The Work Is Innocent

by Rafael Yglesias

  “But I do mean them!” Richard made a helpless sound. “I really do. I think it’s more important to be a writer than to be a housekeeper.”

  “Listen, I agree with you.” John looked at him and smiled. Richard saw how amused John was and he laughed. John said, “She’s wacko about that.”

  “She thinks she’s Tolstoy.” They were both quiet thinking about it, and John handed back what was left of the joint. Richard bent down to smoke it, because they were in heavy traffic. The butt was so small he burned his finger but he felt the pain only dimly through the overwhelming warmth and relaxation of his body.

  “Wanna do another joint?” John asked.

  Richard heard himself groan in agreement. He laughed as he slowly opened the glove compartment and got out the other joint. “I’m stoned, man. Wiped out.”

  “You’re gonna start raving any second.”

  “No,” he protested, realizing how hard it was to co-ordinate as he was unable to strike a match and keep it lit long enough. John noticed this and smiled at him. Richard laughed and handed him the joint. John very competently managed both the car and lighting the grass. Richard said, “Aren’t you stoned? I don’t understand how you can drive.”

  “I got my number goin’, don’t you worry.”

  Richard felt his face in chaos, eyes half closed, his mouth open, his cheeks sunken and lifeless. John, except for a little brightness in his eyes, seemed normal. Richard envied him. “John’s totally together. It’s heavy.”

  “Gotta keep the social graces goin’.” John glanced at him, his bearded face large and cheerful. “You want more of this?” His hand held out a misshapen cigarette with a long, uneven ember trailing smoke.

  “I’m goin’ to sleep,” Richard said, suddenly disgusted. He put his head against the seat and, smelling a mixture of the grass and the vinyl, he fell asleep to a face that was either his father or John discussing the merits of his prose.

  He woke with a start when they arrived in front of the barn and he got out without responding to John’s exclamation of surprise. He hurried into the house to go on sleeping but was stopped by someone saying hello. He looked up and saw Jonas, a friend of John’s, who had moved to Vermont from New York to live quietly as a carpenter. His natural look of discomfort was accentuated by the suspicion with which he observed Richard. John said hello and earnestly began a conversation with him while Richard stood ten feet away, unhappy physically, and revolted by Jonas’ presence. Jonas always inspired Richard’s anti-Semitism, his brown, stringy hair tucked behind his ears, his pale, fleshy face slumped in perpetual complaint. When most depressed, Richard would harp on how alike they were. After a visit from Jonas, Richard would become obsessed with washing his hair and walking with greater dignity and quickness.

  He was so groggy that these feelings became acute and he wanted to assault Jonas. But watching John smile and make some reference to being stoned, he woke up and wearily approached them.

  “Man, you’re wrecked,” Jonas said to him.

  “Really?” Richard asked, and looked at John. “Are my eyes bloodshot?” He hoped to communicate to John by his glance that he had contempt for Jonas.

  John said, “No. But you really popped out. Were you tired?”

  Richard stretched and yawned. He was pleased by his relaxation. Somehow it made him feel superior. “No, but let’s go inside. I want some coffee.”

  They did and Richard felt mature. Normally, he would have stood there miserably until the others made a decision. While he put out the cups, John built a fire. Jonas straddled a chair, tilting it back and forth while talking: “Hey, John, you know Ricky’s mother is visiting. Crazy lady. Dig what happened, though. I go over there to help him with the chicken coop and he’s taking a bath with Janey and Mrs. Harrison standing there. So he gets out of the bath and Mrs. Harrison drys him with a towel.”

  “What!” Richard said. “You mean his mother?”

  Jonas nodded slowly. “Yep, by Gawd.”

  John laughed and repeated the imitation. “Buy tha sweet luv of Jeezus Chryst.”

  “Now wait a second,” Richard said. “You mean that his mother dried him with her hands all over?” Jonas nodded. “And this is the same Ricky whom I’ve met? He’s in his twenties.”

  John laughed. “The countryside does strange things, Richard.”

