"Get up, you, dammit you! Why should you be able to sleep when I can't? And it's all your fault."
She wouldn't know what I was talking about and might think I'd gone mad.
"Do you love me?" she might ask.
She doesn't ask it anymore. She knows we are in a struggle also and has too much pride to fly a white flag of ignominious defeat. (I'm glad she doesn't. I would have to make concessions. I wish it were over.) I think I know when it will end, how I will be able to disengage us from this stalemate and resolve the conflict in a way rewarding to both: on her deathbed.
"Don't die," I can say then. "I love you."
I will have my honor. She will be appeased. I will be a hundred and eight years old. She will be a few years younger. I will have to start doing my own shopping in supermarkets and groceries to make certain there is coffee and juice in the house for me. I will have to sell the house and move to an apartment. (And then I will miss her.) She hasn't asked in years. Age and self-respect, I think, have stilled the question every time she wanted to ask: "Do you still love me?"
It is in her mind, though. I can see it as a verbal sculpture. She fishes, hints. I decline to oblige. Or perhaps she believes I don't love her any longer and fears that if she were to ask: "Do you love me?"
I would answer:
"No."
And then we would have to do something. (And wouldn't know what.)
I'm glad she doesn't, although I frequently feel her on the brink. It would be demeaning to have to deal with. I don't want to have fights with her about this. I don't know how I would answer now if she were to ask: "Do you love me?"
Unresponsively, facetiously, evasively. I would not want to lie and I would not want to tell the truth (no matter how I felt). If she were to ask while we were savaging each other in sex, the answer would be easy.
"Turn over, and I'll show you."
But that would not be what she wanted, and both of us would know. And I am so pleased she doesn't ask, feel so grateful and deeply indebted to her at times, that I want to throw wide my arms in relief and proclaim: "I love you!"
And after I made that mistake, I might never be able to get my divorce. (I believe I understand now why I get along so well with women when I want to and have so much trouble getting along with my children. I treat my girlfriends like children and expect my children to behave like grown-ups.) Arthur Baron wouldn't want me to.
"Well?" he's asked. His smile was a trace broader than ever before and there was a stronger cordiality in his expression.
"I really have no choice," I surrender with a smile, "have I?"
"You do."
"Not really. I want Kagle's job."
"That's good, Bob. Congratulations."
"Thanks, Art."
"We'll tell him early next week. You know him pretty well. How would you guess he'll take it?"
"Bad. But he'll do everything to hide it. He may ask to be the one to tell me."
"We'll let him."
"He'll want to take credit. He may even want to be allowed to issue the announcement."
"That will make things easier. You'll have much to put in order."
"I've made a list."
"I'll probably want to add to it, Bob."
"That's okay with me, Art." I laugh lightly (before tendering my gentle wisecrack) and bow my head in a gesture of self-effacement. "I'm not one of these officials who'll resent advice from his superiors."
"Ha, ha. I didn't think so, Bob. You'll run the convention."
"I've begun making plans. I think I know how."
"There's one more thing we've found out about Kagle, Bob," Arthur Baron tells me. "He goes to prostitutes in the afternoon."
"I've gone with him."
"You'll stop, though. Won't you?"
"I already have."
"That's good, Bob. I was sure you would. By the way," he adds, pressing my elbow with a conspiratorial wink and chuckling. "They're much better in the evening."
"Ha, ha."
Almost imperceptibly, my relationship with Arthur Baron has altered already in the direction of a closer conversational familiarity. Shrewdly, discreetly, diplomatically, I make no comment to indicate I've noticed the improvement. I've had a talent, thus far, this footman's talent, for being able to decipher what Arthur Baron and others of my betters (Green is my superior, not my better. Kagle is neither) expect of me and the subtle theatrical instinct for letting them observe they are getting it. (I have the footman's fear of losing it and being turned out of my job for betraying a spaniel's eagerness to please. Holloway in my department is that way again now, stopping people, dogging footsteps, fawning aggressively, extorting attention, demanding praise or benign admonishments. He'll break down again soon. They always break down again. I don't know why they even bother to try to come back. Holloway cannot be trusted with important business responsibilities: he lacks the fine genius for servility that I have.) I know that Arthur Baron doesn't want us to invite him back again. My wife doesn't.
"I'm sure she must be counting," my wife has repeated worriedly. "They've had us there twice since we had them here. Three times, if you count that cocktail party they gave for Horace White. I never expected to be invited to that."
"He doesn't."
"I'd be so embarrassed if I ran into them."
"I'm sure."
"I'm glad. I would like to give another nice dinner party soon. I'm glad I don't have to."
Arthur Baron lives not far away in a much better house in a much richer part of Connecticut than I do, although the part of Connecticut we do live in is far from bad. He has more land. (I own one acre, he owns four.) Most of the people around me seem to make more money than I do. Where I live now is perfectly adequate: and when I get my raise and move, it will again be among people who make more money than I do. This is known as upward mobility, a momentous force in contemporary American urban life, along with downward mobility, which is another momentous force in contemporary American urban life. They keep things stirring. We rise and fall like Frisbees, if we get off the ground at all, or pop flies, except we rise slower, drop faster. I am on the way up, Kagle's on the way down. He moves faster. Only in America is it possible to do both at the same time. Look at me. I ascend like a condor, while falling to pieces. Maybe the same thing happens in Russia, but I don't live there. Every river in the world, without exception, flows from north to south as it empties into the sea. Except those that don't, and the laws of the conservation of energy and matter stipulate harshly and impartially that energy and matter can either (sic) be created nor (sic) destroyed.
