Frolic of His Own

by William Gaddis

  —I know you just called the police. When the phone rang earlier, who was it.

  —I don’t know. It was some hysterical woman who could hardly . . .

  —My God. Was it Trish? But you wouldn’t know her voice anyhow you haven’t seen her for years, not that it’s changed since her operation for, what did she say?

  —Nothing, I told you, just a lot of garbled . . .

  —I’d better call her. Do you have to turn that thing on right now? and she had the phone, —even hear myself think while somebody’s trying to sell me toothpaste, will you see if that water’s boiling yet Lily? I put the, hello? Hello? Yes it’s Christina, are you . . . No, Christina, it’s Teen, yes are you all right? You sound . . . yes, did you call earlier? who? No, a rude man who hung up in your face? No he, you must have had a wrong number, you don’t sound . . . oh my God! She turned her back to the diverting spectacle on the silent screen where the evening news led off with the inevitable skeletal parade scantily tailored in garments of pounded bark against an arid landscape, distant Mozambique this time, a woman with milkless dugs lofting a child deprived of food had there been any by a mouth fungus in the swelling vanguard of Africa’s twenty eight million famine orchestrated candidates for oblivion —but my God how awful, how did it happen? Far to the north, a gold mitred Pope in ankle length skirts rebuking a benumbed audience fresh from the potato fields with the revelation that all children born and unborn were gifts of God gave way, nearer home, to a fetid congregation of homeless being ousted from their digs under a railway trestle —still in court? But which was it, this nonsense about foetal personhood or for wearing the skins of these dead chinchillas my God that’s all they’re good for isn’t it? a fur coat? A new denture cleaner and brightener, a new itch fighting shampoo, the radiant testimonial of a halitosis survivor nonchalantly sweeping up dead leaves with a bamboo lawn rake whipped up in a Chinese prison and back to news on the economic front, the trade deficit, a burgeoning bank fraud, a lugubrious President announcing China’s most favoured nation status —chewing your bandages? Well stop him. Will you turn that thing down!

  —Look! Christina look!

  —Or an ambulance if you have to, you can find one in the phone book it will do you so much good. Can’t you stop him? what? In court again tomorrow? No, pry his jaws open and push it to the back of his throat and then hold them closed till he . . . oh! did it break the skin? I’d better hang up yes, whenever you can, I’ll get things ready, now. Did you have to turn that thing up while I was . . .

  —But look! And surely enough, there looming over this dark tale with a happy ending the jagged planes of Cyclone Seven shed its scarred benisons down upon the wedding of Billy Pinks and Millie Kalikow, her fifth grade classmates clutching bouquets of bluebonnets side by side with the groom’s ushers buoyed by the bonhomie of his colleagues on the loading docks at Miller Feed Co. drawn up at the patio entrance to the newly inaugurated Mel’s Motel to be followed by the numerous guests into the generous dining area where the bride cut a cake topped by a spun sugar approximation of the towering artifact beyond the glass where their romance had first been kindled amid the passions that had blazed forth here on a darker occasion as the screen revisited the floodlit melee of flying rocks and beer cans, Stars, Bars and Stripes asunder, signs and placards brandished and trampled GOD IS JUDGE aloft and IMPEACH smouldering on the judicial robes of controversy lately put to rest by the conciliatory visit of Senator —wait stop it, what are you doing!

  —I’m turning it off, what does it look like I’m doing.

  —No but didn’t you hear what he . . .

  —I don’t care what he’s saying, my God do we have to go through that scene again? What time is it.

  —Didn’t you hear what he started to say about the . . .

  —Please! before we, it’s too late to go shopping isn’t it, will you write down chicken? Lily? have you got a pencil, juices, soup, something bland, sole, plain flounder if they don’t have it, rice, beef broth and, oh and do we have a heating pad Oscar? one that works?

  —Yes but I’ve been using it for my . . .

