Killing Everybody

by Mark Harris

  “We always thought so,” she said, “though I guess worse things go on than you realize behind closed doors. Let me recommend that you appear more businesslike because Harold’s on his way home for his bowling shoes.”

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “I don’t know where the girls are, either,” she confessed.

  “Maybe he’ll phone,” said James.

  “No,” she said, “because he’s left the office by now, if he was there in the first place. He can’t phone if he’s not in the office because he doesn’t like to use a dial phone.”

  “They’re the best kind,” said James, confused.

  “He doesn’t feel confident,” she said. “He’s not a good reader. In the office he makes the girl dial.” She held James’s hand to her breast. “Oh, your voice,” she said, her flesh rippling. Her flesh seldom rippled so late in the day, and she was astonished, and she released his hand suddenly, nervously rising and touring the living room and dining room, looking out all the windows for her girls, and she stood, too, at the little square window of the front door, through which she had greeted James this morning upon the occasion of his first arrival, which had not been his last, seeking not only her girls now, but her husband, and Christopher, too, feeling upon her the weight of many lives: all would topple, fall, and be crushed if she were incautious, if she surrendered to extreme temptation. Why am I this way? she thought. Why can’t I be like other women? “Just because I’m walking doesn’t mean I’m not listening,” she said.

  “James James,” he said. “There’d be a name to sign to your letter, they’d figure it must be real because nobody’d make it up. Put an initial in the middle.”

  “Bryan M. Winters,” she said, “stands for BMW.”

  “There’s a girl at the Chronicle named Opel Ford,” he said.

  “There he is,” said Lala.

  “Harold!” said James, alarmed, restoring his chair to its proper place, and straightening his necktie.

  “No, Christopher,” she said, “riding his bike like nothing happened, in the same old dirty clothes he’s worn for days.”

  “He’s showing off for you,” said James. “You’re somebody special to him now. He’ll never forget you. Nobody ever forgets the first person they shared a sexual experience with. I don’t. Do you remember the first person?”

  “Yes,” she bitterly said. “Harold.”

  “Why would he phone you to tell you he’s coming for his shoes? I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t he just come home directly?”

  “Because that’s how he is,” said Lala.

  “Because maybe he wants to warn you he’s coming,” said James. “Maybe he really wants you to be doing — well, things slightly off-color.”

  “If I put back on my eighty-five pounds I’d have him in the palm of my hand again,” she said.

  “Let’s take a chance,” he said.

  “Where are the girls?” she asked.

  “Lock them out of the house,” suggested James.

  “My own girls!”

  “Just lock them out of the bedroom,” said James.

  “Never,” she said.

  “It reminds me of a true story that happened to a friend of mine,” said James. “It’s really a filthy incident.”

  “The filthier the better,” she said, “but keep it a little low because I’m not sure where anybody is.”

  “Well,” said James, “there was this fellow, a friend of mine, that was hired by Vaseline to make a survey of the various uses of their product.”

  “Was his name Dick Richards?” she asked.

  “No,” said James, “his name was Bob Roberts. He went around from house to house asking people how they used Vaseline, and they told him how they used it like for burns, greasing things up, irritations, chapped lips, raw knuckles, skin irritation, between the toes, there’s just a million uses for Vaseline and he thought he’d heard them all when one day he meets this lady that says sure, she uses it, they use it around the house sexually. ‘O.K.,’ he says, ‘that’s a common use for it, madam, speak right up into the microphone, does your husband apply it to his person or to your person or perhaps you apply it to both of you mutually?’“

  “What microphone?” Lala asked.

  “The interview microphone,” said James. “It was a TV interview.”

  “You said it was a house-to-house survey,” said Lala.

  “You must be mad,” said James. “The lady said, ‘Neither. We don’t apply it to ourselves. We have six children.’ ‘O.K.,’ he says, ‘six children, super-terrific, the company is very interested in any sort of development and this one sounds unusual. It sounds like a breakthrough. You’re telling me you apply it in some way to the children?’ He was trying to look cool like he heard of any number of people recently that Vaselined their children sexually. I do the same in Classified. You get some strange requests.”

