Yes, ma’am. I’ll say, very sombre, he surely did. And I’ll shake my head and say in my cleaning-lady-what-should-have-had-a- better-life voice: Where now the snows of yesteryear?
“Oh Mosie,” she’ll say, getting weepy, and she’ll take out the crystal glasses and pour us a little nip each.
But on this occasion, the occasion of the TV newsflash about old Zeb at West 112th and Amsterdam, it don’t work when I drag out the old yesteryear snows. She just stare at me like I’m some total stranger that’s taken liberties on the subway. Pinched her or tickled her, or something. It’s a really weird look she give me. And she’s walking up and down, up and down, with her hands over her eyes. “Oh Mosie,” she says. “It’s not … not commensurate.’’
What’s that in plain English, ma’am? I ask her.
But she’s too busy doing her jittery-skittery marathon to answer.
Well, I say, if you ask me, anyone making a fuss about what goes on at Hallowe’en, just asking for trouble.
I’m not saying I approve of all that falderal, don’t get me wrong. Hallowe’en is no joke, leastways not right here in the middle of the world, north of 110th and west of Amsterdam. It’s not kids’ play, it’s downright dangerous. But that’s the way it is. If you got any sense you stay inside, you turn a blind eye. I never did understand these people got to try to interfere with the way things is. Just asking for trouble, which is what they get.
Old Zebediah, now. I’ve known for years he’s had it coming. Nice old man, but not too smart upstairs. I guess he was bom into that newspaper shop on the corner of West 112th and Amsterdam. My Mrs C. Talbot, and Mrs W.W. Emberson upstairs, and all my Columbia biddies, they get the Times there, and that’s where I get my cigarettes and my Enquirer. Why you read that trash? old Zeb ask me. Mr Zebediah, sir, I say, I can take my truth straight, I don’t need it prettied up like in the Times. Well, Mosie, he laugh, an original is what you are.
My boys warn me Zeb has it coming. Ma, they tell me, you like that old Yid? You better slip him some advice. He’s not co-operating.
But somehow, even though he never co-operates, over the years they let him be. He’s stubborn, but there’s something about him. I think my boys like him, to tell you the truth, so you can see there is something about him. Just the same, they use to shake their heads. You should warn him to wise up, they say to me.
So I know, sooner or later, he has it coming. I’m prepared, in a manner of speaking. Just the same, the way it come, even I am shook up. Shook up pretty bad. I’m glad I don’t have to clean up after.
People like Mrs C. Talbot now, or old Zebediah himself, they’re innocents. They don’t understand the way the world works, which is what education does to you in my opinion. And I seen education at close quarters all my life, up here at Columbia, and I can say this from experience. Education all very well in its place. Education give you more money, get you up and out of the basement apartment, as long as you got no crisis on your hands. But come a crisis, come hard times, and give me lack of education every time. Give me my boys, give me my know-how on the way the world works, that’s the safest way to live.
Well, Hallowe’en. I guess I’ve seen everything at Hallowe’en. Round here it’s not exactly a time for kids. I open my door one time, there’s little R2-D2 and C3PO on my doorstep, and behind them their daddy, Darth Vader, and their mommy Princess Leia. I am just putting bubblegum in their little plastic pumpkins when Darth Vader pulls a gun. Trick or treat. Princess Leia say; where you hide your cash? Well, Princess Leia, I says, it’s like this, my boy Charlie and my boy Jake, they usually look after it for me. Shit, Darth Vader say, you Charlie and Jake’s ma? Shit, we never knew that.
I never seen anyone leave so fast.
Trick or treat! I called after. I never laughed so hard in my life.
Well Hallowe’en, anything goes, but mostly it’s just local boys having fun, dressed up like pirates or cats or fairies-in-drag, breaking a window here and there, slashing a few tires, nothing serious. No one in their right mind pays attention, no one has any sense is going to make a fuss.
But Zeb, now, he was the kind chock-full of certain information, the no use kind, but didn’t know nothing about nothing when it counted. So on Hallowe’en, someone plasters his shop with eggs. I mean plasters. (I’m glad I don’t have to clean up.) Gobs of yolk like tiger-snot on his windows, puddles of yellow on the newspapers, leaking into some politician’s mouth and God knows where else. Well sure, a pain in the ass, but not something anyone who knows anything would make a fuss about.