  —I’m sure you can manage without it for a few days, there’s no sense filling the house with them, there’s that old hot water bottle Father had for his gout you can find that and, yes and some gauze bandage she may forget to bring any she’s been so distracted, this commotion over her daughter’s breakdown when she cut her wrists last night and little T J called the doctor going to court like that all day or they might have thrown out this fight over her mother’s will if she hadn’t shown up and this sanctimonious idiot who threw catsup on her fur coat in a courtroom right down the hall where she has to show up tomorrow for that revolting boy with his absurd paternity suit when the whole thing literally went down the drain weeks ago my God she’s so brave, if you could have heard her just now. Bright, cheerful, she even thought of you Oscar, the midst of all she’s going through asking if it would upset you if she comes out?

  —But, well no but how long do you think she would . . .

  —For as long as she wants to! I’ve never heard anything so selfish even from you, we’ve taken your friend here in haven’t we? She can sleep right there in the library, I think you’re able to start staggering up the stairs to your own room again aren’t you? You can help me air it out after supper Lily and get rid of those stacks of newspapers, they can go right down to the laundry room Oscar if you can’t bear to part with them, it’s not as though you’re being asked to actually do anything my God, I’m the one who’ll be waiting on both of you aren’t I? And that little phone stand right there Lily, it can go in the library where you can take her tea in the morning, or coffee, write down some sort of muffins will you? or those frozen croissants though God knows she may just want to sleep, is that asking too much?

  —No but listen, Christina . . .

  —Is it? in a cry taken up next morning before a drop of coffee —or just tea Lily, and you can sleep on that couch in the sunroom can’t you, I’ve napped there and it’s quite comfortable, do you have that list? I’d like to get down there when the stores open, we’ll have plenty to do here, will you try to pick up your things in the library while we’re gone Oscar? that’s not too much to ask is it?

  —No but Christina, listen . . . but the doors down the hall clattered closed behind them, the car’s engine thumped, thundered, and they were gone leaving him to falter his way back from the kitchen splashing tea in the saucer where he set it down, gathering up pages, clearing his throat, the words coming hit or miss, coming in chirps, descending for —Ahhh! must a man be scourged then, and racked, have his eyes burnt out and then be set up on a pole, to know that he should wish, not to be just, but to seem it? plaintive now, almost a bleat, was it the words? his choice of them? or the very words themselves, the strongest words in the finest language in man’s history, God what they could accomplish with the simplest of lumber, the mansions they had built: Now he belongs to the ages! Maintenant il appartient à l’histoire, sheer tissue paper. Jetzt der gehört er der Welt? Geschichte? like a cow backing into a stall. Let them look up at the sky then! if they must be so blind . . . He stood gazing out over the pond where each branch on the leafless trees standing out sharply on the opposite bank blurred into a dull strip of grey without a cloud in the sky, putting down the pages to steady himself as the whole middle distance seemed to come closer and fall away, abruptly seizing up some pages he’d left on the sill there and bracing himself as though facing an audience intent for the facts not the words, not the sound of the language but its straightforward artless function, —Grant’s army ascending the Tennessee River to disembark at Pittsburg Landing where Buell’s divisions were to join it, the Confederate army deployed in battle lines near the Shiloh church barely two miles away in the gloom that had descended out there over the pond where the few isolated houses and the wide lawn below seemed to slip into the water as though the pond were flooding, and he took out the last Home Run to smoke on the veranda before
he brought in the newspaper, settling back in the familiar embrace of his immobilized chair to fold back its pages in wide sweeps and mutterings, guttural sounds of impatience, aversion, an occasional mmmph of satisfaction, a gasp, ha! just as the sharp clack of heels down the hall brought him to his feet.

  —Oscar? can you help us here?

  —Listen to this! Listen. A new court case surfaced today in the boiling controversy that has engulfed the notorious outdoor steel sculpture known as Cyclone Seven since the initial uproar that greeted its first appearance in this sleepy rural hamlet, far from . . .

  —Put some water on to boil will you Lily? in the big pot with a cover, will you help her with those bags Oscar?

