by Tim O'Brien
“Harvey—my brother—Harvey can tell you all about it if you’d like.”
“I don’t think so,” Maglione smiled. He hooked his wife by the arm. “Not that I don’t like it. I can see it’s a solid bomb shelter, no question about it.”
“You can paint it.”
“Now there’s not a bad idea,” the man said enthusiastically.
“I mean, you can paint a mural on it or something. Like in the caves. Make an interesting relic after the …”
“Paul! Stop that.” Grace took his arm.
Bishop guided the couple inside. They tested the water and walls and floors. Upstairs, they tried Harvey’s door but it was locked. Bishop talked nonstop. He seemed to know the house better than Perry, as though he’d been waiting years for the chance to sell it off.
“Anyhow,” Bishop said as they went outside, “you won’t find a much better place for painting abstracts.”
They stood in a broken line in the back yard. Maglione and his wife looked around randomly as if trying to sight the future.
“I can see it’s beautiful,” Maglione said. He had a bright, disarming way of smiling. His wife continued to eye the bomb shelter.
Finally they walked to their car. Everyone shook hands and Maglione said he’d be in touch within a few days. Bishop honked twice as they left.
“There,” Grace said.
“What do you think?”
“You were ghastly about the bomb shelter.” She laughed and took his arm. “I think they loved it. It was obvious.”
Perry shrugged. “That woman’s a real tiger.”
“You were awful!”
Harvey was waiting in the kitchen. He looked shaken.
“They fell in love with it,” Grace said. “And they were nice people. We’ve got ourselves a sale.”
“Is that right?”
“Probably,” Perry said.
“Charming.”
“You should have said hello to them.”
“Who were they? Never seen them.”
“From St. Paul. Name’s Maglione and he’s a broker and she’s some sort of beauty queen. Actually, they were all right. He wants to paint abstract pictures.”
“Italians,” Harvey muttered. “I can’t believe it. Here we were all going to Italy and instead the miserable Italians are invading us. I don’t like it. They didn’t look right.”
“They were very nice,” Grace said firmly.
“Creeps. I was watching from the window. The guy looked like a creep to me.”
Perry was disgusted. “If you don’t want to sell, just say the word. You keep it. It’s yours.”
“I was only saying they didn’t look right.”
“Just let me know.”
Harvey went back to his room, and that night Perry heard him pacing. The wind was from the south and he smelled the pond. It was hard to give a damn about anything except selling and leaving and finding a new place and forgetting the rest. He listened to the pacing and the mosquitoes.
“Poor Harvey,” whispered Grace.
“Tough on him.”
“Don’t you have pity?”
“Sure. I have pity for myself, too.”
“Well.” She was quiet and the pacing continued. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Forget it. I’ll be glad when it’s sold. I was just being cranky. I’m glad we’re selling. We’ll find a good place somewhere else.”
Grace rolled close. “You know,” she said, “you do spend a lot of time feeling sorry for yourself. You and Harvey both.”
“A family trait.”
“Paul?”
“What?”
“Paul, what do you think?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“No, I mean what do you think about selling? Are you …? You never tell me anything of what you’re thinking.”
“I never know what I’m thinking.” He was thinking of his father.
She sighed. “I can’t read minds, you know. If you don’t think you want to sell, if you changed your mind, well then just tell me. I won’t mind, really. Really. I can’t read minds.”
“We’ll sell,” he said softly. “I never said we wouldn’t.”
“I just want you to be happy,” she finally said. “I thought you’d maybe changed your mind and didn’t want to tell me. I can’t read minds. I like it better when we talk about things. Don’t you? I do. I do. So if you changed your mind … I’m not going to care. I just want you to be happy. I worry over you.”
“All right,” he said.
“You know?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want a nice rub?”
“No. I want to sleep.”
