Interference & Other Stories

by Richard Hoffman

  Harvey discovered that if he let all the air out of his lungs, he could get down to the bottom and scrabble along it with his hands for a few seconds like an alligator. When he came up again, there was a loud commotion on the beach.

  People were standing, shouting, shaking their fists at someone on the cliff above him. He had to swim back to the beach to see. People were throwing rocks, shouting.

  “Pig! Creep! Get out of here!”

  Harvey stepped onto the beach and turned to see. On the cliff was a man in a T-shirt and jeans and a baseball cap, looking down at them through binoculars. Right behind Harvey a man yelled, “Go home!” and threw a rock. None of the rocks that people threw reached the intruder, but he vanished back into the dark of the trees.

  People muttered their resentment, nodding or shaking their heads at one another. New conversations started. Harvey was offered an apple but turned it down. Looking at everyone and at no one in particular, he walked back to where his clothes lay and stretched out on his towel. The people on the beach were like deer come from the woods to drink, or bear come to fish.

  And there was a song coming; not a sad song but a deeply peaceful song, about reassurance and trust and contentment. Harvey borrowed a ballpoint and a used envelope from Rick, lay on his belly, and wrote the first line as it came to him:

  When you see were all the same

  Rick and Linda looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

  Harvey turned over the envelope and made his first quick list of rhymes:

  blame

  fame

  game

  name

  shame

  There was something about this search for rhymes that often started up the musical part of Harveys imagination. It was going to be a quiet song, but not a sorrowful one. He was just beginning to hear it.

  When you see we’re all the same

  Next he wrote out lines for each of the rhyme words. It was important not to be critical now, to jot whatever came to mind:

  — we are none of us to blame

  — there is no such thing as fame

  — no longer play the game

  — you will be without a name

  — you should never feel ashamed

  None of them were what he was after. None led him to the next thought. They were all cliches. Besides, they were all too darkly serious; they were not for the music he was beginning to hear.

  Harvey sat up and looked around him, stroking the top of his head. The old man with the watch had a child on his back and was dancing and splashing his feet in the shallow water while the child shrieked with pleasure. Another man stood up and waded into the water. He was overweight but with a very skinny frame so that he appeared to be wearing an umpire’s chest protector under his skin, or as if he were an actor who’d stuffed himself with pillows to look more corpulent. A woman on a nearby blanket had a T-shirt on, her shoulders shielded from the sun—but what about her bottom? A man with thick dark hair on his back and shoulders sat with his arms around his knees next to a large, soft-looking woman lying on her back with her breasts flopped to either side, her flat brown nipples large as campaign buttons. There was a gray-haired woman whose flesh hung down under her arms and at the backs of her knees.

  Harvey was losing the song. Where only a few moments ago the only individuals on the beach were Rick and Linda, because he knew them, and the old man, because of the watch, now each one he saw was different from every other, unique and separate. He stroked the top of his head several times and clenched his teeth. His stomach grumbled. He made a pillow from his clothing, leaned back, and tried to regain the feeling he’d had, the snatch of melody he’d almost heard. He went down inside himself and hurt was there, and shame, and fear, all tangled together so that he wanted to open his eyes.

  He found that by opening his lids the slightest bit, he could see while still appearing to be napping. The sun on his eyelashes made an iridescent veil of shimmering green and gold, and from behind this veil he watched. There was a short black man with high hips and thin legs with their calves very bunchy and high. A woman off to his left, very pale and with prominent blue veins on the backs of her legs, was kneeling and running a brush through her long red hair. A man was rubbing suntan lotion on a woman’s buttocks and back. Harvey began to feel more at ease. He tried again to regain the feeling of the song or at least to feel the beginning of the urge, but he couldn’t. He closed his eyes and rested.

  Linda was laughing. “Harvey!” And before he knew it, she’d put her hand around the shaft of his penis and slapped the top of it with her other hand. His erection subsided immediately. He got to his feet and ran his hand back over his baldness and looked at her.

