Census

by Jesse Ball

  Her husband had been a kind of technician—he could fix televisions, ovens, radios, that sort of thing. The whole back of the house, I won’t take you there, but I could, was his workshop and it is still full of all his things. I know that I could get rid of them, I could have the whole house to put things in, but I don’t have anything else to put there, you see, and anyway, it would break my heart to see his tools piled up on the curb.

  She asked me why I was going around at my age. You don’t look so well, she told me. I hate to say this to a grown man, but you don’t look so well. Someone else should have said it to you already.

  I said people had been telling me so, and I knew it myself. I was a doctor before I was a census taker.

  This took her by surprise, and she didn’t like it at all. Evidently, she had an entirely different code of behavior for how to be around doctors and people of that sort, and I had in some way forced my way in to the house as a census taker, when in fact, I was a doctor, etcetera.

  Unfortunately, the incident could not recover from this epiphany, and we made our departure shortly after. I couldn’t write out the proper thing to fix it—maybe I could have said the proper thing, but with her hearing problem and me having to write it out on a sheet of paper and show it to her, it wasn’t possible, not for me. At the door, she regretted her hostility, and she pressed some cloth napkins on my son, monogrammed ivory napkins. You’ll need these if you are traveling, she said, and hugged him.

  O

  When my wife was pregnant with my son, we had many talks about possible futures—things we would do, ways that things would go. She thought that she would perhaps go back to performing and traveling. Perhaps even the three of us would travel together. She imagined that her son or daughter might become a performer like her. Don’t performers go about in families? she would say. All of this dreaming came to an absolute halt on the day of the birth when our son appeared. I don’t mean to give the impression that we were unhappy, because we weren’t, we weren’t unhappy at all. It was just that a sheer wall had appeared confining us and our lives in certain ways that we could never have guessed at before. My wife said to me about it—I think that my whole life before was training for this. If that was so, it was a lucky thing, because our son certainly needed someone around who knew how to behave with him, and how to help him. And in our life, we saw many other families who were not as successful in handling the special demands of the situation.

  There were children in the neighborhood, who, as he grew, would come to play with him, but they changed so quickly, grew so fast, they would outgrow him in a year or so, and he would be alone again. In this way we became his main companions and playfellows. My wife did not return to the stage, there just wasn’t time for it, and, in truth, I think having our son made her like people less in general, I know it made me like them less.

  Liking them less, she no longer wanted to perform for them. How could it be, we asked ourselves again and again—that they are all so cruel to him? How can this enormous conspiracy exist—where everyone has agreed ahead of time that it is completely all right to be hurtful to these harmless people who hurt no one?

  The situation in some ways tinges everything with the sadness of these inevitable encounters. People’s ignorance was so sharp then, it is still sharp now, and many of them cannot perform so much as a basic interaction without saying something base and awful, or laughing or outright turning away.

  It is true, though, that there is another side, which is that it made it easier to find the people who are worthwhile, as they were and are in no way troubled by him, and would enter into an immediate camaraderie. Such a person is difficult to guess at—I would not always have known them from their appearance, for people with innate gentleness and sensitivity are often compelled to hide or disguise it.

  In any case, this is how we ended up making our friends—by pushing away people we thought brutal, and gathering to ourselves those we thought kind and subtle.

  It was hard though for me, as a doctor, when a patient of mine would say something thoughtless and awful, and then I would be in a position thereafter to affect that person’s life. So many times I wanted to leave the patient with a little punishment, a twinge in the knee, a slight limp, a pronounced scar. But it is not a thing I ever did.

  ››

  We came into a house where the door was open. Is anyone here? A man was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, with his shirt off. He was about my age. He engaged us in conversation and when he learned what we were after, he began to tell us all kinds of things. He said that he was the representative for his union, the boilermaker’s union, and that he was currently conducting extremely, as he put it, clandestine, negotiations regarding salary and benefits. The negotiations were going on nearby and he had just run out to take a breather. If we thought it strange that he was not wearing a suit, well, that was part of the situation. He didn’t want anyone to know exactly what was going on.

  His wife came into the room. What are you doing here? He explained to her what we were doing there. She addressed us again, what are you doing here? I explained what he had explained: that we were there on the business of the census, and simply asking questions, recording answers, and so forth. She nodded, seemingly surprised that my answer was in accord with his.

  This way, she said.

  And when he got up to follow, she said, severely,

  Not you. You stay put. You stay right there.

  We went into the next room, which was a parlor with a big television set facing a dirty couch. It was lined with bookshelves and on the bookshelves were those books that are actually the spines of books taped together to look as if the person has all the classics.

  I don’t know what he just told you, but he is very ill. My husband is sick. He won’t take his medication today, and it would be better for all of us if you would just leave. I can’t believe you came in here in the first place. What a piece of shit you are. You’ve gotten him worked up, and it will take me at least an hour to get him back to where he was.