  “Everything is natural and normal,” said Lala.

  “That’s the spirit,” said James.

  At this moment, however, the telephone rang, and Lala ran to it, saying, “Did she use it on her children?”

  “No,” replied James.

  “Then how?” she said. “It’s my mother, I’m sure, she doesn’t like it to ring too many times, she worries.”

  “I’ll tell you later,” said James.

  “Now,” she said. “Quick.”

  “She smeared it on the doorknob to keep the children out,” he said.

  “Mother,” said Lala, answering the phone, “I’m trying to keep the line clear for Harold.” The lady smearing Vaseline on the doorknob came into focus in her mind, and she laughed, and her mother asked her why she laughed, and how the children were.

  “Harold won’t be home,” said Iris. “He’s going directly bowling.”

  “He forgot his shoes,” said Lala.

  “He’ll borrow shoes,” said Iris.

  “Did he phone you?” Lala asked.

  “Your line was busy,” said Iris.

  “It wasn’t busy at all,” said Lala. “You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure he’s not coming here?” An idea was forming in her head: she’d take a chance, she thought.

  “Absolutely sure,” her mother said.

  “Mother,” said Lala, “hold the phone a minute while I turn the stove down,” and she pointed upstairs for James to see, flashing signals to him, but he appeared to be confused by the signals she was flashing, whereupon she clapped her hand over the mouthpiece instead and said plainly to James Berberick, “I’m going upstairs. Hang this up when I get on upstairs. Then follow me,” handing him the telephone, which he eagerly received, following her with his eyes as she ran happily up the stairs.

  She hurled herself across her bed to the farther side, and seized the telephone. “All right, mother, I’m back from the stove,” lying tangled in her pink robe. But where were the girls? When James swiftly entered her bedroom she signaled to him with her free hand, indicating to him, first pointing, then twisting her wrist as if locking a door — but once more he appeared to be foiled by her signals, confused, unable to apprehend them, and she therefore clapped her hand over the mouthpiece instead and said plainly to James in high excitement, “Lock the fuckass door,” which he understood easily.

  “What have you got on the stove?” Iris asked.

  “The girls’ dinner,” Lala responded, thinking of the food she’d say she was cooking if her mother asked. “Only eggs,” she said, “because I didn’t think Harold would come for his shoes, I thought why bother with anything much.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Iris said. “Did you put anything on your bite?”

  “It wasn’t a bite,” said Lala, “there’s no break in the skin. Maybe I’ll put some Vaseline on it” — holding her arm high in the air so that James might remove her pink robe and find her beneath,
which was his first sight of Lala naked, and about what he’d expected, and he offered by signs and signals of his own to assist her with the other sleeve so that she might for the sake of comfort be divested altogether of her robe, but she demurred — half was enough for now — go slow, she thought, make it last, as in the old days when she and Harold so much enjoyed lovemaking at this end of the line with her mother at the other, before Lala lost weight and Harold therefore lost interest, and she said into the phone, “I’ll put his shoes back in the closet then.”

  “Have you been watching the astronauts?” Iris inquired. “Everything is knocked off the air for them. It’s getting interesting now. It’s very dramatic. They might die. They might already be dead.” Faintly Iris moaned, as with pleasure, at Harold’s entering into her, for although it was true that he could barely read well enough to dial the telephone he had found his way well enough to Iris’s heart. No need for bowling shoes here! There he was now, inside Iris, in the place where Lala had begun. Only here was pleasure possible for him. His own wife inhibited him — inside his own wife he was overcome by the fearful sensation that he was suffocating his unborn daughters. He had lost all power to love his wife, and he had replaced her in his affections with her mother, taking special enjoyment now, as he had taken special enjoyment in the past, at the sensation of simultaneous intercourse: he with Iris, and Iris on the phone with Lala. It was the old connection, but the ladies were reversed.

  “Did they land yet?” Lala asked.

  “Nobody knows much,” said Iris. “We don’t even know if their thing is on target. They might land in the wrong ocean. Even Walter Cronkite doesn’t know.”

  James whispered into Lala’s ear, “It’s a good thing we don’t have Vista-Phone 150 yet.”

