by Mort Castle
“Well,” Warren said, “you’ve got people who want to talk with you. I have to be on my way.” And then, once more, he held out his hand.
When he got to Milly’s Family Restaurant, Warren was shown to his usual corner booth. “How are you doing today, Professor?” the waitress asked. He said all right. She asked if he wanted coffee or something from the bar.
He ordered a Bloody Mary.
— | — | —
Two
In its typically facile style, the People magazine story related the problems and pressures of the author of a first novel that had zoomed onto the bestseller charts. In the accompanying pictures, one showing him aboard his newly purchased cabin cruiser, another relaxing in the Jacuzzi with his live-in lover, an aspiring actress and certified acupuncturist, he looked neither pressured nor problem plagued.
And why, Vicki Barringer wondered, did People never print articles on the authors of smash flops—authors like her husband.
At 32, Vicki Barringer, slightly built and fair, her short hair a curling halo framing her oval face, looked her age, neither more nor less, and it was an age that suited her. She’d felt awkward throughout most of her 20s and knew that people thought of her as pleasant-looking and wholesome in an era in which chic and trendy were the style of youth. In one of his drunken outpourings of sarcastic bile, Warren had told her, “You look like you stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting of a PTA meeting. You’re the second assistant hospitality hostess, holding a paper cup of lukewarm punch and scared shitless that no one will like the chocolate chip cookies you baked.” At that time she’d been so hurt that, though she rarely swore, one of the few welcome remnants from the strict religious upbringing she’d tried to reject, she yelled at Warren, calling him a “drunken asshole dumb bastard fart.” That made him shake his head. “Jesus, you even swear like Betty Crocker.”
Vicki had come to a time in her life and a state of mind that made her comfortable with her pleasant-looking and wholesome self. And, she’d recently reflected, she was perfect for Grove Corner, a town that Norman Rockwell could have used as the inspiration for a thousand Saturday Evening Post covers.
She dropped the magazine to the floor at the side of the brown suede chair. It was only 9:30, but she was tired, though not unpleasantly so. It had been a good day, her first on the job at Blossom Time, the florist shop. Afterward she’d raced home to be there when Missy got out of school. Now Vicki felt too logy to take the three steps to bed or even to reach up and turn out the lamp.
She leaned back her head and closed her eyes. Her quilted housecoat felt snuggly warm, a grownup’s security blanket, and soon she was floating in the dusky limbo between sleep and wakefulness. Centering her attention on the beat of her heart, Vicki was contentedly at rest. It was even better than the heaviness of sleep, this airy sensation of well-being.
She could barely hear the distant tapping of the typewriter as, downstairs in his study, Warren worked on the book. Good. She’d been concerned about him today. He’d come home from the university at 6:00, with absolutely nothing to say, and had been just as uncommunicative all through a dinner which he hardly touched. Past experience had taught her that his heavy silences were too often a prelude to heavier rages, furies fueled by hard drinking. After supper, he’d gone straight to the study and closed the door, locking himself and his silence away from her and Missy.
But in the past hour, Vicki had heard first the tentative clicks and then the rhythmic tapping of his typewriter. Warren was writing, and that meant everything was okay.
The drinking and the hateful, hurtful arguments that were not disagreements but emotional demolition derbies were all in the past. She could wave goodbye to the past and thumb her nose at it, too! This house was good for Warren, good for the three of them. The old house on Main Street, oldest still standing in Grove Corner, with its sun parlor and a living room as big as a used car lot and the magnificent oak and silver poplar trees all around was their home.
As for the past, all right, she had not been blameless. She had been foolish—not just foolish but stupid. All right, stupid and bad and wicked. Unfaithful. Sinful. No! That word, the heavy, hissing weight of it, the guilt that went beyond guilt, belonged to her childhood, to another time and place, another world. That was her parents’ world, but her parents were dead, and it was still her sister’s world, her sister Carol Grace who’d married evangelist Evan Kyle Dean, but her sister was a stranger.
Goodbye to the past.
The past was over and finished and done.
On the swirling purple screen of her eyelids, a red rose appeared. It was a memory, the first sale she’d made on this first day at work. “One red rose, please.” The customer was an old man with a plaid cap and, as he explained, the need for a peace offering. “The wife and I had a spat, and this should put me back in her good graces.”
In her relaxed state, it was easy for Vicki to think of the single rose as an omen of the future. The future was a bright flower, open and inviting. No more trouble with the problem. “All writers drink too much, especially if they’re stuck with someone as insensitive as you.” No more trouble, not this time at this school. “Bastards denied me tenure. They don’t want you around if your mind isn’t as fossilized as theirs!”
Mama?
