I thought Vincent would toss it back as it touched his hands. Instead he glanced at Myrna, took a deep breath, opened it, read the pages for what seemed a very long time. Then I could tell he wasn’t reading any more but he still didn’t look up from the pages. The crackling of the fire was the only noise in the room. Finally he looked up, and his face still devoid of expression; said,
“Thanks.”
The room breathed.
Josh said, “Think nothing of it, sport,” and smiled, but the smile didn’t work. It looked more like one of Vincent’s unthinking attempts to ape Josh’s casual air.
“Josh!” Mimi exclaimed, peering around Vincent’s arm to see, “I think that’s lovely. Vincent, I’m so happy for you!” She hugged him excitedly, or came as close to hugging him as she could, his height and her girth taken into consideration. “Beth, Josh gave Vincent acreage just south of us, a couple of acres, whatever it is, I think it’s just great, Josh, you did a wonderful thing.”
“Yes, Josh,” Vincent said. “It’s just great, you did a wonderful thing.”
“Okay, sport,” Josh said irritably, “You pulled it off very well, now can it, huh?”
Simmer simmer, bubble bubble. I had a very strange sensation at that moment. Of evil spirits passing in the night. Of us as the stage set of your inner being, Josh. Not that we were created by your imagination but that we represented your various real limits and possibilities. It stood to reason that your life, or at least your possible lives, should be lived out while you only inhabited your pose. So perhaps, I thought, perhaps Mimi was your sense of duty, and I was that private, inward part of you which could not have survived the life you lead, and Vincent—Vincent was your anger, that’s what started me on all of this—that at the moment when you threw Vincent the deed, expecting anything from smoldering fury to a lengthy diatribe on the impossibility of buying him off, accompanied by the deed’s being thrown back at you, and Vincent failed to register any emotion at all, why then at that moment he had freed himself, he was no longer your anger, which thus passed back into you.
Lights off, lights back on again. A moment of stillness; We waited for thunder, but in the wrong season.
Josh stalked to the window. “We’re not going to have any snow, goddamn it. I travel three thousand miles for Christmas and I get nothing but a few lousy patches of snow on the ground. I should’ve stayed home and screened a Sonja Henie flick.”
“You haven’t touched the eggnog, that’s your trouble,” Barney said, himself holding another Bloody Mary.
“I’m off booze and onto grass,” Josh said.
“Ah, yes,” Barney said. “I read someplace that it’d become very middle class.”
“You know something, son?” Josh said. “If you put your pecker where your mouth is you’d be the biggest cunt man on the East Coast.”
It was such a vicious remark, so out of proportion to Barney’s sly needling, everyone was stunned. Even Lily’s giggle was nervous.
Barney whistled. “Wow. Merry Christmas and No Holds Barred.”
“Josh,” Mimi said tremulously, “you have a way of saying these perfectly terrible things that don’t mean anything but they sound so awful.”
“Oh he means something all right,” Barney said mildly.
“Sorry, buddy,” Josh muttered, “you caught me at the wrong time.”
“Sure, I understand,” Barney said. “It’s like playing Russian Roulette. The bullet’s always there but this time it hit me.”
I smiled in spite of myself. It was the reason Josh had made so many enemies over the years, not so much the people he’d insulted as everyone’s feeling that the insult was lying there in wait in his mind, to be used at will, so that many people preferred him to be their enemy whom they never need see, rather than a friend who might eventually victimize them with his tongue.
“I could use a smoke right now,” Josh said. “Do you have anything with you, Lil?”
“You told me not here, Josh,” Lily said. “You know you told me not to bring it here.”
He laughed shortly. “I suppose I did. It just goes to show.”
“Show what?” Barney asked.
“Oh, I dunno . . . One man’s Eden is another man’s Elba. Or the same man’s. Whatever.” His good humor was temporarily restored. “Hey, I like that. Maybe I’ll force down a drink, after all, none of that afterbirth-nog, a drink. Some scotch, some ice, some glass, some straw, ho ho ho, I feel the Christmas spirit upon me again. It must have begun to snow, look outside, somebody.”