Zeb now, he saw who did it. Three gorillas, but of course he knows who they are. Well, they aren’t trying to hide, they aren’t wearing masks for disguise, they aren’t cowards for god’s sake, what’s some fun at Hallowe’en? Hi Zeb, they call, trick or treat? He knows their voices.
And what does he do? He calls the police. I know it’s hard to believe. Even my boy Charlie can hardly believe it. That Yid, he says, shaking his head. If they gave out gold medals for dumb stunts …!
That is Zeb’s first mistake. And the second is picking a time when Eddie Cottle is on parole. If you got it in for a kid, if you determined to get him into trouble, you don’t pick when he’s already on parole. You just don’t do it. It’s not decent. And on top of that, you don’t push a kid like Eddie Cottle too close to the brink. He’s excitable. Eddie need Hallowe’en, his ma say to me. He gets edgy when he’s on parole. You’d think they’d give the kid a break.
Ma Cottle’s right. A few high jinks, what’s the harm? The boys have to let off steam, which is what I’ve tried to explain to Mrs C. Talbot about Emberson Jr upstairs. But that’s the thing about people like Zeb and Mrs C. Talbot. They don’t have give. It’s not their fault. Their minds are so full of education, there’s no room for give.
Well, Eddie Cottle’s not so great on give either, he always overdid things, he’s excitable. An egg for an egg, so to say. That’s what I thought of when I see old Zeb’s skull dribbling brain-yolk all over the sidewalk. It always did make me feel sick, raw egg. Jesus, I say to my boys on the phone, there’s some places I draw the line. Don’t worry, Ma, my boys say, we don’t care for it no more’n you do, who needs that kind of publicity, that Eddie’s way out of line, we’re straightening him out.
I should hope so, I say. And that’s what I say to Mrs C. Talbot to cheer her up. Don’t work yourself up, I say. There’s some kids get out of line at Hallowe’en, but there’s others that straighten them out. Just the same, I say, old Zeb, he should’ve had more sense. Making a fuss over next to nothing.
She puts her hands up to her cheeks like she’s trying to stop something from breaking. Well, I think about saying – just to jolly her up a bit – I don’t come from Mars, you know. I’m just the lady irons your petticoats.
“Over nothing,” she whispers. “Oh Mosie. Over nothing!” And she’s shaking again like that leaf in Momingside Park. And that’s when I suddenly realise what really putting ants in her pants.
Mrs C. Talbot, ma’am, I say. Don’t work yourself into a flap. That boy just ain’t the type. He’s a sad case, he’s a nasty piece of work, but he ain’t that type.
W.W. Emberson Jr blow someone away? My boys got a kick out of that one. Babyface Emberson? they laugh. You’re killing us, Ma! My boys grew up with that kid. In a manner of speaking, that is. I’m not going to try to tell you old W.W. send his son to P.S. 187. But when W.W. Jr weren’t at his ritzy East Side ack-ack-adda-me (that’s what my boys call it) or away at his fancy-pantsy summer camp, he hung around a local joint or two. That weirdo, my boys always say; that babyface got the mind of a fox and the courage of a broken-backed worm.
You be careful how you treat that boy, their father (my late Willy) used to tell them. His daddy’s a vip professor. His daddy’s wrote books on Shakespeare. One day W.W. Jr have a say in your jobs around here, you mind your p’s and q’s.
Do
n’t need no W.W. Jr or no Shakespeare either to take care of me, says Charlie. He’s mean and he’s got no guts, that babyface, Jake says. A dangerous combination.
You think maybe Mrs C Talbot is right? I ask my boys. You think he’s mean and dangerous enough?
Don’t make us laugh, Ma, my boys say. He even yellower than he mean.
She mighty scared, I say, since she went up and complained. He gives her this look on the stairs. He just shovelling his music down through her ceiling louder than ever, at busting-your-ear-drums decibels. He lean on her doorbell every time he pass, just lean on it, on and on, and she shakes like a leaf.
