Flying to America

by Donald Barthelme

  “Is he fake?”

  “Not more than anybody else. He has facades but who does not?”

  “Does he know the blue lines?”

  “Excellent with the blue lines.”

  “Does he know the old songs?”

  “He’ll crack your heart with the old songs.”

  “Does he have the right moves?”

  “People all over America are sitting in darkened projection rooms right this minute, studying McPartland moves.”

  “What’s this dude look like?”

  “Handsome as the dawn. If you can imagine a bald dawn.”

  “You mean he’s old?”

  “Naw, man, he’s young. A boy of forty-five, just like the rest of us. The thing is, he thinks so hard he done burned all the hair off his head. His head overheats.”

  “Is that a danger to standers-by?”

  “Not if they exercise due caution. Don’t stand too close.”

  “Maybe he’s too fine for us.”

  “I don’t think so. He’s got a certain common-as-dirt quality. That’s right under his laser-sharp M.I.T. quality.”

  “He sounds maybe a shade too rich for our blood. For us folk here in the downhome heartland.”

  “Lemme see, Arkansas, that’s one of them newer states, right? Down there at the bottom edge? Right along with New Mexico and Florida and such as that?”

  “Mr. Cockburn sir, are you jiving me?”

  “Would I jive you?”

  “Just for the record, how would you describe your personal relation to Mr. McPartland?”

  “Oh I think ‘blood enemy’ might do it. Might come close. At the same time, I am forced to acknowledge merit. In whatever obscene form it chooses to take. McPartland worked on the kiss of death, did you know that? When he was young. Never did get it perfected but the theoretical studies were elegant, elegant. He’s what you might call a engineer’s engineer. He designed the artichoke that is all heart. You pay a bit of a premium for it but you don’t have to do all that peeling.”

  “Some people like the peeling. The leaf-by-leaf unveiling.”

  “Well, some people like to bang their heads against stone walls, don’t they? Some people like to sleep with their sisters. Some people like to put on suits and ties and go sit in a concert hall and listen to the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for God’s sake. Some people —”

  “Is this part of his warp?”

  “It’s related to his warp. The warp to power.”

  “Any other glaring defects or lesions of the usual that you’d like to touch upon —”

  “I think not. Now you, I perceive, have got this bad situation down there in the great state of Arkansas. Your population is exploding. It’s mobile. You got people moving freely about, colliding and colluding, pairing off just as they please and exploding the population some more, lollygagging and sailboating and making leather moccasins from kits and God knows what all. And enjoying free speech and voting their heads off and vetoing bond issues carefully thought up and packaged and rigged by the Arkansas State Planning Commission. And general helter-skeltering around under the gross equity of the democratic system. Is that the position, sir?”

  “Worse. Arkansas is, at present, pure planarchy.”

  “I intuited as much. And you need someone who can get the troops back on the track or tracks. Give them multifamily dwellings, green belts, dayrooms, grog rations, and pleasure stamps. Return the great state of Arkansas to its originary tidiness. Exert a plenipotentiary beneficence while remaining a masked marvel. Whose very existence is known only to the choice few.”

  “Exactly right. Can McPartland do it?”

  “Sitting on his hands. Will you go to fifty?”

  “Fervently and with pleasure, sir. It’s little enough for such a treasure.”

  “I take 10 percent off the top, sir.”

  “And can I send you as well, sir, a crate of armadillo steak, sugar-cured, courtesy of the A.S.P.C.? It’s a dream of beauty, sir, this picture that you’ve limned.”

  “Not a dream, sir, not a dream. Engineers, sir, never sleep, and dream only in the daytime.”

  Edwards, Amelia

  Amelia Edwards was washing the dishes when she noticed that a dish that she had already washed had a tiny piece of spinach stuck to the back of it.

  I am not washing these dishes well, she thought. I am not washing these dishes as well as I used to wash them.

  Mrs. Edwards stopped washing the dishes, even though half of them remain unwashed in the sink. She dried her arms on a paper towel and went into the bedroom. She sat down on the bed. Then she stood up again and looked at the bed.