“Snow’s all in here, Josh,” Barney said.
“Ho ho ho,” Josh repeated. “Did I ever tell you, son, that if you put your mouth . . . no, forget it.”
Only Josh would attempt to neutralize an outrageous remark by repetition.
Silence.
“How long ago did you buy this land, Josh?” Vincent asked. Myrna was asleep, her head on his shoulder, looking far less lethal than she had when she was awake.
“I dunno. ’Thirty, ’thirty-one. Why?”
“Just curious. What was it like up here?”
Josh shrugged. “Dull. Just like it is now.”
Things are dull when you look at them from too far away.
“Josh,” Lily protested, “You know that isn’t true. It was so lively, there were so many brilliant people, the conversation sparkled.”
“Like Concord wine.”
“He’s just putting you on, Vincent,” Lily said. “Josh, you shouldn’t do that.” At that moment eager that even the despised Vincent should understand.
Josh said to Vincent, “I’ve never seen anyone develop a landowner’s mentality so quickly. Next thing I know you’ll be tracing your family tree.”
“Don’t be silly, Josh,” Lily said. “He’s writing a book.”
“A book?” Josh asked, suddenly bristling with suspicion. “A book about what?”
“About me. Everything I write is about me.”
“Maybe that’s your problem.”
“Maybe,” Vincent said. After a moment calmly adding, “On the other hand, it’s a problem you have to be an artist to have. Only a hack can afford to concentrate on other people.”
“Son,” Josh said, “you’re getting so fucking pretentious I can’t even tell what you’re talking about. Hey, Barn, be a good kid and get me another drink, will you? The stuff is good, y’know? Fattening but good. I forgot how good it is, that’s pretty funny, isn’t it? Jesus, I’m tired. What the hell gave you the idea of appropriating Welford, Vin? Welford has nothing to do with you.”
Oh but you were so wrapped up in Welford, weren’t you Josh!
“It has nothing to do with any of you, really, except as counterpoint,” he went on. “Welford’s just this cruddy little town full of Jewish reds and provincial blooze. Forgive me, it’s a visual pun. I work in a visceral medium.” He finished the second drink. “Jewish reds.” He smiled nostalgically. “We used to get furious when they talked about the Jewish Communists. We were supposed to be Communists instead of being Jews.” He held out his glass to Barney, who brought him the bottle. He refilled his glass, stood up very solemnly, found his beret, put it squarely on top of his head, and began reciting in the manner of a rabbinical chant: “In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will . . .”
At every point we came up against his clever unwillingness to understand us.
“. . . The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society.”
So funny. As if he’d gone past Marx to find out how the world really worked.
He bowed and took off the beret with a flourish. “What else do you want to know, sport? Maybe I should write the book for you.”
“Maybe,” Vincent said. “It’s about selling out.”
“Right,” Josh said. “Selling out is what you do when you have something and someone wants it and is willing to pay your price.”
> Vincent smiled. “You’re taking it in a narrow sense. I meant selling out as a function of betrayal.”
“Betrayal, selling out, whatever you want to call it. It’s what your friends say you did when you fall out of love with an idea they still have or a woman they still think is sexy.”
Or a piece of land whose beauty you’ve never seen. With a flash of panic I realized the land he’d taken away had to include the whole pond. I looked at Max. He was stiff and bemused.
“I’ve been accused of selling out so often that it’s made me realize what extraordinary resources people saw in me in the first place. It’s why I can afford to sell out my ideas; I know something new’ll spring up to replace the ones I’m unloading.”
It was quite a set piece. Vincent had walked into a trap. I wanted to tell him that a pond was a world of its own, that a pond couldn’t be replaced like his ideas, but I was afraid of getting caught in the trap, too.
“Actually,” Josh was saying, “I fail to see how the concept of betrayal can apply to an idea, except for purposes of rhetorical convenience. How do you betray an idea? By seeing its fallacies? By expanding on it, by limiting it, by seeing that whether it’s true or not doesn’t make a fucking bit of difference? The whole concept of betraying an idea involves a kind of romantic personalization fantasy where ideas become people with feelings. People don’t betray their ideas, they only betray themselves.”
