’t even discuss with him, and when I try to make him feel, feel equal, he starts abusing me and calling me a white intellectual … hell! I’m no intellectual! I am a woman!” And that was exactly why Estelle was so fond of Agatha. Estelle learned many things about Negro men from Agatha. She knew also, that Henry had caused Agatha to move — she was really evicted because the tenants complained — four times since she had left home, also because of him. That was two months ago. “When I moved into that bachelor apartment, on Prince Arthur Avenue, the building superintendent complained. I was having too many parties, he said. I didn’t have one party, Estelle. I was only in the place three weeks, and I spent those three weekends in New York, with Henry. And then he changed his tune, and said something like, Well, you know, Miss … we haven’t got anything ’gainst you, but you see, the other tenants, well, they see you all the time with this coloured fella … and that bastard was a DP! A foreigner! Estelle, I was never so ashamed to be a white person!” (Estelle could not fully understand the dilemma that Agatha had seen herself in.) “It’s been like that, three other times, after Prince Arthur. St. George Street … there, the superintendent was all right until he saw Henry helping me move in. Then he started asking a lot of insulting questions. Was I married, miss? … Then Bedford Road, then Lowther, in a so-called old Toronto family home … until now, when I got this flat on Huron and Bloor.” But she didn’t tell Estelle the worst of all her experiences. It was when she had to move from Prince Arthur to St. George Street. Things were going well, until she needed a reference; and she could only get this from her previous superintendent. It was required because the St. George Street caretaker had seen Henry; neighbours with no love in their heart had caught Henry kissing Agatha goodnight outside her apartment door late one night. The neighbours complained. The superintendent asked her to leave, because, “Miss, this is a decent apartment dwelling.” Agatha hired a friend who was a lawyer; and when the lawyer knew he was involved in a racial case, he advised her to drop proceedings, because, “Well, look at it this way, Agatha. It isn’t doing you any goddamn good to get mixed up in a thing like this with a Negro chap. You understand what I’m saying? I mean, Negroes are great guys, I subscribe to the NAACP, and I dig jazz and all that, but I’m not advising you now as a lawyer, I’m talking to you as my friend. I’ll ask the owners to refund you your three months’ advance rent, and I think you should find yourself a place to live. And Agatha, there’s a lot of nice guys your kind, around still, yuh know?” This was the seed from which began to grow a smouldering hate for Henry. After this, she loved him less. She had got herself into debt (the moving, packing, lawyer-friend’s fees, bottles of sleeping pills and tranquillizer pills and two emergency sessions with her psychiatrist) and she began to weaken under the stress of society and its demands upon her. Once, in a moment of reality — this was her mother’s favourite phrase — Agatha really looked at herself; and toyed with the idea of going with a man less black than Henry: somebody like Harry Belafonte. Her reputation was being discussed at parties (she was no longer invited to them) as the poor Jewish kid who got kicked out of apartments because of her weakness for Negroes. Somebody suggested making her an honorary president of the NAACP. When word got back to her, through a mutual, but tongue-lashing friend, she remained in her Huron Street room, forcing herself into perpetual sleep, because everywhere she went, she thought white people and black people were pointing their fingers at her, and saying There she is! It was her landlord, a painter, and a kind of Bohemian, who got her out of this depression, by inviting her, and Henry to have dinner with him, and his wife. A new view of the world sprung up out of the four glasses of Beaujolais wine which her landlord served.

  That was Agatha’s story, as she told it (in parts, and in part) to Estelle. But the person whom Estelle sympathized with was Henry. Secretly, Estelle still felt that Agatha was “stealing one of our men.”

  But now, it was summer. Summer brought with it a remarkable exposure: an exposure of friendliness, of happiness, of gaiety and of life to the shrouded, over-coated atmosphere of the city. Summer brought Estelle closer once more to Sam, who seemed a new man. He took her to Niagara Falls, to Oshawa where they made cars; he took her across the Canadian border to Buffalo and to Syracuse where she saw many houses painted white, like in Barbados. Sam was now driving a white convertible Cadillac. It was education and excitement. But Estelle could not speak a word of it to Bernice. As far as Bernice knew, she was going out with Agatha.