Palace Council (14 page)

CHAPTER
22

A Royal Audience

(I)

T
HE GOLDEN BOY
of Harlem was Perry Mount. He was a year younger than Eddie, and of royal lineage, as such things were measured, on both sides. His late father, Burton, had been a surgeon who lectured at Columbia Medical School and, on the side, guessed correctly which blocks of Harlem were moving in which economic direction, and invested accordingly. His late mother, Trina, had in her day run half the civic groups in Harlem and, in her spare time, become the first Negro woman to serve on the New York City Council. Eddie had known Perry since the old days, when the families had summered together on Martha's Vineyard, and the children had sat together in the backyard, reading
Hamlet
and
A Midsummer Night's Dream
aloud because Wesley Senior trusted only the King James Bible and William Shakespeare, and despised most things written since. Perry had been a chubby boy, with thick glasses and fingers all smeary from the Baby Ruth bars that seemed to serve as breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but he could fix the gears on your bicycle and put your electric trains back together. He had not been widely liked because he had not been widely likable. They had to let him play with them because the families were friends. Otherwise they would have stayed clear, for the Perry of those days was a brooding, suspicious child, swift to find insult in your tone of voice, ever ready to drop his candy bar and fight.

But that Perry was gone. The new Perry, a Harvard degree in hand, was tall and lean, with gray eyes and a pencil mustache. Perry sported gaudy bow ties and vested suits, entirely aware of his role as Sugar Hill's most eligible bachelor, and playing it to the hilt. Perry was at Columbia, doing additional graduate work in languages, but the work must not have been terribly challenging, because Eddie ran into him frequently at the salons, always with a different woman on his arm. It was Perry who had tried and failed to calm Eddie down the night of Aurelia's engagement party; and Perry, too, who had danced with Junie at Aurelia's wedding, and, evidently, kept in touch thereafter.

Eddie got along with Perry Mount. Eddie admired him and, occasionally, envied him. But Eddie never really liked him, perhaps because he sensed behind the clever eyes and charming words a constant calculation, as if he expected you every moment to prove afresh your worth to him. He sensed it now, as Perry sat listening, the two men in a deli on Broadway near the Columbia campus. It had taken him a month to arrange the meeting. It was March of 1959, his sister had been missing for almost two years, and Eddie had the sense that time was running out.

You knew her well, Eddie was saying, his tone polite.

You stayed in touch with her all the time she was at Harvard Law—maybe wooing her, maybe more.

You knew Philmont Castle, and talked to her about him.

You must ache almost as much as the family does.

What was my sister up to?
Eddie was really screaming, only in a placid tone.
And where is she now?

When Eddie was done, Perry stirred his tea. He asked for tea all the time in the salons, perhaps wanting you to know he had spent an undergraduate year and two years since in Asia. When he received his master's degree this spring, he would be going to work at the State Department. Harlem—their Harlem—was proud of Perry, but of course wanted him to marry first. Perry sat thinking, the gray eyes giving nothing away. The mercurial personality Eddie remembered from the years on the Vineyard was gone. This was a man who pondered and planned—the very opposite of Eddie himself.

“I'm looking for her,” Perry finally said. “I don't know who did this, but I'm not going to let them get away with it.”

Eddie said nothing.

“I don't like the fact that you're looking, too. You're getting in my way, Eddie. You're causing trouble. People are crawling under rocks, people I need out in the open, where I can find them.” He lifted the spoon, pointing. “You're her brother. You're famous. There's no way you can look for her quietly. You should leave it to me.”

About to be very cross, Eddie imagined Junie's hand on his, urging a calm response. “You're sure she's alive, then.”

“Don't put words in my mouth.” Testy after all. “I have no idea if she's alive, Eddie. But I'm trying to find out, and you're making my work harder.”

“What is it that you imagine you can do that I cannot?”

“I know you think you have connections, Eddie. I also know you've pretty much used them up. Joe Kennedy was a one-off, and look at you. Now he's got you working for his son. Big propaganda victory for JFK, huh?” The spoon pointed again, while Eddie, very surprised, wondered how much Perry knew—and how. “You're out of people to ask for help. I'm not.”