“Or others,” Max put in, so quietly that I almost didn’t believe he’d spoken.
“I drop ideas and people,” Josh said, ignoring him. “when they don’t interest me any more; I’d be betraying myself if I did anything else.”
Later on Vincent would lie in bed awake and remember where it began and think of the things he should have said, but right then he couldn’t cope with Josh’s rhetoric. He could have done better if he were angrier: now, leaning against the back of the sofa, Myrna’s head on his shoulder, he seemed not to care if he won. He wasn’t really angry; he’d been goading Josh out of habit. He had been disarmed by Josh’s gift—or perhaps only by his own ability to accept it. Barney could have answered if he’d cared enough but Barney was an expatriate at Yiytzo and he couldn’t jeopardize his status by caring too much. By a choice made long ago his visa could be revoked if he participated in our politics. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say he was a plant evolved to a point where it couldn’t exist in its natural element but must remain warm and calm in the greenhouse of other people’s lives. Barney had gone home once in all the time I’d known him. He was away for two weeks, lost ten pounds and took a full month from his return to recover his weight and a vestige of his humor.
“Josh,” Vincent said, “would you mind if I nosed around in some of the stuff in the attic?”
“Stuff in the attic?” Suspicious again. “Which stuff?”
“I don’t know,” Vincent said. “I’m not really sure what I’m looking for until I find it. I thought maybe some of the old stuff from the Masses, things like that.”
Long silence. Josh deliberating. He looked at the whiskey bottle, looked at his glass. His face already had a drunken slackness to it.
“C’mon.”
“Where?”
“You wanna go up to the attic? So let’s go.”
“Now?”
“Why not?”
“Do you think this is really a good time, Josh?” Mimi asked. “With all of us here?”
“I think it’s a great time,” Josh said, drunkenly decisive. “Christmas Eve. We can make a bonfire with the Masses and sing Christmas carols.”
I panicked—not because I took him seriously but because of the careless drunken violence of his mood. ] could envision everyone tramping up there, papers get ting torn and ground under heels, drinks spilling. No body ever went to the attic but Mimi and me.
“No,” I said. “Don’t go up there. Not now.”
Everyone stared at me as though I’d said something unrelated to what was going on.
“Why the hell not, if I may make so bold as to ask?”
“Too many people,” I said. “Nobody goes up there except Mimi and me. And anyway, you’re drunk, Josh.”
“Irrelevant and immaterial.”
“Please, Mimi,” I said. “Please don’t let them go up now.”
“Where do you get this ‘let’ shit?” Josh asked.
“In point of fact, Josh . . .” Barney began.
But Josh wouldn’t let him say it.
“Screw the attic,” he said. “There’s nothing in the attic anyway.”
It must have been the first moment that he realized he’d given away the house. He could go up if he insisted, of course, and the stuff up there belonged to all of us, still . . . we had no more of the house than before, but he had less.
“Maybe tomorrow?” Vincent asked. “Or some other day?”
“I’ll tell you what’s in the attic, Vin.” He staggered over and put an arm around Vincent, soddenly confidential. “A bunch of garbage. Old clothes, an overworked mimeograph machine, the kids’ school stuff. Mimi’s compositions. Did you ever see Mimi’s old compositions? ‘When I Grow Up I Will Marry Ferdinand the Bull.’ What else? Lily’s outgrown diaphragms, photo albums, a wicker bassinet, a couple of old guitars that need to be wired for sound, songbooks. More songbooks. The Weavers Songbook, the People’s Songbook, the Workers of the World Songbook, the Drudges of the Party Songbook.” A mad gleam came into his eye and he began singing. “Oh the banks are made of marble . . . remember, Lil? Come on, you remember it. Oh the banks are made of marble, with a guard at every door . . .” Together they began doing a sort of tap dance as they sang. “And the vaults are stuffed with silver that the worker sweated for.” They stopped for a minute. “Jesus Christ, thirty years, more like nothing. Come on, Lil.” And they went on again, a mad duet in green plaid and red velvet. “I’ve traveled around this country, I saw the Western farmer, ploughing his sod and loam, I’ve heard the auction hammer just a-knocking down his home. But the banks are stuffed with silver . . .” He stopped, out of breath and momentarily disoriented. They both collapsed on the sofa.
