Scumbler

by William Wharton

  Kate really likes her work here teaching. It’s an important thing helping little ones hold on to the joy of learning, thinking, and she’s damned good at it.

  Since we can’t have any more of our own, it’s a shame to let all those fine mother juices go to waste. I think it also makes her feel good bringing in the bacon, making money. She gets paid a good salary for what she does and deserves it. And now three hundred and twenty thousand bucks staring down our throats like this makes any salary seem a joke. No, we don’t need that.

  Here I am, the maniac, always bitching about not having enough money, chasing my ass ragged, fixing up rats’ nests, painting umpteen paintings a year, and suddenly I decide I don’t need money, don’t want it.

  I feel struck down. It’s as if something awful has happened: like having a parent die, or a child, or having a heart attack, or finding out you have inoperable cancer. The bottom’s dropped out of things.

  I sit there all afternoon mulling it over. I try not to slug too much of my phony Cointreau, just keep sipping away. I’m floating in oranges.

  A PLUG PULLED, MORE SEEPAGE, A SENSE

  OF ENDING, THE FAINT BREATH OF OBSCURITY.

  One thing I work out. It’s a big new idea for me. I honest to Christ did not know it before.

  Considering everything, I’M HAVING THE BEST FUCKING LIFE I KNOW ABOUT! CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE ANY WAY TO IMPROVE IT!

  I don’t want to change my life.

  It’s a bit disappointing. I’ve always lived with the idea I was doing things to make the old life better. Maybe I can still dink around, doctor it up a bit, but sure as hell not with money.

  It’s an unforgivable, arrogant thing to do but I do it anyway. Sometimes we’re driven to things we can’t explain away to anybody, especially ourselves.

  I write a quick answer to the real-estate investor people saying we’re not interested in selling. Then I have the joy of building a tepee of sticks in the fireplace and using their letter to start the fire. I quickly run downstairs to a bakery. I buy some tuiles, apple rolls and chocolate éclairs; run back. I fix up a tasty tea and put more wood on the fire. I’m ready for the family when they come home.

  Maybe it’s not fair but I need more time to think. Something like this changes too much. I’m not ready. I’ve got to talk with Kate in private, find out what she wants.

  CONSULTATION IN A WHIRLPOOL, SWIM WITH AND

  HOPE TO BE FOUND OUT; OR SWIM AGAINST THE

  TWISTING DOWNWARD THRUST. WHAT TO TRUST?

  XXII

  23 SKIDOO

  It’s-almost-two-weeks-after-the-fire,-not-the-studio-fire-but the little fire where I burned the forty-acre three-hundred-twenty-thousand-dollar letter. I’m at home trying to work out some storage for the paintings. I have no real studio now, no place to work.

  With this weather, most of the time I’m out on the streets. Still, I need a place for stretching, preparing canvas; grinding paint, making varnish—all the technical stuff. But right now I mostly need space for storing paintings; as I said, my attic’s chock-full.

  THE MOUSE RUNS DOWN THE CLOCK. I CLIMB

  IN MY HALF ATTIC, SEARCHING FOR A SPACE,

  A PLACE TO BURY MY WINTER FOOD. SHELTER.

  I’m considering converting one of the lofts in our apartment to painting storage. It’s the loft where the kids used to leave up their trains or slot cars when they were little; nobody’s using it now. Jim and Annie are gone and Mike will be off to UCLA in September, Sara has a private room for her stereo. Tim’s still between toys and stereo; he reads.

  I’m climbing around up there; it’s only a little more than a meter high so I’m crawling on my knees. I’ve been out painting all morning, still in the Marais. Now I’m up there, cleaning out and stuffing things into the blind storage I built over our kitchen. There’s a knock at the door.

  I figure it’s probably some salesman, or maybe the electric or gas company wanting to read our meter. Also, I’m afraid it might be the guy from Switzerland with the studio downstairs. We’re always leaking our dirty water through our floor and his ceiling into his impeccable white studio, onto his black-on-black paintings. It’s already happened three times. We’re probably the most careless people who ever lived in a French building. We can’t even remember to turn off faucets. The last time, he haughtily said to me in English, German-accented English: “Sir, your floor is my ceiling, remember that!” I thought about this afterward and it seemed pretty funny.