  I stood up. My son held my hand.

  Please excuse us.

  The woman’s face was furious. Her body was agitated.

  She saw us to the door. The man was behind her. He had stood up and he was shouting about something. His voice was really thin in places, like it had been worn out. She pushed us through and shut the door. As we went down the steps, the door opened again and she stuck her head out.

  Don’t come back!

  P

  It had snowed a great deal in P, and the factories looked rather beautiful wearing white coats. I stopped the car by a little park, and my son went out into the snow and adventured there. Meanwhile, I turned the heat on and read from Mutter. I enjoy reading her books aloud, and so I sat reading aloud from With Wings Outstretched, her monograph on cormorant behavior.

  There is a puzzling behavior that I myself first noticed in the rag-faced cormorant. It is: the propensity to stand about on dry land with wings outstretched. While such a tableau is dear to me, it is hard to say for what reason the bird would disport itself in such a manner. I have heard it said the bird is performing a kind of salute, or mating display, that the purpose is to attract the attention of female birds. But males and females both perform this gesture, and furthermore, have been observed doing it when alone. It is also the case that cormorants with young, which, as a rule, come once in the year, will perform this gesture. I like nothing better than to see the little cormorants gazing up at the majestic parent standing so far above them, wings outstretched.

  If the cormorant were preyed upon to any great extent, then this behavior could be seen to be some sort of colorful crest, but, in fact, the cormorant is for the most part safe on land, safe in the air, and safe in the water. While gulls and others do eat cormorant eggs and chicks, the bird that has grown to adulthood may conduct its affairs without too much fear.

  I believe that the cormorant is a sort of laundress, and that the gesture is done merely to
dry the wings. The bird likes, as we all do, to have its clothing dry, and so it stands and lets the wind do its work. There are those who think otherwise, and I will let them.

  The door opened and my son was back in the car, covered in snow. I wrapped him in a horseblanket and we continued through the wintry landscape towards the gigantic electric sign of a restaurant, some blocks distant.

  ››

  The town is named after a city in Spain, so the waitress told me, in Spain or in Portugal, one of the two. I apologized for tracking snow into the restaurant and her response was: I don’t have to clean it up. He cleans it up, so I don’t care.

  She pointed to a man who stood at the back of the restaurant holding a mop loosely in one hand while reading a magazine with the other.

  What is it you want?

  She set us up with a large meal. We must have ordered most of what was on the menu, including some sort of spiced wine, which I drank happily.

  When she came back she asked why we were there. No one willingly comes to P, she said. It must be for work. It is for work, I told her. I’m a census taker. I knew you were, I just knew it, she said, clapping her hands together.

  How did you know?

  Well, I saw that.

  Sticking out of the corner of my bag was the tattooing apparatus.

  Tattoo artists don’t really carry their gear around. At least, it’s not common. Anyway, you hardly ever see a tattoo artist over fifty. I just put two and two together: who else tattoos people?

  She leaned in and unbuttoned her dress:

  I don’t have the mark yet from this one, but I’m ready. I love, I just love to be tattooed. She showed me some of her tattoos. You ever met anyone like that?

  I said well let me finish the meal, and then we’ll go through the whole rigmarole.

  She thought that was okay, but then she kept coming back. I should explain that the restaurant was empty. The cooks were playing cards in the back with a radio going.

  It’s five now. Five o’clock. The workers don’t start coming in until seven she said, when the chemical factories close. It’ll be a parade.

  She said she was an actress when she was young. When I was young, I was an actress, she told me, although she could have been no more than twenty-five as she stood there. I had a few roles, a few big roles. Then I got into trouble. I like to gamble. Do you like to gamble?

  I said I did like to gamble, but I almost never did.

  That’s right, she said. You have to cut off the arm as soon as you can tell it’s poisoned.

  I got into trouble, I owed too much—had to leave. So I came here a few years back and guess where I am? I’m still here.

  I said that she could go somewhere else if she wanted to.

  She said, I bet you want to know what it was—what I bet on, don’t you? It was the horses. I inherited a house from my parents, both dead now, and I mortgaged it and bet the full amount on a tip.

  I said it must have been a good tip.

  She said she was mathematically inclined, always mathematically inclined as a child, and she worked it out—she would only have to win this one bet, on a horse, which, mind you, should have been the favorite, but was not, and then she would never have to do another thing, not even one thing in her whole life. Now she had to do all kinds of things she didn’t want to do. But did she regret it? No, she did not regret it. She had read a book once, one of her aunts gave it to her, it said, have no regrets, never have any. So she never did. She took it literally, she explained—she, as a girl, thought that it meant, don’t let yourself regret things, rather than, go out and do the thing that you long to do, so you don’t regret not having done it. She took it the other way, and in fact, to her mind, the other way is the way to take it. It’s the better principle, on the whole. Anytime you think you are about to feel regret, just think about something else. There are plenty of things to think about, aren’t there?

