Carpenter's Gothic

by William Gaddis

  — What are you going to do in California, she said finally.

  — Man like if I had anything to do why would I go to California. I mean come on Bibbs pack up. We'll be there in the morning.

  — I can't. I can't, it's not just Paul it's, things I have to do, doctors, these lawsuits about the plane crash I have to see their doctor before the…

  — You've seen him Bibb you've seen him fifty times I mean you're in there with ninety other people, how's that going to change the lawsuit.

  — Not just mine it's Paul's too he, it doesn't matter no I don't want to talk about it. I just can't go.

  — Paul! That's what I mean everything comes back to fucking Paul, you mean his lawsuit? this bullshit about half a million dollars for loss ot these fucking services he's trying to go through with it? Oh man… and he reached abruptly across for the blank pad by the phone, seized the pen with it — I mean he's the one that's wiping you out Bibb not some old plane crash, look… Figures mounted the paper, — half a million dollars, if he had a hundred dollar a night call girl that's five thousand nights every night, that's thirteen years screwing every fucking night you think any court's going to listen to that bullshit? He thrust the pad away, cracking the knuckles of one hand in the other, looking at her. She didn't look up, didn't move, and he got up suddenly. — I went out to that place, he said, his voice fallen, — yesterday, out to Hopewell.

  — But what, she looked up sharp — what…

  — Nothing. I just went. He'd turned away, — all these spaced out old cruds they had them around this long table making nut cups for Halloween, I mean it was like nursery school at the wrong fucking end of the line. She just lies there, this tube in her nose she didn't even know I was there. There's this big sign somebody put by her bed You are in Hopewell, New Jersey. I mean she must wake up sometimes and ask them where she fucking is. I've got to go, Bibbs… he'd come round and put a hand on her shoulder. — You sure? All he got was the shake of her head coming up from her shoulders but she came with him, came as far as the door where she seized his wrist.

  — Could you stay?

  — Have to be at Newark by ten… That was all; and she stood with all her weight against the door motionless in the sudden glare of headlights, until they swept an arc across the windows and were gone.

  In that house more frequently now she would find herself paused to listen, as she did passing back to the kitchen, though for what it was never clear. Once there, she turned on the radio which promptly informed her that traffic was being detoured in the vicinity of the BQE because of an overturned tractor trailer truck and she turned it off and picked up the hundred dollar bill, and then she came round to find the crumpled check on the floor and smooth it carefully against the refrigerator door before she put them both under the napkins and placemats in the drawer. Lights went out behind her, TEARFUL MOM wailed mute from the coffee table where Town & Country lay menaced by the Masai in a glint from the streetlight.

  In the tub she examined a fading bruise on the inside of her knee. In the bedroom, she brought the television screen to life with two men struggling on the top of a speeding train until one hurled the other off as it crossed a trestle and she watched, wrapped in a towel, for the satisfaction of the flailing figure dashed on the rocks below before she pulled open the bureau's top drawer as the train sped on.

  Two, then a third palm size page fell free of the worn address book, a meticulous chaos of initials and numbers, crossings out, writings in, arrows spanning continents, bridging oceans, MHG Golf Links New D tlx 314573TZUPIN; Bill R, Midi and numbers crossed out for BA and new numbers; for funding GPRASH Luanda and numbers; Jenny Dpnt Crcl and numbers; SOLANT and numbers crossed out; Seiko and numbers, IC, more numbers; she restored them haphazard and dropped it into the folder spread open on the bed where she came down to the last page taking her pencil straight to a man somewhat older and drawing it through another life, writing in other lives; through another woman for other women; through somewhere, for a wife hidden now in Marrakech, biting the nub of the eraser over his still, sinewed hands when the phone brought her upright.

  — Yes hello…? No, no he's not here who is it, if he calls I can… Well yes he was here briefly Mrs Fickert, but he had to turn right around and… pardon? Well he, well yes of course he's married. I mean I'm his wife. Do you… hello?

