by Mark Harris
Luella massaged him. With her fingertips she stroked his scalp, his eyes, his nose, his ears, his jawbone, his neck, kneaded his shoulders with her magic hands. There she began, as upon her “husband” Brown, who thought of her as a shy, sweet woman of the darkness, for that was the Luella he knew, and the only woman he had ever known. “Don’t you think you’d better sound out her husband?” Luella asked, massaging his collarbone now, his chest, his heart, lightly with her fingertips, promoting his ecstasy.
“God, God, God,” said James, “your hands.”
“God gives everyone a gift,” she said. “The gift of God is in my hands.”
“If it wasn’t for you,” he said, “I’d be a menace to the city.”
“Where will you open your studio?” she asked.
“Maybe right around here,” he replied. “Maybe we’ll start a little Massage Row right down Narrow Alley.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” she said, “where if one place is booked a patient can stroll down the street to another.”
“None of this dashing madly all over the goddam city,” said James.
“Please, Jimmy,” she said, “don’t take His name in vain.”
“Whose?” he asked. “Do you belong to the Civil Liberties Union? They’re fighting to outlaw the laws against sodomy in Texas.”
“Sodomy’s not one of my worries,” she said.
“Sing me a song,” he said. “What am I humming?” he asked, humming the song which had imposed itself upon him in the Portalwood Pharmacy, and Luella listened, slowing slightly the rhythm of her massage until she had found the song in her mind, and then she resumed her rhythm, and she sang —
“Once in a while Will you try to give one little thought to me Though someone else may be Nearer your heart.”
“Keep singing,” he said. “I first heard that song from you,” and Luella continued to sing her song, a lullaby, massaging James’s waist now, thighs now, her fingertips now and again at the edges of the towel about his “private parts,” as she called them, though they were hardly private these days, Jimmy’s or anybody else’s, the way they were flashed about: you got a bare lady’s breasts with lunch downtown these days, fornicating onstage at your friendly neighborhood tavern — “Twelve Top Pop Positions,” the marquee advertised on Mason Street — it was a long way from the way the city used to be, a long way from her own bringing-up, and she didn’t mind, really, it was healthy, it was all of a piece with the will to live.
“Never stop,” he said, “go on forever.”
But whether he meant the massage or the singing she didn’t know. Both, she assumed, although in the end it wasn’t either; in the end it was Luella herself he wanted, as he had often pleaded. “I go broke over you,” he said now. “I’ve been here forty times and never fucked you, never even saw your flesh higher than your money, never even massaged you.”
“If you massaged me I’d lose you,” she replied.
“Not me,” said James, “I’m faithful forever. The very least you could let me fuck you in the mouth, but I never even got that either. Golly, what’s happening? It’s only fair. What could be more reasonable? Well, I’ll tell you, the masses are rising,” grasping the towel that covered his “private parts” and flinging it backward over his head. “Hows that?” he asked, anticipating her defiance, her protest, her coyness, her shrinking, her withdrawal, her scolding him, her calling upon God to witness this illegal obscenity, calling upon the police, calling upon the Health Department, but instead she seized his hips, her hair loosely falling upon the flesh of his thighs, and James thought Just before the battle, mother.
Nine
Lala (Mrs. Harold) Ferne, still wearing her pink robe, crossed the street to Mr. Brown’s house, carrying a frozen pie in a bakery tin. The route she walked was the route Brown had walked in the earliest hour of this day, after releasing Paprika from the garden. Today, for the first time in his life (and twice at that). Brown had entered Lala’s house, and now she was about to enter his.
But although Lala had posted or planted in the frozen pie, like the flag of explorers upon a new land, a small note reading “Fresh from our home oven for our hero Mr. Brown from Paprika’s whole grateful family” the pie remained a bakery pie, frozen en masse with thousands of others. It was no “home oven” pie. True, it had reposed for weeks in Lala’s home freezer. Allow to cool, she thought. (Allow to thaw, she meant.)
She had her plan. She’d place this frozen pie on the Browns’ kitchen table, where they’d find it when they came home tonight, and they would say, “Oh, how lovely of that lovely Lala Ferne, leaving her homemade pie here to cool for us. She went to so much trouble! We should invite her over.” They would invite her over, and invite Harold, too, and Lala’s mother, Iris, whom Mr. Brown had met at lunch, and that nice young man from the Classified Advertising Department of the Chronicle. Six: two couples, two spare parts. They’d all say, “Isn’t it wonderful of that adorable, thin Lala to have brought us all together!” Oh yeah, can’t you just imagine Harold saying such a thing? Gruff Harold, she thought. Where was Harold now? Brown would say to Mrs. Brown (Lala assumed, of course, that they were man and wife), “Lala Ferne is so attractive, thin, and thoughtful we must constantly invite her to dinner.” He was nice. “Mrs. Brown,” was rather prim. But since Harold hated dinner parties, let Harold stay home. “Harold has a previous engagement,” Lala said, entering the dinner party on the arm of the young man from the Classified Advertising Department of the Chronicle, horny but nice, she felt, whatever his name was. Five: two couples and one spare part. Her mother was the spare part. Mother and Harold.
