Mister Sandman

by Barbara Gowdy

  On Saturdays and Sundays they visit Joan twice, once in the afternoon and again in the early evening. Doris says that the prices in the hospital cafeteria are highway robbery, so after the first visit they return home for supper, and while the left-overs are heating up, Gordon goes downstairs to Joan’s office. He doesn’t intend to, he is suddenly there, opening the door.

  Stooped over, just inside, he waits for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He sees the reflecting silver strip along the bench, and the white-spined books on the shelves. He built these shelves. There are four on the west wall, five on the east, the lowest ones just off the ground and the highest a little taller than she is. He spent an entire Saturday afternoon arranging the books alphabetically and in subject order, but that same night Joan rearranged them in order of colour, a spectrum going from white to off-white to beige, brown, orange, red, purple and so on to black. White and black spines in opposite corners.

  He limps to the stool and sits. Way down. He rubs the thigh of his bad leg. On each side of the bench, in two neat piles, are what he presumes must be the original tapes. Unlabelled, it goes without saying. How does she keep track of what’s on them? he wonders. And why this tidiness, everything put away, as if she was finished here? Maybe Marcia is right, not necessarily about Joan willing herself into a coma-like state but about knowing it was going to happen. Jack once told him about an elderly parishioner of his, healthy as a horse, who matter-of-factly said, “I’m going to kick the bucket next week, better get another fellow to pass the plate,” and the following Saturday night he died in his sleep.

  “Jesus,” Gordon says to have thought of that. And then he is crying in the dry-eyed, gasping way he has been doing all week. A sudden fit of panting followed by long exhalations, long sheets of breath as though he is blowing up a balloon.

  When it’s over, he feels nothing, not even drained. He looks around. The visor is on top of the tapes, and he picks it up and turns on the penlight to check the batteries. He sweeps the beam over the bench, over David Rayne’s notes, over his own haggard, bewildered-looking face in the mirror, over a jar of pens and pencils, a bottle of rubber cement and, right in front of him, two more tapes still in their boxes.

  Hold it right there. These tapes are labelled—“tape I” and “tape 2” typed on a strip of white paper and glued to the boxes. At the bottom of the tape 1 box it says, “finished composition” and under that, “ready to play.” He turns the boxes over, and on the tape 1 box a typed paragraph says, “On two different tape recorders (of course!) play the A sides of tape 1 and tape 2 at slow speeds and simultaneously, ensuring that the tape counters are in perfect synchronization with each other. At the end of the A sides, turn the tapes over and play the ? sides likewise.”

  His heart starts hopping up and down. He shines the light on Rayne’s notes, back to the tape 1 box, comparing the typefaces. He leafs through the notes, and there it is—where she cut out the words “tape 1” and “tape 2.” He keeps turning pages and finds where the words “finished composition” came from. A few pages later is the hole that was the entire how-to-play-the-apes paragraph.

  It’s not handwriting, it’s not even her typing, but she selected the words from Rayne’s notes and cut them out and glued them to the boxes, and that makes it written communication. Her first written communication. No matter what she has produced on the tapes themselves, this is a breakthrough.

  He sits there for a minute waiting for his heart to stop jumping around. “Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh,” he thinks. No. “We have seen Strange things today.” He is trying to come up with the right passage to fit the breakthrough, or at least his discovery of the breakthrough. There was a time he did this to impress Jack. Since Joan has been in the hospital he can feel himself doing it as penance for appealing to a God he doesn’t even believe in. And, yes, to soften Him up. How many atheists have over a hundred New Testament verses under their belts?

  “That they may see your good works…” No. He picks up the tapes. Switches off the penlight. “They were filled with madness …” No.

  Twenty-Two

  The tape recorders are on the floor in front of the TV, their counters turning from one to two. It is four hours later. “We found the tapes,” Marcia told Joan when they went to see her after supper. “We’re going to play them as soon as we get back. We’re going to have a concert.” Marcia claims that Joan clicked her tongue at that. Nobody else heard, but they are all feeling encouraged.

  Gordon has just taken his seat. Beside him, in her chair, Sonja knits. Marcia lies on the chesterfield with her legs across Doris’s lap to pin her there, keep her still for this. Doris has already gotten up once because she thought that a cricket was the kitchen tap dripping.

