Love and Shame and Love

by Peter Orner

  That night, their sweat pooling in the hollow of their futon, Popper said, I could lie beside you like a Sunday roast.

  “Who said that?”

  “I forget. A. J. Liebling maybe. No, he probably just said, ‘I want to lie by a roast.’ ”

  She raised her head and kissed him, daintily, un-Katlike, as a small reward. For stealing a line? For A. J. Liebling?

  Now she brought a small tower of books to bed with her every night. She fell asleep holding Hannah Arendt.

  The three fans only flung the heat around and made it hotter.

  He stood up and yanked the light cord, that cord that dangled above their lives as they slept, like some ceiling god was fishing for them.

  “Hey, I’m reading.”

  “You were snoring and that bulb’s like the Stasi.”

  “I’ve never snored once in my entire life.”

  He stood up again and yanked the light on again.

  Kat went back to sleep with her book in her hands, snored.

  He nuggled closer to her. “Did you know that the Nazis forbade Jews asparagus? I mean what kind of bureaucrat thinks that shit up?”

  “Popper—”

  “Well, we’ve rounded them up, machine-gunned, gassed, burned alive their babies—now let’s forbid them an esoteric vegetable.”

  Kat opened her eyes a crack, read a paragraph. Then she said, “Why is it always back to the Nazis?—Jesus, that’s it, so obvious—Nazis give you a hard-on.”

  “It must be the sadness.”

  “Arendt says there isn’t anything particularly unique about the Nazis, only that they were better accountants than, say, Kubla Khan or Oliver Cromwell.”

  “The sadness, the grief, it must, you know, increase the old firepower—Arendt’s completely full of shit. And Kubla Khan was in it for territorial expansion. I forget who Cromwell was. A mean Englishman? I remember Benny Hill doing some bit—”

  “Go slow, Popper. Woo me a little.”

  Her naked already. Him naked but for his Sox hat. If they could have torn off their skins they would have.

  “Take off your hat, Popper.”

  “Never.”

  Like two wet seals thumping. They kept losing their grips on each other’s greasiness. Kat almost fell off the bed. Two and a half minutes tops.

  He edged downward. “Let me correct the imbalance.”

  “No. Not now. Later, okay?”

  She got up and took another shower. He stared at the bulb above the bed and listened to the trickling of the water. They had very low water pressure that summer. The whole city did, according to Eyewitness News. He stared at the bulb and thought of the water slowly falling, draining down her body into the abyss of the drain.

  1233 NORTH DAMEN

  It’s the sex. Lack thereof.

  Why don’t you just go back to sleep? I’m just thinking.

  On the floor?

  I like it.

  Want a pillow?

  No, thanks.

  I specialize in anticlimax, which, when you think about it, has its own subtle excitement.

  I’m just thinking. Not about that.

  You want to get some toys or something? Spice things up. There’s a place on Western Ave I could go and pick up some stuff. How about porn? I grew up with porn. My father had a ton of it. I think of it as a character-forming aspect of my childhood.

  Let me think, Popper. I’ll come back.

  It’s the sex.

  No, it’s more than that. Or less. Fuck, I don’t even know. Sometimes I’ve got no want. I don’t even want to want. Do you know what I mean?

  July 28, 1945

  So little to say—Nothing’s changing—At night all sorts of past experiences keep popping up in my mind—of you and I arguing about this or that while I drive—This is such an artificial life in a way, and yet it is so intense—one loses all sense of place and time—I wonder if where we are at any given time is even important—It’s just where we come from that means anything at all—This is no life for a family man—I’m no different from the rest of the men—When we censor the crew’s mail, I can see how much they miss their wives and kids, too—What a fine bunch of stay-at-homes this war is going to make of all of us—

  DINER GRILL, IRVING PARK

  We have no destinations.

