The Runaway Soul

by Harold Brodkey

  I don’t know what the pain was like. People told me later it had been extreme but that he had managed in spite of the pain to drive on and ask directions to a Veterans Hospital and to drive there; and he had collapsed only on the steps in front of the doors of the hospital—which had not opened for the day.

  He was unconscious for weeks, I was told . . . I never saw the hospital records. Tan was his favorite color in suits and ties and in cars the year he fell ill . . .

  He wasn’t just driving to Chicago—he’d left Lila. And us, the kids. For good, he’d said. He was through. Lila told us this in a certain tone of voice, private-but-public, tearful, defiant, indomitable, domitable. Human and personal. And like Irene Dunne. She did it for a few select listeners: S.L.’s left me . . . It isn’t a joke this time.

  Daddy told Nonie in the spring of that year when she was to graduate from high school that he hadn’t the money to send her to college. She would have to get a scholarship or work her way through. But as she herself said, she was not scholarship material and she did not want to work in front of other girls who did not have to work, whose fathers had sent them to school in a haze of luxury, husband-hunting. Daddy told her she was a pretty girl and didn’t need college and it would be best if she went to work. He said that daydreams didn’t enter into it; her grades weren’t high (they were very poor) and he was strained to the uttermost (his phrase); the world was going to hell in a handbasket—war was coming; the American Nazis made his life difficult as a small-town Croesus-entrepreneur—with no money. The Depression had not lifted. She could help him by going to work. He was at his wit’s end as it was without finding more sums to send her to college on a fool’s errand.

  He had said, always, that he would find the money for Nonie to go to school. He had given her no warning that the promise was rescinded—Lila said that he had sneaked into this out of cowardice toward Nonie and the situation.

  Lila tried to help Nonie; she told S.L. to go rob a bank if he had to: a real man did whatever was necessary for his family: he had given Nonie his word.

  And Nonie, in a different voice, with much greater intensity, begged him, then commanded him, to do just that, to steal the money. It was almost funny, the somewhat pretty-but-fierce way in which she meant it.

  He said to her, “I’m not going to wreck myself for your sake . . . You have to go to work . . . No one wants to give you money to go to college . . . Not Grandma, not Casey”—his sister who was rich, Nonie’s aunt. He grew cruel trying to end the scene and her tears: he’d tried to raise the money for her, he said, “but everyone I go to says the same thing: Don’t try to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.”

  Nonie’s high-colored face went white—we knew, I knew by then, I was nine, that S.L. was often snobbish, often cruel, and that he often lied—that he had done genuinely shameful things whatever his pretensions with us were and that he was not a model of rationality or of judgment.

  And that he was perpetually embarrassed. Or close to being embarrassed. Or enraged. He intended for her to forgive him.

  She said, “I’ll become a streetwalker . . . I hate you . . . I’ll marry a rich man and I hope you starve.”

  She wasn’t restrained when she said it. She yelled and screamed and sobbed when she fought with him. She said to him, “You lied to me, you’re no good, everyone will have the last laugh over me now.”

  “A girl like you shouldn’t have enemies,” Daddy said. “A sweetheart like you, Little Miss Sweetie Pie.” Ironic. Tricky. You know?

  We were all more grown-up than we had been.

  Lila said, “Unhappiness is not funny—she trusted you, S.L. You broke her heart . . . You lead her to expect you’ll take care of things and you let her down . . . Now you see what it’s like to be taken care of by you; see what you’ve done to me? Well, what do you expect of her? What do you expect her to do? What can she do when you’re the way you are?”

  “Christ!” Then: “Have some mercy on me,” he said dryly. “And let’s have some silence.”

  Lila refused. She and Nonie both refused to let the issue go. No silence supervened—at all. They cornered him—Lila accused him of having no feelings for anyone but himself, and he began to shout, purple-faced, thunderous. He had considerable power. When he shouted back at her, she flinched. She shouted at Nonie, too.