  “I want to stay on the phone,” Lala whispered to James in reply. “I love it like this. We used to do it.”

  “You’re really queer,” he said into her ear.

  “You must have been on the phone,” said Iris, “because Harold said he tried and tried.”

  “He mustn’t have tried very hard,” said Lala, “because I was here all afternoon except I stepped across the street for a minute.”

  “What was across the street?” her mother asked. “Oh, to vote.”

  “No, I voted this morning. To take a pie to Mr. Brown.”

  “Who’s Mr. Brown?”

  “Who found Paprika,” said Lala.

  “Oh yes, he’s an awfully nice man,” said Iris. “And is that the extent of your gratitude? You dragged a pie out of the freezer, and that’s all the gratitude you show the man who found Paprika?”

  “I’m going to invite him over here again,” said Lala. “But Harold doesn’t like mingling with the neighbors.”

  “Harold will mingle,” Iris said. “Invite me too.”

  “And I’ll invite that nice young man from the Chronicle because we really are indebted to him, too,” said Lala, taking into herself now “that nice young man from the Chronicle” to whom she had spoken for the first time this morning, met for the first time at midday, to whom she had served lunch, whose voice excited her skin at every rippling pore, who had twice pursued her up the stairs, once by impulse, once by command, and who had entered her twice, formerly there, now here, and all this upon a single day, whereas for several years between Harold and her nothing had happened good, no love, no excitement, whereas James Berberick made things happen, and Lala said into the telephone breathlessly, “Harold never tried and tried anything, mother. Harold doesn’t try hard enough,” speaking, she thought, to her mother, but of course to Harold, too, who lay with Iris. “I don’t think Harold and I are going to make it, mother. I have only one life to give and I’m not going to spend it in this house. I have a business offer. I’m going into real estate.”

  “If the deal goes through tonight,” James whispered.

  “If the deal goes through,” she said, weeping into the telephone, not in sadness, really, but in joy, in pleasure, sounding much to Harold at the nether end as she had sounded in the earlier days, crying for pleasure in his arms in their house on Eagle Street before the girls were born; and the sound of her crying excited Harold anew, and he whispered to Iris at the height of his pleasure, “Tell her to invite Brown over tonight after bowling.”

  “If you invite Mr. Brown tonight Harold will come, too,” said Iris. “He mentioned that he’s as grateful as he can be.”

  Harold whispered again to Iris, “Tell her to buy a big gift for Brown.”

  “Buy something nice for Mr. Brown,” said Iris to her daughter. “Run right out and buy him a nice big gift.”

  “I will later,” said Lala. “Right now I’m occupied.”

  Ten

  Farewell, Lala, we won’t see you again. We leave you to your new friend, James Berberick. We congratulate you upon your new attachment, your new contact, as the businessmen say. Above all, your new connection.

  Yet you remain of our circle. We are all connected. You connect with James Berberick. James Berberick connects with Luella. Luella connects with Brown. Brown connected last night with Officer James Phelps. Phelps connected this morning with Iris. Iris connects with Harold. Harold connects with you. Our circle has no end. Farewell, Lala, we won’t see you again; we rejoin your neighbor Brown, who is walking down Nineteenth Street toward your daughters walking uphill home from school.

  “Apologize,” says Brown aloud, to the phantom of the candidate McGinley, “for your obscenity to me.” Louisa and Catherine observe Mr. Brown talking to himself. They cross the street,

  Brown, embarrassed, straightened up, squared his shoulders, thrust out his chest, and “quickened his steps.” What’s that? We hear an echo: “Brown quickened his steps down the corridor in order to enter the elevator with Schwarzlose.” There we began Chapter One, almost twenty-four hours ago. Time flies.

  Tonight he’d do no such thing, he vowed. What was his terrible compulsion to enter the company of hated men? Such people only deepened Brown’s agitation, and it was all such a waste of time, such men were beyond redemption. Burn it down with phosphorous balls, drop phosphorous balls down the elevator shaft, sprinkle them in the men’s room, light up the urinals, shut them up in desk drawers, and slowly depart the premises while the fire takes hold and rages and the firemen come. Assist the firemen. Here on Nineteenth Street Brown walked downhill past the house of Fireman White, who had always been cordial to Brown and Junie at Fire Company Number Two. Junie climbed the topmost ladder, steered the after-truck. It was a fine family, all children well and grown. Some men were more fortunate than others.

