by T. C. Boyle
MUST BE CIRCUMVENTED FROM ITS IMPERIALIST EXPANSIONIST DESIGN
TO ENSLAVE THE MASSES AND TURN ARTIFICIALLY NATIONALIZED
PROLETARIANS AGAINST BROTHER AND SISTER PROLETARIANS
IN THE INTERNECINE CONFLICT THAT FEEDS
THE COFFERS
OF THE REVISIONIST RUNNING DOGS
OF BOURGEOIS COMPLACENCY!
The poems went on for hundreds of pages. I couldn’t read them. I wondered why he had sent them to me. Was he trying to persuade me? Was he trying to justify himself, reach out, recapture some sympathy he’d deluded himself into thinking we’d once shared? I was in law school. I didn’t know what to do. Eventually, the packages stopped coming.
Erica and I married, moved back to Westchester, built a house, had a daughter. I was working in a law firm in White Plains. One night, 2:00 A.M., the phone rang. It was Casper. “Jack,” he said, “it’s me, Casper. Listen, listen, this is important, this is vital—” Phone calls in the night. I hadn’t spoken to him in seven years, gulfs had opened between us, I was somebody else—and yet here he was, with the same insistent, demanding voice that wraps you up in unasked-for intimacies like a boa constrictor, talking as if we’d just seen each other the day before. I sat up. He was nearly crying.
“Jack: you’ve got to do something for me, life and death, you got to promise me—”
“Wait a minute,” I said, “wait, hold on—” I didn’t want to hear it. I was angry, puzzled; I had to be at work in five and a half hours.
“Just this one thing. You know me, right? Just this: if anybody asks, you stick up for me, okay? No, no: I mean, tell them I’m all right, you know what I mean? That I’m good. There’s nothing wrong with me, understand?”
What could I say? The phone went dead, the room was dark. Beside me, in bed, Erica shifted position and let out a sigh that would have soothed all the renegades in the world.
I was busy. The incident slipped my mind. Three days later a man in an elaborately buckled and belted trenchcoat stepped into the anteroom at Hermening & Stinson, the firm that had given me my tenuous foothold in the world of corporate law. No one paid much attention to him until he announced that he was from the FBI and that he wanted to speak with me. The typist stopped typing. Charlie Hermening looked up at me like a barn owl scanning the rafters. I shrugged my shoulders.
The man was big and fleshy and pale, his irises like water, wisps of white hair peeping out from beneath the fedora that hugged his bullet head. When I showed him into my office he flashed his credentials, and I remember wondering if TV producers had studied FBI men, or if FBI men had learned how to act from watching TV. He took a seat, but declined to remove either his hat or trenchcoat. Was I acquainted with a Casper R. Mendelson, he wanted to know. Did I know his whereabouts? When had I seen him last? Had he telephoned, sent anything in the mail? What did I think of his mental state?
“His mental state?” I repeated.
“Yes,” the man said, soft and articulate as a professor, “I want to know if you feel he’s mentally competent.”
I thought about it for a minute, thought about Lake George, the poems, Casper’s tense and frightened voice over the phone. I almost asked the FBI man why he wanted to know: Was Casper in trouble? Had he done something illegal? I wanted to gauge the man’s response, listen for nuances that might give me a clue as to what I should say. But I didn’t. I simply leaned across the desk, looked the man in the eye, and told him that in my estimation Casper was seriously impaired.
That was a year ago. I’d forgotten the man from the FBI, forgotten Casper. Until now. Now he was back. Like a slap in the face, like a pointed finger: he was back.
“What are you afraid of?” Erica asked. “That he’ll say hello or shake your hand or something?”
It was dark. Moths batted against the screens; I toyed with my asparagus crêpes and spinach salad. The baby was in bed. I poured another glass of French Colombard. “No,” I said, “that’s not it.” And then: “Yes. That would be bad enough. Think of the embarrassment.”
“Embarrassment? You were friends, you grew up together.”
“Yes,” I said. That was the problem. I sipped at the wine.
“Look, I’m not exactly thrilled about seeing him either—the weekend at Lake George was enough to last me a lifetime—but it’s not the end of the world or anything…. I mean, nothing says you’ve got to invite him over for dinner so he can lecture us on the wisdom of Mao Tse-tung or tell us how miserable he is.”
