by Herbert Gold
I asked if she made herself pathetic for him. No, she did not. Her plight was to be optimistic, cheerful, undaunted, a young wife and mother whose husband was this close—this close—and she made a graceful little gesture with thumb and index finger. It made me think of someone talking about the size of a prick. “This close,” she said, “if only he’ll reach out to accept the big score that would make everyone feel so much better, plus pay the future bills that will come due.”
“You’re not satisfied with your standard of living? If not Xavier, then Karim can help?”
“Oh dear, how stubborn a man can get. Especially my beloved husband. Put it this way, Dan—halfway I’m prudent, I think of schools for Jeff and the future and maybe some nice things. We don’t have to get specific, but a car that goes vroom, vroom? With a rag top?”
“That’s pretty specific. Do you have the color red in mind?”
“—and halfway I’m a red-blooded American girl who knows her husband can provide the best, the very best. We’ve had our fun, Dan. Now it’s time for you to reach.”
“For what? Vroom, vroom?”
“You can be so much more.”
“A money launderer? A drug courier? Maybe the arranger of hits?”
She shrugged. My tone was so negative, so unnecessary. But Priscilla was a woman who respected her own power, and therefore she could recognize my tone but not be daunted by it. “I wouldn’t, surely, Dan, ask the father of my son to do anything—would I?—that isn’t exciting and challenging and probably the kind of dancing on the edge that’s at least as safe as the parachute jumping you used to do in the army. Dan, you remember—we were on Mount Tam having a picnic—you told me how military parachutes were really small and you came down really fast and it was like jumping from a second-story window? And you really enjoyed it?”
“I was nineteen years old.”
“Would you just listen to him, Dan? Pay attention? For me, too?”
Her eyes were both dreamy and bright and her face was flushed. It was as if we had just made love. Anyway, Jeff was about to wake up. We could hear him stirring.
* * *
Naturally a man capable of a big score did not see the need to rush panic-stricken into mere behavior. Setting things straight with Xavier had been entertainment; but Karim might be pushing my luck. Consideration was called for. I wasn’t going to seek him out, confront him with a jumble of charges and reproaches, such as corrupting my wife, which of course was not the case at all. Priscilla was incorruptible by others. Priscilla had her own integrity, the best, the highest, and any corruption she required could be taken care of by her own efforts. I would not pursue Karim. I too could rise to a high standard of independent conduct.
So I grabbed him next noontime on the terrace of Enrico’s, where I knew I would find him, around the corner from my office up the Kearny steps, across the street from the second-story parlor, A-ONE MASSAGE, OPEN 24 HOURS, which catered to lonely Filipino gentlemen but did not disdain others if they came up to normal all-night massage parlor standards. Karim wasn’t involved in this business except for providing the opening lease expenses, accounting services, and the girls.
“Now you’re a good friend of my wife?” I asked. This was my version of calm consideration.
“Sit down, sit down,” he said, offering great hospitality, my choice of chairs, his palms open and concealing nothing. “She said she would speak with you—”
“She did.”
“Now we must learn to defer to a woman of her quality, Dan. All men must. Your wife, a quality woman. And I congratulate you.”
“As a good friend.”
He took this comment under advisement. He was busy weighing the facts. “As a close acquaintance,” he offered judiciously. “We both keep your best interests close to our hearts.” Touched his own heart with thick, hair-sprouted, but trimly manicured fingers. Practiced sign language indicating sincerity in case words did not suffice. “Pris-ceela, myself, we are thinking about your future, my friend.”
“You’re not going to make deals with my wife, Karim.”
“Would I ever do such a thing? Without seeking full agreement from you? Since only your trust and confidence provide us with all the satisfaction we seek?” He was startled by the hint of duplicity I seemed to suggest; he was shocked, shocked. “My friend, Pris-ceela appreciates to make an arrangement, but only, only on your full behalf, and only if you freely desire what all your dear friends want for you—the best! Surely you must understand that my interest in your quality future equals hers. If you don’t fully appreciate my friendship, let me help by assuring you. My respect for Pris-ceela is profound. My admiration for you, Dan, and the respect which follows admiration, is only doubled and redoubled by this quality person in your life who wants nothing more than…”
Than what she chooses to want.