  But he hadn’t enough say-so to silence them. Nonie, like David, advanced on him; Nonie called him names; she said, “You’re weak and stupid and a liar.” Daddy got a look that I associate with nightmares—the hurt-cum-anger, the being past most, or all, caring: the approach of limitlessness. “You have destroyed my life, Daddy,” Nonie said.

  I saw the logic then of him feeling he had nothing further to destroy in her. “I never expected to hear such talk from a daughter,” he said. “Maybe you’re not my daughter—maybe you’re trash like your mother’s family—did you ever think of that?”

  Then she slapped him.

  He looked at her with disgust—disgust-and-rage, disgust-and-hurt; but he didn’t hit her back—he said, “You’re no good . . .” He said it simply.

  And she said it back to him, “YOU’RE no good . . .” With mounting hysteria.

  He was still holding his face. He said to the air: “She’s no good . . . It’s all no good. I’m through with her . . .”

  The yelling continued in conversational tones—the pain, the weird strain of debacle, of failure. Nonie would shout, “I HATE HIM. HE’S A FOOL!”

  He would be sitting there.

  In the kitchen, Nonie palely went down on her knees to hug me sweatily and murmur, “I think I am going to die . . . I won’t give in, I won’t . . .” I was somewhat, a tiny bit, on her side: parents shouldn’t break promises . . . Of course, I had an interest in that issue. But neither she nor Momma in scenes that went on for days could drive him now to try again to raise the money and he didn’t care that I felt the issue mattered. Oh, he was hurt. Daddy would come in the side door of the house and tiptoe to the door of my room and beckon to me to come to him; and sometimes I went; but if I went, he would hug me too hard and he smelled of nerves and of sadness—and of cigars; and he would drag me back into my room no matter how I protested or kicked and onto my bed; and he would imprison me and lie down; he would lie there and hold me near the thudding of his heart against my will; and he would complain about the women—and about me and promises—and he would whisper fragments of poetry about late and soon, getting and spending.

  And he would say, “It is the end of the world, Wileykins . . . They have gouged me high and dry, they have wrung me for a loop, they have no love or respect in them.”

  But he was monstrous with being in the wrong. And I couldn’t bear to be held like that. I couldn’t bear to be near him. “You shouldn’t have told Nonie those things.”

  “Don’t you start . . .”

  “You said she was your pet and she should never worry.”

  “Give me a hug,” he said. “Don’t talk like a woman.”

  I was silent and waited to get away from him. He would hold me too tightly, too watchfully for me to be able to get away easily; but I would not submit.

  And by then he knew better than to go too far in trying to break my will . . . The school was interested in me; and so was my real father.

  S.L. said man-to-man: “You don’t care about money. You never ask me for money. Wiley, they are killing me . . . Be nice to me.” My real father sent money which paid for me by then. I would wiggle out of Daddy’s grasp and run from the room, from the house, until the middle of the night, even waking him if he was asleep: they hurt him as much as they could in order to win. Nonie would yell (at Lila and S.L. both but particularly at Daddy), “WHAT AM I GOING TO DO NOW?”

  I slept with a pillow over my head in order not to hear the nighttime scenes. But the night he left, I heard the side door slam . . . How dark it was. The slammed door echoing; it echoes still, the sound of the wood, hollow wood in a ten-year-old house, the rattle of the
metal doorknob, the hardware. I feel the dark. And my heart pound. Far off, the trunk lid of the Chevy bangs—a peculiar, compressive sound; and then the metal, the air sound, appears—in my ear, in my head—and then the rubber and metal clang and the tinkling whistle, the dim cling-clang of the chrome ornaments that go with the basic sound are there. Then the car door—then silence—then the motor’s lurching whine and the eventual throb moving in the peculiar cavern under the house which is the garage and out into the air behind the house and then on the driveway that runs alongside the house; it passes under my bedroom window—a close-by rustling that stirs the window screen—and then among the night sounds of the tree-lined street, the buzz and drone of distances: Say goodbye to your father, Dear . . .

  Or your dear father . . . if he is dear . . .