She was in the kitchen area, spooning the foam off a cup of cappuccino. “Are you afraid he’ll vandalize the house—is that it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, we’re not kids anymore—he’s not that crazy.” I thought about it, listening to the hiss of the coffee maker. The house we’d put up was pretty cozy and dramatic. Modern. With decks and skylights and weathered wood and huge sheets of glass. It called attention to itself, stylish and unique, a cut above the slant-roofed cottages that lined the road. It was precisely the sort of house Casper and I had sought out and violated when we were sixteen. I looked up from my wine. “He might,” I admitted.
Erica looked alarmed. “Should we call the police?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, we can’t—” I broke off. It was futile. I wasn’t really afraid of that sort of thing—no, my fears went deeper, deeper than I wanted to admit. He would look at me and he would condemn me: I’d become what we’d reacted against together, what he’d devoted his mad, misguided life to subverting. That was the problem. That’s why I didn’t want to see him at the tennis courts or at the lake or even walking along the road with his shoulders hunched under the weight of his convictions.
“Hey”—she was at my side, massaging the back of my neck—“why not forget about it, you’ve got enough worries as it is.” She was right. The EPA was filing suit against one of our clients—a battery company accused of dumping toxic waste in the Hudson—and I’d been poring over the regulations looking for some sort of loophole. I was meeting with Charlie Hermening in the morning to show him what I’d come up with.
“You know something—didn’t Rose say he’d been back nearly a month already?” She was purring, the cappuccino smelled like a feast, I could feel the alcohol loosening my knotted nerves. “And you only saw him today for the first time? If he was going to come over, wouldn’t he have done it by now?”
I was about to admit she was right, finish my coffee, and take a look at the newspaper when there was a knock at the door. A knock at the door. It was nine-thirty. I nearly kicked the table over. “I’m not here,” I hissed. “No matter who it is,” and I slipped into the bedroom.
There were voices in the hallway. I heard Erica, and then the polite but vaguely querulous tones of—a woman?—and then Erica’s voice, projecting: “Jack. Jack, will you come out here, please?”
Mrs. Shapiro, our next-door neighbor, was standing in the doorway. “Sorry to bother you,” the old woman said, “but your garbitch is all over the driveway—I can’t even get the car through.”
Garbage? Her driveway was at least fifty feet from ours. What was she talking about?
The night was warm, redolent of flowers and grass clippings. There was a moon, and the crickets seemed to be serenading it, chirring in the trees like a steel band locked in a groove. I walked beside Mrs. Shapiro to where her car sat rumbling and sputtering, lights flooding the gumbo of vegetable peels, papers, milk cartons, and diapers strewn across her driveway. The cans had been deliberately hauled down the street, upended and dumped—no dog or raccoon could have been so determined or efficient. This was deliberate. As I bent to the mess, I thought of Casper.
“Kids.” Mrs. Shapiro, arms folded, stood silhouetted against the headlights. She spat the words out as if she were cursing. “Things just seem to get worse and worse, don’t they?”
I worked in silence, embarrassed, digging into the slop with my bare hands, trying not to think about baby stool, maggots, the yielding wet paste of cof
fee grounds and cantaloupe shells, scooping it up by the armload. When I was finished I told Mrs. Shapiro that I’d have Erica hose down the driveway for her in the morning. The elderly woman merely raised her hand as if to say “Forget about it,” tumbled into the car seat, and set the car in motion with a shriek of the steering mechanism and a rumble of rotten exhaust. I watched the taillights trace the arc of her driveway, then hauled the garbage cans back to my own yard, all the while expecting Casper to pop out at me with a laugh. Or maybe he was crouching in the bushes, giggling to himself like a half-witted adolescent. That was about his speed, I thought.
Inside, I washed up, fumed at Erica—“It was deliberate,” I kept saying, “I know it was”—and then shut myself up in the study with the brief I’d prepared on the battery manufacturer. I couldn’t read a word of it. After a while—it must have been twenty minutes or so—I heard Erica getting ready for bed—running water, brushing her teeth—and then the house went silent. I knew I should go over the brief a couple of times, have a mug of hot Ovaltine, and get a good night’s rest. But I was rooted to the chair, thinking about Casper—a grown man, thirty-one years old—sneaking around in the dark dumping people’s garbage. What could he be thinking of?
