The Up-Down (4 page)

 

 

1

Pace found that the writing life agreed with him. He rose each morning at six and began working on his book after he'd had coffee, bread and fruit, usually by seven. He enjoyed imagining what Sailor and Lula's early life together was like. The main theme, Pace decided, was his parents' devotion to one another, what could be considered an intuitive spiritual connection. Lula had told Pace many times that she knew Sailor was destined to be her partner for life from the moment she met him, and that she believed Sailor felt the same way about her. “In these modern times,” Pace recalled his mother telling him, “this ain't so usual.” Pace was ten years old the first time Lula had said this, the night before his daddy was released from prison after having served a decade behind bars for armed robbery during which two men had been shot and killed, one of them Sailor's accomplice, a person named Bobby Peru, whom Lula referred to as a “black angel.” Sailor had not spoken much to Pace about this period of his incarceration, saying only that the penitentiary where he'd done his time, at Huntsville, Texas, was filled with liars, every inmate claiming to be innocent in one way or another of the crime for which he had been convicted. Pace, who was fifteen at the time, had asked Sailor, “Were you innocent, Daddy?” and Sailor answered, “No, son, I was both guilty and a liar. Don't ever blame your troubles on anyone but yourself, and don't be afraid or ashamed to ask for help when you really need it. There'll come a day you will.”

 

 

2

Bitsy and Delbert Parker, the couple who lived in Dalceda Delahoussaye's big house, were decent, intelligent people. Pace became good friends with them and they often invited him for supper. Del taught at Robert Pete Williams High School, named after the self-styled African-American revolutionary who'd written the book
Negroes with Guns
, and who'd fled the country after committing a crime, then lived most of his life in Red China, as it was then commonly called. The school had originally been named Dogger Bank High, after the site of a naval battle that had been fought in the North Sea during World War I. Times were changing, Del Parker told Pace, even in a state as backward as North Carolina.

Both Del and Bitsy were thirty-two years old. Being childless, and with Del having summers off, they had travelled extensively throughout the world and shared stories of their adventures with Pace, who in turn told them about his own colorful life. Pace felt fortunate to have them as tenants and neighbors.

One cloudy Wednesday afternoon, just as Pace was finishing up his writing for the day, Bitsy knocked on his screen door, which he opened as soon as he saw her.

“I hope I'm not disturbing you,” she said.

“No,” said Pace, “I'm about done for now. I'm just comin' to the part where Lula tells her mama, Marietta, that she's pregnant with me.”

Bitsy laughed, and said, “Well, then, this might could be the right time to talk to you about what I've come to talk to you about.”

“Come in. You thirsty?”

Bitsy shook her head no, and they both sat down on a couch in the cottage's front room. Bitsy was a petite, pretty blonde with green eyes. She did a considerable amount of physical work as a landscaper, so she was strong and sinewy with a good figure which Pace could not help but admire. He liked to look at her.

“You may have wondered,” she said, “why Del and I have never had children.”

“I just figured you hadn't gotten around to it yet.”

“Not exactly. The thing is, Del can't shoot nothin' but blanks. I'm okay, though. We had tests to find out why I've never gotten pregnant.”

“Rhoda and I never had kids. Now that I'm older, I wish we had. Anyway, you can adopt.”

Bitsy shook her head and her honey blonde hair covered the left half of her face. She stared down at the floor for a minute, then looked back at Pace. There was an expression on her face that he had never seen before, a serious, dark look that made him uncomfortable.

“I got somethin' tough to ask you, Pace, and if you think it's crazy, just say so, all right?”

“Go on and ask.”

“Would you consider makin' love with me and see if I could get pregnant? I mean, you're Del's and my good friend and landlord, and livin' here together like we do, it just made sense to me when I thought of it.”

Pace just stared at Bitsy for a while before he spoke.

“Is this something you and Del decided? I mean, to suggest the idea to me?”

“Not really,” said Bitsy.

“This is only your idea, then,” Pace said.

Bitsy nodded. “Do you think I'm crazy, Pace? Does the idea appeal to you at all? Do you think I'm attractive?”

“Of course I think you're attractive, Bitsy, but that's hardly the point. If you and Del decided that you wanted my sperm to use
in vitro
, I guess I'd go along with you, but . . .”