Down the Yukon hill at high speed came Christopher on his singing bicycle wheels. His nose was streaming, his hands were red and raw, and his left knee was freely bleeding. The wind had come up, chilling him. He parked his bicycle in Brown’s driveway. “Don’t you have anywhere to go?” she asked. “Why aren’t you dressed warmer? Why aren’t you in school?” Aware of how many crimes her questions accused him, she struggled to change her tone from accusing to inquiring or loving, and she said, “I want to take care of that knee for you.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said.
“I’m stopping in here a minute,” Lala said.
“Mr. Brown went to work,” Christopher said. “There’s nobody home.”
She wished he hadn’t told her that. Therefore she pretended not to have heard him. At the door she remembered having been here once before, and with a frozen pie, too, on a warm summer day after Paprika had stolen Mrs. Brown’s muffins from a window ledge. “There’s not supposed to be anybody home,” she said, “because I have a surprise for them.” Christopher followed her into the house, and she set the pie upon the kitchen table. It was part of her plan. She had a further plan, however. Up to something again, aren’t you, Lala? You always were.
“They sent me home from school,” said Christopher. “I have to get a note from my mother, but I don’t know if I’ll see my mother.”
“I’ll be very happy to write you a note,” said Lala, speaking in a voice unnaturally loud, as advance notice to anyone who might be, unknown to her, somewhere in the house. “Why did they send you home?” she asked.
“You’re talking so loud,” said Christopher. “You’re a funny person. They keep sending me home because I don’t have the note.”
“Why were you supposed to have a note in the first place?”
“I can’t remember,” he said.
“You poor thing,” she said. Nobody wanted him. His teacher and his principal sent him home for “a note.” Lala had written notes for him in the past, signing herself “C’s mother.” It was true in a way. C stood for Catherine, too. His parents were always gone. They worked for “danger pay” at the Welton plant, manufacturing bombs. In a manner of speaking, Christopher and his parents were not on speaking terms.
“This isn’t you
r house,” said the boy. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re definitely correct,” said Lala. “I’m bringing them this pie for finding Paprika. Is that all right with you?”
Christopher hadn’t really cared. He had gone to the television set to watch the crisis of the astronauts, who had been neither seen nor heard from since being “wiped from the screen” four hours before.
“I don’t think you should be roaming through the house,” Lala called, although she herself had begun to roam through the house in search of Brown’s typewriter, if any. She would compare the style of his machine with the style of the anonymous letter she had received.
“I’m not roaming,” Christopher said, standing before the television set with his arms folded. He favored his injured knee. “The astronauts lost radio contact,” he said.
“They shouldn’t be listening to the radio anyhow,” Lala said. “They should be tending to business. Let’s be little elves and help clean things up around here.” Swiftly she opened and closed every closet door she saw, standing on tiptoe, looking on all high shelves for Mr. Brown’s typewriter. Evidence!
“What are you looking for?” Christopher asked.
“Do you see a typewriter anywhere?” she asked.
“Are you going to write a letter?” the boy asked.
“Does Mr. Brown write many letters?” Lala asked. “Do your mother and father ever complain about Paprika’s barking by any chance? Do you have a typewriter in your house?”
“No,” said Christopher.
“Are your mother and father day sleepers?” she asked. “Like are they sleeping now?”
“No,” he said, “they’re at work now. If they were home I could go in.”
“Why can’t they leave you a key?” Lala asked.
“Because if I had a key I’d go in,” he said, his eyes always upon the television screen. “I’d track dirt in the house and bring friends in and get in a lot of mischief.”
“We really shouldn’t be here,” said Lala. “We’ve been little elves and picked things up, haven’t we?”
“Maybe you have,” he said.
“This isn’t our house,” she said. “I just wonder if they have an attic, but it would look awfully funny if they found me in the attic.”
“Let’s go to your house,” Christopher suggested.
“Where would you go if you didn’t have somebody’s house to be in?”
“On the street,” he said. “Ride my bike. Or stay here and watch the astros croak. I know they will. This guy on Noe Street predicts the future.”
“Tomorrow I’ll go to school with you and make sure you get back in,” said Lala, “and if we run into any problem we’ll get in touch with some proper agency.”
“I’d really and truly appreciate that,” he said. He raised his eyes to hers, and she saw that he was grateful. “They won’t be home tonight,” he said.
“They won’t be home all night?” asked Lala. “Where are they? You’re not getting proper care. Don’t you think there’s something very irregular about your parents’ not coming home all night?”
“There’s always somebody to stay with,” he said. “I sleep here a lot. I sleep with friends. I can sleep at your house with Catherine and Louisa.”
“Oh you can, can you?” said Lala. “Maybe we should turn off the television because this isn’t our house. We just tidied up a bit out of gratefulness to Mr. Brown for finding Paprika, and left this frozen pie to cool as a little gift.” She had placed the pie on the kitchen table beside a copy of Life bearing on its cover a photograph of Walter Cronkite steering a boat.
“I slept in bed with Melissa Wakefield,” he said.