  I climb down my ladder, open the door and it’s Sandy. I almost crap my pants! The outside world doesn’t usually come into this, the inner nest. I let her in. I’m wondering how the hell she found out where I live, probably asked Sweik or Lubar.

  Soon as I close the door, she’s in my arms. Oh boy! This is all I need, the chickens coming home to roost. I untangle and lead her to a chair at the big table. If anybody comes in, we’re perfectly respectable. She looks at me; I’m sure she can see I’m all shit up a creek; my hands have started shaking.

  “Matt gave me your address; he didn’t want to but I made him. I want to talk with you in private.”

  Who the hell’s Matt? I remember; that’s Sweik’s first name. How did she make him? OK, I think; I’m listening. But could we get it over and said in less than two hours, please? That’s when the family will be coming home.

  I’m feeling guilty. I feel guilty easily. It’s as if there’s some terrific crime I committed in the past and I don’t remember what it is. I do remember.

  I dream sometimes I have a body in the trunk of a car and I’m driving around trying to figure how to get rid of it.

  THE TIMELESS WEIGHT OF FLOATING FEAR,

  FEAR OF KNOWING THE UNKNOWN. FEAR OF

  FINDING THE UNKNOWN IS SO BECAUSE IT ISN’T.

  I smile and wait for Sandy to go on. I think of getting up and starting tea. Drinking tea would make us look even more respectable.

  I wasn’t feeling particularly guilty when Jan was up here; something big definitely happened between Sandy and me; no matter what I say, no matter how I try, it’s there. Those kinds of things can’t just be pushed into corners because they’re inconvenient.

  Sandy’s wearing a dress again; I try not to peek at her knees when she crosses them.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “Hello, I’m pregnant.” “I’m George, pleased to meet you.” Those thoughts run through my scummy mind just as she pauses, not really stops, only pauses. The mind has to be the only thing faster than light.

  “Do you know where I can get an abortion in Paris?”

  Let me recommend my dentist, he’s conventionné, it won’t cost you a cent. But my mind is slowing down, the spin is letting up. I look at Sandy. She’s being brave but she’s scared. Hell, do I know an abortionist? If I did, I’d want to talk with him, find out what he thinks is important; what makes his mind work. What he feels about vacuum cleaning vaginas all day, every day.

  “Are you sure?”

  Familiar question; my originality is limited.

  “Just passed the second furlong and turning the corner into the back stretch.”

  She smiles. I catch myself looking. Is there really another human being under that brown corduroy dress? I wish I could be in there. They say the first months you swim around, like a tadpole in a goldfish bowl. Imagine swimming and not having to breathe, in the dark, in a fluid, warm as you are, and supportive: the original hot tub.

  She’s waiting for me to say something. Does she actually want me to tell her where an abortionist is or does she just need to talk with somebody, anybody?

  “You’re the only one I could think of who might know.”

  Who me, lover of life, of babies, know an abortionist? It’s amazing the idea people get of you from the outside. I guess Sandy has me pegged for a worn-out Romeo, inept seducer of lost girls.

  IMAGE BENT BY WARPED LENSES, THE SIMPLE

  SENSES BENDING TO REFLECTED LIGHT.

  Holy heaven, it’s a responsibility for women, the
whole reproduction thing. Like everything else valuable: fire, atom power—if it’s worth having, it can be hard to handle. Even Shakespeare, a man you’d think would have a good grab on life, at least from his plays, disowned his own daughter because she had to get married during Lent, although he and Anne Hathaway were pregnant when they married. Ah, hypocrisy! Poetic hypocrisy, yet.

  Everybody flies apart at the seams when somebody has a baby if the entire format of the culture isn’t nailed down. But think about it. No man can have a baby and mostly only women between twenty and forty can; that’s about an eighth of the population. A lot of these either don’t want to or can’t, so maybe we’re down to one tenth. We should cherish that tenth, give them all the support possible, help them have their babies, shower them with gifts, aid from us all. The truly most valuable product of this planet is people, loved people.

