The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done

by Sandra Newman

  Eddie snorted. “Dad was queer for you, Chrysa. Like, talking as a guy? Window-dressing shit to one side, a guy can form a deep romantic attachment for an oven-stuffer-roaster fucking chicken, given you dethaw it and it’s got that, you know that neck hole? Guys are just a prick with attachments. Sorry.”

  “You’re just trying to make something dramatic from . . . poor materials.”

  There was a silence. In the dark, you couldn’t tell what so terribly impended. I had the familiar feeling that Eddie’d dismantled something in my chest.

  He said, “Chrysa.”

  His hand groped over to my ankle and up my calf, to grip me solemnly on the swell of my new muscle. I started to cry. He continued:

  “Chrysa, you got to learn to face stuff. It’s a million years ago, already. Like, Columbus was President –”

  “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  “Mongolia was a world power – shit, are you crying? Oh, no. No, I made you cry? Come here.” He shifted about ponderously to sit and hold his arms out.

  He sat there with his arms out, waiting.

  I was going to be manipulated into hugging him, and then my world would come to an end, my soul would go out, what he said would be true. I was still crying though the original feeling was gone. If I hugged him I could wipe my nose surreptitiously on his shoulder, dispensing with the looming need for a tissue. Perhaps the nose-wiping could redefine the annihilating hug, turning it into a light-minded prank. Crying jaggedly, I marveled at the power of toilet/snot humor, a universal of human experience: I thought of writing to Lévi-Strauss and suggesting it as a rival to the incest taboo, if Lévi-Strauss were still alive. I wondered if Lévi-Strauss, like Saint-Lazare, had lost his mind and cashed in his chips in a sly poststructural manner.

  “Oh, fuck it,” said Eddie, and let his arms fall. “Trying to reach out. Okay, listen, if I’m that transparent, I just need to know if Dad screwed you for my personal reasons, cause –”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No, he didn’t. I was ten.” The word ten came out in a little-kid falsetto, and I sobbed horribly behind it, snorting like a drain.

  “Oh, man. No. I gotta hug you. Do not try to resist.”

  Eddie shuffled toward me on his knees. I held my arms stiffly crossed over my stomach, to mime noncompliance. He got me roughly and crushed my face to his chest. He seemed very big and too much like a man, musky-smelling. As long as I stayed tense, my soul would not go out.

  “Kiddo, kiddo. Kiddokiddo. Honestly, stop, I get this pain thing in the small of my back. An actual symptom.”

  “Oh, you don’t care,” my crying said / I listened but it meant nothing to me.

  “Okay,” said Eddie. “But – you do? You do?”

  “I care. I care,” my crying said / while I triumphantly did not care.

  “Well, fantastic: care.”

  I stopped crying and was shivering feebly. He stroked the back of my head. You could tell he wasn’t consciously stroking, it was just a reflex. I said on my own behalf, coldly, to try how it sounded:

  “Okay, I don’t. I don’t care about you anymore.”

  He let me go so violently I seemed to bounce out of his arms.

  I could hear him breathing rapidly. He said, “Turn on the light.”

  I turned on the light. He was sitting up, hugging his knees. The light felt chill where I’d sweated through the nightgown. The mussed bed shocked me. It looked as if we’d been energetically throwing the covers in the air.

  Eddie said, “Okay, you can turn it off again now.”

  “No.” I shrugged, brattish.

  “Oh. Suit yourself.” Then he sat there making frown after frown, as if preparing to make a difficult disclosure. I began to stare dully, out of focus, at his shoulder. The blue nightgown felt now like the costume my character wore in the “brother” scene.

  “Chrysa,” Eddie said, vehemently.

  Despite myself, I met his eye. He went on, encouraged:

  “I just, I thought, what would make it better, right? Is for us to sleep together. Cause, it’s like, we’re not even related. And – oh, don’t. Don’t –”

  Without having intended to move, I found myself standing against the wall. I said, in that kid falsetto,

  “Very. Funny.”

  “No. Not very funny. Very serious. Really. I thought about this.” He pointed to his head.

  “You thought about this.”