“When was that?” Lala asked, distracted, fascinated by the view from the window: her own house. It was a view she had never had before. Sometimes, late at night, she saw Mr. Brown sitting here at the kitchen table, just before he went upstairs to bed. Yes, Mrs. Brown was prim. I can tell, she thought. He never looked toward her house. He was a shy man, and very sweet, very gentle, although if it was actually he who wrote such letters as the letter beginning “My Very Dear German Shepherd Dog Owner” then he wasn’t so sweet as you might believe from the evidence of the surface was he? No. “I’m talking to myself,” she said to Christopher, “and don’t require an answer.”
“I talk to myself too,” he said.
“So I have your permission,” she said. “I suppose you’re fond of Mr. and Mrs. Brown, aren’t you?”
“They’re all right,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell them.”
“Tell them what?” Lala asked. “I’m not doing anything wrong. I just brought the pie.”
“And snooped all over the house,” he said.
“What room is this?” she asked, pausing at the door of Junie’s room — that is to say, the room which had been Junie’s, where he had slept all the nights of his boyhood and young manhood.
“That’s Junie’s room,” Christopher said. “I’ve slept in there.”
“Junie’s in Asia,” Lala said.
“Junie is dead,” said Christopher.
“No,” said Lala, “I met his mother this morning voting, she said he was in Asia.”
“Dead in Asia,” said Christopher. “Right in the middle of these astros croaking they give you commercials.”
Something troubled Lala. Something nagged. Yes, Paprika. Paprika was barking across the street. Something must be wrong! But when Lala went to the kitchen window to see what was wrong she saw Paprika barking at nobody, at nothing, at a fallen leaf, a rock, a pebble, a blowing shred of paper, a noisy cloud in the sky, simply standing there by the gate barking in the most outrageously persistent way; here in the Browns’ house she could hear him in a more direct way than she could hear him in her own — this ceaseless, incessant barking. It was the sound waves. They crossed the street directly. They didn’t turn corners. Hearing Paprika in this direct way she understood for the first time how irritating he could become to other people; one could bravely endure the barking of one’s own dog as one could never endure the barking of someone else’s, just as one found charming in one’s own children traits and characteristics merely boring or even disgusting and repulsive in someone else’s. Christopher’s bloody knee, for example, caused Lala to squint with displeasure, whereas Louisa’s or Catherine’s injuries aroused Lala’s tenderness. Or think, for example, of that young horny Classified man whatever his name was, who told how his own stink, so repugnant to other people, was easily acceptable to himself, clinging to his nostrils like a precious scent. Where’s Harold? she thought. She’d rather not think. Yes, Christopher was beginning to irritate her, beginning to get on her nerves trailing along behind her like this with his bloody mess of a disgusting knee. “Listen to that damn dog barking,” she said.
“He’s your damn dog,” said Christopher, mystified to see hatred in Lala’s eyes.
“Your knee is disgusting,” she blurted. But then she was instantly overcome by revulsion for herself for having hurt the boy, swooping in upon him, seizing him, holding him close to her. It was a man’s hard body She hadn’t anticipated that, and she trembled with her own stirring Christopher, recoiling from her hatred, forgave her instantly, too, in the moment of her repentance, permitting himself to be held by her for as long as she wished, melting in her embrace, and feeling himself filling with warmth. He had been cold She said, “I don’t understand what’s the matter with your mother.”
“Nothing,” he replied, resting his head upon her bosom, his arms encircling her now, he seizing her now, clinging to her, his hands at her back, his fingers in her flesh.
“You need a hairwash,” she said, inhaling the top of his head and releasing him from her embrace.
“Don’t forget tomorrow,” he said.
“Where does your mother work?” Lala asked.
“Same place
as my father,” he said.
“But where?” she asked.
“At the Welton plant,” the boy said.
“What do they do there?” Lala asked.
“They work there,” Christopher said.
“But what kind of work? Do you know? Are they in the office or in the machines if you know what I mean?”
“I was never there,” Christopher said. “I never saw him.”
“Like does he wear overalls or a necktie when he goes to work?”
“I never see him go,” said Christopher.
“You see him come home,” Lala said. Such people should be shot, she thought. Bombed with their own bombs. She hoped the whole plant blew up, breaking windows for miles around. I’ll bomb your asses, you bitches and bastards, she thought. It’s a poem, she thought. It had rhythm, and it almost rhymed. “We should be getting along now,” said Lala. “We’ve tidied up enough.” She released him from her embrace.
Reluctantly, he released her, too. “You didn’t see Junie’s room,” the boy said.
“All right,” she said, “we’ll see if it needs tidying up.” Maybe she’d find her evidence there. But why would Mr. Brown have retrieved such an annoying dog? “Paprika’s barking is driving me wild,” she said. Yes, she could understand very well now why the Browns (as she thought of them) might not want such a dog living across the street, and why Mr. Brown might have written Harold an anonymous letter, and why it might have been Mr. Brown who telephoned late at night and barked anonymously. Once you saw yourself from another point of view . . . once you hear your dog bark as others hear him . . . well. She followed Christopher into Junie’s room.