  Richard served the coffee while Jonas went on describing life at the Harrisons’, a weird series of arguments and activities that fascinated Richard. He began to like Jonas because of the stories he told in his Brooklyn accent. Jonas talked compulsively, going on from the Harrisons to warning them that wolves had rabies and that the state cops were out to crucify longhairs. Later John took him upstairs to see his work and then Jonas left. While they were making dinner Richard tried to find out how John felt about Jonas. But apparently he had none of Richard’s concerns, he just thought Jonas was a funny, disorganized man. So Richard talked through dinner and cleaning up about how Jewish Jonas was and how that didn’t fit with living in Vermont and living with WASPs. He developed the notion and ended up convinced Jonas was having an identity crisis and would either leave or have a breakdown.

  John did nothing to keep the conversation going, and Richard was so hurt by this that, while rambling on, he had a hysterical private monologue to assure himself that it was merely John’s inability to keep pace with a novelist’s insights.

  John had taken out the drawings for his house and was bent over them when Richard finally shut up. Richard watched him silently, afraid that he had offended him. Then John sat up and dragged on his cigarette, looking at him quizzically, “How ya doin’?” he asked with a smile.

  “Uh, I’m depressed.”

  “Really?” John said, glancing at his drawings. Richard made a helpless gesture with his hands and nodded. “What about?” he asked and picked up a pencil, hunching over the drawings.

  Richard didn’t know what to say. He was embarrassed by his feelings. He thought of something that would be plausible—sex. “Well, when I was in New York I called up an old friend.” John looked up with interest. “And he took me to a party.” Richard stopped as he realized what he was getting into.

  John got up and went toward the pantry. “What kind of a party?”

  “Well, this guy is going to Performing Arts and it was just a party for those people.”

  John re-entered with a bottle of wine. He put it on the table and went over to the cabinets for a glass. “You want some?” he asked.

  “Sure. So I met a girl there.” This really interested John, and Richard regretted having mentioned it.

  John had stopped in his movement toward the table. He put the glasses down and looked at him with a smile. “So did you get a little of winter’s warmth?” They both laughed while John took out his pocketknife to open the bottle.

  Richard was completely nonplused. He couldn’t bring off a lie and the truth—what was the truth? “Well, not really,” he said as it occurred to him that it was worse to say she wouldn’t let him.

  John had uncorked the bottle. He filled their glasses and said, “What do you mean, not really?” Richard laughed nervously and picked up his glass, taking a long drink. “She didn’t want you to?” He had sensed Richard’s reluctance. John’s expression of shared pleasure had changed to tactful concern.

  “No!” Richard said, willing to admit anything else. “She was into it.” He giggled. He saw the look of pleasure and curiosity in John’s face and tried to think of a good lie.

  John ran his hands through his hair and tipped his chair backward. “What’s to be depressed about?”

  Richard was flustered. He saw how funny it was and decided there was no escape from being foolish. He said, “I wasn’t able to do it,” in quick choppy words.

  John seemed to fight embarrassment, but Richard couldn’t be sure. John scratched his beard and cleared his throat. Richard couldn’t stand that and he laughed in a high screeching tone. John’s eyes suddenly focused and said, “Wha
t—what do you mean?”

  He had to convince John he wasn’t a schmuck. “It’s hard to explain. I, uh, we had some grass and we necked for a while.” Richard was almost unable to say the words. “And then she suggested we go into her room.” John smiled. “So I—well, we got into bed and I had”—he laughed—“an erection. A big one.”

  John’s smile was becoming uncontrollable. He said, “That’s cool anyway. What’s the problem?” They laughed and John put on a serious look afterward.

  Richard imitated it. “Well, I jumped on top of her with no introduction and I couldn’t get in.” He said that quickly, his voice loud to bluff confidence.