A muffled sound was pulsing through the house. At first it didn’t register, and then, with a flash of anger, I realized what it was: someone was knocking at the door. This was too much. If there was garbage in the neighbors’ driveway they could damn well clean it up themselves, I thought, storming down the hallway. I wrenched the door back, expecting Mrs. Shapiro.
It was Casper.
He stood there, his head bowed, the moon blanching the stiff bristle of his crown. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, shorts, sandals. The veins stood out in his arms. When he looked up at me his eyes were soft and withdrawn. “Jack,” was all he said.
I was at a loss. The worst possible scenario was playing itself out on my doorstep, and I was caught up in it, against my will, suddenly forced to take a part. I felt like an unrehearsed actor shoved out onstage; I felt exhausted and defeated. My initial impulse had been to slam the door shut, but now, with Casper standing there before me, I could only clear my throat, wipe my features clean, and ask him in.
He hesitated. “No,” he said, “no, I couldn’t do that. I mean, I just came to … to say hello, that’s all.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, insistent, already ushering him in. “Here, the living room. Have a seat. Can I get you something: beer? brandy? 7-Up?”
We were standing beside each other in the center of the living room. He took in the potted plants, the umbrella tree, the little Paul Klee my mother had given me. The nearest piece of furniture was the loveseat; he perched on the edge of it, apologetic. “No thanks,” he said, eyes on the floor.
I was halfway to the kitchen, needing a brandy. “You sure? It’s no trouble at all. I’ve got liqueur—how about a Drambuie?” It had suddenly become crucially important that I give him something, an offering of some sort, a peace pipe, the communal leg of lamb. “Are you hungry? I’ve got Brie and crackers—I could make a sandwich—?”
He was still staring at the floor. “Milk,” he said, so softly I wasn’t sure I’d heard him.
“You want a glass of milk?”
“Yes, thanks—if it’s not too much trouble.”
I made some deprecatory noises, poured out a brandy and a milk, arranged some Danish flatbread on a platter around the cheese. Two minutes later we were sitting across the room from each other. I was looking into my brandy snifter; he was studying the glass of milk as if he’d never seen anything like it before. “So,” I said, “you’re back.”
He didn’t answer. Just sat there, looking at his milk. There was something monkish about him—perhaps it was the crewcut. I thought of acolytes, nuns, the crop-headed Hare Krishnas in airport lounges. “It’s been a long time,” I offered. No response. It occurred to me to ask about the garbage cans—perhaps we could share the intimacy of the joke—but then I thought better of it: no sense in embarrassing him or stirring up any rancor.
“About the garbage cans,” he said, as if reading my thoughts, “I did it.”
I waited for an explanation. He stared at me so fixedly I finally looked away, and more as a means of breaking the silence than satisfying my curiosity, I asked him why.
He seemed to consider this. “I don’t know,” he said finally, took a tentative sip of milk, then downed the glass in a single gulp. He belched softly and settled back in the chair.
I was losing my patience. I had work in the morning. The last thing I wanted to do was sit here with this wacko, on edge in my own living room, mouthing the little platitudes of social formality when I knew both of us were seething. I made another stab at conversation, just because the silence was so inadmissible. “So,” I said, “we’ve wondered about you from time to time, Erica and I…. We have a daughter, did you know that? Her name’s Tricia.”
His arms were rigid, tense with muscle. He was staring down at his interlocked fingers, straining with the tension, as if he were doing an isometric exercise. “I was in the hospital,” he said.
The hospital. The syllables bit into me, made something race round the edge of my stomach. I did not want to hear it.
I got up to pour another brandy. “More milk?” I asked, the rigorous host, but he ignored me. He was going to tell me about the hospital. He raised his voice so I could hear him.
“They said it was a condition of giving me a clean slate. You know, they’d rehabilitate me. Eleven months. Locked up with the shit-flingers and droolers, the guys they’d shot up in the war. That was the hospital.”
I stood in the kitchen doorway, the brandy in my hand. He was accusing me. I’d started the war, oppressed the masses, wielded the dollar like an axe; I’d deserted him, told the FBI the truth, created the American Nazi Party, and erected the slums, stick by stick. What did he want from me—to say I was sorry? Sorry he was crazy, sorry he couldn’t go to law school, sorry Marx’s venom had eaten away the inside of his brain?