“Than what is right,” he said, completing the thought after a moment of pursed-lip humming to himself. “So we must trust each other more, my friend. Can you accept this challenge? Can you, Sir?”
Karim’s profundity of feeling was worth nothing if not communicated in all its great humidity. Hands fluttering to chest, mouth winsome with smiles, black-edged eyes poring over mine with little jumps and starts and then a steady high beam, all the generously proffered bundle of deeply human emotion informed me that this was a man I could truly count on for love, respect, and full employment. He sought to divert me from my Kasdanish slothfulness of spirit. He sought to inspire me with hope and greed. He was preoccupied with thoughts of my best interests. He liked challenges.
As for me, I was still getting used to the best interests of Priscilla as worked out by Priscilla without terrific reference to her spouse. But did her surprising (ambushing) me mean she wasn’t right in her intentions, since I had always thought her intentions were both sometimes surprising and certainly right? She saw no reason for me to think any differently, so why should I?
It seemed that my wife was not merely a marvel of intelligent gleam and tenderness; that she was more than the statistical miracle I had found as if by God’s help in the middle of my time. She was also an American woman, wanting some fun, wanting some goods, wanting some changes to be made. Others must have seen this coming and encouraged her renewed free choices in life. I was in the great tradition of blind lovers. Suddenly I was a little less blind.
“Please, if we can talk,” said Karim. “Let me report once again…”
I heard the words “respect,” “admiration,” “quality.” I heard the word “deeply.”
“Together you make, what? A truly spicy combination. Perhaps cuisine is not the way to think about learning to accept a higher reward for talent—”
“I had a wife I loved,” I said. “I fell in love with her.”
Karim touched my arm in that way some men have, gentle, sharing, paying attention, and alert to how they look doing so. He shook his head heavily, mournfully, from side to side, and it came to rest with a heavy mournful smile. He pitied slavishness in a man, but he also meant to honor love. “So full of feeling,” he murmured. “Kudos, Dan, kudos. You are a man capable of a rare devotion. I offer kudos and respect.” Encouraged by my not squirming away under his fingers, he gripped my arm; he too enjoyed intimacy, hoped to learn kudos. “Now you must leave room for the woman to express a woman’s devotion, woman’s needs. You must listen carefully and consider, my dear friend.”
Usually so concentrated on his enjoyment, greedy for his meal, Karim today picked at his food. Yet when I looked again, his plate was clean, with a decorous few brush marks where his fork had missed something. He must have been getting what he wanted. I was sure he enjoyed our little chat.
“Listen carefully to me,” he said, “and above all listen to this unusual woman.”
* * *
And so I said to Priscilla, “I don’t want to do business with Xavier, and I don’t need Karim either.”
“It was only a thought, dear.”
“I don
’t want to.”
“I can dream that you’ll change your mind though, can’t I? Even if you love me truly, as I know you do, you can’t take away a girl’s right to dream.”
“You’re an American.”
“You said it, I didn’t … Of course, I’ve said it on occasion in the past. I do believe I even uttered those words to Karim and he was charmed. He just went on, totally charmed, about how much he admires your skills.”
New reasons kept coming up for Karim’s persistence. It wasn’t just Karim. Xavier wanted me in his employ. Priscilla wanted me in a better line of work, one that brought in more interesting amounts of cash. They all had an interest in filling my life. Flying ideas were buzzing around my head. The concept “tax free” came to me without clearing off the buzzing. “Are you in some sort of trouble?” I asked.
“You’d be the first to know.”
“In trouble with Karim?”
“Give me a little credit, lover,” she said.
Instead I gave her a little time. Sometime with a client you just wait and he speaks, he incriminates himself, he caves. Priscilla wasn’t a client and she didn’t cave.