  John cleared his throat and dragged on his cigarette. Richard knew he’d blown it. John slowly picked up his wine and took a sip. “That’s nothing. I mean, that’s not—it’s your first time. Stuff like that is normal.” He laughed but Richard didn’t. “I mean impotence isn’t—”

  “Impotence!” Richard was stunned. Impotence was for Tennessee Williams characters. “I don’t think, uh.”

  “It wasn’t that?”

  “You mean did I lose my erection? No, I don’t—I don’t know.” His voice cracked and he laughed helplessly.

  John shook his head no and said mildly, “I didn’t mean a classic case of impotence. I went through that. The first time I was scared shitless.”

  Richard looked at him hopefully. “Really?”

  “Sure.” He looked down at the drawings and brushed the back of his hand over them. “She didn’t help you out?”

  “No.” Richard groaned. “It would’ve helped.”

  “She just lay there? Yeah, that makes it worse.” John opened his knife and sharpened his pencil. “So that’s what’s been on your mind.”

  “I know. It’s so humiliating that I’m in this position. I mean, I should have been fucking for years.”

  John laughed and looked at him with the old closeness and pleasure. That cheered Richard up. John closed his knife with a snap and said, “We should all have been fucking for years.”

  Richard exaggerated his laughter, hoping to be happier. “I just feel that the rest of me has outgrown being a virgin and I’m stuck, unable to become blissfully ignorant and fuck without caring.” He reached for the bottle and filled his glass.

  “You should get drunk and find somebody. If you’re really wacko it’s a mess but at least you get it done.”

  They were quiet. John returned to his work and Richard looked at the wine in his glass. He was half drunk already and a moment ago he wanted to be blind, but now that seemed sick and he put his glass down in disgust.

  The next two weeks were as dull as Richard had feared. Even though they would be up drinking until five in the morning, Richard would always find John working upstairs. He would get up with a splitting headache at about one o’clock but John was up and around by nine-thirty. The afternoons were depressing—workmen banged all about the house putting in central heating. Richard had passed out one night, forgetting to draw the blinds, and he was appalled the following morning, when he opened his eyes into the stare of a workman outside his window. For weeks Richard would imagine what the workman had seen: the covers draped over the bedside, books and empty beer cans strewn on the floor, Richard in a thermal T shirt, black on the edges with filth, his pants still on, his head thrown back with his mouth wide open. He got up and pulled the shades down violently. After a cup of coffee, he went upstairs and told John about it. John laughed and asked Richard when he’d last taken a bath, but Richard tossed the question back at John and they laughed, agreeing it was a draw.

  Nevertheless, Richard cleaned his room up, changing the sheets and airing it out. Then he took a bath. John teased him about it and his inability to hold liquor. Richard felt the jokes keenly and resented John but he never showed it since that would make him more of a fool.

  Between these jokes and Richard’s awareness of what he could be thinking because of his sexual confession, Richard was suspicious of John’s friendship. He swore to himself every night that he would behave in an independent fashion—not get drunk and rave (as John called it) about his life. But he sat there, doing nothing while John pored over his designs, his stout muscular body perfectly still and awesome, until Richard would start talking, getting drunker and more hysterical as the night wore on. John would put away twice the quantity of liquor, unchanged but for slightly dull, reddened eyes.

  His parents were coming soon and he and John were both on edge. John was uneasy about being in the house for the month it would take to finish because of the strained way the family had taken Naomi’s trip. Richard couldn’t stand living with them any more. John asked Richard a few days before they were due to arrive if he thought they would notice all the liquor bottles had been drained except for laughably small amounts.

  Richard was surprised by that fear, but when he looked at the liquor cabinet and saw seven bottles almost emptied, he felt the constricting shame of a little boy’s guilt. “Boy, that is a drag,” he said.

  John looked at him thoughtfully and sighed. “Well, fuck ’em.”

  It startled Richard to hear John speak forcefully. “Yeah. Why shouldn’t you drink the liquor?”

  “What is this—you? I wasn’t the guy who said he was going to drink five different kinds of booze in one night.”

  “Us,” Richard said, laughing. “I mean us. Why shouldn’t we?”