  How strange the world is. I feel it when I am forced to acknowledge the newness of circumstances. A newness almost unidentifiable in the general almost-familiarity of your own breathing, but still scary and unidentifiable in the other way of the horror of being alone; then your own breath begins to seem strange to you.

  Lila said, “Don’t tell anyone he’s gone. Be a help, not a hindrance.”

  A day or two later, she said, “Do me a favor and clean up after yourself.” She was sort of excited and bossy. And defiant. She couldn’t help blaming Nonie for having driven S.L. away.

  Nonie was angry—pale-nerved and wild-nerved, maybe horrified, but unsorry, a bit burning-eyed, finally and ultimately and forever now obstinate: a realist.

  Lila said to her, “Don’t show off—let’s see what you’re made of, we’ll see what your mettle is.” Nonie found a job and went to work every day and was steady and reliable. Lila took a job two weeks later—she “got friendly” with some man who liked her and she became an insurance agent, working for him—but she was temperamental and did not always go into work, and she was often late: she was moody and important. She said the men all wanted to sleep with a woman “at least once just to show they got their money’s worth.” She was incredibly bitter and would not tell me why. Her mettle was not as good as Nonie’s in some ways.

  She did say, “I’m not the best-looking woman in the world, but I have a little oomph and they take it for granted that if I want their business, they can have me if they want me. Well, they’ve got another think coming, I’ll tell the world. The way they carry on, you’d think I had no say, no feelings, no opinions . . . no connections. S.L.’s gone but I’m not alone in the world. Wiley, how far do you think a mother should go to make a big sale of insurance?”

  Her commission would come in over a period of years, she said. “It isn’t laughable, but what is it worth to earn two hundred and fifty dollars a year in commissions from my business with them? Is it worth my self-respect? I like to do what I want to do.” She’d be lying on the couch in the front room in the silent house with no lights on, to save money on electricity, and she’d be talking about this stuff.

  Nonie, walking a little like a hunchback—Nonie kept to herself, wounded in her moneylessness; and she read novels about girls who rose in the world on their own efforts, read mouthing the words; and she played the radio and spoke about the money that radio stars earned. Her posture was bad, Momma kept saying; it had always been good. Don’t lose your nerve now, Momma would say. Nonie mostly ignored me and Momma. She did not become engaged to any of the men interested in her. “She kept her nerve that way, anyway,” Momma said. “I don’t know if I’m coming or going . . . Do you know if I’m coming or going, Pisher?”

  Nonie boasted how good she was at office work—at office politics—she was, too. She was soon promoted and given a raise and encouraged to stay, but other people were eager to employ her and she switched jobs for a still better salary. She didn’t exactly make wisecracks but she sort of did. She went to night school to learn to better her office skills—she studied psychology and English Composition.

  I wasn’t good or loyal—I stayed away from the house; I stayed at friends’ houses. At home, our home, the women of my family, flayed, exposed, horrified me; and I helped some but did not really chip in . . . ; and I wasn’t really loving or kind. I said, “You were too hard on Daddy.”

  Five weeks after Daddy left, when no message had come from him, Lila announced to the world (around us; the world in which everyone already said S.L. had gone) that he had left her and that he intended to be horrible and tough and not do it in a clean way. He had just disappeared—which was embarrassing.

  A number of family meetings were held, and Momma told me—in the kitchen, where we were each eating coffee cake she’d made—she could bake but not cook—“It’s all decided: I divorce him and get around and take a look and choose someone a little more reliable and I marry HIM. Meanwhile, Momma and my brothers will give me an allowance.”

  I wasn’t included in the family conferences—I resented that. My real father came to see me and said I could come live with him. Lila did not object, but my real brother did. I did too—somewhat. Enough is enough—in the way of changes in one’s family.

  At any rate, my father-by-blood sent money for my expenses and he telephoned me and he came to see me six or seven times to try to persuade me to come live with him. I did not want to leave my school or to entrust myself to him. Precociously under the circumstances, I negotiated a treaty with Lila: she was not to boss me around anymore or I would leave and take Max’s money for myself—she mostly or entirely embezzled it for herself now.

