The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy

by John Waters

  “Don’t change the subject,” Mrs. Dieck warned him. “And don’t tell me who she is.”

  “Well, dear, you’re even over overwrought than I am. I can’t understand how I’ve stained your tablecloth in this thorough way.”

  “I suppose you are planning a divorce,” she asked him. “It would be a natural thing to plan at this time . . . But if she’s a student . . . My god, you can’t be sure it will last, Dick. Well, the children are nearly grown, so we’ve completed ourselves there!

  “Do you want me to get the divorce or shall you get it?” Mrs. Dieck inquired.

  “Clara, my dear, will you explain all this to me,” he cried, removing his spectacles. When Dr. Dieck removed his spectacles, especially now that he no longer had his mole, he was to say the least totally unrecognizable.

  Mrs. Dieck’s open-mouthed astonishment now had nothing to do with the charges of adultery and immorality, clandestine vice, hypocrisy, deceit. She was openmouthed only because she frankly did not recognize him.

  “My dear, you’re unwell.”

  “I’m well well well!” she shouted.

  Going up to him and narrowing her eyes, Mrs. Dieck said with breathless caution: “Are you, my dear, really the man I married.”

  There was doubt in her voice, anguish in her heart, and as she knew the beginning of something mental.

  “Look all you want, my dear.”

  He had pushed his chair back from the table, and allowed his arms to drop. He noted his own posture, and recalled with great nausea the fact that he resembled a man whom he had seen on trial in town a few years back for manslaughter. It had been a boring trial, but the man on trial had interested him if only for the fact he looked totally guilty and totally too weary to defend himself. He understood the man now completely. He was obviously on trial and did not feel any spark of energy to defend himself.

  She sat down about two yards away from him, near a large wandering jew.

  “I first heard about it at the faculty wives’ tea.”

  “Everything is discussed there. I’m aware of that.”

  “Of course I would be the last to know. Wives always are.”

  “Come, come, Clara, my patience and my time are running out.”

  Without warning he lifted up one of her hand-painted china cake plates and threw it against the wall.

  The outrage snapped the tension in the room, and she could weep now with some mild comfort, but without, he could see, any shock or concern for the priceless plate. (Aunt Clayburn)

  “You admit then you have a lover,” she said, examining the broken pieces of china, from her chair.

  “I don’t admit any such god damned thing,” he scoffed.

  “The ladies were certainly sold on the truth of it.”

  “I wish I had the nerve to have a lover. I might have been a better writer.”

  It was the first time she ever heard him admit he was anything short of an eminent, and important literary figure.

  The shock of his self-deprecation quieted her.

  Here then my dear is heaven and hell and if Dr. Dieck’s mysterious lover was unknown even to himself, there was not the slightest doubt in the mind of Clara Dieck that this lover existed, albeit it was only the cool pressure of a co-ed’s hand, unfelt, unseen by poor Dr. Dieck. The years and years he had lectured before co-eds, both in the day of his mole and today without that mark of distinction, surely (she saw this at once) there must have been many a co-ed who languished over his charm, his knowledge, his then literary eminence, now for sofaras he was concerned gone forever.

  “Then you’ve lost your fame!” she cried.

  “Clara, will you listen to me for the only time in your life.”

  She surveyed the ruins of her dining room.

  “I never had any literary reputation,” Dr. Dieck said. “I am what President Dorsey said before he left the college.”

  “I can’t remember a thing President Dorsey ever said when he was here or prior to his departure or since his departure and death.”

  “President Dorsey said to me just before he himself was dismissed by the board of trustees, ‘My dear Dieck, you’re not known, believe me, fifty miles beyond our campus here.’ ”

  “What did President Dorsey himself know fifty miles from home.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to your question,” Dr. Dieck told his wife. He rose. He did not deign to look at the tablecloth or the broken hand-painted china plate.

  “You deny then you have a sweetheart, a lover, whatever they call such things today . . .”

  “I have nobody,” Dr. Dieck said. “You may have a divorce anytime you wish,” he added.

  “But I don’t wish one. I thought you wished one. I thought you had a lover.”

  “At fifty, my dear. A lover. Where are you sending the tablecloth to be laundered,” he said.

  That then was his last word, that there was no lover. And to tell the truth, to present the truth, no lover was ever found. But, the effect on our characters was the same: Mary Jesus Joseph. We are and have of a right ought to be free and independent Kotex empires, and we come we come and can only therefore come. We come and the Kotex empire then is safe . . .

  Dr. Dieck perhaps, as some wag said, had a lover and did not know it. Ladies and faculty wives especially are seldom wrong. Mrs. Dieck, Clara, died with the surety of true knowledge that one pale April evening he had yielded to the blandishments of a co-ed. Nothing could shake her from that belief. She died another man’s wife of course, for shortly after Dr. Dieck bespattered her tablecloth and mashed her hand-painted china dish, she sued for divorce. He did not contest it.

  Shortly after the divorce, while lowering a shade in his office, Dr. Dieck fell face forward upon the carpet which he had received among his mother’s effects.

  He had died, the doctors and coroners (one office) said instantly. His secret of course went with him.

