“Opera?” said Papa. “New York?”
“Faust,” said Mama, “at the Met. I have always loved Wagner.”
“Not Faust,” said Papa. “That wasn't Wagner's. Much as I hate him, I can't blame Faust on him.”
Mama said, “You can blame Fran for Faust. I'm taking her and Jed with us. Once she sees this plow-boy in a big city and with cultured people, she'll give him up… you'll see.”
“That will cost money,” said Papa.
“If it was your sister,” said Mama, “your sister married to a freight hand.”
“I haven't got a…”
“Don't tell me for the hundredth time you haven't got a sister. I am only making a point…”
I knew what making a point in the pool room was; it was done with dice. But Mama could make it just by talking…
It was no secret, of course, that Mama and Aunt Fran were the most beautiful women in town… but on the train to New York and in the cab drive to the hotel I think they were the two most beautiful women in New York…
Fran was really dressed up, and Mama had put on a “few rags” that cost Papa one of his best lots. Jed was wearing a smartly tailored Sears Roebuck—neat, but not loud, and dark enough to match in with Papa's “tail,” which was beginning to show signs of wear.
I was dressed in tight dark short pants, bare legs, and a close haircut like a lawn cut by a mower from which a blade was missing (so was a bit of my ear—Mr. Zimmerman was getting a little old for a barber).
It was good to see New York. I hadn't seen it since Gramp and I used to live high there, and were known as two of the sights of the town. Gramp was in California… had been for several years, a very, very old man resting by the blue sea… and everyone felt nothing could happen now… unless he eloped one morning to Mexico with his nurse.
Jed was not much worried about the big city. He walked into the Waldorf as if he worked there, and we went to our rooms. Mama and Fran had one, and Papa and I and Jed had one.
Papa shaved… the second time that day. Jed combed his hair and put on a black bow tie, and winked at me, and we went to the opera.
We were late. It had already started. We had good seats in a box that Mama had loaned from a friend of Gramp's who hated opera, but appeared there once a year to show her heirs she wasn't dead.
On stage a large black man was making love to a small girl in a nightgown.
“Faust…” said Mama.
“Played by a colored man?” asked Papa.
“Tuskegee,” hissed Mama. “They have some very fine colored singers…”
“They don't look happy,” said Fran, sliding in under Jed's arm.
“Opera is very unhappy,” said Jed.
“Please,” said Mama… “shhhh.”
“I read it in a book,” said Jed.
The colored man began to cry and weep. We sat there, and the little girl sprayed sound at us, and every time the colored man wept the drummer hit the big drum and took a bow. Papa's collar wilted, and Jed said, “Opera is better than it sounds,” and Mama looked at him, and Jed said that he read that, too, from a book…
After a while Mama said, “Now Faust betrays her, she sings the Jewel Song, and then is burned alive and she goes to heaven… Faust finding he has lost his soul to the devil…”
“Shhhhhhh shhhh…” said seven people at once.
“Well!” said Mama, and turned around and watched the colored man suddenly take a pillow and smother the little girl on a bed. Mama looked puzzled and bit her lips, and when it was over we went out into the lobby. Mama said. “They certainly modernize these stories, don't they, Mr. L.?”
Papa nodded and looked at me, and I looked at a poster saying OTHELLO TONIGHT… and Papa looked at me that he would drop-kick me across Broadway if I said anything… it shows you how much Papa loved Mama. Anyway, we had a late dinner at the Waldorf, and one thing Mama could do—she could order a meal and look at Papa and smile, and give us all the impression (to say nothing of the two waiters) that Papa had thought it all up and ordered it all himself.
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