Lainie told me she loved me and I believed her for as long as I did because I wanted to believe her. She had come to me in my life as someone indescribable. It was a miracle that she came to me at all. I should never have left her the way that I did, but I did what I had to do then because I didn’t know what else to do. Oh, yes, I knew I could go the other way, but my two selves were at war, battle-fatigued by the fence that had been installed by my own hand.
I wanted to know more than just the betrayal. I wanted to know the beauty. I wanted to experience everything that was positive and nothing that was even the least bit disturbing. Tooie tells me that I am the world’s last innocent, a soul without blemish, but that’s not true. I was never an innocent, a blemish-free soul. I was a man who couldn’t bear the thought of the thing that was perfect housing a shadowed flaw.
Lainie was flawed and I should have known it. I should have known it before my heart and my love were so much at stake. But I was an ass, as I said. I never asked and she never told. Accidents will happen and when our did, it was more than I could bear and I was a fool. I acted badly and I betrayed what was best in both of us. I have never forgiven myself.
Myself. What is that? Who is that? I don’t even know any longer. Vincent Compton. Who is that? What is that? I don’t know any more. I don’t know.
♦
Vincent Compton got out of the automobile and reached for the newspaper the man at the stand was holding out for him. The nickel he handed the vendor was new and shiny and it sparkled in the bright sunlight. He returned to the driver’s seat and slapped the periodical down on the seat next to him. It flopped open and its headline was too revealing, too important to ignore:
SACCO/VANZETTI DEAD.
DEMONSTRATORS ENRAGED
It was August 24, 1927. Two men, accused, tried and convicted of murder, but condemned for their radical politics, had inspired the creative minds of the nation to campaign for justice. Six years of hearings had taken their toll on many, including George Bernard Shaw, Einstein, H.G. Wells and the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay who had gone to jail for her vocal protestations of their innocence. Vincent Compton had not taken part in any protests or even attended single seminar on the case. He was a closet Socialist himself and for his family’s sake he had kept his profile low in these dangerous days.
Besides it was the 1920s. Life was lived in the fast lane if you could pull over into it. Compton had tried to make that move but each time he started in that direction something pulled him back, called him up short. The vo-do-dee-do life was an elusive one even though he could see it, hear it, taste it even all around him. He loved the new jazz music. He liked to dance and could fox-trot and charleston as well as anyone. Women’s clothes, short, flimsy, decorated with beads and fringe attracted him, especially when there were long legs and bare arms attached to those dresses. He had natural appetites and he wanted to indulge them, but there was still an old moral sensibility that held him at bay. He hated it.
But this day, this particular day, with Sacco and Vanzetti gone, there was a new and terrible tremor in the city. It was unavoidable. It was like the new subway system that rocked and shook and made the subterranean walls shiver. Here it existed above ground, in every building, in every street. He parked the car, tossed the still unread newspaper into a trash can and walked down the street to the nearest speakeasy, determined to have a drink, to forget his inability to communicate his needs.
When he entered the Sparta Sportsman’s Club on West 55th Street he thought, at first, that it was empty. There wasn’t another soul at the bar, so he took a stool in the center of the row of nine and waited for the barman to take his order.
"A beer, I think," he said. The barman looked him over carefully, then spoke.
"I’m afraid you have to be a member here, Sir. Are you a member?"
"I’m not," Compton admitted. "I didn’t know..."
"Give him a beer, Teddy," a woman said from somewhere in the gloom behind him. Compton turned and squinted in the dimness of the large room. He saw a slight flash of light from a corner, perhaps in a booth, he wasn’t sure yet. His eyes had not adjusted to the change of light from the bright outdoors to this place with its few candles. "It’s early. He needs a beer."
"Sure. Why not? And if we’re busted, I’m calling you out on this, Lainie."
"Thanks...whoever you are," Compton said, adding quickly, "whereever you are."
"Think nothing. You looked like you needed one."
"I don’t need...well, I guess I could use...that is..."
"It’s okay, kid. Just relax and enjoy it."
"Where are you?" Compton asked. "I can’t see you."
"Your beer, sir," said the barman behind him. Compton turned to look at him, this man he could see. "Twenty cents, please."
"It’s on me, Teddy. No charge."
"Okay, sister." The barman moved away and into his own dim corner at the end of the mahagonny bar. Compton felt someone at his elbow and when he turned the woman who had bought him a beer was standing there, so close, so near to him. Her being there was a surprise, so sudden, so unannounced, and he took a moment to blink a few times, not sure whether she was actually near him or not.
"Enjoy your beer, Mister..."
"Compton," he said. "Vincent, please."
"Mr. Compton, then." Her voice was like a honey-coated purr. He found himself looking into her eyes and seeing himself reflected in them, two Comptons, both with that sad expression that came over his face when he felt uncertain of his next move, his motivations.
"Hello," he said. "And thanks."
"It’s okay. I got the change."
"What do I call you?" he asked.
"Lainie. It’s a simple name. Say it a few times. It’ll be yours."
"Lainie," he said, and then he repeated it a few time, saying it differently each time.
"That was good," she told him. "You sounded sincere once or twice in there."
"Oh, I was. I am."
"Nice to know," she said. "Very nice to know you."
"Very nice to know you too, Lainie."
"Oh, Mr. Compton, you used my name in a complete sentence." Her cooing tone made him wonder about her own degree of sincerity, but it also made him smile so he decided not to think too much about her sincerity.
"It’s a nice name. I’d like to use it often," he said in perhaps the most romantically motivated statement he’d ever made. "You're like a dozen red, red tea-roses, don't you know. I'll have to say your name a lot."
"We’ll have to arrange that somehow."
She put her hands on top of his, tapping it a few times with her fingers. The sensation that produced in him was one he found verbally indescribable: soft and gooey with a hardening of arteries in parts of his body that didn’t naturally harden. He had no male friends to talk with about the way Lainie made him feel at that moment, and he certainly couldn’t describe it to his mother. He decided to leave it to memory alone and not try to talk about it.
♦
That memory of our meeting was with me when I stood in the funeral parlor so many years later looking at her daughter Lana and her grandson, Maxwell. Between them, mother and son, daughter and grandson, I could see the Lainie I first knew on that strange summer afternoon in 1927. I had outlived this woman I should have loved better than I had. I had given that to both of us. I could fulfill the promise I made to her one night, long after we had parted, after I had married her best friend, Tooie the Lesbian. I could be the man I promised her I would be.
I just had to figure out how to do that. I have my limitations.
###
