Stories in an Almost Classical Mode

by Harold Brodkey

  I’d never brought up in conversation with her matters that had to do with feelings of mine that were unclear or difficult: what good would it have done? She would not have made the effort to understand; she did not know how; she would only have felt lousy and been upset. I was silenced by a long tradition of lying to her and being lucid. I could at this time only say over and over that I was sorry—I couldn’t try to explain any of it to her.

  She said, “You’re being silly. I think you’re too close to me, Buddy. I don’t want you to grow up to be a mother’s boy.”

  I said, “What will you do when I go away?”

  “You think I can’t manage? You don’t know much about me. Don’t be so conceited where you’re concerned.” (But I’d put that idea into the air.) She said, “I can manage very well, believe me.” I expressed disbelief by the way I stared at her. She said, “Go into my top bureau drawer. Look under the handkerchiefs.”

  There was a bottle there. I held it up. “What is it?”

  “My morphine.”

  “You hide it?”

  “I know how boys like to try things.…”

  “You hide it from me?”

  “I don’t want you to be tempted—I know you’re often under a strain.”

  “Momma, I wouldn’t take your morphine.”

  “But I don’t use it much anymore. Haven’t you noticed I’m clearer lately? I don’t let myself use it, Buddy—look at the date on the bottle: it’s lasted over a year. The doctor can’t believe I’m so reformed; he’ll ask me to marry him yet. Just sometimes I take it on a rainy day. Or at night. I thought you knew I wasn’t using morphine anymore.”

  I hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t been keeping track. I didn’t like to be too aware of her.

  She could have had another bottle hidden; there was a nurse who came twice a week and who could, and I think did, give Doris injections of morphine. I didn’t want to investigate. Or know. I just wanted to go on experiencing the release of having her care about me. Worry about me. She said, “You’ve been a help to me. You’ve done more than your share. You know what they say—out of the mouths of babes. I’ll be honest with you: I’d like to be young again, I’d like to have my health back. But I’m not unhappy. I even think I’m happy now. Believe me, Buddy, the pain is less for me than it was.”

  AT HARVARD, I began to forget her. But at times I felt arrogant because of what she and I had done; I’d managed to do more than many of my professors could. I’d done more than many of them would try. I knew more than they did about some things.

  Often I felt I was guilty of possessing an overspecialized maturity. At times I felt called upon to defend Doris by believing the great world to which Harvard was a kind of crooked door was worthless in its cruelty and its misuse of its inhabitants, and Doris was more important than any of it. Than what I had come to Harvard for. But I didn’t go home.

  And Doris wanted me to enter that great world: the only parts of my letters she really enjoyed were about things like my meeting a girl whose mother was a billionairess. By the standards of this new world I was sentimental and easily gulled and Doris was shrill. I did not want to see beyond a present folly or escape from one or be corrected or remember anything. Otherwise the shadow of Doris lay everywhere. I began to forget her even while she was alive.

  The daughter of the billionairess was, in addition to everything else, a really admirable and intelligent girl. But I didn’t trust her. One night she confessed various approaches she followed for winning the affection of boys. If you don’t want to be silly and overly frail, you have to be immune and heartless to the fine-drawn, drawn-out, infinitely ludicrous, workable plots that women engage in. The delicacy and density of those plots. But I wasn’t confident and I ran away from that girl. It seemed to me my whole life was sad. It was very hard to bear to see that in the worldly frame of Harvard Doris was, even in her relative nobility, unimportant. I had never been conscious before of the limitations of her intelligence. She had asked me to send her money and I did, my freshman year. I had a scholarship and I worked. It wasn’t any longer that she was jealous of my life but she wanted me to show I cared about her still. She had changed her manner just before I left her; she had become like a German-Jewish matron of the sort who has a son at Harvard. And her letters were foolish, almost illiterate. It was too much for me, the costliness of loyalty, the pursuit of meanings, and everything savage from the past, half forgotten or summarized (and unreal) or lost in memory already. How beautiful I thought the ordinary was. I did not go home to live with her and she did not ask me to, when, after three years of remission, and three months after my leaving her, her cancer recurred.