  John cleared his throat. “Well, seven bottles is gonna put them uptight.” John yawned and scratched his beard. “You know, ‘Oh, John’s been drinking instead of doing his work.’ ”

  “Oh, come on. They wouldn’t say that.”

  John was unimpressed by his assertion. “I’m doing a lot of work pretty cheaply.”

  “They know that. They know it would cost them twice as much to have it done by a contractor.”

  “A contractor wouldn’t do what I’m doing.”

  “Yeah, they wouldn’t even get that design. Listen, when I was with them I described what you were doing. They loved it.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yeah. Are you kidding?” Richard nodded at him with solemn assurance. “The only thing that’ll bug ’em is that it isn’t finished when you promised.” John made a face. “But that’s because of the plumber. You told them about that.”

  John looked at him seriously, exhaling cigarette smoke in a thin line. “But when I wrote Aaron about the heating problem and told him it would cost another thousand, he just sent the check in an empty envelope.”

  “Well, it wasn’t your estimate. I mean he can only be angry at Hickle for that.” Richard knew that his father might very well blame John for anything if he was in a bad mood. John explained to him why it had taken him so long to get to work on the attic upstairs, and Richard’s sympathies were with him. Richard assured him that his father hadn’t meant anything by just enclosing a check. John seemed to feel better, but in a rush, Richard imagined how his father would look at the situation: they would be stuck in a chaotic house, the downstairs having heat put in, the upstairs being built. On top of that there would be no place to put the furniture they were moving until Hickle’s men were finished. His father would be unable to write in peace.

  So, just before his parents’ arrival, they worked hard at cleaning things up. Richard was convinced that the beauty of John’s work would reconcile them to waiting for it. The heating would be done in a few days, and surely his mother would appreciate that the rooms were neat and clean.

  He was stunned by their reaction. Silently, his mother giving him significant looks, they toured the grounds with a knack for finding flaws. John had driven his truck on the lawn just before winter and deep tracks were molded into the ground. It had never occurred to Richard that this might be serious, but his father’s color changed and, though John’s assurance that it would be gone by summer was sufficient for Richard, his father was unimpressed. The barn wasn’t in order, his father said. Richard was enraged. He said it was cleaner than when they le
ft. Betty stopped a fight between them by saying sweetly to Richard, “You had it beautifully done during Christmas.” Richard explained loudly, while his father walked away, that cutting wood for heat tended to mess things up. John seemed unaware of Betty’s and Aaron’s hostility. They looked at the attic and muttered something about it being nice. Richard was appalled that they could begrudge John a compliment.

  The next month was suffocating. Aaron went about with a severe frown. He worked all day, was silent during meals, and read each evening without responding to questions. Betty’s tone of voice had a familiar meekness to it—as if anything harder might trigger an explosion. John bluffed cheerfulness so well that Richard believed he was oblivious to his parents’ behavior.

  After Aaron and Betty would retire to their bedroom, Richard would go upstairs and talk with John while he painted the plasterboards he had placed between each beam. Richard repeated the stories about his father, with John glancing down from the ladder wearing a self-conscious smile. They both knew Aaron could hear him. Richard called Aaron egotistical and said that his taunting of Naomi had destroyed her self- confidence. John disagreed very mildly but Richard would insist. “You don’t know some of the stuff that would go on. Like when we were in the Hamptons and she was hitchhiking across the country. You know Naomi, she hadn’t shaved her legs and underarms, so when she came down to dinner after a shower he said, ‘You see. A shower and a shave and you’re fine.’ ”

  John nodded his head and went on painting. Richard enumerated the times Aaron had hit him, how Leo had screamed hysterically while he was doing so. Richard’s tirade shifted to his brother: how Leo had never confronted Aaron as he and Naomi had; that this had marked him for life as a compromising weakling, untrustworthy, and repellent. It was an uncontrollable vomiting that he recognized as foolish and wrong. Somewhere in the middle of his attacks on the family, he would realize that John was embarrassed and Richard would try to make it seem like a joke.