What’s Happening?

by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

  “What?”

  Marc had been conscious only of the road ahead; his concentration was instantly reabsorbed by the road.

  “I said I like to listen to music while we’re driving.”

  “Will you stop bugging me, for Christ’s sake!” He didn’t turn from the road. “I have to drive and I can’t concentrate and listen to you.”

  Rita recoiled instantly.

  “… and shut the God damn thing off.” Marc snapped the radio off. “How the hell can I drive with this sun, and you, and the radio?”

  Rita brooded silently, peering through the side window at the houses which lined the highway, foliage entwined about their steps, bathed in the evening sun. She gazed absently at the other cars alongside of which they drove, passing each in turn.

  “Wow … this sun is blinding,” Marc said abstractly, pulling the sun visor down.

  Rita remained silent. Though well initiated to Marc’s inexplicable outbursts of temper and anger, she was not impervious to their sting. She spoke not another word until they reached New York—which to New Yorkers is Manhattan.

  The city was hot and close with humidity even though the sun was setting behind the buildings. Rita and Marc began to perspire, their clothes beginning to cling uncomfortably. Marc pulled alongside a parked car and backed into a parking space.

  “Wheww … I’m sure glad to be home. I’m tired,” he exclaimed, turning off the ignition. “I wish the hell we were still at that cool beach.”

  Rita ignored him, hastily gathering her belongings from the back seat. She opened the car door and started angrily toward the apartment.

  Marc remained in the car for a moment, watching her stride toward the building. He knew from her rapid, determined walk that she was still angry. Her face was set and she was probably cursing him.

  “Hey, wait for me,” he called, jumping from the car.

  Rita continued into the building, ignoring him completely.

  Marc locked the car, ran to the building, and started up the stairs. He heard a door slam shut on a landing above as he ran up the steps. She is a fiery one, he thought, laughing to himself.

  “What the hell are you so mad about?” he asked innocently as he closed the apartment door behind him.

  Rita walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. She began changing out of her swimsuit, which she had worn home under a sweater and jeans. She reopened the door and came out of the bedroom clad in her bathrobe. Without looking at Marc, she marched straight toward the bathroom.

  Marc put down the glass of beer he had poured for himself. “Hey, come on now.” He sprang from his chair and caught Rita by the arm as she stormed past him. “Come on, don’t be so angry. I didn’t mean to be curt with you. It was the sun and all.”

  “That’s no excuse to talk to me the way you did,” she said, refusing to look at him, trying to loose his grip.

  “Aww, come on now … I’m sorry.”

  “That’s just the trouble, you’re always sorry. And the next time you’ll do it again. I’m tired of being spoken to like I were your little servant girl.”

  “I didn’t talk to you like you were my servant girl, baby. The sun …”

  “The sun, the sun … I suppose the sun made you talk like that, hanh?” She tugged desperately, trying to pry Marc’s hands from her wrists.

  “Can’t you forget it?”

  “No, no, I can’t forget it. You’ve been taking me for granted for weeks now and I’m tired of it. You don’t own me.” She succeeded in loosing Marc’s grip. She bolted into the bathroom and slammed the door.

  “God damn it! I said I’m sorry,” Marc shouted to the closed door.

  The water of the shower started to spray down against the plastic curtains. Marc twirled about angrily and walked to the kitchen table.

  “God damn women …” He emptied the beer can into his glass. He cocked his arm to crash the empty can against the wall. As he brought his arm forward, he lessened the power driving it forward and dejectedly let his arm flap at his side without releasing the can. He glanced momentarily toward the garbage pail and lobbed the can at it. It hit the lip of the pail and rebounded to the floor.

  “Can’t even throw the God damned garbage away right.” He lit a cigarette, took his glass of beer, and walked to the window overlooking the street. He rested his head against the window frame.