  “Now, no talking,” Gordon says.

  Out of the tape recorder nearest him a voice says what sounds like tone, tone, tone. But after several repetitions, it is obvious that it’s Joan. Joan, Joan, Joan … Not sung and yet describing a familiar melody.

  “Mister Sandman!” Marcia says.

  “Shh,” Gordon says.

  Once more, at the same slow tempo, another string of Joans instead of the bums that “Mister Sandman” begins with.

  “Who is that?” Doris says.

  “You,” Marcia says, realizing.

  “Shh!” Gordon again.

  “I never said Joan like that.”

  “No!” Marcia says. “I know what she did! She taped you saying it once, then copied it, then she sped it up and slowed it down—“

  “Quiet!” Gordon says.

  Now the song itself starts, still that creeping tempo and not sung so much as spoken on key. Except that those aren’t the right words. It is difficult to make out what the words are because of a muffling hum in the background and because, as Marcia said, half of them sound mechanically altered. No two words in a row seem to be from the same voice. “Is that me?” Marcia whispers, hearing a girl say shrivel at a normal pitch. “That’s me!” she whispers, hearing chuck. Heck she hears and nudges Doris, who nods.

  “We’re all in it,” Doris whispers, amazed. She has picked out Gordon saying orange and peanuts, Sonja saying nostrils, father and jeepers.

  Gordon has heard nostrils and jeepers. Peanuts, to him, was penis, but he instantly decided it must be Venus. He is concentrating on the second tape, which is playing a short passage of murmured words whose rhythm is syncopated to the “Mister Sandman” rhythm. This voice is not different voices joined together, it is a single voice, female, either Doris’s, Sonja’s or Marcia’s, it would have to be. He has figured out that much, that Joan was taping them, and he is already a bit apprehensive. What is the voice saying? He is about to get up and fiddle with the dials when the voice says distinctly and at such a high volume that it sounds shouted—“YOU CAN KEEP A SECRET, CAN’T YOU?”

  Sonja stops knitting. “Was that me?”

  “It sure sounded like it,” Doris says.

  “She taped us,” Marcia says excitedly. “I wonder when she did.”

  “Well, those heaps of tapes she has,” Doris says. “She might have been doing it for years.”

  “But I thought it would be her playing the piano,” Sonja says.

  “Shh,” Gordon says gently.

  On the first tape the “Mister Sandman” tune has begun again as before, with all of their voices speaking a word in turn. The words seem to have been chosen for no other reason than that they have the right number of syllables and the right pitch, although, as in the first verse, many words (and in some cases only parts of words) sound sped up or slowed down. Despite the hum these words are easier to make out than ones in the first verse were. Tibby retard fly breast shebang carrot top Negro albino worms darn. A nonsense jumble. And yet startling, some of them. Tibby. Breast.

  Meanwhile, on tape 2, a voice (Gordon’s) is murmuring another broken sentence of about seven or eight words. You can tell how long the sentence is because it is a rhythmic phrase
being played over and over. Again the words are unintelligible until the end of the verse when suddenly they blare out, perfectly clear: “I THINK ABOUT HIM ALL THE TIME!”

  Doris looks at Gordon. “Who do you think about all the time?”

  He shakes his head. “My father,” he says after a moment.

  “Quiet,” Marcia says.

  A third verse of the same “Mister Sandman” melody has begun on tape 1. On tape 2 there’s that incoherent voice—female and, even this early on, recognizably Marcia’s. Marcia covers her mouth with her hands as she waits to find out what she’s saying. She hopes it’s not too personal. Chinless neglected Bill Cullen tongue blood type …

  “Blood type?” Doris says.

  “Bill Cullen,” Sonja says with a smile. She has resumed knitting.

  … pediatric mango pop tongue erection …

  “Erection!” Doris says.

  “Quiet!” Marcia says and glances at her father.

  But Gordon is hardly listening. His heart is flopping around like a fish. He can’t think. He can’t remember. Did he ever mention Al Yothers to Joan? Did he say he loved him? My God, he has a feeling he might have. With a quaking hand he pulls his handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and dabs his forehead. Okey-dokey bean virgin from tape I. Is bean Jack Bean? Virgin? Who said virgin?