  —Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

  Wanting to be alone but not free of voices, he drives his mother’s tired Chevelle to the Diner Grill, where the taxi drivers go for late-night coffee and cheeseburgers. Three in the morning, he sits on a stool facing the wide, empty street, a double-parked cab idles with the windows open, the dispatcher calling out an address: 37, I got a pickup at 1673 Aldine, copy. 37. 37, I got a fare standing by. 37, where in the fuck are you? You got to stop disappearing on me, 37. And at the end of the counter slumps an ancient man, not a driver, maybe he was one in the past and now—not being able to sleep either—he comes to be around the old talk. Always a plate of fries in front of him. Just fries, no burger, Ken, thanks.

  A new driver pulls up. He comes in and sits next to Popper.

  Couple of fried eggs, Ken.

  Hash browns?

  Sure thing, Ken.

  Outside it’s getting colder but inside the windows sweat from the hot breath of the men who don’t tell the stories Popper is looking for—about the holdups, the fare-skippers, the drug-addled. One driver talks about a homemade remedy for hemorrhoids and Hash Browns says, That’s all a crock. And the creams don’t work, either. The only surefire way to lose them is to shell out the money and get the operation. Any other way just buries the pain temporarily.

  Popper gets back in the car and drives block after block looking for lighted windows. This is September 23, 1995. It’s 3:45 in the morning, your light is on. The corner of Ashland and Milwaukee. Fourth-floor apartment above Vasilatos and Sons Real Estate. Who are you? What are you doing? Right now, tell me, what are you thinking about?

  1233 NORTH DAMEN

  Sunday and Popper lying on their bed with his shoes on, a sacred indulgence. The weight of one’s shoes relaxes the feet, providing a kind of wonderfully decadent encasement, a double set of wombs for each foot, if you will, or two little comfortable tombs, to put it another way. Interesting, womb and tomb. All you have to do is switch a letter.

  Kat was digging around for something in the closet. All he could see was her ankles and the backs of her bare feet, dust-coated from pacing around the apartment all afternoon.

  “Maybe I’ll go to law school,” Popper said to her feet. “I’ll defeat the class system from the inside. They’ll never know what hit them.”

  “Who?”

  “The class system.”

  Kat stood and stepped out of the closet. She held a gray dress he’d never seen her wear. “You think this is too frumpy?”

  “Put it on.”

  And she did. He watched her pull off her sweats. Blue underwear, no bra. Remember this: her blue underwear, no bra. Breasts inflated like wind socks, like for a small regional airport. She’s my Meigs Field, my Palwaukee…

  Being nearly naked somehow made her taller. She was like his father this way, short but this didn’t mean she didn’t have a way of looming. She raised her arms and pulled the dress over her head. It had little frills on the sleeves.

  “I want to go to the front lines. I’m talking about real change. Without lawyers there’d be no minimum wage, child labor would be rampant. We’d still be driving Pintos. And don’t forget Gandhi was an attorney. So is Fidel Castro.”

  “Popper?”

  “Or maybe I’ll just take up Tae Kwan Do—It’s not frumpy.”

  “But it’s a little biggish?”

  “I had my yellow stripe in high school. I wonder if it’s still valid.”

  “Popper?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “All right, I won’t go to law school.”

  “Popper,” Kat said. A slightly different emphasis o
n the er, as if the name had slightly more weight in the world. His name?

  “Behold immaculate conception.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes? Actually yes?”

  “I mean no, not that. But yes. Yes.”

  “Damn, I feel like Daniel Ortega. He’s probably a lawyer—”

  “I think I’d like to go ahead with it.” She stopped but didn’t step toward him. Only her eyes got closer. She stood there in that gray dress with little frills on the biceps.

  “Serious?”

  “Serious.”

  Popper got off the bed and went to the window. A couple moseying down the alley paused to grope each other before walking on. He opened the window, he closed the window, he opened the window, he closed the window. He wanted to shout out to them. Hey, you beautiful, carefree hoodlums. Something has happened. Up here. Look up here. An occurrence. It’s about time. Plot! Up in this window. You’re not even looking. Hey, up here, have a look up—

  “You think you’d like to go ahead with it?”