  Below, someone had opened the fire hydrant. A powerful stream of water was gushing across the street. Neighborhood children danced in its cooling spray. One child ran through the spray with his dog in his arms. Smaller children in white cotton underclothes were gleefully running down the steps of the tenements across the street. When their underclothing was soaked, it clung to the pink skin of their buttocks. They were all happy and dancing in the water. One kid in the spray was fully clothed, and his clothes were soaked and flapping about his body as he danced. Older folks fanning themselves in apartment windows watched the cavorting children, probably wishing they could jump in too. One old woman, heavy and squat, had taken off her shoes and was dancing by the curb across the street from the hydrant, as the water skimmed there and then flowed toward the sewers. Her husband, in a strap undershirt, a cigar stub in his mouth, was laughing and clapping his hands. On the roof across the street from Marc’s apartment some older boys and girls in bathing suits were leaning over the edge of the roof, watching the younger children in the spray below.

  An old lady sat at one of the windows of her apartment in the same building where the kids were leaning over the roof. She fanned herself with a folded newspaper with one hand, covering her mouth with her other hand. Marc wondered why the old woman covered her mouth with her hand—perhaps to hide the spaces from which her teeth had fallen.

  A car eased through the stream of water, the children screaming delight as the water pounded its metal side.

  Marc pushed away from the window frame and sat in the overstuffed arm chair which faced the window. He gazed up at the dusk-streaked sky and sighed, shaking his head. He sipped his beer, leaned his head against the back of the chair and smoked his cigarette.

  They’re all alike, he thought to himself. God damn women. God damn women. Can’t even ask them to let you drive the car, they start crying and bitching. “God damn it …” he shouted through gritted teeth, twisting to stare at the closed bathroom door. “Wait till she comes out,” he said under his breath.

  His eyes scanned the apartment. It was a pleasant apartment in which they lived, he thought, his anger easing. The three rooms had been his alone before Rita moved in. The place wasn’t elaborately furnished, but it was all that he could afford in the beginning, and in the beginning furniture and space do not matter—not at first, when all one wants is privacy. It had been enough for the two of them too—in the beginning anyway. But as reason through prolonged association supplanted passion, Marc began to see shortcomings, to realize the need for more than a communion of physical existence. Perhaps some paint? It was still his apartment, he thought angrily, and it was the way he wanted it; he refused to be pressured into a corner.

  Marc had never before thought of the toll of living together, but he was at least mindful of it now. It was a nice enough apartment, he assured himself. It was convenient for him to get to school during the school year. It was a long haul, however, from his east-seventies tenement to the Village. That was why Rita had quit working. She still attended acting classes, although lately she had been attending less and less. She no longer had the time; she was now more concerned with the task of keeping a pleasant home for Marc and herself. Living together was great, Marc thought, except for times like this. He couldn’t stand a woman’s caprices. In the last weeks, they had been getting along real well, he admitted—just every once in a while they’d have a little conflict.

  I didn’t have to yell at her like that. I didn’t mean to.

  The bathroom door opened and Rita came out in her robe, a towel draped into a turban about her head. Contrary to what Marc had expe
cted, she walked toward his chair and sat on the edge of the chair, slipping her arm behind his head.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” she said, kissing his temple. “I guess I was just a little hot and bothered before. The shower cooled me off.”

  “That’s all right. I didn’t mean it, you know? I know you didn’t either.”

  “Okay, … let’s forget it. We said we were sorry. I love you.” She leaned forward and kissed him. Marc slid his arms about her waist and held her tightly against himself. They parted and he rested his head against hers.

  Dusk was now enveloping the city and the room was deep grey and dark with shadows. Rita absently stroked Marc’s head.

  “It’s kind of funny,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, the way I’ve changed since we’ve been living together.”

  “Me too. I’m a lot different than I was. Don’t know how to explain it … but I can tell.”

  “I can’t say either, but I know it’s different,” she explained. “Maybe it’s that I understand.”

  “Us?”

  “Us … and me—lots of things. Things about love and people. Things I never stopped to think about before.”