“Jesus,” Josh said. “I’m nearly as old as I used to be.”
Lily giggled breathlessly. “That was fun.”
Max’s face still told me nothing of his reaction. Aside from his one soft reprimand to Josh, there had been nothing to tell me anything. Myrna had awakened but her head was still on Vincent’s shoulder as though she didn’t want to interfere with this good dream of two beautiful singing dancing Hollywood stars entertaining her.
“But what do we do for an encore?” Josh asked Lily. “Hey! Wait a minute! I’ve got it, a voice from the dim past is coming to me!” He stood up, still unsteady-but very excited. “I’ve gotta find something. Lil, you come with me.” He bowed to me. “Assuming we have your permission, Madame Curator?” But without waiting for a reply he took Lily by the hand and headed upstairs. Myrna watched them go as though she were waiting for a curtain to drop so she could applaud.
Barney shook his head. “You really set him off on a rampage, kid,” he said. To me.
“I didn’t set him off on anything,” I said.
“Sure you did. You let him see that you were prepared for anything and that made him feel free to do anything. The only thing that made Josh so benevolent to you all these years was his idea of your picture of him.”
I closed my eyes. A combination of exhaustion and anxiety overwhelmed me. I wanted terribly to go to sleep but feeling as I did that the house was an occupied country, I knew that even if I went to bed I would stay awake.
“Just a minute,” someone said. “I don’t see how you can say that.” Max. I opened my eyes. “Or at least if you can, you can say it about anyone and you can always blame anything anyone does on someone else.” I clutched the beaded bag, now warm in my hand.
“Right,” Barney said. “You’ve hit the nail on the head.” Max was silent.
“You like them, huh?” Vincent said to
Myrna, who was watching the steps for Josh and Lily’s reappearance.
“How come you never said a word about them?” she asked.
There was a long pause then Vincent said, “It was a treat. I was saving it.”
“You must be worn out, Myrna,” Mimi said. “After that long trip.”
“I’m all right,” Myrna said resentfully, as though Mimi were trying to send her off to bed so she’d miss something.
Max put his arm around me.
“I’m exhausted,” I whispered to him. “But I feel as though I’ll never fall asleep with all of them here.”
“You want to take a little walk?” he whispered back. “I could use some fresh air.”
“Wonderful,” I whispered. So grateful to him. I went to get my coat but meanwhile Josh and Lily came down, Josh triumphantly bearing an old book, one of the bound magazine collections, yellow pages of which fluttered to the floor as he waved it at us. I picked them up. New Masses, 1929. The little bag dropped out of my hand and Josh scooped it up although he hadn’t bothered to get the pages.
“Aha, what have we here?” he asked.
“Give it to me,” I said.
“I do believe,” he said, holding it out of my reach, “that we have here a bearded ridicule, I mean a beaded reticule.” Max flushed. “You, sir, did you have my permission to give my daughter this beaded bag, which I believe from the look of it must have belonged to your mother? Did you give my daughter your mother’s bearded reticule?”
“Leave her alone, Josh,” Mimi said. “You’re not being at all funny.”
“All right, all right,” Josh said, tossing me the bag. “Here we go, Lil. You be Harriet Tubman and I’ll be John Brown. Here we go kiddies, an American Chronicle Play by Michael Gold. A lesson in selling out.” He took both of Lily’s hands, the book open on the coffee table in front of them. “ ‘So this is Harriet Tubman! God bless you, you brave girl. You are the Moses of your poor people. I’ve long wanted to know you.’ ”
Lily giggled. “ ‘I’ve also heard of you, Mr. Brown, as one of the most determined abolitionists among all the farmers in this region.’ ”
Nine Months in the Life of an Old Maid Page 13