  The bedspread had been placed on the bed in a somewhat sloppy manner. She thought: I am not making the bed as well as I used to.

  She sat down on the bed again and stared at the floor. Then her eyes moved to the corner of the room near the closet. In the corner, in the place where the two walls met, there was a gray dustball the size of an egg.

  I have not vacuumed this room correctly, she thought. Is it because I am thirty-eight now?

  No. Thirty-eight is young, relatively.

  I am young and vigorous. George is handsome and well paid. We are going to Hawaii in June.

  I wonder if I should have a drink?

  Mrs. Edwards went out to the kitchen and looked at the vodka bottle.

  Then she looked at the plate with the bit of spinach stuck to the back. She scratched the spinach from the plate with her fingernail. She poured some vodka into a glass. She went to the refrigerator to get some ice cubes, but when she opened the door to the freezing compartment it came off in her hands.

  Mrs. Edwards regarded the door to the freezing compartment, a rectangular piece of white plastic.

  The door to the freezing compartment has come off, she thought.

  She placed it on the floor next to the refrigerator. Then she moved a tray of ice cubes from the freezing compartment and made herself a vodka-tonic. The telephone rang. Mrs. Edwards did not answer it. She was sitting on the bed looking at her vodka-tonic. The telephone rang eleven times.

  Perhaps I should listen to some music?

  Mrs. Edwards arose and walked into the living room. She found an Angel record. “Don Giovanni Highlights,” with Eberhard Wächter, Joan Sutherland, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. She placed the record on the turntable and switched on the amplifier. Then she sat down and listened to the music.

  She remembered something she had read in the newspaper:

  GIRL, 8, FOUND SLAIN

  Mrs. Edwards drank some of her vodka-tonic. Then she noticed that something was wrong with the music. The turntable was slow. The music was dragging.

  She got up and lifted the arm of the turntable to see if there was anything the matter with the needle. She scratched the needle with her fìnger. A scratching noise came out of the speakers. Behind the cabinet on which the turntable sat — between the back of the cabinet and the wall — there was a pair of black socks.

  Black socks, she thought.

  Mrs. Edwards turned off the amplifier and carried the black socks to the closet. She placed them in the dirty clothes hamper.

  Take clothes to laundromat, she thought.

  Then she went into the kitchen and made herself another vodka-tonic.

  Which she did not drink. She placed the second vodka-tonic on the small table beside the big chair in the living room and looked at it.

  I used to put lime juice in my vodka-tonics, she thought. Now I just put in the vodka and the tonic, and the ice. When did I stop putting in the lime juice? I remember buying limes, slicing limes, squeezing limes . . .

  If we had had children, I could have interested myself in the problems of children.

  I once won a prize for whistling with crackers in my mouth, she remembered. I whistled best. At a birthday party. When I was eight.

  The telephone rang again. Mrs. Edwards did not answer it. Because she was afraid it was the Telephone Company calling about the teleph
one bill. The Telephone Company had already called once about the telephone bill. She had told the woman from the Telephone Company that she would send a check right away but had not done so.

  The telephone bill is one hundred and twelve dollars, she thought.

  I can pay it on the fifteenth. Or I can send them a check and forget to sign it. I have not done that for a long time. Probably that would work, at this time.

  Mrs. Edwards drank some of the second vodka-tonic.

  Do I not put the lime juice in because of the war? she wondered. The incredible war? Is that why I don’t put the lime juice in?

  Behind her — that is, behind the chair in which she was sitting — a large picture fell off the wall. There was a sound of glass breaking.

  Mrs. Edwards did not turn around to look.

  I never liked that picture. George liked that picture. Our taste in pictures differs. I like Josef Albers. George does not understand what Josef Albers is all about. Only I understand what Josef Albers is all about. Our tastes differ. I have not been courted properly in three years. It is ridiculous to have a reproduction of Marie Laurencin hanging in one’s home. In the living room.