  HOW CAN I even guess at what she gained, what she lost?

  I spent the summer with her. I had a job and stayed home with her in the evenings. My manner unnerved her a bit. I was as agreeable as I knew how to be; I tried to be as Middle Western as before. When company came, Doris would ask me to stay only for a little while and then to excuse myself and leave: “People pay too much attention to you, and I like a little attention for myself.”

  The Christmas after that, I traveled out to be with her, fell ill, and was in a delirium for most of two weeks. Doris was curiously patient, not reproachful that I’d been ill, not worried, and when we spoke it was with a curious peace, and caution, too, as if we were the only two adults in the world. She said for the first time, “I love you, Buddy.”

  IN MAY I was called to her bedside because she was about to die. Her family had gathered and they stood aside, or else Doris had told them to leave us alone; perhaps they recognized my prior right to her; they had never been able to get along with her, they had only loved her. Doris said, “I was waiting for you. It’s awful. Mose comes in here and complains about his health and carries on about me and doesn’t hear me ask for water, and Ida cries and says it’s terrible for her—Ida was never any good at a deathbed—and your sister comes in here and says, ‘Have a little nap,’ and when I close my eyes she runs to the dresser and looks at things: she’s afraid I left it all to you; she already took my compact and she uses it in front of me. I wasn’t a good mother but she doesn’t have to rub it in. She thinks I’m dead already. Her feelings are hurt. How is college? What I’d like to hear about is the rich people you’ve met.…”

  When I started to speak, she cut in: “I was afraid you wouldn’t get here in time. I didn’t want to interrupt your studies and I was afraid I waited too long. I didn’t let them give me a morphine shot today. I want to talk to you with a clear head. The pain is not good, Buddy, but I don’t want to be drugged when we talk. I’ve been thinking what I would say to you. I’ve been thinking about it all week. I like talking to you. Listen, I want to say this first: I appreciate what you did for me, Buddy.”

  “I didn’t do anything special for you.” I did not remember clearly—I had put it out of my mind.… I did not want any responsibility for Doris.

  “Buddy, you were good to me,” she said.

  “Well, Momma, you were good to me.” I was too shy, too collegiate, too anxious to praise her, too rattled by the emergency, by the thought she was dying, to say anything else. I thought it would be best for us to go on to the end as we had gone on for so long. For so many years I’d calmed and guided her this way: it was an old device. I assumed I couldn’t be honest with her now. I had no notion that dying had educated her. I was eighteen, a young man who had a number of voices, who was subject to his own angers, to a sense of isolation that made him unwilling to use his gifts. In Cambridge, people I knew applied adjectives to me in the melodramatic way of college sophomores: interesting, immature, bad-tempered. There were people who were in love with me. I was intensely unhappy and knew that a great deal of it I owed to Doris.

  Doris said, “I’ve been waiting for you. I missed you, Buddy. Listen, I’m not as strong as I was. I can’t put on too good a show—if I make faces or noises, don’t get upset and run for the nurse: let me talk: you make things too easy for me. No
w listen, don’t get mad at me but you have to promise me you’ll finish college—you tend to run away from things. You’re lazy, Buddy. Promise me; I have to make you promise: I want to be a good mother—will wonders never cease?”

  “You always were a good mother.”

  “Oh, Buddy, I was terrible.”

  “No, Momma. No, you weren’t.” But I think she wanted companionship, not consolation; I guessed wrong on that last occasion. She said, “We don’t have to be polite to each other now—Buddy, will you say you forgive me?”

  She thought I was happy and strong, that I’d survived my childhood. I wanted her to think that. So far as I knew I didn’t blame her, not for anything; but not blaming someone is very unlike forgiving them: if I was to forgive her it meant I had first to remember. I would have collapsed sobbing on her bed and cried out, God, it was so awful, so awful, why did those things have to happen, oh God, it was so awful.…

  I don’t know if I was cruel or not. I told her I wasn’t being polite, that I had nothing to forgive her for: “You were a good mother.”