A lot that has to do with me. My dentist scraping at one tooth in my socket is more painful to me than my wife's cancer will be if she ever gets one. I get corns in the same spot on the little toe of my right foot, no matter what shoes I wear.
Arthur Baron has had us to his home for dinner half a dozen times the past two and a half years (and never serves enough food. We are hungry when we reach home). And we have had him to our house once. We have a good time. He usually will have just one other person from the company, whom I may or may not have met before, and three other amiable couples with occupations unrelated to our own. There is room for just twelve at his dining room table. The evenings are quiet and end before midnight. The subject of Derek has never come up at his house and we tend to feel we could gloss by it without discomfort there if it did. Nothing unpleasant ever comes up; no one's misfortunes are ever mentioned. The fact that they do not serve enough is a prickly trait for us to absorb, for we like both Arthur Baron and his wife and enjoy going there, even though we are uncomfortable. His wife is an unassuming woman with whom we almost feel at ease.
We had Arthur Baron and his wife to our house for dinner just about a year ago (time does fly). And we served too much food. People tend to eat more than they want to at our house. We like to offer guests a choice of meats and desserts. We also like to show we are people of lusty appetite who know how to entertain generously. My wife was trou
bled awhile that they might take it as a criticism.
"Do it your way, honey," I encouraged her. "Not the way someone else would."
The evening went marvelously. Intuition told me it was the proper time to invite him. (Once we invited Green. He told me he didn't want to come to my house for dinner, and we were relieved. There is an insulting honesty about Green that is refreshing afterward.) Wisely, I did not organize the evening around Arthur Baron. (We would have had the dinner anyway.) "Yes, Bob?"
"Hello, Art. We're going to have some people over to dinner the third or fourth Saturday from now. We thought it would be nice if you and Lucille could come."
"Love to, Bob. I'll have to check."
"Fine, Art."
Before noon that same day his wife phoned mine to say they were free either weekend and were pleased we had thought of asking them.
They stayed late, and ate and drank more than we would have supposed. (I still wonder with some perplexity about the small amounts of food they prepare when they entertain. I guess they must be hungry too by the time we reach home.) I mixed tangy martinis that everyone drank, and the mood was lightened from the start. I thought of myself as courtly as I stirred and poured. I caught glimpses of myself in the mirror: I was utterly courtly. I wore a courtly smile. (I am vain as a peacock.) I had no one there from the company. I had a copyright lawyer, a television writer, an associate professor of marketing, a computer expert, the owner of a small public relations firm, and an engaging specialist in arbitrage with a leading brokerage, about whose work none of us knew much and all of us were curious (for a while). The wives were all pretty and vivacious. The conversation was lively. There was boisterous laughter. My wife gave recipe tips when asked. The Barons were nearly the last to leave.
"Thanks, Bob. We really enjoyed it."
"Thanks, Art, I'm glad you could come."
My wife and I were aglow and enchanted with our success and made love. The evening went marvelously indeed, but it was written in the atmosphere--and my wily sixth-sense tells me it is still there--that we were not to invite him again for a long time, although it was much more than just okay to have done so then. My wife, a churchgoing Congregationalist, doesn't understand; she is instructed by a minister of God in matters of duty and hospitality. As a registered Republican, though, I know more about protocol.
"Why not?" she wants to know, and there is a tinge of eagerness in her perseverance. "Aren't you getting along with him?"
"We're getting along fine."
"Don't you think they'll want to come?"
"It isn't time."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"It's written in the atmosphere. Give a dinner party without them if you want to give one."
My wife falters. Derek's a heavy presence in the home now and changes things. (Enthusiasm dwindles rapidly into lassitude and stillborn wishes. Long-range plans for joy turn dreary in contemplation of their fulfillment. Then she has nothing to do.) Then we have my daughter to cope with as well if she doesn't have a date of her own for that evening and decides to stay home to watch. Either she mingles with our guests more intimately than we want her to or passes through in silence with a countenance of rude displeasure that everyone can see, responding with the barest cold nod to the salutations of anyone there who knows her (and passes through again like that an hour later, every hour on the hour, until my wife mutters, "I'll kill her if she does that again" and goes to tell her off). The time may soon come when I'll have to order her acidly to keep out of sight completely whenever we have company, like Derek. (I don't like children hanging around when I visit other people, either.) Derek creates disturbing problems also in our relationship with our other children because of the attention we have had to concentrate on him and the large amount of money he costs. (Soon, I will have to start putting money aside for his future.) "How are the kids?" people feel obliged to inquire whenever they come to our house, or we go to theirs.
It's a question I've learned to fear.
"Fine, all fine," I feel obliged to reply with too much alacrity (in order to get off that subject as speedily as possible). "And yours?"