  “This doesn’t make me any less pro-choice, does it?”

  “Huh?”

  “And I admit, the fatness part bothers me. I’m as vain as anybody.”

  “Go ahead with it?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “What do I think?”

  “A kid, Popper, a bambino.”

  “Jesus. The heat wave.”

  “Right.”

  “Want to fool around? Suddenly I feel like—”

  “I do, actually.”

  1233 NORTH DAMEN

  And another thing, Popper, does the world really need another privileged overeducated white kid? Haven’t we done enough to destroy the world?

  You’re having second thoughts.

  I didn’t say that. I’m just feeling guilty. I need you to help me justify.

  At least ours will be a poor privileged overeducated white kid.

  That’s true. Wait, is that good? The kid’s expectations will be so out of whack with reality, with what we can provide, he’ll become more enamored with money than if we had it, and then—Shit, we’re so fucking white.

  But we’re also minorities. Don’t forget that—

  I’m only half a minority.

  That makes you a minority’s minority.

  Give it a rest. And I’m fine with being half-Jewish, more than fine. My father used to say he had enough trouble being a human being from Wisconsin. He said if people worried less about their own nationalistic identities, we’d have one less excuse for killing each other.

  The kid will be three-quarters Jewish, not bad, not bad at all, said the reform rabbi!

  Popper, I’m so tired. Can’t I be less tired?

  1233 NORTH DAMEN

  I rented Ordinary People.

  Again?

  Ordinary People is—

  I know, I know, the greatest war movie of all time. Ordinary People makes Apocalypse Now look like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—

  Right, not that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is for slouches, not at all—

  I know, Popper, I know.

  PHILIP, MICHIGAN AVENUE

  He pauses in front of the Wrigley Building and looks north. Six o’clock in early October and the light is white gray. And the people flee. And the cabs scuttle for position like crabs. Above it all, the Hancock Building. Philip thinks of birds. Always, when he looks at the Hancock he thinks of birds. When the building was finally finished in the late sixties, triumphantly, they flipped on the airplane lights. We all cheered but the birds didn’t. The lights must have baffled them and that first night bird after bird slammed into the windows. Small thumps nobody heard. In the morning, carnage. Philip remembers the picture in the paper, the birds lined up like earthquake victims on the sidewalk, tags around their necks.

  August 2, 1945

  Start brushing the moths out of my clothes—all the talk is we may well be heading home soon—I want to be ready to hop into civvies as soon as I get back—You know my tails are still at Dapper Cleaners in storage—I still have the receipt for them—Anybody going formal? Ah, sweetheart, we’re so close and we can start right up again—Oh, my darling—Whatever needs fixing with the house—let it go—I’ll fix it—What about some new drapes for the living room?

  1233 NORTH DAMEN

  They talked about getting curtains. Neither of them could figure out how to measure the windows. Kat slept a lot during the afternoons, when she wasn’t working at the bookstore or in class. He’d join her. He always had the time. Three nights a week he was still doing overnights at the Y, but even so, he always had the afternoons.

  “You know what my mother told me once? She said she and my Dad stayed together so long because of the children and I actually said, I swear, What children?”

  “That’s sad. Everything about that is sad.”

  A shallow daylight sleep, on top of the covers most of the time. The long quiets of those afternoons, not even much traffic on Damen.

  August 4, 1945

  When you do write you never seem to mention much about my letters—are you getting them at all?—

  MONTROSE BEACH

  Odd that an abstract notion like fatherhood could make him feel more alone than ever. No wind this morning and the lake is lumpish. The bloated waves curl slowly toward the shore. Only at the last moment do they collapse. This bedraggled city beach, broken glass, a few tires, a single slatless bench, faded letters, Prk Dist. of Chic. Scattered styrofoam like unmeltable snow. Even the water crib, five miles off the beach, has faded into just another tired old building. It used to give him such joy as a kid—that magic floating house in the middle of Lake Michigan. Miriam once said only in Chicago would the powers that be build a cathedral just for the fish.