  Once, I would have refused to have a reproduction of Marie Laurencin hanging in my home.

  Not that she is bad. She is not bad at all. She is rather good, if one likes that sort of thing. Once, I would have fought about it. Tooth and nail.

  She thought: A long time ago.

  She thought: Did I remember to have photostats made, front and back, of the two checks for $16.22 each that the Internal Revenue Service says we didn’t send it for the maid’s Social Security for the first two quarters of 1970? That we did send? Because I have the cancelled checks?

  No, I did not. I must take the check to the photostat place and have the photostats made front and back and then send them with a letter to the Internal Revenue Service.

  I will not have another vodka-tonic. Because I have will power.

  When I lived in the city I had a dog. I would go out and walk my dog at ten o’clock in the morning. I would see all the other people walking their dogs. We would smile at one another over our dogs.

  If I have will power, why don’t I take my anti-alcohol pills?

  Because I would rather drink.

  Marie Laurencin had a good time. In life. Relatively. 1885–1956.

  Am I a standard-issue American alcoholic housewife? Assembled by many hands, like a Rambler, like a Princess telephone?

  But there is my love for the work of Josef Albers.

  But perhaps every one of us has a wrinkle — kink would not be too strong a word — which enables us to think of ourselves as . . . Marginal differentiation, as they call it in George’s business.

  Three years.

  Mrs. Edwards looked at her fingernails. There was a time, she thought, when I cared about my cuticles.

  Mrs. Edwards thought about Duke Ellington. She knew everything about Ellington there was to know. She thought about Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Ivie Anderson, Tricky Sam Nanton, Ray Nance the fiddler, Jimmy Blanton. She thought especially hard about Barney Bigard. She thought about “Transblucency,” “What Am I Here For?,” and “East St. Louis Too-dle-oo.” This music had made her happy, when she was young.

  But the turntable —

  I have done something wrong, she thought.

  At this point, the water, which had been accumulating for many days, walked up the stairs from the basement and presented itself in the living room.

  Living room, Amelia thought. What does that mean?

  There is water on the floor of the living room.

  Chagall is soft, she thought. All those floating lovers. Kissing above the rooftops. He has radically misperceived the problem.

  The telephone rang but Mrs. Edwards did not answer it, because she knew the caller was a professional woman-terrorizer who was not very good at it: too tentative. She had talked to him before. His name was Fred.

  I do not want to talk to Fred today.

  Mrs. Edwards looked at herself and noticed that she had forgotten to put any clothes on. When she had gotten up, after George had left for the office. She was not wearing any clothes.

  Then she went into the kitchen and washed the rest of the dishes. Very well, very well indeed. Very carefully. Nobody could object to the way she washed them, nobody in the whole world.

  Marie, Marie, Hold On Tight

  Henry Mackie, Edward Asher, and Howard Ettle braved a rainstorm to demonstrate against the human condition on Wednesday, April 26 (and Marie, you should have used waterproof paint; the signs were a mess after half an hour). They began at St. John the Precursor on 69th Street at 1:30 P.M. picketing with signs bearing the slogans MAN DIES!/ THE BODY IS DISGUST!/ COGITO ERGO NOTHING!/ ABANDON LOVE! and handing out announcements of Henry Mackie’s lecture at the Playmor Lanes the next evening. There was much interest among bystanders in the vicinity of the church. A man who said his name was William Rochester came up to give encouragement: “That’s the way!” he said. At about 1:50 a fat, richly dressed beadle emerged from the church to dispute our right to picket. He had dewlaps which shook unpleasantly and, I am sorry to say, did not look like a good man.

  “All right,” he said, “now move on, you have to move along, you can’t picket us!” He said that the church had never been picketed, that it could not be picketed without its permission, that it owned the sidewalk, and that he was going to call the police. Henry Mackie, Edward Asher, and Howard Ettle had already obtained police permission for the demonstration through a fortunate bit of foresight; and we confirmed this by showing him our slip that we had obtained at Police Headquarters. The beadle was intensely irritated at this and stormed back inside the church to report to someone higher up. Henry Mackie said, “Well, get ready for the lightning bolt,” and Edward Asher and Howard Ettle laughed.