Yeah, my boys say. That’s his style. He’ll probably work up to delivering grocery bags full of shit.
He already done that, I tell them. And guess who has to clean up?
What we tell you? they say. That’s his style. But he don’t blow people away, give us a break. That … that …
Ain’t often my boys stuck for a word, but W.W. Jr do that to people. Did it to his own father.
“Mosie,” he says to me one time, back before he died, maybe ten, fifteen years ago, “do you ever lose sleep over your boys?”
Yes sir, I says. I was bringing him lunch in his study, which can do with cleaning and tidying up, but will he let me lay a finger on anything ever? (Don’t talk to me about professors’ studies. There’s pigs live neater.) Yes, sir, I says. I sure do.
“There’s no predicting, is there?” he says. “No accounting for it. You think the family, the background, the best schools … but when it comes down to it, there’s no predicting. You know, I took him to his first Hamlet when he was six years old. And The Tempest when he was seven. You know what he said when I asked him who his favourite character was?”
No sir, I say.
“Caliban,” he says. He puts his head in his hands. “Caliban, dear God. And what is he becoming, Mosie? He’s turning into a … into a … It’s not to be understood. He’s had the best education that money can buy, but ten years from now, I wonder if there’ll be anything to choose between your sons and mine?”
Well! I got some strong feelings about insults like that. I don’t like to hear my boys mentioned in the same breath as that mean-minded lily-livered kid. But I don’t say anything. That’s what lack of education gives you – the know-how to say nothing at the right time. What I say is this: I don’t know about no Callyban, Professor Emberson, sir, but boys will be boys. They keep you awake nights, but they mostly turn out all right in the end. That fooling around your boy does, it’s harmless. Don’t get yourself so worked up.
“Bless you, Mosie,” he says. “I hope you’re right.”
And to tell you the truth, though I never did care for W.W. Jr, I do think he’s harmless. And that’s what I tell Mrs C Talbot. I do think he’s nothing to make a fuss over. What do you mean, you think you’ll go mad? I says to her. What are you talking about? I’m polishing her silver and she’s got her head down on her book, the Emily Dickinson one (she must have read it a thousand times), she’s beating her forehead against the book. “I think I shall go mad,” she says. “Sometimes, Mosie, I feel so strongly about him, I feel so angry, I actually believe I could do him harm.”
What you talking about? I ask.
“The noise,” she says. “It’s driving me mad. It inhabits me.”
Oh, I says, they doing road work on Amsterdam, another day or so, that’s all.
“No, no,” she says. “Not that. That’s nothing, that’s background sound. I mean the music.”
Music? What music? I ask her. I mean, there’s a lot of competition round these parts. To hear any one sound in particular you got to concentrate real hard. I concentrate, and then I hear that W.W. Jr making very free with his stereo, his mother’s stereo if we going to be exact about this. Very good speakers too, quadraphonic, bought at super-duper discount from my boys who can lay their hands every time on the best of equipment. The taste of W.W. Jr run to heavy metal rock, which is not the taste of Mrs C. Talbot, no sir, no more’n of W.W. Jr’s ma, but Mrs W.W. away down in the Florida sun at this moment.
That music is bothering you, ma’am? I says to Mrs C. Talbot.
“Bothering me, Mosie! It’s like living in a courtyard of hell, there’s no escape. I am really beginning to be afraid I shall either go mad, or do something violent.”
I can see she mean it. People like Mrs C. Talbot, they’re not very adaptable. You and me, are we going to make a fuss over someone’s stereo? But Mrs C. Talbot and Zeb, people like that, they can work themselves up into a state over the most amazing little things. They can’t help themselves. They got no sense at all when to leave well enough alone. I could’ve told Mrs C. Talbot – I did tell her, but you think she listens to me when she’s in a state like that? – that it weren’t a good idea to go up and ask W.W. Jr to turn his equipment down, no more’n it make sense to call the police because a couple of kids play a Hallowe’en trick with eggs. I told her: Spare yourself the agony. Because you wouldn’t believe the state she got in just to walk upstairs and knock on his door and ask her silly question in her silly nervous-polite voice – which just exactly the kind of voice going to make W.W. Jr dig his heels in. I told her all that. Just wait a few months, I told her, till his mother’s back from Florida.
