The Work Is Innocent Read Free Page B

it. “I don’t know. Probably not. But I’m not ready to submit either.” He looked at her significantly. “Get it?”

CHAPTER TWO
    Richard got off his plane, prepared to greet his parents, and was unpleasantly surprised to see his brother, Leo, waving to him from the top of the escalator that came out onto the main lobby of La Guardia Airport. His brother looked down at him casually and, once noticed, turned aside to drag on the butt of his cigarette in the Bogart manner. Richard’s surprise was overcome in watching his brother’s movements, and when he reached the end of the escalator, it had changed to amazed scorn for the naïveté of his parents. Could they really still be unaware of his contempt for Leo?
    The baggage was late in coming and concern over it—his novel!—delayed conversation. Richard nearly gave away its existence because of anxiety, and if he was that careless, he wondered if he could conceal his desire to run away. Once in the cab, Leo asked, “So how was the flight?”
    “Shabby. Very shabby. The jets go up like helicopters. Straight up. I really thought I was going to vomit.”
    “Do you usually get sick on planes?”
    “No. For some reason this was incredibly bad. It’s one of those small jets and it kicked around like a motherfucker.”
    Leo grunted and looked out his window. Richard followed suit but for him it had real interest. From the grace and bounty of the countryside to the decay of New York. They were nearing home, and seeing the bloodthirsty streets of his neighborhood so frightened him that it seemed impossible he had ever walked them without terror.
    “How do you feel about coming back?” Leo asked.
    “How do you think I feel?”
    “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
    Richard laughed. “I feel it is disastrous. I cannot imagine anything more loathsome.”
    “You really feel that way?”
    “Uh, yeah. You havin’ trouble believing me?”
    “No. You said it—I thought you were kidding.” Leo had cut his hair short, and his friendly, startled eyes were even more so. “You know Brandeis isn’t so bad.”
    “What’s Brandeis?”
    “The high school you’re going to go to.”
    “I didn’t know I was going to one.”
    “Are you kidding, man?” Richard had convinced himself of his power, so this coup was a shock. He wasn’t able to conceal his disappointment, and Leo looked at him sadly. “It’s good there. There are dyno blacks, and you can do some really good organizing.”
    Richard retreated into contempt. “If I wanted to get into organizing, I’d prefer to do it outside of school.”
    “Yeah, sure, but it’s better to be going to that kind of a school than to some kind of white bullshit like Cabot. Or to something so unreal like the school in Vermont.”
    Richard wanted to jeer at Leo for his pitiful adulation of blacks, for the absurd conclusions it led him into—but they had arrived. His mother had made a good lunch, and the talk was lively. His situation wasn’t mentioned, but he enjoyed himself so much that his resolve to run away was weakened.
    His mother showed him to his room, proud of how neat she had made it. Richard, though pleased, was uneasy that his things had been gone through.
    “It’s lovely,” he told her. “But you didn’t have to. I would have enjoyed doing it.”
    “Oh, it was a lot of fun. Richard, I can’t tell you how it broke my mother’s heart, going through your drawers.”
    Richard flashed silence with his eyes so expressively that Betty almost jumped. Her smile disappeared and her tone changed. “You know. All the broken ashtrays.”
    He quieted and said that he had no other way of disposing of them, since he shouldn’t have been smoking.
    “You could have sneaked them into the garbage.”
    “Yeah I guess so. Listen, I want to change.”
    She turned to leave but asked instead, “How are Naomi and John?”
    “Like I said. Fine.”
    Betty narrowed her eyes at him. Richard smiled. He felt uncomfortable.