He faced the wall, lying on his side, and trying to be still. The mosquitoes were buzzing against the screens. He wasn’t sure of anything: Harvey’s restless pacing, Grace lying awake and listening and too afraid to talk, the smell of Pliney’s Pond drifting with the breeze from the woods. Once, forever, he thought he’d hated the house. Penance for not loving enough, the old man or the woods. A circumstance. He was hot. The sheets seemed to tie him down.
Wide awake and restless, he swung out of bed, his fists clenching and closing like a pulse. He sat still a moment. He listened to the July heat, mosquitoes screeching at the screen windows, inchworms in the back pines, the old house, the forest, a close-seeming flock of loons. What he did not hear, he imagined.
“Paul?”
“Go to sleep.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m going for a walk.”
“Did I make you angry? I’m sorry.”
“No.”
“Paul …”
“Stop that infernal whispering.”
“Paul.”
“I’m sorry.” He got dressed. “I’m in a rotten mood. Mosquitoes, the heat, everything. I’m sorry. I’m taking a walk.”
He’d forgotten his glasses. He blundered down the path, groping with his hands, thinking: she will be crying now, worrying, wishing he were happy, happy. Couldn’t be helped. Selling the damned and cursed house, selling out of the great histories. He smelled the pond before him. Involuntarily, with the laxity of forgetfulness, his bowels moistened. Sweet anticipation. Selling out of the house and woods, it was time.
He blundered off the path and felt the underbush climb around him. He turned back, found the path by memory, and hurried towards the thick smell of the pond.
He was grinning and his bowels were wet and loose.
Blind anyway, his eyes were squeezed shut and he followed the path down and down. His belly was warm.
The night was warm.
A mosquito was trapped in his ear, dancing madly. He dug it out and another entered, buzzing in its frantic death dance, dancing madly, his father ringing in the death bucket, the hollow tinkle in Harvey’s voice, the bells of Damascus Lutheran, the stone cold apse.
He did not notice the northern lights. He did not look up. He did not see the rocketing, wavering, plummeting red in the sky. The mosquito rattled in his ear and he plunged towards Pliney’s Pond. He was blind and cold in the steaming woods. “Here we are,” he said, coming to the pond. He could smell it and hear it, the soft muds and insects. It was sullen and hot, and he listened, his fists clenching and closing, and he was thinking suicide. He did not see the northern lights, but he heard the mosquito shrieking in his ear. “So, at last, here we are,” he said.
He shed his clothes and at last went in.
At last.
He glided inch by inch into Pliney’s Pond.
It seemed almost a ritual, but he knew it was neither a ritual nor an armistice, for his universe was fear and memories, and as he waded inch by inch into the hot algaed waters he said, “Here we are, at last.”
The water drew around his belly and bowels, and he was wet and warm, releasing as he waded deeper, the whole architecture of his northern world flowing sweetly to ruin in the hot waters.
He glided through the thick water, aiming for the center o
f Pliney’s Pond, letting his arms go out, his palms touching the surface of the waters and slowly rising in float. The mosquito still rattled in his ear and he went deeper. Expecting to sink, he was instead buoyed high. He was careful to hold his shoulders and neck and head above water. His eyes were now open. His stomach and intestines had lost all feeling, and he thought with a smile of a pricked sac of black bile that now flowed like kitchen syrup into warm Pliney’s Pond. He bounced lightly on his toes, wading deeper towards the center. It was curious thick water with the odor of purity. Dead insects floated around him. Live insects swarmed around his head.
At the center of Pliney’s Pond, he closed his eyes. Then he lay back, drowning the mosquito in his ear.
Eyes closed, ears closed, there were no sounds and no lights. He lay still in a bath of secondine, blood and motherwarmth.
There was no wind. The waters were stagnant. There was nothing to carry him in one direction or another, and he floated dead still as a waiting embryo. In an infant’s unborn dream, the future was neither certain nor even coming, not even the future, and the past was swimming like so many chemicals around him, his own black bile running like diarrhea into the pool of elements.