  “Yeah, I know. I guess when you’re bouncing around like a Yo-yo without a string you don’t give much time to thinking about other people, and how maybe they’re unhappy or lonely or sick, too. I never gave two damns about anybody. If they bugged me, carried on the way I didn’t like, I put them down, but quick. But you, with all your crazy tantrums and all, you drive me nuts … but, somehow, I don’t mind it so much.” He smiled a bit.

  “Yeah, that’s something like it. I would never have taken the things I take from you from a guy before. But now it doesn’t matter. You know, what’s the difference if you get a mad on once in a while—I know you don’t mean it. I love you and you love me, and we need each other. Without you it’d be like living on the moon. I know you don’t get angry because you … well, I don’t know. You just get mad sometimes—so do I—then it goes away, and everything is all right again. I guess that’s the difference. I understand, like life is real, life is earnest. I guess love is really just an outweighing of human faults and hard times and old bitch Mother Nature by warmth and companionship. You know, you learn to accept the fact that everybody is a bit different, imperfect. We’re getting to understand the things we don’t like, aren’t we?” she asked softly, smiling.

  “Yeah. I feel that way too. Sometimes you think I’m putting you down and you get angry at me. And then I get a little angry ’cause I’m not really putting you down. But I understand you more now, and I don’t mind so much.”

  “I’m getting better though,” she suggested.

  “Me too, I hope. I’m tired of being inside my doubting skull counter-punching myself. I want to relax. I’m glad we’re together. It’s good for us, for me.”

  Rita continued to stroke Marc’s head.

  “Do you think we’ll get married?” she asked absently.

  “I don’t know.” Marc shrugged. “Maybe … who knows?”

  They remained where they were, Marc sitting in the chair, resting his head against Rita, Rita sitting on the arm of the chair stroking his head—the golden, purplish, reddish, harbingers of night rose high in the sky, pulling the veils of evening after them.

  20

  The finger holes spun in a blur over the letters and numbers on the phone dial as Rita’s finger selected the desired combination. She sank back in the overstuffed chair, gazing through the window at thin strips of cold, fall rain winding out of the sky. Small clumps of transparent light-grey clouds, outlined against the dark grey of great rain clouds, floated on the wind, their fragile bodies torn out of shape, dispersed into vague nothingness. The room was overcast by gloom; no lights were lit. Rita sat half in shadow, her legs and hips obscured by dismal grey, the upper part of her body encased in ebon shadow.

  In the earpiece, she could hear the steady bleating as the phone rang. She inhaled from her cigarette. The tip blazed orange, casting a pale light on her mouth and cheeks, then faded to a slight reddish glow. Rita spit out the smoke as the phone on the other end was lifted.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Mother … Rita. How’re you?”

  “Rita?” Mother exclaimed with surprise. “How’re you?” She emphasized the “you” that had been lost so long.

  “Okay. How’s Dad and Randy?”

  Rita was being sincere when she asked about her family. She could now call and be sincere because through her life and love with Marc she was more securely a person, she was no longer plagued by the insecurity of being alone and unloved, and she could understand her parents’ anxiety and insecurity because she now knew that they too were only human, plagued with human imperfections, fears, needs, anxieties, just as she and Marc were. Before—before Marc—she had never been so understanding as to consider that her parents might be doing what they were doing because they believed in their own way of life, because they had to be themselves, because they too were insecure in their relation to the world. She had not considered the fact that people differ in taste and intellect as much as they differ in appearance. Even if Rita had realized before, she would never have been forgiving. Why should she have been the one to accept rather than they? Why should she have forgiven them? Now she understood, and in understanding, she felt she must be the one to go forward with outspread arms. If she disagreed with them, she thought, she should try to indicate her disagreement gently rather than condemn them. How irrational the behavior of months past now seemed. It was wonderful to be with Marc, she thought, wonderful to be awakened to the world finally, after years and years of unending sleep.