  Water Crib, Wilson Avenue

  12

  THE COMFORT INN

  THEATETUS: The very next question which I am going to ask you is an extraordinary one, although expressed in perfectly ordinary language.

  SOCRATES: There is no need to warn me: I am all ears.

  THEATETUS: What did I say between your last two interruptions, Socrates?

  —Karl Popper, “Self-Reference and Meaning in Ordinary Language”

  BOYHOOD HOME

  December of 1995, and Kat read that Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home in Dixon had been restored to its original splendor and was now open for pilgrimages.

  “We’re not the faithful,” Popper said.

  “I’m just thinking maybe his goofy-ass house will explain—”

  “Explain what?”

  “Who this country is.”

  “We’re all Clinton now. Bill Clinton’s this baby’s daddy.”

  “Let’s hope the kid doesn’t end up on welfare.”

  “He had to sign that bill.”

  “He had to sell the poor down the river?”

  “It’s called politics, Kat.”

  “It’s beyond revolting.”

  “Anyway, poor Dutch has Alzheimer’s.”

  “Isn’t it too poetic? He’s the one who gets to slip away so easy into forgetting while the Guatemalans eat—what do Guatemalans eat?”

  “Papaya?”

  They drove up on Saturday. They stopped in Mooseheart, where Popper bought a key ring at the Citgo: Mooseheart, Illinois: City of Children.

  Back in the car he said, “Maybe in time all parents become Republicans. This means us. You know my father, the great Democrat, voted for Reagan the second time around. But part of that was because—”

  “Because your mom slept with Walter Mondale.”

  “I told you that? That’s a closely held and sacred family secret.”

  At the boyhood home, a little blue-haired tour guide doubling as the gift-shop lady cried in a piercing voice, “Welcome! Welcome! And when does your little precious arrive?”

  She showed them sacred artifacts in glass cases. A leather football helmet. His varsity letters. A replica of the hutch where Ronnie raised his rabbits. Photograph
s of his childhood dogs: Stoney, Taddy, and a short-lived shepherd (a runaway) named Doug. A story: “Once Ronnie was fined fourteen dollars and fifty cents for lighting off fireworks. And he thought he’d get off easy because his daddy played pinochle with the chief of police. Fat chance of that! It took Ronnie half a summer to pay that off. Now this is the President’s room. He shared it with his beloved brother Neal, also called Moons.”

  “Is this where he first started hearing Commies under the bed?” Kat asked.

  “Listen, missy,” the woman growled, at a much much lower register, “you don’t have to be grateful to him, but you don’t have to be an ignoramus, either.”

  Her hair wasn’t blue, either. Where did Popper get the idea it was blue?

  Hardly pausing for breath, the woman went back up to her gift-shop voice. “And this watch here is not a replica. This is Ronnie’s first Timex. (He remained loyal to the brand throughout his entire life.) He bought it with his own money in 1929, which, as you know, was an inauspicious year to be buying anything, and yet Ronnie was ever the optimist, never once did he believe that tomorrow wouldn’t bring more blessings than…”

  Before they left, they bought a coffee cup, two T-shirts, eight postcards, a Reagan bobble-head, and promised to return with the baby.

  They ate roast beef sandwiches at Arby’s and got a room at the Comfort Inn. The gray stucco walls were covered with glazed pebbles. The television remote control was screwed into the night table. In the dark, they held each other. It was 5 degrees outside. In the room, they couldn’t turn down the heat.

  “I feel like a wildebeest,” Kat said.

  “You’re fine.”

  “A Weeble Wobble inflated up with a bike pump. I mean, have you looked at my cheeks lately?”