  “I think maybe we should turn this off now,” he says.

  “What?” Doris says. “Why?”

  “Listen!” Marcia shouts, and a second later her voice on tape 2 says, “WE WENT ALL THE WAY TONIGHT!”

  She yelps, embarrassed.

  Doris subtracts the number of years ago that Joan presumably stopped taping everybody (it would be when she began editing in the basement) from Marcia’s age. “Hey, you weren’t even seventeen!”

  Marcia laughs. “So?”

  “I don’t know if this is the right time to be listening to this,” Gordon says.

  “If you don’t want to listen, don’t,” Doris snaps. “Go for a walk. I’m staying right here.”

  “Can we just listen?” Marcia yells.

  … yours canary Ziggy cream cheese soft spot…

  The next voice on tape 2 is Sonja’s. “THE TRUTH IS ONLY AVERSION!” it eventually hollers. Then on to the next verse and more of the same: from tape I a list of random words—bosom baloney chinky crown lard—spoken to the tune of “Mister Sandman,” and from tape 2 an inaudible, repeated phrase providing a jazzy counterpoint.

  What verse are they at now? The voice is Doris’s. When it shouts, “WELL, IF THAT DOESN’T BEAT THE BAND!” she says, “Do I say that a lot?”

  “You never stop,” Gordon teases. His heart is settling down. The next murmurer is female, and the last two declarations have been innocuous enough. Each verse is roughly two minutes long, so if the piece continues like this until the end, that works out to, what, twenty-five or twenty-four more verses, of which maybe six will feature him. And what percentage of everything he uttered at the threshold of that closet could possibly have been indiscreet? Less than one percent of one percent. “I suppose she wanted us to hear it,” he concedes. “She wouldn’t have left instructions—“

  “Shh,” says Marcia. The voice on tape 2 is hers. The clarification of the murmured phrase is all any of them are really listening for now, although they can’t help hearing that oddly disturbing catalogue of words on tape 1—padded dingdong hammer pass—as if a lunatic were raving in their ears while they were straining to catch an important announcement. “Boys,” Marcia says. “I think it’s something about boys.”

  “Oh, great,” Doris says grimly.

  It’s about boys, all right. It’s: “1 HAVE SLEPT WITH so

  MANY BOYS I HAVE LOST COUNT!”

  “What?” Doris cries.

  Marcia sits straight. “I never said that!” Did she? She may have thought it, but did she say it?

  “Before you were seventeen?” Doris cries.

  “I just said, I never said it!”

  “We heard you!”

  “Maybe you meant ‘had a little snooze with,’” Sonja offers.

  “I hope you’re taking the pill!” Doris says.

  “I’m taking it,” Marcia says. “Not that it’s anybody’s business.”

  “Look,” Gordon says, “let’s keep in mind that these are edited tapes, and there are unnatural breaks between words. I think that what she did was extract a word from this conversation and a word from that conversation to manufacture her own sentence.”

  “Why would she do a thing like that?” Doris cribs.

  “I don’t know,” Gordon says. He doesn’t even believe it. He is thinking of himself. Ahead of time, from a state of savage, efficient dread, he is constructing his excuse.

  “Well, it’s a big—“ Marcia says and her breath snags. She can’t say “lie.” She can deny having said it but not having done it because that would be calling Joan a liar. Why did Joan tell everybody, though? She folds her legs into her chest and presses her forehead to her knees. Robin queen quack bare Vaseline… the song goes. The end of the verse is approaching.

  IT’S SONJA’S VOICE THIS TIME, “IN MY LAST LIFE I WAS THE LADY ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE!” IT YELLS.

  “Well, now you know,” Sonja says with a chuckle. “But I’ll bet you anything I was.”

  The next voice is Gordon’s. He grips the arms of his chair. Love, he thinks he hears, and burning halos begin radiating from his skull, “WHEN YOU FALL IN LOVE, OTHER MIRACLES ARE INSPIRED TO SHOW ?HEMSELVES!” his voice finally proclaims.

  He exhales. That wasn’t so bad. He smiles at Doris, who stares at him. “I must have read it to her from some book,” he says. Right! That’s it! If anything risqué comes up, he’ll say he must have read it aloud!