  He scrambled out of the bed, taking the top sheet with him. His tennis shoe tumbled to the floor, dispensing ash. I said,

  “Get out of my room.”

  He put his hands on his hips. “No.”

  “You better get out this second.”

  “Not.”

  “Look, this isn’t funny.”

  “Come on, lighten the fuck up.”

  “Will you get out of my room before I –”

  He came toward me with his arms out like the Mummy. “Oooh – oooh – I’m gonna touch you! Oooh!”

  “OUT! GET OUT!” I dodged, but he sidestepped and cornered me.

  I was screaming OUT! while he danced, making tickling movements with his fingers. I started to laugh, helplessly, breathlessly, and say,

  “Oh, come on, give me a break, Eddie, you got to be kidding me –”

  And then he swooped and caught me in the corner, both of us laughing hysterically and he pulled me against him and I shouted –

  The door flew open: it was Ralph.

  Eddie and I jumped away from each other like naughty children.

  Standing against the lit doorway, Ralph looked huge and dark. He said in a cool, carrying voice, “What are you doing?”

  Eddie spoke up first. “Yeah, we were just, fooling around. Cause I was saying about the aliens coming down to save the Earth –”

  Ralph said to me, “What’s going on?”

  I gasped: “Eddie wanted to fuck me.”

  Eddie and I glanced at each other. I couldn’t help it, I smirked. It was mainly shame, but there was a crazed undertow of glee. I thought of announcing that the snake had tempted me, but when I looked at Ralph, it was chilling how untickled he was by our (I suddenly, conveniently believed) mere horseplay.

  Ralph said, “Eddie?”

  His voice described an arc from disgust to a kind of friendly amazement. He was prepared to hear it never crossed Eddie’s mind to fuck his sister.

  Eddie said, “Yeah.”

  Ralph stepped into the room. He said, “Maybe I should leave.”

  The horseplay scenario held for a long long moment, then I said,

  “Don’t leave. Don’t leave me here with him. Jesus Christ!”

  Ralph said, “Okay,”

  and walked straight to Eddie. He put one hand on Eddie’s shoulder and said down into his face, “I ought to kill you.”

  “Look, I’m going,” Eddie said. “Cause, your thug deal, me no like.”

  “Go, then,” said Ralph, not taking his hand from Eddie’s shoulder.

  “No, serious. The whole I-kill-you-motherfucker thing? I got one word for you, man. Cops.”

  Ralph took his hand off of Eddie’s shoulder. I caught my breath.

  Eddie said again, in a tight, smug voice, straightening up to enjoy Ralph’s retreat: “Cops.”

  Ralph drew back slightly and punched Eddie in the head.

  The fist carried Eddie’s head back to the wall and pinned it there momentarily, then sprang free. Eddie staggered, shuffling and reaching out for nothing, then found the wall with his shoulderblades and slumped there.

  Ralph said, “Say that again.”

  As if in reply, Eddie began to bleed. He bled in real time: you could see the trickle run from his nostril to his chin and drip. He began to say, “Man, that sucks, that just so sucks.” He dabbed at his face with his knuckles and inspected the blood. “Asshole.”

  “I’m going to hit you again,” Ralph said with absolute clammy hatred.

  Eddie flinched and
took a step to one side. Then he squared himself against the wall and said, “Fuck you.”

  I said, “Don’t, this is so crazy.”

  Ralph looked at me in frozen unrecognition. Before turning back to Eddie and curling his arm back to gather the deep force of his whole body, punching again so Eddie’s lip split over his tooth and needed two stitches, Ralph said to me:

  “Aren’t you going to cry?”

  LOLA SECTIONS

  Argument

  Ralph grows up in penury and neglect,

  which inclines him throughout his life

  to fits of uncontrollable rage.

  Dave Something Scottish

  “My mother’s people, they were real gypsies, in caravans. And I had a gran, she’d take me out ‘calling.’ It were begging, really. Well, my dad found out about it, I got the belt. Him with his council flat and he weren’t running his amusement arcade yet, but you could see where he was going. Begging weren’t in it. But she let me keep my own money so I’d sneak off.