“No,” she said. “I don't want some test tube full of jizz injected into me. I need to have it done right, the way nature intended.”

“Bitsy, I don't know. Anyhow, you'd have to discuss this with Del. He's your husband.”

Bitsy slid over next to Pace and kissed him. She put her hand between his legs and fondled him. Pace kissed her back.

She took her mouth off of his and whispered, “It'll work, Pace, I just know it. This is your chance, too. Maybe the last one.”

Bitsy stood, took Pace by his left hand with her right, pulled him up, and led him into the bedroom.

 

 

3

Pace carried on with Bitsy for a couple of months, rendezvousing with her three or four weekday afternoons while Del was teaching at the high school. This turn of events disturbed him because Del knew nothing of his liaison with Bitsy. Pace asked her what she intended to say to her husband if and when she became pregnant; after all, Pace said, Del had been tested and told he could not father a child. “I'll just tell him it's a miracle,” Bitsy answered. “It's proof that miracles do happen, and that he should be happy.”

Pace wasn't so sure about Del buying Bitsy's story. What Pace was certain about was that she continued to have sex with Del while she kept on with him. What was happening, Pace realized, was that he was becoming more emotionally involved with Bitsy than she was with him. Bitsy treated their lovemaking sessions with a demeanor Pace found a little too breezy for his taste. Not that she was distant or not tender during their “sessions,” as Bitsy called them, it was just that after a while, once he'd gotten over the initial thrill of making love regularly again with a beautiful young woman, Pace began to resent his being used. It would have been better, he decided, to have just donated his sperm and let a doctor inseminate Bitsy with a needle. Pace had fallen a little in love with Bitsy, and he was not happy about it, not under these circumstances.

When Pace confronted her with his feelings, Bitsy looked into his eyes and said, “I been tryin' to suppress my feelings for you, Pace. I was in love with you, I guess, even before we started up. Now I've got a confession to make: Del never has had any medical tests to determine the motility of his sperm. Only I've been examined and the doctor said there's nothing wrong with me, that I should be able to conceive.”

“Why didn't Del have a test?” Pace asked.

“I never insisted on it. He's just always said if it happens, it happens. If it doesn't that's okay with him, too. He just says bein' with me is the most important thing.”

Bitsy began to cry, and said, “I'm sorry I lied to you, Pace, I truly am now. I suppose you won't want me any more.”

Pace didn't say anything for a minute. He wanted to tell Bitsy that despite this revelation he wanted her almost more than ever, but he held his tongue.

“Let me think on it, Bitsy,” he said, finally. “Let's both of us take some time to decide what to do.”

Bitsy kissed Pace on the cheek and walked out of his cottage. Pace wished right then that Sailor were still alive and that he could ask him what to do. “Leave her be” were the words that popped into Pace's head.

“Thanks, Daddy,” he said.

 

 

4

Pace left before dawn two mornings following his last conversation with Bitsy. He headed his Pathfinder north with New York City as his intended destination. He left a note tacked to the front door of the big house addressed to both Bitsy and Del, informing them of his sudden desire to revisit New York. He wasn't sure when he'd be back, he'd let them know. Pace took his notebooks with him, planning to continue writing his book about his parents wherever he landed. That was the great thing about being a writer, Pace thought: you could do it anywhere.

If somehow Bitsy had conceived a child fathered by him, Pace did not really want to know. She would certainly tell Del that it was his and they would both be happy. It didn't matter what Pace felt or thought. He welcomed, even depended on his insignificance in the matter. In the end—or the interim, whatever the case might be—one's understanding of one's actions does little or nothing to alter the result. Pace wondered if he had read this somewhere, or was it a product of his own consideration of the circumstances? Perhaps Bitsy was not pregnant—but Pace's intuition told him that she was. What if he were not Bitsy's only lover? That was always a possibility. Time to go. He was no longer needed or particularly wanted, and he had work to do.