He opened his eyes, rolled over, face down, submerged, put his feet into the mud bottom and submerged like a turtle, opened his eyes again, relaxed, calm, warm, suspended, at home. Things moved around him. He pushed towards the bottom and took a handful of slime and squeezed it between his fingers. Then his breath left him.
Coming out, emerging, he saw the great lights.
He waded to the rocks and sat still. He smelled the pond in his lungs. The old man’s crazy illusions seemed dull and threadbare, as though their vitality and old importance had somehow flowed with the black bile into Pliney’s Pond. Everything was quiet. There were mosquitoes but they were not hungry, and everything was very quiet and peaceful and things were not really so bad or so urgent as the old man had preached. And there was still Grace. He had no more memories. Not so bad, he thought. Not so bad, at all. Buck up, boy. Buck up, he either said or thought, because it’s good to sell and there are better and more comfortable illusions to live under. The old man was crazy. That was the terrible hell of it. And there was still Grace. Warm deepdown Grace, the ripe deep pond. He would tell her that he loved her and mean it, mean it at precisely the moment he said it, rather than not saying it or saying it and not meaning it, meaning it later when he did not say it. Someday he would say it and mean it at precisely the same time. Not so bad, he thought. He smelled the pond inside him. Not so bad, at all. At last he dressed and moved without hurry along the path to the house.
He made hot chocolate and sat at the kitchen table to drink it. Grace came out in her robe.
“I was worried,” she said.
“I’m better now.” He looked straight at her and smiled, almost meaning it. “I’m sorry. I was feeling rotten but I’m better now. Hot chocolate?”
“You stink,” she smiled.
“I know it. I went for a swim in the pond.”
“What?”
“I did.”
“You hate that pond!”
“No more. It wasn’t so bad. Not bad, at all.” Again he smiled and almost meant it. “I need a shower now.”
“No,” she said. “No, that can wait till morning. Come along with me.”
So he followed her down the hallway. Already, sensing it in the bare hollow hallway, he was thinking of the house as sold. Foreign and too cold. Not so bad, he thought.
“There,” she said, “aren’t you lucky to have me?”
“Yes.”
She pulled down the sheets. For a while he just held her, then before knowing it and without forethought, he was ready to make real love. He smiled at an image of the old man, banishing it, and it was like the warm pond. “You want a son or daughter?” he said.
“A son, of course.” It was as though she were thinking of the same possibility at the same time, but the way she said “of course” had great surprise.
“A son?”
“Of course,” she said.
“All right then.”
“What?”
“Son,” he said. “The son frame of mind.” Clumsy but not embarrassed, he helped her with the robe.
“Phew!” she laughed. “What a stinker.”
“It’s just the pond.”
“Phew.”
“Should I shower?”
“Oh, no. It’s lovely.”
Soft as the pond, he thought. Except for certain things, such as resilience. So, “Don’t stop,” she said in a loud voice that was not a whisper, but still like the pond which was always so rich-smelling and mud-deep and unconscious, scaring him away and still attracting as if to a natural element, attracting until in calm desperation, with nothing to lose, he relented and went in. She examined him like a toy. “Don’t stop,” she said, and I won’t, he thought, I won’t. Two sides, he also thought. Selling and staying, and it was as much negative as positive, selling, selling and denying the crazy stuff of the old man and the histories … “I won’t,” he whispered to her because she was pleading so loudly … A son, he thought. He thought son, son, son, son. He would be kind to his son. Have him read all the classic books and the Atlantic Monthly, and give him just enough of everything and not too much of anything. Huge breasts, he thought. Flattened now on her chest, spilling over her ribs where he could not see in the dark. There was a lull of waiting and rebuilding and floating in restless waters. He smelled the pond with them. “Paul?” she said loudly. Chlorophyllrich and algathick and deep to the very bottom of things. Such breasts, he thought. She began to move again, restlessly. She threw her legs behind him and seemed to suck him in. “Ow,” she said loudly but not complaining, and “All right?” he whispered and “Perfect,” she said loudly, “don’t stop.” I won’t, he thought, thinking she’s pregnant already, because he’d been coiled like a snake for years and the tension had gone slack and when he was ready to spring the spring wasn’t there, but it could be recoiled, slowly, slowly he thought. Unimaginative, he also thought. Clumsy, out of practice, docile for too long. Unimaginative.