  “Fine, fine, everybody’s just fine,” Mother assured her. “But we haven’t heard from you in so long. We were starting to worry. Poppa was going to call, but I told him, ‘She’s all right. If something is wrong, we’ll hear,’ I told him. So how are the girls, all right?”

  “Oh fine, we’re all fine too.”

  “That’s good. What are you doing these days?”

  Rita was disappointed that Mother’s voice was the same. Somehow she had hoped it might have changed. She envisioned Mother at home, now by the kitchen phone, trying to dig into Rita’s life, trying to tactfully interrogate her, to see if she was still a disgrace.

  “Working a little … going to school … the same things,” she lied.

  “You’re still going to that school, hanh?” Mother asked, a deep-seated disapproval ringing in her voice.

  Rita drew in her breath. “Yes, … I’m still going to school.”

  A profound silence befell the conversation.

  Why does knowledge impose understanding which ignorance and laziness can shirk? Must I be the appeaser, Rita wondered, the offerer, the one who must go to them, to offer gift tokens? Have these adults no obligation to me? Am I not a person?

  “What else is new in the neighborhood?” asked Rita, making conversation.

  “Nothing much. You know Mrs. Shoren’s daughter, Betty? You should see the lovely engagement ring she got—five carats—and such a nice boy too, so respectful, and nice. It’s such a pleasure for a mother to see her daughter so well provided. Ahh …” Mother sighed soulfully.

  “Yes, really nice,” agreed Rita, leaping agilely to the side of the thrust as it tried desperately, albeit lovingly, to tear into her flesh. Rita tried to justify Mother’s obtuseness. Mother had been brought up in a different world; the rules that her grandparents had drummed into their children—rules inflexibly tied to the horsecart and Jewish persecution, were out of tune today. It is impossible to retain specific rules forever, because the old rules were made to cope with old problems, and now there are new problems, different problems, and the need for new rules. The world is bigger, and wider, and faster, and there are more things to do and enjoy, and more freedom, and more problems, … and though it’s nice to have respect, it should help, not impede life as it exists. People must respect thems
elves first, before they can respect things that once were. Rita wondered what the ancients were like—the ones who made up the ancient rules. Were they so much more self-sufficient as to have been able to think for themselves? Why were people who were now alive so incapable of making rules, if not for themselves at least for posterity? Was it the age of automation and mass production which did not require thought, which reduced people to digits and cogs in a vast machinery? Or was it that the rules of life were always created haphazardly, by inaction and whim, evolving by themselves from the depths of indecision.

  “You know,” continued Mother “… your brother, Randy, he’s getting so big now. He’s going out on dates with a girl from school. What a big boy! He even wants to take Poppa’s car, but I won’t let him. He might hurt himself.”

  “I think he’s a little young to be driving a car.”

  “Aww, he’s only a boy. But he’s getting big already,” Mother crowed proudly.

  Life is not breathing or eating, Rita thought. Life is change. And a thing that does not change is dead.

  “So how come you called? I mean, you don’t usually.”

  “I thought it might be nice if I said hello to my family.”

  “Oh, really? You mean, you’re just waking up?” Mother was sarcastic in the way only ignorance can be sarcastic—like a dull hammer.

  Rita held her breath, holding in her annoyance.

  “Yes, I guess so,” Rita replied resignedly. “Everyone has to wake up once in a while—don’t they?”

  “Why don’t you come over for dinner. We haven’t seen you in months, you know?”

  Rita wasn’t prepared for another visit yet. She just couldn’t bear being trapped again.

  “Yes, I know. Maybe I’ll come over soon and have dinner one night. That is, if there’s no plate throwing or any other nonsense.”

  “You know Poppa don’t mean that. He’s just tired from working and he gets upset right away. He don’t mean nothin’ …”

  Understanding is wonderful, Rita thought, but it’s difficult too. Difficult to accept and forgive misunderstanding and the ignorance of those understood.