  But for the next quarter of an hour, the declarations are harmless. Gordon’s voice saying, “I FEEL LIKE BUCK ROGERS AT THIS POINT!” Doris’s saying, “WHAT DO YOU THINK, SHOULD I LOSE TEN POUNDS?” “I ALMOST WENT THROUGH THE FLO?R!” from Sonja, and from Doris “GIMME A PIGFOOT AND A BOTTLE OF BEER!” Marcia snorts at that one. “It’s a song,” Doris says stiffly. Marcia’s voice says, “I SURE KNOW HOW TO PICK THEM, DON’T I?” and along the same lines, “WHY AM I ATTRACTED TO LEPER KEEPERS?” (“Leopard keepers?” Sonja says. “Leper keepers,” Marcia says.) When Marcia’s voice says, “I AM A WALL AND MY BREASTS LIKE TOWERS!” Doris glances at her.

  “It’s from the Bible,” Marcia mutters.

  “The Song of Solomon!” Gordon says heartily.

  Doris sighs. Maybe what Gordon said about Joan manufacturing sentences is true. Who knows? The whole thing sounds crazy to her. She pulls Marcia’s feet onto her lap and begins plucking lint balls from her socks and flicking them away. (As if, Marcia thinks, but is not offended, they are the countless boys she has slept with.)

  In unison, the two tapes click off their reels. “That’s the end of side one,” Gordon says, slapping his knees and coming to his feet. He is feeling fine now. More than fine—fired up. As far as he is concerned, Joan’s rhythmic variations are as sophisticated as anything he ever heard on a David Rayne recording. “This is extraordinary,” he says as he turns the tapes over. “Disquieting in places, there’s no question about that. But once you accept that her intention is to provoke, there are levels within levels—“

  “I think it’s weird,” Marcia cuts him off. Her feelings are still hurt. Why did Joan pick on her? “And I think it’s weirder that she was secretly taping us like a Russian spy.”

  “Those lyrics, or whatever you want to call them, are sure weird,” Doris says. “When you think of all the thousands of words we must have said. And she goes and picks humdingers like orgasm and bosom! Who said chinky, by the way?” She twists around. “Oh, look, it’s raining out.”

  “I suspect she chose them partly for their sound,” Gordon says. “And to juxtapose a shocking word with a bland one. Okay.” He flicks both switches. “Here we go.”

  “I hope we’ve heard the last of Mister Sandman,” Marcia
says.

  “Well, I would think we have,” Doris says, surprised.

  “No, we haven’t!” Sonja says as the first words come traipsing out—blowing doughnut jerking kiddo …

  On this side, the tape 2 voices turn out to be spouting platitudes, “WELL, YOU CAN’T WIN ‘EM ALL!” “LIKE I SAID, IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE!” “GIVE A GUY AN INCH AND HE’LL TAKE A MILE!” “SO I GUESS IT’S OUT OF THE FRYING PAN AND INTO THE FIRE!” “I’M NOT GOING TO COUNT MY BLESSINGS UNTIL THEY’RE HATCHED!” (THAT ONE FROM SONJA.)

  Gordon laughs, an attack of enormously relieving and slightly out-of-control guffaws. “This is terrific,” he says, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.

  Another malapropism from Sonja (“A BIRD IN THE HAND is WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD!”) has them all laughing, Sonja as well, she isn’t sure why. By now the tapes are almost running out. Only a few more verses to go.

  “That sounds like me,” Doris says, as the next murmured phrase starts up. “Hold on to your hats,” she says, grinning. And from the tape recorder her voice shrills, “I LOVE TO HAVE SEX WITH BARE-NAKED WOMEN!”

  Sonja blurts out a laugh, imagining this to be another joke (one she thinks she gets).

  “Oh, my God,” Marcia says.

  “I never said that,” Doris says quietly. A blush starts climbing her throat.

  “Of course, you didn’t,” Gordon says. He forces a laugh.

  “I never said that,” Doris says again.

  “This is what I was talking about before!” Gordon says. “She took a word from here, a word from there and spliced them together!”

  Doris holds her hands in her lap. Her bearing is regal. “I would never have said anything like that,” she says in the same quiet and startled voice.