Pace suddenly remembered one night about ten o'clock when he and Bitsy had been walking together on the path between the cottage and the big house, in which Del was correcting his student's exams. She turned her head to say something to Pace when he took her right arm firmly with his left hand and said, “stop.” Bitsy had been about to take a step when she looked down and saw a very long water moccasin crawling across the spot on the path where she would have put down her left foot had Pace not held her back. “What a terrible snake,” she said, as they watched its silver and red-diamonded body slither past them. Her foot was still suspended above the ground. “I just saved your life,” Pace said. “Don't forget it.” She finished her step and they smiled at each other. “Not tonight or ever,” said Bitsy.

 

 

5

Pace's Pathfinder had 75,000 miles on it. It drove a little rough, like the basic pick-up truck it was, but it was roomy enough so that he could sleep comfortably in it if he needed to. He'd bought it from a friend of his mother's,
Á
lvaro Iturri, a Basque from Bilbao, who had married a young widow from nearby Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, whom he'd met when she was on a European tour following the death of her husband. He then moved with her to Bay St. Clement and bought into a car dealership. Iturri, who was the same age as Pace and had been a merchant seaman for most of his adult life, admitted to Pace that before buying into this business he had known next to nothing about automobiles.

“That's the great thing about America,”
Á
lvaro Iturri told Pace, “everything depends upon trust. In Spain, nobody trusts anyone, not even themselves. This is the theme of
Don Quixote
, of course. In America, doubt exists, certainly, but pessimism is not ingrained in peoples' souls the way it is in Spain and the rest of Europe. The one exception, in my experience, is Italy, where the guiding ingredient is corruption. The Italians make up partially for this in other ways, so they can be most amusing but never less than dangerous.

“Now that I am an American, I can tell you this vehicle I am selling you will run well and for a long time. And since you are an American, you can trust that I am telling you the truth.
Buen viaje.
”

The Pathfinder made it to Philadelphia before it broke down. It was while he was having his SUV repaired that Pace met Siempre Desalmado, and began the third act of his life.

 

 

6

Pace had never before been in Philadelphia. He got a room in a hotel off Rittenhouse Square, the Hotel Espíritu, and, since the auto repair shop would need two days to fix his SUV, decided to walk around and explore the city. He was on Race Street, near the Greyhound bus station, when he saw a young woman sitting on a suitcase with her face in her hands, crying. Pace stopped and asked her if she needed help and she lifted her head and looked at him. Despite her distraught condition, the woman had the face of an angel—almost oval, an unmarked, olive complexion, with large, dark brown eyes and long, thin eyebrows. Though tears ran down her face, she smiled at Pace, revealing perfect, brilliantly white teeth. She looked to be anywhere in age from sixteen to twenty-six.

“Who doesn't?” she said. “Do you live in Philadelphia?”

“No, I'm in transit, but temporarily delayed due to car trouble.”

“What does ‘in transit' mean?”

“I'm between here and there. I'm not sure where ‘there' is, but my home of late has been in North Carolina.”

“You say funny things: ‘in transit,' ‘home of late.' You are uncertain.”

Pace nodded a little. “I guess so,” he said. “And you, are you in need of help?”

“I guess so, too. I took a bus from Phoenix, Arizona, to here, where a friend of mine said there would be a job for me. I called to the place where she was and was told she had been fired and is gone. Now I'm trying to decide what to do.”

“Do you have money?”

She shook her head. “Not very much.”

“My name is Pace Ripley. Come on, I'll buy you lunch.”

The girl stared at him.

Pace smiled, and said, “I won't hurt you. We're both a little stranded and in need. What's your name?”

“Siempre Desalmado.”

“I know siempre means always, but desalmado I don't know.”

The girl stood up and wiped her eyes. She was even more beautiful than Pace had thought. Somehow her face was both bright and dark at the same time.

“You must not believe it,” she said.

“Believe what?”

“That I am what is my name, desalmado. It means heartless, or cruel. I do not like having this name.”

“You should change it then.”

“Yes,” said Siempre, “perhaps I will. You are how old?”

“Fifty-eight. And you?”

“I will be twenty-two tomorrow.”

“Happy birthday, Always. Come on, let's get something to eat.”

Later that afternoon Pace took Siempre Desalmado with him to his room at the Hotel Espiritu. He told her that she could have the bed and he would sleep on the floor until she found a place for herself.

“Why do you do this for me, Pace?”

“Because of your beauty.”

“Do you always tell the truth?” asked Siempre.

“Not even to myself,” said Pace.