  She said, “Buddy, you helped me—I can bear the pain.”

  “Momma!” I refused to understand. “You did it all yourself. You were always better than you thought.”

  Each breath she took was like a seesaw noisily grinding aloft, descending. Her life was held in a saucer on that seesaw. I have no gift for bearing human pain. I kept thinking, I can accept this, I can do this without getting hysterical.

  “It was always easier for me than you thought, Mother; you never hurt me much; you always thought you were worse than you were. A lot of what you blame yourself for was always imaginary: you were better to me than anyone else was—at least you lived.”

  “Buddy, I can face the truth, I know what I did.”

  “I don’t know what you did.”

  And she even forgave me that. She said, “I understand. You don’t want to face things now. Maybe it’s better not to bring it up.”

  “Do what you like, Momma. I’ll understand sooner or later.”

  She said, “Kiss me, Buddy. Am I very ugly?”

  “No, Momma.”

  “You always thought I was pretty. Listen: at the end, Buddy, I tried. I loved you. I’m ready to die; I’m only alive because I wanted to talk to you, I wanted that to be the last thing—do you understand, I want you to know now how much I think of you.”

  “Momma—”

  “I’m going to die soon, I’m very bad, Buddy. Listen: I don’t want you to grieve for me. You’ve done your share already. I want you to have a good time. I want you to enjoy yourself.” Then she said, “I can’t be what you want; I don’t want to upset you; just say you forgive me.”

  “I will if you give me your forgiveness, Momma.”

  “My forgiveness? Oh, Buddy. I bet you’re good with girls. What a liar you are. And I always thought I was a liar. I forgive you, Buddy. Don’t you know what you did for me? You made it so the pain was less.”

  “Momma, I didn’t do anything.”

  “Isn’t it funny what people are ashamed of?” She was silent for a small second; then she said, “Do you forgive me?”

  “I forgive you, Momma, but there’s nothing to forgive you for. If it wasn’t for you I’d be dead.”

  “That was a long time ago; you were still a baby then. Oh. Run now and get the nurse. I don’t think I can stand the pain now. Tell her I want my shot.”

  After the nurse had gone, Doris said, “Buddy, I went in a wheelchair to the ward where people had cancer and were frightened, and I tried to help them—I thought you would be proud of me.”

  For a moment, I remembered something. “Momma, I was a stupid boy.”

  “Hold my hand while I fall asleep, Buddy. I don’t know if I think Harvard is such a good place—you don’t face things as well as you used to. Buddy, I’m tired of it all. I don’t like my family much. Is it terrible to say I don’t think they’re nice people? In the end you and my father were the only ones. I wish you could have known him. I loved you best. Don’t let it go to your head. You never thought you were conceited but you were—that’s always the part of the story you leave out—and how you like to domineer over people. It’s a miracle no one’s killed you yet. It’s terrible to be sorry for things. Buddy, do you know why that is—why is it terrible to be sorry? I don’t know why things happened the way they did. I kept thinking as I lay here it would be interesting if I understood things now and I could tell you—I know how you like to know things. Buddy, I promised your mother you would remember her—promise me you’ll think well of her. She was your real mother and she loved you, too. Buddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Find someone to love. Find someone to be good to you.” Then she said, “I love you, Buddy.… I’m sorry.”

  She seemed to sleep. Then her breathing grew rough. I thought I ought to go get the doctor but then I sat down again and stared at the ceiling. I was afraid my feeling for her or some flow of regret in me or anything in me she might as a woman feel as a thread requiring her attention would interfere with her death. So I said to myself, You can die, Momma; it’s all right; I don’t want you to live anymore. From time to time, in her sleep, in her dying, she shouted, “Haven’t I suffered enough?” and “Buddy, are you still there? Don’t have anything to do with those terrible people!” Then she came to and said, “Am I shouting things? … I thought so. I don’t want you to go away, but when you’re this close I don’t feel right.”

  “Do you want me to go into the hall?”

  “No. Don’t leave me. But don’t sit too close to me, don’t look at me. Just stay near.… I want you here.”