  “No one,” as President Dorsey said, “ever read Dr. Dieck except under compulsion, meaning under his personal supervision.” After his death, nobody read him except, oddly enough, Mrs. Dieck. Who was then Mrs. Webb Stuart. After the death of Dr. Dieck and her second—her illegal marriage, as she often bitterly called it, for her second husband, left her, under disgraceful circumstances, she began reading all of her first husband’s works. She found them as tasteless, as boring as the most “persuaded” of his co-eds, but they became with her something of a drug. She had to go on reading him. He was, after all, all she ever had. And she thought by reading him to discover perhaps if he had had a lover.

  THAT’S ABOUT ENOUGH

  OUT OF YOU

  Written circa 1955.

  “Idid something I don’t know what for,” Pete told his mother. “I didn’t want it and knew I didn’t want it, and I didn’t like it.”

  The old woman seemed to understand. She cleaned the kitchen thoroughly tonight, gathered up the waste food and put it carefully in the garbage pail, and put this outside of the room. Then she began to wash her hands in the strong disinfectant soap Pete always had on the sink.

  “Do you know what happened?” he asked his mother.

  “Just so you didn’t kill anybody,” the old woman replied.

  “No, none of that. But why do you suppose I did something I didn’t want to do,” Pete wondered, as if to himself.

  The old woman stood there listening. “She’s not young,” the old mother said.

  “She’s not anything,” Pete said.

  “Well if nobody was hurt,” the old woman said . . . Then, “you won’t hear anything about her again, unless you go there,” the woman said.

  “That’s just it,” Pete said, “what if I go there again.”

  “Do you plan on marrying,” she wondered.

  He made a gesture of deprecation with his mouth. “I don’t like her and I don’t hate her,” Pete said. “I don’t want her, I don’t ever want to see her again. It just happened was all, and why did it have to occur that way do you su
ppose . . . I knew the way she . . .” He stopped, and the old woman looked at him.

  “Well for heaven’s sake forget it. And at my age what am I listening to it for. She must be common or she wouldn’t have let you.”

  HE WENT TO the tavern and found George Diamandapolos and told him. George didn’t really listen, he had had a good many already at the bar, but finally he said, “Let’s go into the back room then, let’s talk in there.”

  “NO, IT DOESN’T surprise me too much,” George said after a little while, “not too whole goddam much it don’t.”

  “Why would I do that to her . . . I told my old woman too I did it.”

  “You told her,” George wondered. “Well you’re crazy Pete.”

  “And I’m afraid I might go over there again,” Pete said.

  “Well, the old gal is probably expecting that,” George said.

  “I believe you,” Pete said, and he was terribly pale, “I believe you.”

  “But don’t go,” George said suddenly and he was pale now too.

  “Don’t go?” Pete echoed.

  “That’s right,” George said, and he finished his whiskey . . . “Don’t!”

  “I don’t want to go,” Pete said. “I don’t know why I did it. She was so old too. But when she looked at me, George . . . Say are you listening.”

  George grunted.

  “When she looked at me, I could tell she was thinking how desirable I was, she made me feel . . . feel superb like . . . SUPERB like,” Pete said . . . “That’s why I did it.”

  “Well it wasn’t rape anyhow, that’s all your old woman meant too when she didn’t make no fuss . . . But imagine telling your old woman you . . . raped her.”—George said raped anyhow.

  “I raped her,” Pete echoed dully.

  “She thought I was everything, that’s why I did it,” Pete began again.

  “Well you’re not,” George said, “You’re not much. I’ve seen all you’ve got and you’re nothing. Christ.”

  “Look, George, look what do you think I let her for.”

  “You let her,” George laughed. He was very drunk.

  “What do you think I let her let me,” Pete said.

  “I don’t understand now,” George said.

  “You don’t have to,” Pete said. “You don’t have to understand . . . Listen,” he said, and he held on to George now. “She was almost my first woman, she felt like my first woman,” he said to George. “Do you follow me.”

  “Don’t pull on my shirt,” George commanded.

  “Go to hell,” Pete said.

  “I said don’t pull on my shirt and I mean it. I don’t want my shirt mussed.”

  “George,” Pete began again, “you tell me why did I do that to an old woman,” he began to cry now, and George calmed his own anger down.

  “I don’t know why you done it,” George said. “Why don’t you forget it.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll go there again,” Pete said.

  “Well it don’t matter does it if you do or don’t. You didn’t kill nobody.”

  “That’s what my old woman said,” Pete said.

  “Well then that’s the truth for both of us,” George told him.

  “But I don’t want old women,” Pete said. “I’m a young man.”

  George stared at him.

  “Ain’t I?”

  “You’re young enough I guess,” George said.

  “But I don’t want old women, then,” Pete went on.

  “Well there’s a whole batch of young ones just everywhere,” George told him. “Just crawling with young ones.”

  “Look here,” Pete said, getting up, and he pulled on George’s shirt, but George didn’t say anything. “Maybe I don’t want young women.”

  “Then that’s your funeral,” George replied. Pete put his hand on his and George pulled it off his shirt.

  “George I believe you hate me,” Pete said.