  “So it was round hers and her mates you got the social. They were keeping a check on the kids, really, so we’d tell them a pack of lies. The social workers were all spies, weren’t they? This one, Dave, he was good for a laugh, though.

  “I’ll never forget, he had this Ford Zephyr, with fins like that. I thought that was the coolest thing out. I was always pestering for a ride. I’m all of fifteen – trouble. So finally he crumbles and I’m there in the front seat, riding down through Sunderland with my hair combed out, all the great lady. Dave’s yelling me to roll the window up but I weren’t having it.

  “And there as we’re at the traffic light I see my dad just on the pavement, as near as you are to me now, with a face like thunder. You know, if I ever dared smile at a man I got wrong off him . . . well, we drove off, but me knowing. And I thought, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb and when we stopped I ran out and spent all my calling money on beer.

  “That man, that social worker, he never knew what hit him. You don’t want to get in the path of a gypsy lass who’s had her first little whiff of freedom. I guess by the time my people were through, he wished he’d just gone to prison for me, they had every penny he ever earned until he just upped and pissed off back to Scotland. Or that’s what I heard. I guess I was busy having a baby and that so I didn’t give him much thought. Anyhow, then they had me know I was on my own. Not that I broke my heart over them, not a chance. Over him or them. I never looked back.”

  IRENE MICHAELSON

  a.k.a. Gypsy Lola

  a.k.a. Seven Up

  and her ten years’ borrowed time

  Five foot nothing

  Brown eyes the kind that look black

  Black hair.

  Skinny, nothing to her

  from speed, barbs, smack.

  Irene for an Irish grandmother, dead when she was born.

  Rechristened Lola by the strip-club manager.

  A stroppy cow: trouble. Off her trolley. Never in nick, but that’s nine parts luck. Spots/bad teeth embarrassed Ralph but blokes were happy to shag her. A tart (for money, for real) when money was tight: otherwise gave it free.

  For that, “Seven Up.” Untold toothbrushes in her bathroom. Which Paul? Which John? Which Tim? Which Alonzo?

  “No, I do know two: with the Dexedrine script, and with the Jag.”

  Loved men for their drugs: but not just. She’d ring at 3:00 A.M., blubbering: “Christ, love, even if you hate me from my nonsense, I’d lay down my life for you, and all I need’s company.”

  Rebuffed, light another fag and dial the next number. In a sighing aside to Ralph: “Never mind, pet: needs must.”

  And: “Men aren’t half cunts, it has to be said.”

  And: “Do the washing up, love, Mummy’s saying please.”

  And: “I will get married, when I’m 23, it’s in my palm.”

  Lola did without

  •hot food

  •hot running water

  •winter coat/umbrella/boots

  •socks & underwear

  so Ralph could do without them too. “I’ve got no bread in the house for my boy” her refrain, but gave her last penny, for the asking. “It’s all about people, in the end. There’s nothing else. It’s about mates.”

  “So, my sister Irene’s been on our settee eight months, that was August, little Ralph were only that old. Breastfeeding, but our Irene, she cannot sleep alone. You ask her. Any normal person, you or me, four people in a one bed flat, you couldn’t get lonely if you tried. And Ralph were only by the settee, he hadn’t got a crib. She’d put him in the carton from the telly. Our Staff used to leap in beside him, try as we might. We was terrified one night he’d poke her eye and that would be an end to him.

  “Anyhow, my sister, she’d have a different one every night bedded down with her. All the blokes in the shops of the high street knew her, she’d be down there enticing them if she didn’t have anything set up. Just turned sixteen, she was, though of course we all had to swear she were nineteen, and she has her dole to this day in the name of our cousin that was nineteen then.

  “Well finally, eight months into this carry-on, ask her if you don’t believe me, she come in one night wanting to sleep in the bed with James and me. Wouldn’t take no. So we humor her, she’d got the spirit beaten out of us by then.

  “But ten minutes, the three of us there, James switches on the light. He says, cool as that, ‘I’ve never punched a woman in the mouth before, Irene.’

  “Had her hand in his crotch, hadn’t she?