  “All right, Momma.”

  I listened to her breathing grow irregular. I said to myself, Die, Momma. On this breath. I don’t want you to live anymore. Her breath changed again. It began to be very loud, rackety. I began to count her breaths. I counted fifteen and then neither her breath nor her actual voice was ever heard again.

  AFTER SHE DIED, I had a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t believe I missed her that much. I’d loved her at the end, loved her again, loved and admired her, loved her greatly; of course, by that time, she did not ask that the love I felt express itself in sacrificing myself for her. I loved her while I enjoyed an increasing freedom from her but still I needed her; and, as I said, I had a nervous breakdown when she died. After a while, I got over it.

  I don’t know all that I gained or lost, either. I know I was never to be certain I was masculine to the proper degree again. I always thought I knew what women felt.

  Make what use of this you like.

  HIS SON,

  IN HIS ARMS,

  IN LIGHT,

  ALOFT

  MY FATHER is chasing me.

  My God, I feel it up and down my spine, the thumping on the turf, the approach of his hands, his giant hands, the huge ramming increment of his breath as he draws near: a widening effort. I feel it up and down my spine and in my mouth and belly—Daddy is so swift: who ever heard of such swiftness? Just as in stories…

  I can’t escape him, can’t fend him off, his arms, his rapidity, his will. His interest in me.

  I am being lifted into the air—and even as I pant and stare blurredly, limply, mindlessly, a map appears, of the dark ground where I ran: as I hang limply and rise anyway on the fattened bar of my father’s arm, I see that there’s the grass, there’s the path, there’s a bed of flowers.

  I straighten up. There are the lighted windows of our house, some distance away. My father’s face, full of noises, is near: it looms: his hidden face: is that you, old money-maker? My butt is folded on the trapeze of his arm. My father is as big as an automobile.

  In the oddly shrewd-hearted torpor of being carried home in the dark, a tourist, in my father’s arms, I feel myself attached by my heated-by-running dampness to him: we are attached, there are binding oval stains of warmth.

  IN MOST social talk, most politeness, most literature, most religion, it is as if v
iolence didn’t exist—except as sin, something far away. This is flattering to women. It is also conducive to grace—because the heaviness of fear, the shadowy henchmen selves that fear attaches to us, that fear sees in others, is banished.

  Where am I in the web of jealousy that trembles at every human movement?

  What detectives we have to be.

  WHAT IF I am wrong? What if I remember incorrectly? It does not matter. This is fiction—a game—of pleasures, of truth and error, as at the sensual beginning of a sensual life.

  MY FATHER, Charley, as I knew him, is invisible in any photograph I have of him. The man I hugged or ran toward or ran from is not in any photograph: a photograph shows someone of whom I think, Oh, was he like that?

  But in certain memories, he appears, a figure, a presence, and I think, I know him.

  It is embarrassing to me that I am part of what is unsayable in any account of his life.

  WHEN MOMMA’S or my sister’s excesses, of mood, or of shopping, angered or sickened Daddy, you can smell him then from two feet away: he has a dry, achy little stink of a rapidly fading interest in his life with us. At these times, the women in a spasm of wit turn to me; they comb my hair, clean my face, pat my bottom or my shoulder, and send me off; they bid me to go cheer up Daddy.

  Sometimes it takes no more than a tug at his newspaper: the sight of me is enough; or I climb on his lap, mimic his depression; or I stand on his lap, press his head against my chest.… His face is immense, porous, complex with stubble, bits of talcum on it, unlikely colors, unlikely features, a bald brow with a curved square of lamplight in it. About his head there is a nimbus of sturdy wickedness, of unlikelihood. If his mood does not change, something tumbles and goes dead in me.

  Perhaps it is more a nervous breakdown than heartbreak: I have failed him: his love for me is very limited: I must die now. I go somewhere and shudder and collapse—a corner of the dining room, the back stoop or deck: I lie there, empty, grief-stricken, literally unable to move—I have forgotten my limbs. If a memory of them comes to me, the memory is meaningless.…