“Then let us work together.”

“No.”

“Come on, Perry. I know part of it. I want the rest.” The golden boy went on stirring his tea. “Remember the night we performed
The Tempest
? Junie was Miranda. You were her suitor, the one her father threw in jail. Ferdinand.” Still the gray eyes watched and waited. Eddie could not tell if Perry was amused, impressed, or bored stiff. “You were Sharon Martindale's boyfriend. You preached about the radical alternative. Now, tell me the truth, Perry.”

A cocky smile. Perry liked being one up. “About Junie? You couldn't take it.”

“Try me.”

“No. Leave it alone.”

Eddie sat back, confused. What was he missing here? What accounted for the hostility? And then, in the watchful, angry eyes, he saw the younger Perry peeking out, the teenager once so possessive of Junie, whom, after they did
The Tempest,
he insisted on calling Miranda.

Perry knew about the baby.

And was furious not to be the father.

“You loved her,” Eddie breathed. “You still love her. This is jealousy. My God, Perry. You're jealous.”

“It's less than jealousy and more than love,” said Perry, still hot. “Junie was my fiancée.”

(II)

T
HEY STROLLED ALONG
College Walk, in the shadow of the Low Library. Young white men stared. Negroes were no longer unheard of on Ivy League campuses, but neither were they common, so if you happened to spot one the odds were good that he did not belong.

“You have to understand, Eddie. The Junie you thought you knew was not the only Junie. You're her brother, but you weren't the one who shared her secrets. I was. Don't look at me that way. You never held her head when she was throwing up in the gutter in Cambridge because she had too much to drink, and you never had her slap your face for doing it. You weren't there when the bottom fell out of her life after the baby's father dropped her, and you weren't there when she had her big bust-up with Phil Castle. To you she was this helpless innocent you had to protect, but in her mind she was conquering the world. Do you really think convention would have held her back? Did you think Harvard Law School was a convent? She took the train down to New York City almost every weekend her first year and a half in law school. Did she ever call you? Did you know she was in town? No and no, right? Junie lived her own life, Eddie. It didn't revolve around your expectations of her.”

Eddie said nothing. He wondered whether Perry could sense his shrinking from this diminution of his sister's purity. Junie had told him to his face that the father of her half-white child was the only man she had ever been with. Had she lied to the brother who loved her? Had she perhaps meant that Professor Mellor was the only
white
man she had been with? Was Perry lying now? After all, when Eddie had asked Junie on Christmas Eve if Perry was the father, she had answered “Yuch.” Or was the true June Cranch Wesley—as her brother was beginning to suspect—a mysterious woman to whom neither he nor Perry Mount had ever gained full access?

“We talked about you a lot,” the golden boy resumed after a moment, and Eddie felt as if Perry was reading his mind. “She was so proud of you, Eddie. Proud, but also a little scared. Junie knew how you thought of her. Most of us, we're worried about living up to our fathers' expectations, maybe our mothers'. Junie couldn't have cared less about that. All she cared about was her image in her big brother's eyes. She didn't want to let you down.” A harsh laugh. The anger was still very near the surface. “I'll tell you something else. She never wanted you to know. About the baby. First she thought about having an abortion, then she thought about adoption. All that she could deal with. But not your disapproval. She was going to keep the baby secret from you, but I changed her mind. I really pushed her hard, Eddie. Know why?” Eddie knew. He didn't know. He felt his purpose crumbling around him, which perhaps was Perry's intention. “Because, if she didn't tell you, she'd always wonder. How you would have reacted. If you would have loved her anyway. I won't say Junie was testing the limits of your love for her, but she finally agreed to tell you because otherwise she would torture herself worrying. That's the truth, Eddie. That's what happened.”

They were no longer in motion. They were standing on the lawn, no closer than men who hate each other will, but still close enough to fight. “You said you were her fiancé,” said Eddie, dully. “You said you were getting married.”