  The train sped toward her and she caught the towel together at her breast up fetching Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, and it roared right over her as though she'd gone down on her back there between the tracks. Opened to the Ds now, licking her fingertip past dogtrot, dive, her finger ran down dishevel, dishpan hands till it reached disinterested, where the precisely incorrect definition she sought was confirmed in a citation from a pundit for the Times, she drew a line through indifferent and wrote it in, worrying at calm with faint prods of the pencil point: the cool, disinterested calm of his eyes belying? She hatched calm in a cuneate enclosure, licking her finger paging back to the Cs for cunning, past cut-rate, curt, running down from cuneiform and held, abruptly, at cunnilingus. She was reading it slowly, finger back to her lips, pp. of lingere, more at LICK, when the phone rang again.

  — Yes? she cleared her throat — yes? hello… She came back on the pillows staring at a woman rudely her junior and blonde at that emerging refreshed from the shower. — No I'm not but, but wait. Wait, hello…? She, whoever you are, I mean you don't need to keep trying to call her here she, you see she's been gone for two years…

  The woman on the screen caressed a chaste limb with something from a bottle, turning to look straight at her, and where she came forward now to run her finger with a resolute tremor on to stop sharp at cunning her eye leaped it to cunt. And as though there'd been no interruption, no two years fallen away in Zaire, Maracaibo, Marrakech, — Places like that… BA, Mtdi, Thailand? — never been there… she lay back on the bed as though she'd never left it, — all these lovely things it looks like she'd just gone for the day… the damp warmth of the towel turned chill and fallen away, feet curled in on the bed in the frolic of the streetlight through the trees, her nipples drawn up hard and a hand passing down her breast and out to the knee flexed up for its reach to touch the bruise there, gliding down slowly on a hard edge of nails to the rising fall where its warmth lingered with the close warmth of breath in the suspense of her knees fallen wide broken, shuddering, by the shock of her own voice.

  — Yes hello! Oh… oh I'm… she caught breath, — I'm sorry Mister Mullins I didn't recognize your voice… She cleared her throat, — no, no I haven't seen Sheila since… I know yes of course you do, I know she's not well but… No he was here, Billy was here a little while ago but he… with him? No, no she wasn't no, he… He didn't know I mean I don't know no, where he was going he didn't… If I hear yes of course I will, yes…

  Knees drawn up she pulled the towel round her bared shoulders and a shiver sent breath through her, staring at that page till she seized the pencil to draw it heavily through his still, sinewed hands, hard irregular features, the cool disinterested calm of his eyes and a bare moment's pause bearing down with the pencil on his hands, disjointed, rust spotted, his crumbled features dulled and worn as the bill collector he might have been mistaken for, the desolate loss in his eyes belying, belying… The towel went to the floor in a heap and she was up naked, legs planted wide broached by scissors wielded murderously on the screen where she dug past it for the rag of a book its cover gone, the first twenty odd pages gone in fact, so that it opened full on the line she sought, coming down with the pencil on belying, a sense that he was still a part of all that he could have been.

  4

  Her anxious morning greeting in the bathroom mirror was not returned: the glass was steamed over, and she trampled a clump of brown socks, a sodden towel getting to her bath, coming from it back down the hall for an exchange in the mirror over the bureau gone from bleak to critical as her eyes met there and fell to her breasts, to the open drawer idly turning up sweaters, bl
ouses, pulling things on without a second look, finally drawn to the stairs and down by the smell of burnt toast.

  — Liz?

  — You came in so late last night I didn't…

  — Look I don't believe this… He was sitting at the kitchen table in shorts and black socks, papers spread out in the blue haze from the toaster. — Montego Bay collect, thirty nine minutes. Fifty one dollars and eighty five cents.

  — Oh. Oh that, must have been Edie…

  — Look I know it must have been Edie. I just want to know why she called collect. I just want to know why in hell you'd accept a collect call from Montego Bay.