  “I told you not to pull on my shirt,” George explained again. Then without waiting he said, “What’s wrong with an old woman. Maybe you’re old enough for an old woman. She’s got money probably.”

  “I can’t answer your question,” Pete said incoherently.

  “Well don’t try if you can’t. I don’t need no answers.”

  “You lie,” Pete said.

  “I what.” George wondered.

  “You lie, you lie . . . I don’t need no old woman, and I can get all the young ones.”

  “That’s what I told you,” George said, getting up.

  “All right all right,” Pete said . . . “I’m not going back there either.”

  GEORGE DIDN’T SAY anything. He was staring straight ahead now into the front part of the saloon. He was thinking of something else.

  “Are you thinking about Greece,” Pete said. He always said that when he was drunk, and George laughed.

  “No,” he replied.

  “What are you thinking about then,” Pete said, and this question was always just as inevitable as his first one.

  “Women,” George laughed.

  “Well quit it then,” Pete said.

  “Why should I,” George said.

  “Because it don’t get you nowhere . . . They’re all the same . . .”

  “Shit,” George said.

  “They’re all all all the same,” Pete said, his head resting on the table now. “I tell you, they drain a man.”

  George said, “Shit.” again, and then said no more.

  “I might go back and see that old bag,” Pete said. “I might teach her something.”

  “Your trouble is you’re crazy,” George said. “You always stayed home, near your old mother.”

  “I was in Korea,” Pete said.

  “Your old woman wrote you though,” George said. “That’s why you don’t know nothing. You’re always waiting for your mother. You need to go to hell. All men go to hell.”

  “I saw Korea.”

  “You didn’t believe it,” George told him. “You didn’t believe Korea.”

  “I saw Korea,” Pete said, and he got up.

  “Sit down, god damn you.”

  Pete got up and pulled on George’s sleeve and suddenly George had hit him.

  “That’s good,” George said, surprised at himself, looking down on the floor at Pete where he had knocked him. “I say, that’s good . . .” “I should have hit you a long time ago. You piss me off.”

  “Why would you hit a friend,” Pete said.

  “You make everything complicated,” George said. “Then I get complicated. It’s this country maybe or maybe it’s the world, but it’s all complicated up and you make it that way by talking and talking about this old woman or that young woman and that old mother. Stop all of it,” he commanded. “Stop it or I will kill you.”

  “I believe you would,” Pete said staring at him, raising himself on one elbow.

  “Well don’t believe me, then,” George sat down and drank a little more.

  “I won’t believe you then,” Pete said.

  “Well shut up,” George told him. “Shut up and keep shut.”

  “Tell me what to do,” Pete begged him.

  “I ain’t your father. Go away,” he told Pete. “Go away go away.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t do anything,” George told him. “Rest. Or should I knock you again.”

  Pete crawled up to where George was sitting. “I can’t make up my mind about anything. Maybe you’re right and I should have gone to hell.”

  “Don’t pull on my cuffs like that,” George said. “It makes me nervous.”

  “Tell me what you’re thinking about,” Pete said.

  “Women,” George echoed.

  “Why do you think about them.”

  “It comes automatically,” George said. “I just see women everytime I sit or rest or work or anything. Women just appear.”

  “I just see myself, I guess,” Pete said.

  “Well that’s your trouble
,” George said. “You finally said it, I guess, what’s your trouble. I’m a woman crazy man, I see women all the time.”

  “I just see myself.” Pete sat up and began drinking again.

  “You should have gone to hell.”

  “I should have died in Korea,” Pete said.

  “Well rest more,” George said. “Let life take you, that’s for the ones that don’t or wasn’t in hell.”

  “What?” Pete said.

  “Take life as it comes. Don’t see yourself, see women, see life.”

  Pete drank steadily of the whiskey.

  “George,” he said, “you are a GREAT man.”

  “I’m just a man and that makes me seem different,” George said.

  “That’s true,” Pete said, “You’re a man and I just see myself when I think.”

  Then George did not say any more.

  There was a silence at the end and they both felt rested, they felt calm, they felt perhaps the morning was coming with a good deal of comfort and that the day following the morning would be a success.

  TALK ABOUT YESTERDAY

  Written circa 1956.

  Percy Fairfield is a bartender at the Music Box Lounge outside of Chicago, and he has had nearly a thousand different jobs. Every time you sit at the bar he will tell you this is his last night at the Music Box, too, because he can’t take it any more. Then if you listen, he will begin to tell you about himself and what has happened to him, and if you nod your head a little and frown he will think you are interested, and he will begin to tell you about Madame Sobey and her penthouse and the spiders. That’s all he really likes to talk about, and though he has had these thousand jobs, and is always going to quit the one he has, I think he has really come to his final lighting-place, and the Music Box is it, and the story is the one I have mentioned.

  The way I first heard him tell it was a woman asked for a drink called a white spider, and Percy shuddered, and after he mixed the drink, he pretended to shudder some more, and because I was looking at him and he didn’t feel busy, he began telling this story. I think it took him three hours, and during all that time he mixed a good many white spiders and lots of other drinks, most of whose names I had never heard before.