  Still, nobody should have a baby they don’t want. Probably one of the worst things in this world is being born to somebody who doesn’t want you. Once, someone compared it to coming into a room with a passel of hostile strangers. Thank God women have some control over these things today. I have to ask.

  “Didn’t you take care, Sandy? Aren’t you on the pill or something—anything?”

  Sandy looks down at herself—checking, maybe. Her lips come up in her sneering smile, smiling at me and sneering at herself, or the other way around. I don’t know.

  “I’m so irregular. I never thought I’d ever get pregnant. How old do you think I am anyway?”

  I hadn’t thought about it. When you get to my age, anybody with more than ten teeth is young. She’s young-looking, very young-looking.

  “I don’t know, maybe twenty-one or two. How old are you anyway: eleven; going to break the world’s record for the youngest mother?”

  She smiles a real smile.

  “I’m twenty-nine. You didn’t know it but I’ve spent four years in and out of psychiatric wards. I’m one of the walking wounded; cracked wide open in my junior year at Holyoke. I used to call it the Holy Hoax. Lubar knows, so does Dale, and now Matt. I didn’t think they’d tell you.”

  “Nobody let me in on the big secret, Sandy. What’s your specialty—fits, murder, arson, Napoleon acts?”

  “Suicide. Three tries. My analyst tells me I didn’t really want to since I failed three times, but I sure as hell had myself convinced.”

  She folds her arms the way I painted her in the portrait.

  “Maybe you won’t believe it, Scum, but my hang-up is men; I’m afraid of sex with men. I was eighteen years old before I had my first period. I’d get the shakes if any man touched me, and my father didn’t seduce me, I’ve never been raped; I have no excuse. The shrinks have run me up and down that course maybe a hundred times. There’s just an unreasoning fear, floating anxiety, the hardest kind to get a handle on.”

  She needs to talk all right. I’m not sure if I’m up to it. I take these things too seriously; and I still need to work out a place for storing my paintings. I look over her shoulder up on the loft where I was climbing around. God, we’ll be lucky to get out of here in two hours at this rate. I’m wondering, too, how long we’ll both keep up the heroic Gallagher-and-Shean act, if we’ll actually get down to talking. We were so close it scared me and now I’m afraid it might start up again. I’m not ready; I’ll never be ready. It’s so real and at the same time so much of “Let’s Pretend.”

  To be honest, if that’s possible, the whole motorcycle business stinks of “Let’s Pretend.” It’s probably a good thing that big painting got burned. There wasn’t much sincerity in it; something of a laugh at the world, a desperation kind of last laugh, not good to hear.

  “Sandy. I don’t know any abortionists. Are you sure you want an abortion? I don’t want much to do with killing a little baby. It’s an undefendable peculiarity of mine.

  “I know a French doctor who’s a pediatrician; she’s also a psychiatrist. She wrote her doctorate at the Sorbonne on babies who were born after the mother requested an abortion officially and was refused. These babies when they grow up have a sad record of crime, alcoholism, suicide—the works. I’ll give you Monique’s number and you can go talk to her.”

  I hope I’ve said it straight enough. I hope Sandy doesn’t think I’m only trying to duck out. She looks me in the eye; I try to keep my eyes level with hers. It’s like playing stare-down in junior high school again. I still have that eerie feeling she’s a junior-high-school high jumper; it’s hard to think of her as pregnant with a real live baby.

  As I’m looking into those eyes, tears start welling up, the way water seeps into the bottom of an old wooden boat; you can’t see where it comes from, it just appears. God, I feel awful; I don’t know what to do.

  “That’s the thing of it, Scum. I never thought I’d ever get pregnant, be a mother. The doctors told me I’ve never developed properly inside, that I have the uterus of a little girl. Now I’m pregnant and I just can’t believe it. It’s weird; something in me’s glad to find out I can actually do it.”

  She stands up. I stand too. She pulls that corduroy dress across her stomach with thumb and fingers outstretched, both sides, in the classic gesture. There could be a little bulge there all right. She looks at me and she’s smiling.