Derek is a heavy presence outside the home as well, for my wife and I still nurture that special terror of walking into a frolicsome party at somebody else's house one evening and meeting socially one of the score of doctors and psychologists we've gone to in the past who know all about him, and all about us. It hasn't happened yet. We prefer large, noisy gatherings, at which public conversation is impossible; we are on guard at smaller, formal groups in which the discussion at any time might take an unpredictable turn to zero in on us. Then we must react hastily to divert it or sacrifice ourselves for a minute or so to talk evasively about something we don't want to talk about at all. (We have to admit it quickly. Admitting it may be good for other families. It isn't good for us. Everybody in the room turns uncomfortable suddenly.) Even at large parties, I have been taken aside often by someone who feels closer to me than I do to him and asked confidentially in a hawking undertone: "That youngest boy of yours. How is he?"
"Fine, fine," I respond. "Much better than we would have hoped."
By now, my wife and I have had our fill--are sick and glutted to the teeth--of psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, speech therapists, psychiatric social workers, and any of all the others we've been to that I may have left out, with their inability to help and their lofty, patronizing platitudes that we are not to blame, ought not to let ourselves feel guilty, and have nothing to be ashamed of. All young doctors, I'm convinced, strive to be beetle-browed, and all older ones have succeeded.
"Prick!" I have wanted to scream at them like an animal. "Prick! Prick! Prick! Prick! Prick! Prick!" I have wanted to shriek at all of them like a screech owl (whatever that is, including the two I went to see briefly in secret about myself). Why can't the simpleminded fools understand that we want to feel guilty, must feel guilty if we're to do the things we have to?
Unperturbed, they would answer equably that my screaming at them was a way of trying to relieve myself of blame and call the repetition perseveration.
And they would be right.
And they would be wrong.
I could tell stories. An outsider wouldn't believe the number of conflicting opinions the different doctors gave us and the backbiting judgments they made of each other, but we did. We believed them all, the good and the bad. And disbelieved as well (we had no choice) and had no choice but to search for others, like wandering supplicants.
"It's organic."
"It's functional."
"It's largely organic with functional complications now."
"He isn't deaf but may not be able to hear."
"At least he's alive."
"The prognosis is good."
"For what?"
"The prognosis is bad."
"It would not be possible to offer a prognosis at this time."
Not one of them ever had the candor, the courage, the common sense, the character to say: "Jesus--I really don't know."
It began with:
"You're making too much of it."
And moved to:
"He will never speak."
"He probably will not surpass a mental age of five, if he attains that. His coordination and muscular control will never be good. It will require tremendous patience."
We hate them all, the ones who were wrong and the ones who were right. After awhile, that made no difference. The cause didn't matter. The prognosis was absolute. The cause did matter. It was organic (ceramic. The transistors are there). It just doesn't work the way others do. (A radio will not work like a television set.) There was no malfunction. It worked the way it was built to (worked perfectly, if looked at their way). The architecture's finished. The circuits can't be changed. Nothing is broken; there's nothing they can find to be fixed.
"Why can't they do it with surgery?" my wife's asked me.
"They wouldn't know where to cut and stitc
h."
He's a simulacrum.
"If only we hadn't had him," my wife used to lament. "He'd be so much better off if he'd never been born."
"Let's kill the kid," I used to joke jauntily when I thought he was just innately fractious (I used to carry color snapshots of all three of my children in my wallet. Now I carry none), before I began to guess there might be something drastically wrong.
I don't say that anymore.
(Poor damaged little tyke. No one's on your side.)
He is a product of my imagination. I swear to Christ I imagined him into existence.
We do feel guilty. We do blame ourselves. We're sorry we have him. We're sorry people know we do. We feel we have plenty to be ashamed of. We have him.
My head is a cauldron.
My mind is an independent metropolis teeming with flashes, shadows, and figures, with tiny playlets and dapper gnomes, day and night. My days are more lucid. I never think of Derek in danger; I only think of my boy or myself.
I have melodrama in my noodle, soap operas, recurring legends of lost little children trying wretchedly to catch up with themselves, or someone else, the day before. They stare. They are too sad to move. They are too motionless to cry. There are blurred histories of myself inside requiring translation and legibility. There is pain--there is so much liquid pain. It never grows less. It stores itself up. Unlike heat or energy, it does not dissipate. It all always remains. There's always more than before. There's always enough near the surface to fuel a tantrum or saturate a recollection. Tiny, barely noted things--a sound, a smell, a taste, a crumpled candy wrapper--can mysteriously set off thrumming vibrations deep within. It's mine. I have more than enough to share with everyone I know. I have enough for a lifetime, and someday soon when I am fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, or ninety, I will overhear someone speak the word birthday, brother, father, mother, sister, son, little boy, doggie, frankfurter, or lollipop and my eyes will dissolve into tears and I will throb inside with evocations of ancient, unresolved tragedies in which I took part replayed in darkness behind curtains that have come down. That will happen. It happens to me now. Frankfurter. A poignant nostalgia befalls me. Merry-go-round. I want to cry. Cotton candy. My heart breaks. I feel I can't go on.
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