  Remember car, he thought. He felt for his streetcar change. He felt for Luella’s tube of green money, too. My Very Dear Officer Phelps, Brown wrote in his mind, waving to the proprietor of the 49’er Market, turning the corner, and descending the steep street on the corrugated sidewalk, Certain authorities are especially disturbed that you violate traffic regulations . . . park illegally . . . illegally turn left . . . park by fire hydrants. Surely the first duty of an officer of the law is to uphold it.

  Fuck off, creep. It banged in his ears. Brown would extract an apology. Was it possible? — no, it could not be possible that a man elected to Congress today could have spoken that way to Brown last night. Outrage bruised him. “If you will apologize to me,” he said, walking now upon the flat of Douglass Street, “I’ll not harpoon you with a hot harpoon,” though it seemed doubtful to Brown that he could extract an apology from McGinley. McGinley never apologized to anyone. It was a different world McGinley lived in. Officer Phelps had heard the insult. Brown would snatch the gun from the young officer’s belt. Suppose no gun were there? Then Brown would snatch the officer’s belt and whip McGinley to death in McGinley for Congress Headquarters. The officer’s pants would fall down.

  But Brown hadn’t been able to kill even a dog last night, how could he kill a man tonight? Perhaps it wasn’t in
him. All his training conspired against him — first religion, later language and reason. Yet perhaps he was working up to it. If he hadn’t killed anyone last night he had nevertheless made one barking telephone call, one bomb-scare telephone call, and kidnapped one dog. These were violent actions. But he had no other weapon against violence: consider that the man who had murdered Junie was this day being elected to public office! How was Junie’s “father” to bear such an event? What response was possible short of revenge? An eye for an eye. “Hello there,” called Brown to a gentleman at the corner of Eighteenth & Douglass, for whose face he had no name. He felt Iris’s hand upon his chin. She was named for a flower, mother of Fafa, Tata, Dada, whatever it was. “You don’t need a shave,” the mother said. Fat and skinny had a race, all around the pillow-case.

  But even assuming that McGinley, soon to be Congressman McGinley, apologized for last night, they wouldn’t be square. They’d only be where they had been, for McGinley still owed Brown one “son,” or, to be more accurate, step-son. McGinley, Chairman of the Draft Board, had denied at the time the personal appeal of the boy, who claimed that he had learned from his father to detest all killing. But McGinley denied the appeal upon the grounds that Brown was never father to the boy, not even technically step-father, no legal papers ever having been drawn. “Not legally, no,” Brown argued, “but God notices our marriage, and the boy was mine from the cradle,” which McGinley denied, and sent the boy to war, and Junie cried out, “I won’t carry any gun,” to which McGinley replied, “We’ll see if you will when the time comes.”

  Lady Bird Johnson

  c/o “Greatest Mass Murderer of Recent Time”

  Texas

  My Very Dear Lady Bird Johnson, Brown wrote in his mind, crossing Eureka Street, approaching Diamond Street, strolling past Station G, where James Berberick once kept a postal box to accommodate pornography, Your campaign to beautify America certainly didn’t get very far. I see that your husband did a great job beautifying Vietnam. Please give him my best wishes if you see him, passing Cala Foods now, and up ahead was Edna’s & Jerry’s. Toys, said their sign in bold letters. It was the first word Junie learned to read, but whether he learned to read it here or downtown at Mordecai’s Toys they never decided, smiling and waving at Edna and Jerry themselves stationed at their counter as Brown traveled past upon his route to the Hibernia Bank, which he entered, extracting Luella’s tube of green money from his pocket, snapping the rubber band free, and waiting in line to be served by a teller — the very teller Lala referred to on page 139: “One of the tellers at the Hibernia Bank turns me on.” He rolled the rubber band like a ring upon his finger to remind him to give Luella the deposit receipt.