Finally I spoke, and told myself it wasn’t that I was caving.
“I don’t think I want you to be out scouting jobs for me. If you need things to do, there must be other things.”
“Didn’t you say we’re partners?”
“Probably I thought it, but I didn’t say it like that.”
“So there! I read your mind, dear. Oh come on, everything has to move along, doesn’t it? Just look at Jeff, how he changes every day. Let Jeff be an inspiration to you, isn’t that a good idea?”
I didn’t want a quarrel. The last thing I wanted was a quarrel with my wife and partner. I let her say “There, there” and run her fingers down my arm in a petting motion, although there was something about the touch I didn’t enjoy. The difference between being loved and being indulged.
The subject wasn’t fully closed. That’s marriage. That’s something I would need to live with. At least Karim and Priscilla were happy, feeling they had planted a seed that might grow in the right weather.
Chapter 10
Nowadays a person seldom feels the instant sea change when a woman stops loving, closes the door. There may be a whiff of draft that the person calls “mood.” (“Hi honey, how was your day?” No answer, mumbly nonanswer; no further questions, please the court.)
She took my arm as if she loved me, her eyes washed their blue all over our lives, she made the picnic and said, “Let’s have cheese and wine and other good things, because we’re lovers, dear man.” Yes, let’s, and forever.
The door closes silently in a house that is suddenly still. At first, no clashing of walls, shaking of foundations, just the quiet munching of dry rot, which means invisible termites. Not even a big fight over take-out-the-garbage or drinking-a-little-more-lately or shit chores with Jeff. She might draw on an afternoon joint, some old-fashioned Acapulco gold, the sort of pleasure a person finds when perturbed and alone but shouldn’t find when alone and upset. She might draw on a little easing smoke and, like other people, give herself leave to repeat herself, inquiring again about Karim, just out of curiosity: Isn’t it nice to be respected, lover? By a very successful business person operating out of a white linen suit he probably has dry-cleaned after one day’s wearing? Hey, what about your bride having to open the garage door loaded down with an armful of groceries and Jeff? A Genie would be nice, Dan, works like magic on FM frequencies …
One day I came home and the wiring in the house was different.
“Oh. Hello. Hi.”
Was that a greeting I just heard? Was it?
So I hugged Jeff and went to the bathroom and washed my face carefully in cold water and made the claim to my pink face, wet beard, that this was “mood.” Jeff and I would roll on the floor and she could just be as much a part of Daddy-comes-home-from-work as she chose to be.
The next day something similar. And the next.
“What’s the matter, Priscilla?”
“Nothing.”
I pick up Jeff. He laughs. I throw him in the air. He laughs wildly.
“Someday he’ll hit the ceiling,” she says.
“Never yet happened. I was a pitcher. Softball in high school.”
“I know a kid lost his teeth that way, his father showing off.”
“Not me, Priscilla. I think my dad did this to me. It’s a free ride in the air. Not showing off, I promise.”
“Would you know? Define the terms.”
“Hey! At Lowell I was all-city—”
“This isn’t softball. Just be careful.”
I could feel the frown gather on my forehead. This is hardball. I undo the creases with my fingers. Then I say to the other happiness in my life. “Jeffy Jeffy Jeffy, don’t you like to fly?”
He says, “Daddy Daddy Daddy,” that’s what I hear, the spirit of pronunciation still at an early period of dadadadada. Pretty good, Jeffy.
Then I turn to my great love, my miracle blessing. “Want to go out to dinner?”
“No sitter. We can’t just pick up like that anymore.”
Why is she explaining that we now have a child? Don’t I know?
“We can get one. The kid next door. Or we can take Jeff.”
“That’s no help.”
“I’ll take care of him. He’ll sleep.”
“No.”
The word that launched a billion shipwrecks, the all-encompassing no, the lips no-ing white at the edges, the eyes no-ing hard in their blue clarity, the face and body finding other places to be in a small house when the husband walks toward her; the no-in-chief; the no of no-ness.