  “It’s okay, Harvey. Hey, don’t get embarrassed. It happens to my patients all the time. That’s what we do and it goes away. No need to get uptight about it. Harvey?”

  Harvey looked around, blinking. The old man with the watch was looking at him, but he immediately turned away.

  “I was asleep. Dreaming.”

  “Some dream!” laughed Linda and reached to take his hand. Rick was grinning at him.

  “I’m going to take a walk.”

  “Calm down.”

  “I’m going to take a walk, that’s all. Okay?” He tried to fasten his towel around him but his waist was too big; he held the ends together with one hand and walked away.

  “He’ll be all right,” said Rick.

  Linda watched Harvey walk into the woods, then she turned to Rick and smiled. “I was thinking. There’s that part in The Book of the Dead where you go through this kind of zone, the last one you go through, where all these naked people are writhing around, and if you get turned on, you get sent back and have to go through life all over again.”

  “You’re thinking Harvey’d never make it,” Rick said, and they both laughed.

  Harvey found a path along the edge of the woods and followed the river upstream, walking hard. He was shaking. He could hear the fast water and the children’s voices behind him for a while then the ground rose and the river fell away beneath him. He stopped and leaned against a tree to catch his breath, but he didn’t feel any calmer. He hit the tree with his fist, hard, and tore open his knuckles. He put them to his mouth.

  There were voices from the river. He walked to the edge and looked down. There were twelve or fifteen people dressed in dark clothing standing on the fen where the river flowed slowly. Some were getting into a rowboat. He stood behind a tree and watched.

  Two men in dark suits rowed the boat out to the middle of the river. There were two women and a young boy in the boat also. Some of the people on the fen were holding one another. Some had their faces in their hands. One man in the boat dropped a small anchor over the stern while the other took out what looked like a shoebox. He lifted the lid and unfolded some purple cloth; then, with a shiny spoon, he began to scatter ashes on the water.

  One of the women on the fen looked up and, grabbing the elbow of the man next to her, pointed at Harvey. Harvey stepped back, dropped his towel, stumbled, and fell into a bed of ferns. When he got up, he saw that others were looking up at him. He turned and began to run back along the path to the beach, holding his arms in front of his face to fend off the branches. At every step he said, “Mmmmm,” in a kind of clenched moan. “Mmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm“ He ran to get back to the beach. Everyone had to get out of the water! Everyone had to get dressed and leave! Who would help him? Rick. No. Linda. No. The old man with the watch! The old man. He would help.

  As he ran he thought of children, of the boy in the boat, of the children screeching and laughing and sliding down the slippery rocks, of the kids on the block at home, obscene, alive, and innocent. He thought of Rick with his pipe and books, of Linda with her charts and diagrams and cards, of old women with flat sagging breasts and thin hair, of men with hair all over their backs and chests and arms, of men with binoculars who could not bear to understand what he was understanding. He thought of himself, of his fear,
of his fatness and baldness and shame, and of his grief. He thought of Sylvia.

  He ran through the woods. He was running past all the places he and Sylvia had been together, past the theater on West End Avenue, past the corner luncheonette, past the vegetable stand, past the Quincy Market in Boston, past Harvard Square in Cambridge, past the farmhouse in Ohio where her parents lived, past Buckingham Palace, past Mount Desert Island, Maine, past the Hotel Centenario in Guatemala City, past, “Mmmmm,” past, “Mmmmm,” past, “Mmmmm“

  He fell on his hands and knees on the beach and cried. Linda put her arms around him and looked at Rick for help. Harvey cried convulsively, trying to regain control. Some people gathered around to look. Harvey reared back with his hands full of stones, and the people backed away. He lifted his hands and let the stones roll out of them and knelt there, his face in his hands, sobbing. Rick helped Linda get him to his feet.

  “Come on, lets get you away from here.”

  Harvey looked at him. Rick’s eyes were full of pity. Screw pity. Through his burning eyes, he looked at the others. Pity. So screw them too. His eyes found the old man’s and he found he could meet his gaze without shame.