  —In a minute listen, made headlines recently when a small dog named Spot, trapped in its interstices, was killed when the towering structure was struck by lightning, provoking a nationwide outpouring of grief. The dog’s body was accidentally disposed of, and its owner, a boy named James B acting through his guardian, has now brought suit against an enterprising glover for appropriating the dog’s name in connection with a new line marketed as Hiawatha’s Magic Mittens, which . . .

  —Lily? The chickens are all cut up, just put them in to simmer and chop up a few onions, will you? and those carrots left from last night, have you picked up in the library Oscar? If that bag is too heavy for you let her come back for it, maybe you can help her in the kitchen?

  —Yes in a minute, listen. Charging misappropriation of the dog’s name for commercial exploitation in captioning the mittens Genuine Simulated Spotskin, Wear ’Em With The Skinside Inside, the boy’s lawyer, J Harret Ruth, cites the provision governing false description and false designation of origin in the Lanham Trade-Mark Act, claiming unspecified damages for trade-mark infringement and of the rights of publicity and privacy. The community has been in turmoil since . . .

  —Will you stop chattering about that damn dog! Lily? can you hear me?

  —No but this is the part, listen to this part, the decision by a Federal judge questioning the good faith of a jury and reversing its verdict in a trial to determine the cause of the dog’s death, for which he has been vilified as an unAmerican ungodly racist and even burned in effigy. These charges have been taken up by Senator Orney Bilk, appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee which is considering the fitness of the judge, Thomas Crease, for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. I mean he really has a lot on his plate, here’s another helping listen, have spilled over into another lawsuit in his court, in which the attorneys for the defendant in a case of wrongful death occurring during a baptism have demanded that Judge Crease be removed in light of his amply demonstrated antiChristian bias which, Christina? Where’d you go. There’s just this . . .

  —Oscar? I’m in the library, will you please come in here?

  —Just this last, yes. The controversy that has swirled around the sculpture Cyclone Seven itself has also taken a new turn, as . . .

  —Now!

  —Yes, as its creator the sculptor R Szyrk seeks its removal over the vigorous protests of the community where it has become a substantial source of tourist income reflected in the new fully booked motel and expanded Kandy Kitchen and the Cyclone Seven pin replicas worn by the townsfolk in their petition for according it Landmark status, to be joined by a theme park featuring strolls among artifacts of modern American history recently opened by James B’s father, who . . .

  —Will you put down that paper and tell me what you plan to do about that mess in there?

  —A lot on his plate, he muttered getting up unsteadily from the crippled chair where he’d settled again.

  —Well so have we! Will you, wait a minute. Your little cart there, you’re sure it won’t go?

  —No I told you, the battery’s dead.

  —Well we’ll get one, we can get one can’t we?

  —Yes but, but I don’t really need . . .

  —My God, you don’t think I’m thinking of you do you?

  —But I, but how long is she going to stay? Because I, I’m not quite steady on my feet yet, I might need . . .

  —Marching around the room, I’m on my feet and I’m going to stay on my feet? isn’t that what you told us? God knows what shape she’s in, you heard her on the phone didn’t you? what she’s been through and you’re too selfish to lend her your little cart? Like a three year old, my God, and when are you going to shave, are you planning to grow a beard too?

  —Well why not! Why shouldn’t I!

  —And that suit, one of the last civilized men left with this whole ridiculous, oh Lily. When you’ve made up the bed in the library I want you to drive down and get a new battery for that chair will you? There was something else I, yes a deck of cards, get two decks of cards we may want to play cards, you can play bridge can’t you or you can just be the dummy to have a little life in this house again after nothing but complaints day after day, as cheerful as could be on the phone with what she’s going through maybe she can set you an example Oscar, all this mumbling and brooding if you see any other games Lily, there was a Scrabble set around here somewhere, look in the library, Oscar? have you seen it?

  —No. No and listen, I’m trying to get this work done I can’t spend the day playing cards and . . .