Perry hesitated, and seemed, for the first time, uneasy. “All right. So I asked her at a weak moment. It still counts, doesn't it? She still said yes. I asked her when she was crying over being thrown over by her baby's father, and she still said yes. She wouldn't take a ring, she hated what it implied, and besides, she said she could never show it to her parents. I didn't understand her. I tried to tell her that after the baby came I would love it as much as—”

Perry stopped. Perhaps he recognized, as Eddie did, the moment when he crossed from angry explanation to childish whining.

“I'm going to find her, Eddie. One way or another. I don't want your help. I don't need it. If you keep trying, you'll be in my way.”

“And you'll be in Asia, working for the State Department, right? What are you going to do, search Tokyo and Hong Kong?” You do it for different reasons. Pride. Fury. Fear. King-of-the-hill. Eddie had not been in a real fight since his days with Scarlett, and, before that, since the Army. But now he was suddenly up in Perry's face. “I think you're a coward, Perry. You're not looking for her. You're running away.”

Eddie waited for the punch. He was not any kind of brawler, as his quick knockdown by the boys at the Newark train station had proved. No matter. More than at any time in his life, he needed to be hit, and to hit back—and who better to provoke than Perry Mount, the golden boy, who loved Junie and pretended to himself that they were engaged, who had used this opportunity to smear her memory for no apparent gain, and who used to swing his fists at any excuse when they were children, even knowing that Eddie would kick the shit out of him?

But Perry neither swung nor fled.

Instead he said, “Okay, Eddie. Unball those fists. I don't want to fight you. It's fine. You can go on searching.”

Eddie could not believe his ears. “You think I need your permission? Who do you think you are?”

Perry was not even interested. He had his hands in his pockets. “I don't think you're up to it, Eddie. I don't think you can find her. But if you do, let me know. I can help you both.”

“If you think for one minute—”

“Now, about this Sharon business.” Glancing around, as if afraid somebody would hear them and he would lose his sinecure at State. “Yes, I dated Sharon Martindale for a while. No, I never tried to burn down the house. Why would I do that? The Martindales have everything mixed up, as usual. I'm sorry to burst your bubble again, Eddie, but it was Junie and Sharon who set the fire—by accident, smoking marijuana in the bedroom when her parents were away—and I'm the one they called to clean up the damage and make everything nice before the Martindales got back. That's all.”

“Why the subterfuge? Why did you let them think your name was Ferdinand?”

A careless shrug. “Junie called me Ferdinand sometimes. Sharon heard it. She liked it, and made me use it, even around her parents. Kind of like a private joke.”

Eddie frowned. He felt he was missing something obvious. It was all too fluid. Too pat. Perry had an answer for everything. And yet he and Junie were close—

Oh!

“One more question,” said Eddie.

“Not about Sharon.”

“No. About Junie.” He hesitated. “The baby, Perry. What happened to the baby? You were her friend. You must know.”

The golden boy sagged. Once more Eddie had touched a sensitive spot. “She wouldn't tell me. I wanted to help. She wouldn't let me. She said it was her problem, not mine. When her delivery got close, she went off somewhere with Sharon. The next day Sharon came back by herself. And Junie—well, Junie got back a week or so later, and she didn't have a baby with her.”

Eddie pondered. His sister gone to extraordinary lengths to hide the baby's whereabouts from the few people who knew she was pregnant—from Benjamin Mellor, the father; from Perry Mount, who wanted to marry her; from the brother who loved her most of all. And there was something else. Mellor had called the baby “it.” Perry never referred to the baby's sex. Eddie wondered whether he himself might be the only one Junie had told that the baby was a girl.

Perry, meanwhile, had resumed his hectoring tone.

“It's time to stop, Eddie. Stop searching. Stop turning over rocks. You don't have any idea what trouble you're causing. You don't understand Harlem. Harlem has secrets. Secrets it won't yield without a fight. Harlem isn't a neighborhood, Eddie. It's an idea. You might even call it an ideology. A force. You can't mess around with it. It has a habit of messing back.”