Or it might have filled the air of another day.
Or been just gradual, like leukemia, a leaking of illness into the lymph system, capillaries wriggling for cover like worms.
Dimly dumbly dying, I took notice of something I had named “mood.” It was more than mood. Emergency call to KCBS: our marriage was injured up to the point of asking to be considered dead. There was a thrill in the unmoving air of a house, something brutal, not quite fully happening yet, being prepared; like a lynching in the neighborhood, or an unannounced lightning war, an attack precise in scale but total. Priscilla was a brilliant antagonist with a pure heart, maybe the only pure heart I’ll ever meet.
With such power she loved and didn’t love!
We had dinner, talking to Jeff and not each other, and then put Jeff to bed. As I bathed him, watched him splash, dodged storms, Priscilla came into the bathroom; she had something to say; she chose not to say it. She opened her mouth and shut it. This was not Priscilla’s way, this silent scream. I supervised the brushing of the Jeff teeth. I urged the putting away of the Jeff toys. I told the story. Again Priscilla came toward us, her lips parted, then shut, and then she bent to kiss him. Goodnight, Jeffie. Goodnight, Daddy. Goodnight, Jeffie. Goodnight, Mommy.
I thought she should have the last goodnight. Sweet dreams, Jeffie.
She shut his door carefully and listened. It was one of those evenings when he was drifting off nicely. Good.
She came out to tell me she had been wanting to mention something, and I was relieved that she would finally be mentioning whatever it was that needed to be mentioned. Again her mouth opened and shut with its barricaded scream.
“Please say it,” I asked.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure how.”
“Just whatever comes to you.”
“What comes to me,” she said with a tentativeness unlike Priscilla. Violently, with a gesture of violent head-shaking no-saying, she planted her legs in a hard straddle in front of me and shouted: “What the hell makes you think it’s my job to clean up your friend’s dog shit?”
I stared.
“Mingus!” she said. “Your goddamn friend’s mess!”
Now I knew what she was talking about. “You’ve got a memory like an elephant.”
Her voice turned cold
and quiet. “No I don’t. I only remember what I need to remember. We’ll see if you like it better that way.”
I didn’t yet understand; it was too simple and pure. She was looking at me in a way that made me think she was staring at someone hidden by my body. I turned to see. No one there. She didn’t laugh. But now that the ice was broken, she felt easier in herself, she was on a roll, she spoke with her usual calm and almost amused control, finding exactly the words she needed in order to make her point. Some kind of logic had been distilled and purified by her long silence.
“I didn’t think I’d grow up to cook dinner for a black cop and a Jewish private snoop, no disrespect intended, dear—”
“Of course not. The surprises life brings.”
“—and wiping up after their pet doggy.”
I couldn’t answer. I had no answer. I wondered if I was supposed to have an answer. “Is that how you saw it?”
She looked genuinely pained. “Dear, I don’t remember how I saw it then. Probably not like that. But that’s how I see it now.”
She was moving backward; there must have been a reason for my graceful wife’s bumping against a framed double photograph of the two of us on a table, knocking it so that it fell like a shot bird, wings flapping; she looked frightened and puzzled. I stopped advancing on her—I realized I had started violently forward. I ran into the bathroom. I turned on the cold water and splashed my face with it. No disrespect intended. No disrespect intended. I didn’t want her to hear me so I let the faucet run.
She was in bed when I came out. I picked up the double-framed photograph and unfolded its wings. The glass wasn’t cracked. That was a good sign; it would have been too much. I reinserted the Polaroid of Jeff where it had been stuck between the glass and the frame. I stood the hinged frames back in place next to the lamp on the table and wondered if she would leave it there. I spent the night in the normal place of a husband in a whole lot of trouble. On the couch, no disrespect intended.
And the next night she was breaking a hairbrush over my upraised arm when I refused to believe she had decided to separate our lives. “I just want to live apart, I need you to move out, I don’t want to be married just now.”