He smelled the rich pond. She held his head. “There,” she said in a loud voice. “Now come here,” and again there was a long time of rebuilding and recoiling, and he did not think of anything. “Ah, shame,” she said. “There, do you like that there?”
He could not say anything and barely heard. The weight seemed to press on his ears.
“Are my breasts too big for you?” she laughed.
“No,” he said.
“Are you sure?” And she started to say something else, a kind of fresh tease in her voice, but she was cut off and said something else very loudly, and again he was not thinking, and as though sinking she moved away from him and down but he caught up and held her by her breasts until she shook, then he held her while they were quiet, then she held him.
“What a stinker,” she finally laughed.
“I can shower.”
“No. I think it’s lovely, I do. We can sleep like this always.”
“Shall I get you some hot chocolate?” he said.
“Yes. Then we can have more energy. Do you think we made a son?”
“Three of them, I’ll bet.”
“I have the same feeling.”
“But I don’t care about the son right now.”
“Good.”
“Are you thinking of anything? I can’t think of a thing to think about.”
“Shhhhh.”
“I feel good.”
“Shhhhh. Where’s my hot chocolate?”
“Are you glad we’re selling?” he asked.
“Yes, but where’s my hot chocolate? Yes, I’m glad. I’m happy now.”
In the morning, Bishop Markham called to say the house was sold. He was cheerful and congratulatory. “You know what really sold ’em? The darned bomb shelter! Can you believe that? It’s true, I swear. The darned bomb shelter. Can you … Maglione says he�
�s gonna make it into a studio. Can’t get more abstract than a bomb shelter, right? Hee, hee. Anyhow, I guess it’s a load off your shoulders.”
“A real load. Thanks, Bishop. When do they want …?”
“Easy, easy. Plenty of time for all that. Mortgages and deeds and banks. You know how that is. Never easy selling a house. But that’s what you got me for, right, so just take her easy and let me handle it. You’re a lucky man, buddy.”
Bishop talked in a faraway voice about the finances and paper work, then Perry thanked him and hung up. Grace was out working in the garden. Pregnant already, he thought. Not so bad, after all.
He watched her through the gauze curtains.
It was cool and she was wearing a sweater, the one he gave her for her birthday, and she looked terrific, he thought, and he was grateful and felt very lucky. She was on her knees, her hands deep in dirt as she planted flowers for the spring, when they would no longer be there, her hands deep in the garden dirt. She saw him watching and waved and he waved back, then went upstairs.
Harvey was in bed, watching television with a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair slicked down. He was smoking.
“Guess that was our good and loyal friend Bishop on the phone,” he said without looking up. It was Saturday morning and the cartoons were on.
“He sold it. The Maglione people fell in love with your bomb shelter.”
“Charming people.”
“They’re all right, Harv.”
“When do we get booted out? Imagine they’re already coming with truckloads of easels and paints to boot us out.”
“No.”
“Italians.”
“No. Bishop says there’s a lot of papers to sign. Lots of time, he said.”
Wistfully, Harvey blew smoke towards the ceiling. “We don’t have to sign, do we?” He looked at Perry with a sober eye. “There’s no crummy law that says we have to sign the papers.”
“No. I guess there’s not a law.”
“I built that bomb shelter with my own hands. Solid as rock. It’ll take anything. Hate like the devil to leave it, you know. Bad news getting caught in a nuclear war without your trusty bomb shelter.”