He was on his feet now. The empty glass flashed in his hand as he crossed the room. He handed it to me. We were inches apart. “Jack,” he said. I looked away.
“I’ve got to go now,” he whispered.
I stood at the door and watched him recede into the moonlight that spilled across the lawn like milk. He turned left on the macadam road, heading in the direction of his parents’ house.
Erica was behind me in her robe, squinting against the light in the hallway.
“Jack?” she said.
I barely heard her. Standing there in the doorway, watching the shadows close like a fist over the lawn, I was already packing.
(1981)
THE LITTLE CHILL
Hal had known Rob and Irene, Jill, Harvey, Tootle, and Pesky since elementary school, and they were all forty going on sixty.
Rob and Irene had been high-school sweethearts, and now, after quitting their tenured teaching jobs, they brokered babies for childless couples like themselves. They regularly flew to Calcutta, Bahrain, and Sarawak to bring back the crumpled brown-faced little sacks of bones they located for the infertile wives of dry cleaners and accountants. Though they wouldn’t admit it, they’d voted for Ronald Reagan.
Jill had a certain fragile beauty about her. She’d gone into a Carmelite nunnery after the obloquy of high school and the unrequited love she bore for Harvey, who at the time was hot for Tootle. She lived just up the street from Rob and Irene, in her late mother’s house, and she’d given up the nun’s life twelve years earlier to have carnal relations with a Safeway butcher named Eugene, who left her with a blind spot in one eye, a permanent limp, and triplets.
Harvey had been a high-school lacrosse star who quit college to join the Marines, acquiring a reputation for ferocity and selfless bravery during the three weeks he fought at Da Nang before taking thirty-seven separate bayonet wounds in his legs, chest, buttocks, and feet. He was bald and bloated, a brooding
semi-invalid addicted to Quaalude, Tuinol, aspirin, cocaine, and Jack Daniel’s, and he lived in the basement of his parents’ house, eating little and saying less. He despised Hal, Rob and Irene, Jill, Tootle, and Pesky because they hadn’t taken thirty-seven bayonet wounds each and because they were communists and sellouts.
Tootle had been a cover girl; a macrobiot; the campaign manager for a presidential candidate from Putnam Valley, New York, who promised to push through legislation to animate all TV news features; and, finally, an environmentalist who spent all her waking hours writing broadsides for the Marshwort Preservationists’ League. She was having an off/on relationship with an Italian race-car driver named Enzo.
Pesky was assistant manager of Frampold’s LiquorMart, twice divorced and the father of a fourteen-year-old serial murderer whose twelve adult male victims all resembled Pesky in coloring, build, and style of dress.
And Hal? Hal was home from California. For his birthday.
Jill hosted the party. She had to. The triplets—Steve, Stevie, and Steven, now seven, seven, and seven, respectively—were hyperactive, antisocial, and twice as destructive as Hitler’s Panzer Corps. She hadn’t been able to get a baby-sitter for them since they learned to crawl. “All right,” Hal had said to her on the phone, “your house then. Seven o’clock. Radical. Really.” And then he hung up, thinking of the dingy cavern of her mother’s house, with its stained wallpaper, battered furniture, and howling drafts, and of the mortified silence that would fall over the gang when they swung by to pick up Jill on a Friday night and Mrs. Morlock—that big-bottomed, horse-toothed parody of Jill—would insist they come in for hot chocolate. But no matter. At least the place was big.
As it turned out, Hal was two hours late. He was from California, after all, and this was his party. He hadn’t seen any of these people in what—six years now?—and there was no way he was going to be cheated out of his grand entrance. At seven he pulled a pair of baggy parachute pants over his pink high-tops, stuck a gold marijuana-leaf stud through the hole in his left earlobe, wriggled into an Ozzie Osbourne Barf Tour T-shirt though it was twenty-six degrees out and driving down sleet, and settled into the Barcalounger in which his deceased dad had spent the last two-thirds of his life. He sipped Scotch, watched the TV blip rhythmically, and listened to his own sad old failing mom dodder on about the Jell-O mold she’d bought for Mrs. Herskowitz across the street. Then, when he was good and ready, he got up, slicked back his thinning, two-tone, forty-year-old hair that looked more and more like mattress stuffing every day, shrugged into his trenchcoat, and slammed out into the storm.