  He turned to Rick. “Okay,” he said. He looked around at the others. “Its all right,” he said. “Everything’s all right.”

  GUY GOES INTO A THERAPIST’S OFFICE

  First thing he sees are several framed certificates on the walls. One looks just like the ad for Renaissance Roofing & Siding (Gutters Our Specialty) that had come in the morning mail. “Fully licensed and insured!” it said. Like the ad, they all have gold seals and signatures at the bottom.

  “How can I help?” asks the therapist.

  “I’m a bad man,” says Guy. “At least I think I am.”

  “What do your friends think?”

  “Friends?”

  “I see,” says the therapist. “Come back next week.”

  Next week comes round and Guy notices some changes. The therapist has new furniture. A new rug. New lamps. As he sits in the leather chair it makes a sound of escaping air, almost like a whoopee cushion if whoopee cushions had a wider range and could mime the sounds of the more common, less theatrical fricatives. Guy worries the therapist will think he passed gas. He stands as if to adjust the crease in his trousers and sits again, deliberately hard, to produce a loud whoosh of air that unmistakably comes from the chair cushion. He sees over the therapists shoulder that there is a new certificate on the wall.

  “How are we today?” the therapist asks.

  “I’m sad,” says Guy, “I don’t know about you.”

  “Yes, you seem agitated. What’s going on?”

  “Everything and everyone but me it seems.”

  “Do I detect a note of self-pity?”

  Over the therapist’s shoulder Guy is trying to read the new framed document. He feels certain he can make out the words “patios” and “drive-ways”.

  “I guess I’m not hiding it very well, am I?” says Guy.

  The following week the therapist scribbles a prescription. He leans forward and hands it to Guy.

  “What’s this supposed to do?”

  “You wore out your wanter, you wanker.”

  “What?”

  “Your wanter, man, your wisher, your will. The burner’s busted. Here. We’ll start with a low dose, build up gradually.”

  “Build up to what?”

  “You tell me when you’re able to give two shits, and we’ll level off from there.”

  “What’s this got to do with my problems?” asks Guy. “I thought we were going to talk about, you know, my childhood. My divorce. I don’t know.” He squints at the framed document behind the therapist. “Custom cornices” can’t be right. And why would it say “asphalt, slate, and rubber”?

  “Why are you always harping on the past? What about the future?” asks the therapist.

  “Oh,” Guy says, “the future. Yeah. That didn’t turn out too good either.”

  SUGAR

  We’re in the check-out line and I’m putting the groceries on the counter. This is the hardest part of shopping with a two-year-old. Jeffrey’s apple, healthful consolation for all the things I have refused him, is down to the core, and he’s working himself up to a crescendo of desire. “Daddy, I want a-a- I wants a- a…”

  The narrow passage is walled with mints, gum, lollipops and candy bars. I manage to convince him that it’s all yucky, bad for him, that it will give him a tummyache, all the while feeling like a hypocrite because since I quit smoking I always have some gum or candy in my pocket. Then he turns to the film, batteries, cigarettes, and tabloids. I explain to him that cigarettes are also yucky. A headline reads: “Man With Split Personality Weds Self.” The woman ahead of us pushes our groceries back with her forearm, tumbling stacked cans, and whacks a wooden stick between our orders. When Jeffrey grabs a bag of disposable razors, I take it from him. He squeezes shut his eyes, his face gets red, and he howls.

  Four bags. Sixty dollars. I write the check.

  Today, because he is still howling, we make it past the dozen inverted jars of twenty-five-cent jawbreakers, Super Balls, tin rings, stale peanuts, and Slime in plastic bubbles.

  “Watch!” I say. “A magic door!” It hums open. Jeffrey yells, “Magic!” and we’re outside.

  “I want the pony!”