  I don’t drink, she said. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke. I stay fit, and I have read every book in the library next to the apartment building I live in, two streets down from here, some of them twice. I sleep five hours a night, I don’t need any more than that, and the rest of the time I come up with plans, but I haven’t done any of them yet. I have nothing to do with the dead-end men who come into this terrible restaurant. I’m just waiting for something to happen—if that horse was one side of the coin, I know there’s another side, and I know it will come.

  She brought us flan for dessert, on the house. I never eat it, she said, but I like to see people eat it. Flan brings so much happiness. Why is that? Do you even know how to make it? Do you know what it’s made of?

  The diner seats were heavily cushioned, and when I went to stand I almost fell.

  It’s all right, I said. I’m all right.

  You are on your last legs, the waitress told me, laughing. Let me help you to the car.

  Q

  We passed out through the hulking plants of P and beyond it there were marshes frozen over with winter. The road ran flat through the marshes, and soon there was nothing, no buildings, no lights, just reflectors on either side of the road, which luckily, was kept plowed.

  After an hour or so of the road running straight, we came out of the marsh, and there was a crossroad with a gas station and a motor inn, and more factories rising out of a sort of standing fog. I asked my son if we should stop. I had to wake him up to do it.

  Want to stop? I asked.

  He sat up straight and looked out the window at the motor inn. Then he shook his head and slumped back into the blankets.

  All right, all right then. I filled the car up with gas at the station, spoke to the attendant, who was a naturally angry man, and we went on.

  At one of the schools that my son went to there was a teacher, a very wonderful man named Pearson. He had worked with children for many years, and had a very comforting presence. Children would speak to him who would speak to no one. We weren’t sure why, but he had a very miraculous track record. The problem was that our son didn’t want to be left there at the school. He didn’t like the idea. When one of the teachers thought of trying Mr. Pearson, we agreed, despite the fact that he was a teacher for higher grades. I think, however, he also taught some experimental education classes. He was a very tall and severe looking man with a hook nose. Apparently he always wore a vest.

  We entered the room and were introduced, and we introduced Mr. Pearson to our son. They stood there looking at each other, and Pearson said, Do you know, I sometimes like to draw or say a thing before I do it. It makes me feel good, and it helps me to know about how it might go, and what I might like or might not like about it. Do you want to try it? They went over to a little table that was there and on a big sheet of construction paper, Pearson wrote, we will be friends and today we’ll go around the school together and see what is here. I will always ask before we do things if you are ready to do them and if you’re not, we won’t. If you’re not ready we’ll just keep doing what we were doing, or go back to something we were doing before. At the end of the day, you’ll go home and you’ll have lots of things to tell your parents.

  Then Pearson explained what he had written down, going over it several times. My son nodded as if he understood from the very first. He took the pencil and made many lines there on the paper, as I told you he liked to do. Then he told Pearson about what he had written, though I could not hear what he said, and that was that. The two of them went out of the room and off down the hallway, and my wife and I had to find our own way out.

  My most crucial memories I tread upon and I have tread upon some of them so often that when I am remembering them, I am inhabiting the space of my enjoyment—of my enjoyment of those crucial memories—at each and every moment that I sought them out before. Then I am many versions of myself, and all together we are aching with fondness over some minute thing, some small thing I noticed, years before, perhaps in passing, a thought that has returned to me again and again and again, sometimes growi
ng, sometimes diminishing.

  One such:

  I would come back to the house often late at night from surgery, and I could see through the window my wife and son sitting at the kitchen table. The house was built in a sort of L shape with a barn on the far side and a high fence creating a hollow yard within which the car would sit. I usually walked from work, however, so I would come up to the outside of the atrium, where the kitchen window was placed, and through it I would see them.

  That was their preferred place, the kitchen; I believe it is a preferred place for many of us, is it not?

  And what would they do at the kitchen table? My son would often draw. My wife would work on a book she was writing, a book she had almost completed at the time of her death. It was called, A Fool is a Mirror, and was a sort of course that one could put oneself through—a course on clowning (although as I have mentioned, her clowning was not very similar to what is generally thought of as clowning).

  As the newspaper put it, years ago, If she is a clown, she is a very strange clown. She is one of those performers who gives a sense that there is no performance, it is just life and we happen to see it.

  I would stand there beneath that window for minutes at a time, just watching them. He would show her what he had done or she would show him some diagram from her book, or she would read aloud some part, and he would listen. There is a school of thought that says you should give people only what they can visibly understand. We never did that with him, but always spoke to him as if he was just like anyone else. I believe this made it possible for him to deal with regular people out in the world. It also makes clear a point, which is—I never knew which part of what I say he would receive. Sometimes I think the three of us could even have gotten along without any spoken language at all.