  —Work? You were sitting here reading the paper when we came in weren’t you? tiptoeing around as though you’re ready for the last rites with this play of yours it’s like running an intensive care unit, it’s like living with a disease that permeates the whole house, it’s a disease this play of yours thank God it’s not infectious or we’d all be dead, where are you going now? Wait, just put those things down Lily and go help him clean up that mess in the library, and those boxes, let’s get those boxes out of the hall there before somebody breaks their neck, I’ll be in the kitchen, and pudding. I should have thought of pudding, vanilla pudding or something easy to digest. I’ll think of something. And she did, after a day of almost speechless dolour relieved only by fetching and carrying, clean sheets, boiled onions, that little electric heater it must be somewhere, sitting down to supper but not the chicken, no, for tomorrow or whenever she gets here, there must be something in a can we can have, —it occurred to me, Oscar? over noodles with a tomato coloured sauce spiced with the taste of tin, —if it’s not already too late of course, I mean she may have been dragged over the coals in court today over it but still it would make a nice gesture.

  —I don’t . . .

  —It wouldn’t cost you a penny if that’s what you’re thinking.

  —But I still don’t . . .

  —If you’ll stop interrupting, this absurd paternal rights case by this miserable boy who got a court order to stop her abortion.

  —But she had it, I thought that was all . . .

  —I know she had it, my God I was with her wasn’t I? that right to life idiot throwing catsup on her and all the rest of it? Of course now he says it was animal rights because her insurance people are suing him for the cost of that lovely chinchilla while this revolting boy is after her for God knows how much in damages for killing his unborn child while they haggle about foetal personhood and the rest of this nonsense where you might make yourself useful, I know she’d be eternally grateful.

  —But what could I, I don’t know anything about . . .

  —Well think about it Oscar. She’s up before a judge who’s already called legal abortions legal executions even if it was legal, even some church idiots trying to get in the act saying she might have been carrying the Messiah. Now do you see what I mean?

  —No.

  —Well I’m sure Lily does. There’s no proof at all that this wretched boy was the socalled father is there? While they sit there splitting hairs over these absurd legal arguments is there any proof that he’s the one who got her pregnant in the first place? I mean they can’t do these fancy DNA tests and God knows what else on this dreadful little foetal person because it’s off where it belongs with that dreadful little dog in its simulated Spotskin, it’s
exactly the same thing. Lily sees what I mean.

  —You mean Oscar? that he was doing it with her too?

  —That’s a way of putting it, my God they’ve known each other for a thousand years he’s certainly had the chance, he can say he did can’t he?

  —You mean if he just said it?

  —Well my God I’m not trying to get him into bed with her, it’s a little late for that, I’ve always thought it was a shame you never took the opportunity Oscar. She’s always been quite fond of you.

  —Is she cute looking?

  —Cute isn’t quite the word Lily, she’s rather tall and, rangy you might say. She’s lots of fun.

  —And she’s rich?

  —She’s very rich. She’d so appreciate it Oscar, think about it. It would really be the gentlemanly thing to do. You might even find you enjoy playing the gay Lothario.

  —He did it with her too? And later, as they took their separate ways, —it was probably her money, that’s probably how he got it up for her even if he was gay, Oscar? getting an arm around him, —did you? ever do it with her? He simply looked at her for a minute, sharing this weary half embrace there at the foot of the stairs where she’d cling to him as briefly late the next morning, descending carefully one step at a time with a raised finger hushing his lips. —No, she’s already up, she’s out in the kitchen making something. You want some tea? And by the time she brought it in he’d already begun his siege with the telephone, slamming it down when she said —I think I heard a car, and was gone up the hall.

  —Well who was it.

  —It’s this real estate lady. She says would we mind if she goes through the house.

  —If she, I certainly would mind! Barging in like a, what’s she doing here. Who sent her.

  —Oscar? I think I heard a car out there.

  —Well you did, it’s some real estate woman Christina. She wants to go through the house, of all the, just barging in like that?

  —They always do. Did you make up your bed? And the sunroom, oh Lily have you put your things away in the . . .