  “Well, she says - and remember I don’t know what’s going on – oh, she says, feathers all ruffled, Mandy wouldn’t mind. By now, I’ve got a fair idea. I say, ‘If that’s what I think it is, I certainly do mind.’

  “Irene chirps, like this: ‘Well, you only have to say.’

  “Then we tell her in no uncertain terms, out. And the wailing and weeping, oh, she can’t go back, she’s frightened. Of course, Ralphie hears it, and he joins right in. And Irene shrieking she’ll have to cut her wrists, and next thing we know, she’s punching herself. Punching herself all in the face. We were holding her down in the end, it took the two of us. Up half the night feeding her whiskey, and God knows we needed one ourself.

  “She’s passed out, finally, and James insists on going through her bag. Find out what the pills are, as if that’s any help. But once he’s got his mind made up, I let him fly. And what he finds is, no pills, but her address book. And what’s mad about that is, Irene cannot read nor write. So she’d had them write out all their own numbers, and then I guess she had to have the next bloke read them back to her. But what really got James’s goat was, underneath, often as not, she’d have them make a note. And it was one of two things, a sum of money which, you had to know, was what the man had paid her. Or else it was names of drugs, whatever he could get hold of, or had on prescription. Had them write it out themselves! I tell you!

  “Well, we didn’t throw her out then, but we gave the housing officer no peace. I spent every afternoon haranguing him, till she got her flat.”

  Then, when Ralph was seven-plus years, a pattern:

  She arrives home with armloads of groceries, jabbering a mile a minute. Ralph falls asleep to Mum scrubbing the skirting boards.

  “There’s going to be some changes, look at this place. Pigs, they are, pigs. Never again.”

  Wakes up to: “Jesus, I’ve been a shite mother to you. Tell me you don’t blame me, Ralph. But don’t lie.”

  As he leaves for school, she’s lying on the carpet by the gas fire with one eye shut, chain-smoking spliffs.

  When he comes home, she’s still there, sleeping, with a naked man.

  “Ralphie, oh, love! Come here and kiss me. Alonzo, wake up, you waster, and say hello to my pride and joy.”

  “Stick the kettle on for us, Ralphie, we’re that knackered.”

  “Ralphie, have we got them ravioli, still? Be an angel –”

  He falls asleep to John,
Paul, Tim and Alonzo, drinking Tennants to The Kinks blaring in the front room.

  The fag ash goes on the floor. The ravioli dries with the fork stuck in the open tin. Drunk and ranting, Paul pisses himself in the bathtub. John vomits in every room.

  He comes home to them and falls asleep to them and wakes up to them. They change and change about, but never all leave. The women scare Ralph more because they want to touch him. Mum says

  Ralphie!

  Ralphie!

  Ralphie!

  The weekends, she has to go out to do her tarot. Then she storms through them, swearing, in a bra and towel, trying to find the other shoe.

  “I want you lot out when I get back, I’ve had enough!” she squeals to general desultory laughter.

  Ralph comes home, the flat’s empty. A thread of smoke still dangles, spreading lazily in one corner. He gets a box of Frosties, sits in front of the telly. The stink rouses him, he opens all the windows. Finds a long dog end on the settee, lights it listening out for Mum.

  As he stubs it out, she arrives home with stacks of groceries, jabbering a mile a minute.

  She’d say Ralph made her think again about changelings. “He never missed a day at that school, it ain’t my side.” And

  “He takes care of me, not the other way around. Couldn’t do without my best mate.”

  But she didn’t love him like mums love children. One of their family rules was, Ralph never to touch her, first.

  He loved Mum, just Mum. To Mandy, he would say, “She’s not like other people, cause she’s psychic. Mum needs to be treated special.”

  And they cuddled together under a blanket for warmth when the gas had been cut off, eking out the last tin of baked beans between them, lonely and poor and lonely and poor.

  And when Ralph was ten, she had a kidney infection. Then it was “gastric folds,” she couldn’t keep food down, woke in sweating agonies. In and out of hospital, Ralph held the fort at home. The longest was the detox, where she lasted two weeks and arrived home at 6:00 A.M., cursing them fascist nurses; barefoot, ebullient, with unnaturally pale, pinned-out eyes.