  I delivered papers and mowed lawns. I tutored—young as I was. Some relatives and one or two local professors (who want to make experiments on you to see if you’re crazy or not, Nonie said) offered to take me in. If I would convert, the choice was much wider. The local Jesuits made a firm effort to recruit me—young as I was. “I bet you’d like being a Catholic,” Nonie said. “Why don’t you try it and see.”

  My real father Max’s older brother offered to take me if I would become Orthodox (Jewish). These matters confused, bothered, upset me. I became aware of a curious measure I used; I measured people by how much pain they saw in me without letting up or offering some sort of consolation. Or mercy. Rough mercy was better than nothing but it wasn’t desirable. Momma’s divorce lawyer proposed to her—or so she said . . . She was something of a fabulist at this point.

  She said the lawyer wore too much cologne and kissed like a log and had no idea how to treat women. But he had a Cadillac, and I thought he was a good bet for her; and we could have been a family again. And I could drive the Cadillac.

  Momma said she could not make up her mind to accept the lawyer. “Nonie and I don’t like each other: and you, I know nothing about boys . . . S.L. runs off and gets the best of it. I need to be alone. If you ask me, she travels fastest who travels alone.”

  But it was possible she had mostly made it all up about the lawyer; she was weird-mooded, and as if hopeful. But she was brutal, too, at this time. “I don’t want a stupid daughter and an ugly son hanging around my neck . . . If I have to go out and shake my rear end and look for someone to marry, I don’t want you two watching me.”

  I ‘understood’ she was tired of some things and not flexible and not very interested. She asked me to do the housework, and Nonie made scenes insisting that I do the housework, but I was working, too, and bringing in, when you count the money my real dad sent, more money than either of the women were: and I got the impression they were trying things out, they were seeing if they could swindle me: they had no real reason to do it; and nothing having to do with honor was involved—it was personal, as in seeing whose eyes turned away first when you stared at each other.

  “Nonie puts the least in the kitty: she keeps almost everything she makes for herself. Make her do the work!” I insisted on this.

  “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” Lila said. “I’ll get a maid.” And she did. We were broke but we had a maid.

  In the loose federation the three of us had so suddenly become, in such a ménage, the role of an adoptee is a
curious one. So is being male. You are a pet—and an enemy—a stranger and an insider and an excuse for things. You are not perhaps a person quite—or perhaps that was a problem of mine and not a problem arising in the situation. Or perhaps one should not generalize at all. The women quarrelled often—but they were more like each other than either was like me—I was an outsider—a distraction—a possible ally—a duty for Lila, not for Nonie—but not a duty Lila accepted. Lila said to her once, “You never even hand him an aspirin, how do you expect him to like you?”

  But Nonie was obdurate—and stare-y.

  I heard her say over the phone to some girl she was talking to: “He can get away easiest of any of us: he’s got a good escape hatch.” Then, in a weird tone: “He doesn’t have to marry anyone.” Lila, maybe everyone just about, was after her to marry anyone just then—to get her out of her circumstances.

  But she didn’t.

  Lila said—moodily—“I’d like to be alone just once in my life.”

  Or Momma, undoing her brassiere and unzipping the side of her dress, and turning her back to me as she steps out of her dress and puts a robe on over her slip, she says in the darkening air, “Where are the breasts of yesteryear?”

  She attempts to get me to do things—she is like an older brother trying to see how dumb I am.

  Sometimes I feel sorry for her.

  She said to Nonie in a harshly jolly tone, “You and I ought to marry Swedish men—cold men are the most interesting.” About business lunches making her fat: “Look at me; I look like a pig—and not a pretty pig either.”

  It’s hard to live among the things that people say.

  Momma—depressed—said to Nonie, “Why don’t you be pathetic and get someone to take you in . . . I’ll tell you the truth, I’ll tell the world, I can’t do it all.” Then, screaming (Momma is unwell): “YOU’RE NOT SO BADLY OFF . . . I’M THE ONE WHOSE LIFE IS NO GOOD ANYMORE.”