  I love this part. The look on his face is a plea but a confident one. I’ve never refused him. I remember giving my own father that expectant look; and when I dig down deep in my pocket past the car keys and the secret candy, I am my father; and when I lift him under his arms, I can feel my father pick me up and swing me briefly through the air; and when he’s in the saddle and I’ve dropped a quarter in the slot, and the pony bucks and begins to rock, and I see his face first fearful then delighted, I am my son.

  I put him in the saddle, worried as always that he’ll fall off, and I wonder why the stirrups are so low that by the time your legs are long enough to reach them you’re too old to ride. “Hold on tight now.”

  But this time the quarter drops and nothing happens.

  “The pony not go!”

  The pony’s tail has been bobbed by vandals or just by kids playing hard, but there’s a knob of it left for me to grip and rock the pony back and forth. It’s hard for me to reach both Jeffrey to steady him and the pony’s tail to rock it hard enough to convince him everything is okay. “Watch where you’re going!” I tell him when he grows suspicious and starts to turn around. When my shoulder starts to hurt, I tell him to say, “Whoa!” When I lift him down he says, “Thank you, pony.”

  He doesn’t want to sit in the shopping cart. “Then you must hold Daddy’s hand,” I say. “There are too many cars.” The parking lot is jammed: cars are circling, looking for spaces; horns are blowing; people pushing carts are trying to navigate among the cars. I change my mind, lift Jeffrey up and put him in the seat, ignoring his protests.

  “Sir! Sir!” A short fat man in a white V-neck T-shirt is coming toward us, one finger held up before him. “You mind if we follow you and grab your cart? There’s none left.” A boy is with him, about ten or eleven, also fat.

  The four of us enter the chaos and make it to the car. When I’ve loaded the bags, the man thanks me, and the boy takes the cart. I carry Jeffrey, quiet now, around to the other side to buckle him in his car seat.

  “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” The fat man is yelling at a large red Mercury backing toward the boy who’s standing frozen with the shopping cart. The windows on the Mercury are down, and the music is loud. The car is shining; even the tailpipes are polished. It stops, rocking; the driver has slammed the brake.

  “Hey! Who the hell you think you’re talking to?” The driver, a lean young man in tight black jeans, no shirt, is out of his car and moving toward the fat man.

  “I just didn’t want you to hit my son, that’s all.”

  The boy stands still with the cart and watches. The young man, even with the boy’s father now, puts one h
and on his chest and shoves him against the car beside mine, bending him backward over the hood. “What else you got to say to me, huh? You got a big mouth. What else you got to say to me?”

  The man, his hands crossed in front of his frightened face, says, “Nothing. I’m sorry. Sorry.”

  I see the boy turn away. He doesn’t move, just stands there with the cart until the shirtless man gets back in his gleaming car, slams the door, and revs the engine. I see the father catch up to the boy and put his hand on his son’s shoulder and the boy shrug off his touch and walk ahead very fast, fat jiggling, pushing the cart, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. I see myself, having done nothing, not doing anything, and not saying anything now to the heavy man who stands still, looking down, before he follows after his son.

  While I buckle the belts of his car seat, Jeffrey asks me, “Why that man was shouting?”

  “I don’t know, Jeffrey.” I walk around and get in the drivers seat.

  “Daddy, why that man was shouting?”

  “Because he’s angry.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Jeffrey, I don’t know why the man is angry.”

  “But why you don’t know?”

  “Because I don’t, that’s why!” I shout at the ceiling. I start the engine and release the brake.

  Jeffrey is screaming now, and when I turn, angry and out of patience, and see his face, I know this is not a tantrum. Tears pour from his eyes and his face is white with fear. I pull the brake back on, lean back, and touch him.

  “Daddy’s sorry. Don’t cry. Daddy’s sorry. Wait,” I say, “I have something good for you.” I push myself up high in the seat so I can reach down deep in my pocket.

  BURNING BRIGHT

  Soon after he turned four, Roger surprised his parents by asking them if it was fun to die. His father hesitated. His mother said to him, “Well, what do you think?”