  — Well I didn't realize it Paul the operator said it was Edie calling and I just, I so wanted to talk to her…

  — She's trying to run through two million dollars from her dead aunt and she has to call collect?

  — Well she, I don't know maybe she didn't have any change and…

  — Change! Fifty one dollars and eighty five cents change?

  — I don't, why it's always money… She poured scorched coffee, standing there at the sink looking out at a lawn chair overturned in the drift of discoloured leaves on the terrace, — why it just always has to be money…

  — Because it always is money! See this? Comes in the same God damn mail, invitation to a gala she's giving for Victor Sweet.

  — Oh! she turned, — could we…

  — Donation two hundred dollars. I mean ever since I've known you Liz, every God damn invitation we've ever had from your rich friends has donation hidden down here in the corner, two hundred dollars five hundred don't they ever give free parties like other people? Just buy some whisky have some friends in give a party?

  — Well of course Paul they, I mean these are benefits they don't, we don't have to go.

  — Go? a benefit for Victor Sweet, go? told you where he gets his backing didn't I? Walk in there's half the KGB to meet you, told you where he takes his orders didn't I? Run him against Teakell they think they'll have a mouthpiece out on the Senate floor pushing disarmament, part of their whole God damn peace offensive tell you something else Liz, I heard he's got a prison record. Want your flaky friends giving galas for jailbirds with a tax writeoff helping the blacks without getting their hands dirty same thing Liz, your brother and his greasy Buddhists same God damn thing. Show contempt for Victor Sweet by giving him money and contempt for the money by giving it to Victor Sweet, he couldn't pour piss out of a boot if you wrote the instructions on the heel. Look at Mister Jheejheeboy, look at her Burmese, money like that's supposed to mean you can buy the best, best food, best cars, friends, lawyers brokers all these God damn doctors but the money attracts the worst so that's what they buy, they buy the worst and the worst scare off the best because you're not leaving money to the kids that's not what happens. You don't leave the money to the kids you leave the kids to the money, two or three generations everybody's crazy.

  — Everybody who, Paul.

  — Look at any of this big old money, you'll see a nut or two at the dinner table won't you? They take away Uncle William's striped trousers think that will keep him in the hospital, last he was seen running up Second Avenue in nothing but his underpants? Ten years ago the cops would have picked him right up, now everybody thinks he's just out jogging don't even turn around take a look at your father, Billy in there pissing on the floor if that isn't…

  — You left me out, didn't you?

  — Didn't say that Liz I didn't say that, didn't say you're crazy, have to admit it's God damn strange though don't you, five years ago you read in the paper somebody put a rattlesnake in somebody's mailbox you're still afraid to open one? just getting things lined up here with Senator Teakell now you want me to show up at a benefit for Victor Sweet?

  — I didn't say that Paul. She'd turned back to the window, her eyes raised now to a sodden streamer of toilet paper blown high in the limbs of the mulberry tree. — Just, my friends I just wish you'd leave them out of your…

  — Oh come on Liz, it's Edie's gala isn't it? She gets up there in a five thousand dollar gown, all the lights on nobody home and they drop their…

  — I'm not talking about Edie just Edie I'm talking about Cettie! I'm talking about Reverend Ude showing up at that hospital in Texas with those hideous flowers the day her father came down to see her and all the…

  — No now look Liz. Jump to conclusions we don't have to drag through that again, coincidence they both happened to…

  — That those newspaper photographers just happened to be there? that your Doris Chin just happened to be there to tell us how he gently took Senator Teakell's arm at the bedside and drew him down in prayer honestly!

  — Same thing Liz same God damn thing, jump to conclusions if you hadn't called that florist and…

  — I didn't call them they called me! They called about the bill for a six foot cross made of white carnations they'd sent her, when I said I couldn't imagine such a thing they told me it went with a card from Reverend Ude's deepest something in the bowels of Christ it was sickening, the whole thing it was perfectly sickening.