See, W.W. Jr house-sit for his ma, but come spring Mrs W.W. shut up her condo in Florida and return to the city, and W.W. Jr go back to his live-in pad at that ritzy-schnitzy country club where he teach golf and tennis to rich housewives who also lonely. Stud-in-residence is what my boys call him. They bartend at the club, what they call their up-front business, they seen a thing or two. But their father was right about one thing, W.W. Jr did have a say in those jobs which he line up for my boys in return for certain concessions.
So anyway, wait for the spring, I say to Mrs C. Talbot, when W.W. Jr. move out again.
“The spring!” she says, like it was a life sentence instead of a few months away.
People like Mrs C. Talbot and old Zeb, they don’t have give. They get a little strange, they get wild. They get like that Bernie Goetz fellow on the subway, I seen it happen before. You notice it’s always people with education? So when she asks me, after she sees the remains of old Zeb on the evening news, when she asks for a gun, I think to myself: Here’s another one gone round the bend.
“For protection,” she says. But I know. I see the way she shakes when W.W. Jr come up the stairs, I see her with her eye to the keyhole. “I shouldn’t have gone upstairs,” she says. “I shouldn’t have asked him to turn down the volume.” Well, I says, I did warn you. People shouldn’t make a fuss over nothing. But just the same, that babyface ain’t the type, my boys agree.
“I need a gun,” she says. “I don’t feel safe.”
So I watch her watching him through the keyhole and then I know. Here’s another one, I think. And guess who’ll have to clean up? My boys are making a book on it, but I don’t think it’s proper to make money out of something like that. I’m not placing my bet, I tell them. There’s some things, I draw the line. Still, if I didn’t have any conscience, I could tell them: three to one says she’ll let him walk right on past her door up the stairs, and after that I’ll hear the shot. A total waste, I could tell her. You not going to make a W.W. Jr lose any sleep because an old friend of his ma does an inside-out Bernie Goetz. But what good would it do? You think she’d listen to me?
“Where now the horse and his rider?” she’d say. That’s all the sense I’d get out of her. “Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,” she’d say. Something like that.
I guess I’ve heard just about everything.
So goon then, is what I say. Goon on your pilgrimage. I wash my hands. Nobody listens to me.
And guess who going to have to clean up?
Port after Port, the Same Baggage
One wouldn’t have expected daughters in full free fli
ght to be so reactionary, Doris Mortimer thought. Yet there it was. The world was riddled with a lack of probity, double standards thick as dandelions in even the best-weeded lives.
But Mother, her daughters said, you know nothing about the predatory habits of men. And travelling alone, well, it’s like an advertisement. You’ll be fair game.
Doris knew that they meant: You need a man to go with you, to protect you from other men; you can’t manage alone. But of course they couldn’t come right out and say this, since it flew in the face of all their principles. She had to smile at their malaise.
You’ve led such a sheltered life, they said. You’re so innocent and trusting.
Which is why you should stand up and cheer, Doris countered. Better, surely, to bloom so unseasonably late than never at all.
But both of her daughters were against the scheme from the start. They thought of it as a sudden madness brought on by the recent death of their father. Via elaborate desk phones, they conferred on her over-reaction. The views of colleagues in Legal Aid office and university department alike were passed on to Doris. There was unanimous disapproval of her plan. All the ex-husbands, with whom the two daughters were on the most cordial of terms, were brought in to concur.
To no avail.
Doris was quietly stubborn.
But a cargo boat! they said. It’s perverse. At least, her daughters pleaded, she should go by – she had earned – a luxury liner. If only, they cajoled, she would take along her teenage grandchildren, who would –
“No,” Doris said.
Doris was fond of her grandchildren. Nevertheless it was her observation that few segments of society were as morally rigid as adolescents. And the first of their engraved absolutes was this: The elderly shall be above reproach.
Janette Turner Hospital Collected Stories Page 15