  Interest in the demonstration among walkers on 69th Street increased and a number of people accepted our leaflet and began to ask the pickets questions such as “What do you mean?” and “Were you young men raised in the church?” The pickets replied to these questions quietly but firmly and in as much detail as casual passers-by could be expected to be interested in. Some of the walkers made taunting remarks — “Cogito ergo your ass” is one I remember — but the demeanor of the pickets was exemplary at all times, even later when things began, as Henry Mackie put it, “to get a little rough.” (Marie, you would have been proud of us.) People who care about the rights of pickets should realize that these rights are threatened mostly not by the police, who generally do not molest you if you go through the appropriate bureaucratic procedures such as getting a permit, but by individuals who come up to you and try to pull your sign out of your hands or, in one case, spit at you. The man who did the latter was, surprisingly, very well dressed. What could be happening with an individual like that? He didn’t even ask questions as to the nature or purpose of the demonstration, just spat and walked away. He didn’t say a word. We wondered about him.

  At about 2 P.M. a very high-up official in a black clerical suit emerged from the church and asked us if we had ever heard of Kierkegaard. It was raining on him just as it was on the pickets but he didn’t seem to mind. “This demonstration displays a Kierkegaardian spirit which I understand,” he said, and then requested that we transfer our operations to some other place. Henry Mackie had a very interesting discussion of about ten minutes’ duration with this official during which photographs were taken by the New York Post, Newsweek, and CBS Television whom Henry Mackie had alerted prior to the demonstration. The photographers made the churchman a little nervous but you have to hand it to him, he maintained his phony attitude of polite interest almost to the last. He said several rather bromidic things like “The human condition is the given, it’s what we do with it that counts” and “The body is simply the temple wherein the soul dwells” which Henry Mackie countered with his famous question “Why does it have to be that way?” which has dumbfounded so many orthodox r
eligionists and thinkers and with which he first won us (the other pickets) to his banner in the first place.

  “Why?” the churchman exclaimed. It was clear that he was radically taken aback. “Because it is that way. You have to deal with what is. With reality.”

  “But why does it have to be that way?” Henry Mackie repeated, which is the technique of the question, which used in this way is unanswerable. A blush of anger and frustration crossed the churchman’s features (it probably didn’t register on your TV screen, Marie, but I was there, I saw it — it was beautiful).

  “The human condition is a fundamental datum,” the cleric stated. “It is immutable, fixed, and changeless. To say otherwise . . .”

  “Precisely,” Henry Mackie said, “why it must be challenged.”

  “But,” the cleric said, “it is God’s will.”

  “Yes,” Henry Mackie said significantly.

  The churchman then retired into his church, muttering and shaking his head. The rain had damaged our signs somewhat but the slogans were still legible and we had extra signs cached in Edward Asher’s car anyway. A number of innocents crossed the picket line to worship including several who looked as if they might be from the FBI. The pickets had realized in laying their plans the danger that they might be taken for Communists. This eventuality was provided for by the mimeographed leaflets which carefully explained that the pickets were not Communists and cited Edward Asher’s and Howard Ettle’s Army service including Asher’s Commendation Ribbon. “We, as you, are law-abiding American citizens who support the Constitution and pay taxes,” the leaflet says. “We are simply opposed to the ruthless way in which the human condition has been imposed on organisms which have done nothing to deserve it and are unable to escape it. Why does it have to be that way?” The leaflet goes on to discuss, in simple language, the various unfortunate aspects of the human condition including death, unseemly and degrading bodily functions, limitations on human understanding, and the chimera of love. The leaflet concludes with the section headed “What Is To Be Done?” which Henry Mackie says is a famous revolutionary catchword and which outlines, in clear, simple language, Henry Mackie’s program for the reification of the human condition from the ground up.