  — Look I said I was sorry they didn't come from you, must have got the orders mixed up they…

  — Well thank God they didn't. Telling me you'd sent her flowers in my name, that ghastly thing it looked like a funeral why did you tell me that. Lining things up with Senator Teakell why didn't you just tell me that's what you were doing instead of, of using her just using her, lying there half dead you never thought of me did you, that I might really want to see her. Your Reverend Ude walking in out of nowhere to wash her in the blood of Jesus it didn't occur to you that I might really want to go down there and, just see her…

  — Oh come on Liz what harm was there, here. Pour me some coffee, what time is it. Got your watch on?

  — It was in my purse. Look at the clock, she said without doing so, looking instead at the cat out there crouched in the leaves.

  — Look I looked at the clock Liz it says five twenty three, you think it's five twenty three in the morning? Electricity must have gone off last night… and his sudden turn in the chair twisted the livid scar coursing up from the drab plaid of his shorts, set sculptural muscles bolting through his shoulders, down his arm for so simple a thing as snapping on the radio which promptly invited him, invited them both in fact, to deposit money in the Emigrant Savings Bank. — Got her under so much sedation she doesn't know what's going on anyhow… he was tapping a pencil on the pile of bills in front of him, — so what harm was there. I told you Ude was out there on a speaking tour didn't I? Had a divine call to go in and pray for her happened to be the same day her father showed up from Washington, whole thing just a coincidence it said that right there in the paper didn't it? Ude gets his message of faith and prayer in papers all over the God damn country, says divine providence brought them together in the shadow of the valley of look, just because you don't believe in faith and…

  — Oh stop it Paul stop it! Honestly.

  — What. Honestly what.

  — Don't believe in faith and…

  — What I just said isn't it? Problem look, problem Liz you don't try and see the big picture he came on scattering bills, envelopes, mailing pieces in thrilling colour, flushing the blank side of a letter opening Dear Friend of the Bowhead Whale — look. He had a blunt pencil, — here's Teakell… and a smudged circle appeared and shot forth an arrow. — Got his own constituency here… a blob took roughly kidney shape, — Senate committees and the big voice for Administration policy up here… something vaguely phallic, — and his whole big third world Food for Africa program over here… and an arrow shot to distant coastlines shaped up abruptly in a deformed footprint. — Now here's Ude… a cross this time, releasing an arrow — same God damn constituency… and it penetrated the blob — but look. He gets his whole satellite television operation in operation… and the cross, gone abruptly from Latin to Calvary with steps added for emphasis, radiated jagged streaks, the blob erupted — he's all over the
God damn country, constituency goes from way up here to all his blacks down here… a smudge unconnected to anything, — you think they can't mark their X on a ballot? think Teakell plans to spend his life in the Senate? Taking his big stand in this third world confrontation going over there right now on a fact finding tour and here's Ude's missions right on the spot… and an arrow leaped from the true cross to strike the distant coastline, spewing aggressive miniatures into the deformity that rose to accommodate them in splayfoot proportions when the phone rang. — Hello? who, God damn it wait… he rescued the page — get a paper towel… but she'd already torn off a length, setting his cup upright where the phone's cord had caught it, sopping up coffee from the scattered bills, notes, invitations to send off for 20-Pc. Bath Towel Sets with Free Digital Quartz Watch, to buy books, buy wrench sets, save seals, sell dinnerware, borrow money, booklets threatening tribulation, apocalypse, inviting eternity in florid colour — hey there, Bobbie Joe? Just going to call you. Just finishing up a breakfast meeting here with my staff, thought I'd fill you in on the big picture. Now what we… not the movie no, not talking about the movie yet I'm talking about mapping out our media strategy for the next big push got a pencil handy…? Better not try that no, little too complicated you better get a pencil I'll hold on, Liz can you clean up this God damn mess? These right here, these brochures got to take them with me… he thrust forth Tribulation, the Christian Battle Map, Guide to Eternity, Harvest Time for — get me some more coffee? seen my cigarettes?