  “I see it but I can’t believe it. I feel different too, inside quiet when I should be more scared. I’m not scared enough.”

  We move toward each other. I take her in my arms. I try to feel her little baby belly pushing against me but I can’t, too much of my potbelly between us. I’m pregnant with years. I hold her tight and try not thinking too much till she’s stopped sobbing. All I need is for everybody to come home early.

  “Don’t worry, folks. Sandy here’s just come to tell me she’s pregnant and we’re working things out, heh, heh!”

  I hold her tighter. She’s squeezing me tighter too; it’s easy to forget how strong a woman can be. We’ve all got these preconceived notions. Of course, I need to say the next thing. The Scumbler has to say it.

  “Why don’t you have your baby, Sandy? Maybe you’d be happy being a mother. It could be the best kind of experience for you, give you something to build around.”

  She squeezes me tighter yet but is shaking her head back and forth against mine. We stay like that without saying anything and my back’s beginning to break. Some of her hair is against my nose and making it itch. She’s saying something into the side of my neck.

  “Matt’s asked me to take an apartment with him. I want to. I’m so happy being with him and I really want to.”

  My mind’s spinning. So, wonderful, it all works out. I’m happy for Sandy, for Sweik. Let’s break out the champagne, celebrate. Let’s get out of here before the family comes home!

  She shakes her head some more. I stick my head out sideways to get away from her hair. I hunch up my shoulder to scratch my nose.

  “I can’t do it to him, Scum; it isn’t fair. I know he’d feel trapped and it wouldn’t be right. I couldn’t live with myself—I think I’m in love with him and it’s wonderful; I don’t want to spoil anything.”

  I’m ready to leave it at that. I did my best, little chum; you probably weren’t meant to make it this time around; better luck next time.

  “OK, Sandy, you know best. Don’t do anything you’ll feel wrong about.”

  I begin untangling myself carefully. I move off into the kitchen and start tea. There’s still more than forty-five minutes until zero hour. I’m feeling depressed, deflated, let down. My nerves are what seem to be failing me first.

  I think—with me, at least—senility is hitting first in the nerves. I can’t take the kind of flak I used to. Now, my knees are wobbling; my hands are so shaky I can scarcely dribble tea into my teapot. A little Twining’s Earl Grey should be about right for the situation; it’s Kate’s favorite.

  We sit and talk some more, sipping tea, trying to be rational. Sandy says she’ll go see the doctor; I give her the name, address. I don’t want to talk about i
t anymore; makes me feel too much the accomplice. We finish our tea and I clear the table, hoping she’ll get the idea. She’s a sensitive. smart person and takes the hint. She stands at the counter and looks over while I wash the dishes and dump tea leaves from the pot. I look up and she’s giving me the double whammy again. I stare back with what little I have left. I’m afraid we’re about to start the whole show a second time. I’ll never make it.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  I go through my mind wondering what she’s talking about. I’ve asked everything I can think of.

  “What didn’t I ask?” I ask.

  “You didn’t ask who’s the father.”

  That’s right. I didn’t. I assumed it was Sweik; what’s the difference? Honestly, I don’t want to know who the father is if she’s going to kill this little one off, sort of doubles the crime. Who the hell knows who a father is anyway? I thought I was father to my first kids; the American people said I wasn’t, took them away. I’ve never heard a word from either of them; they’re in their late thirties now. My son was a captain in the Vietnam War, Green Berets. Somebody else had to tell me that. My son a killer. Even de Maupassant couldn’t’ve come up with anything more ironic.

  I walk around out of the kitchen and she starts moving toward the door. I sneak a look at the clock; there’s still almost half an hour.

  “OK, who is the father, Sandy?”

  “It happened down there in Spain. I know just when it happened because I don’t have that much to do with men. First it was Lubar outside the cave in the sand at night; that was just because I was mad at Dale, trying to get back at her.”

  I feel my heart turn over. She can’t think it’s me. You can’t get somebody pregnant through the eyes, the hands, the tongue, the mouth, the toes, the fingers, the heart. I stand at the door, waiting for what she’s going to say. Maybe it’s some kind of “con” game. I try not letting my mind lead up that particular blind alley.