Vicki thought that without realizing it she had crossed the borderline and slipped into slumber and dream. It was a dream voice she was hearing.
Mama!
Blinking, hands on the arms of the chair, she sat up, listening.
Mama? Missy hadn’t called her that since playpen and pacifier days. “Mom.” Once in a while “Mommy,” if Missy craved an extra dose of TLC or was trying to wheedle an extra half-hour until bedtime.
All Vicki heard was Warren’s typewriter. No, it couldn’t have been “Mama” from that big girl of seven who wasn’t afraid of anything as long as the nightlight shone and she had Winnie-the-Pooh.
So it was a dream then.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check.
Vicki went down the hall, her steps sure even without a light in the house she already felt to be truly their home. She opened the door to Missy’s room.
In the outlet above the baseboard, between Missy’s table and chair set and the walk-in closet, the plastic face of Mickey Mouse glowed a cheerful pink greeting.
When Vicki stepped over the threshold, she felt the cold.
It had been a warm day, not even hinting at the approach of autumn, and so Missy must have left a window open and now, with a sudden change in the weather, so often the case in the midwest…
Both windows were shut.
It didn’t make sense, this penetrating chill. Even if the temperature had drastically dropped, the house had new insulation, less than two years old, the real estate agent had told them, a real energy saver, part of the extensive renovation done by the previous owners. “They didn’t have kids, you see, and so they kind of treated the place like their baby.” They had central air conditioning, a new furnace, modernized plumbing, new wiring, dropped ceilings, paneled basement family room and no-wax kitchen floors.
But Missy’s bedroom was freezing, and, as usual, Missy had waged her nightly war with the covers. They lay in a heap at the side of the bed, Winnie-the-Pooh face down on top.
Vicki went to set things right.
“Mom?”
The stuffed bear fell from Vicki’s hand. Then she smiled as a giggling Missy popped up like a jack-in-the-box and swung around to dangle her bare legs off the bed. Missy hated pajamas and insisted on sleeping in her underwear. A thin child and pale—she never tanned—she seemed almost ethereal, as though with blonde hair cascading down her back, she had just slid down a moonbeam from a fairy tale land to the Earth.
Vicki said, “And why are you awake?”
“’Cause I’m not asleep.”
“Hmm, that makes sense.”
Vicki sat down beside her, slipping an arm around her narrow shoulders. “Aren’t you chilly, ho
ney?” Even as she said it, Vicki realized the room was not cold anymore. Then she thought she understood. She had been awakened from sleep by the call for “Mama” she thought she’d heard, and so it took awhile for your circulation to get going, for your internal thermostat to adjust.
“I’m not chilly,” Missy said. “I’m horny.”
The word jolted Vicki. Oh, it wasn’t as bad as the Ugly Awful “F” word that Missy, with her first grade reading skills, had learned from a public washroom wall a year ago, but it wasn’t anything Vicki wanted her daughter saying.
Quietly, Vicki asked, “Do you know what that means?”
“What? Horny?” Missy tapped herself on the forehead. “Like I have a horn or something, I guess.”
“Wrong.”
“I don’t know. This kid was yelling it in the playground today. He’s a big, fat slob. He’s in fourth grade.”
“I see.”
Missy said, “So what does horny mean, Mom?”
Every book Vicki had ever read on how to raise happy, normal, gifted, intelligent, sensitive, well-adjusted, non-homicidal-suicidal children offered virtually the same advice about these situations-tell the truth. Then in terms the child could understand, you explained that certain words were considered vulgar by many people and why they were not to be used.
Vicki, however, had her own way of dealing with this, one with which she was much more comfortable. “Never mind what it means. It’s a dirty word. Don’t use it.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“You never explain anything to me.”
“Check back with me in twenty years. I’ll explain then.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Okay, forty years.”
“Mom!” Missy squeaked in outrage.
Vicki said, “How about I tuck you in and you go on back to sleep?”
“Uh-uh,” Missy said. “I’m really a whole lot awake.” She tugged at Vicki’s sleeve. “Mom, you want to hear a joke?”
Vicki was used to a seven year old’s way of changing the subject. In a three-minute conversation, Missy was likely to cover a half a dozen subjects.
“Is it a good joke?”
“Awesome,” Missy said. “What’s green and throws rocks?”
“A green rock-thrower?”
“No. Give up?”
“Sure do.”
“A lawn. I lied about the rocks.”
“That’s some joke, all right,” Vicki said. “That’s a fine note of comedy for you to go to sleep on.”
“Hey, I learned a new song. Want to hear it?”
“They taught you a new song at school?”
“No. Not at school. Listen!”
Missy followed an elastically flexible melody set to no fixed rhythm. Her voice was as thin as she was but oddly plaintive.
The song of a lost child, Vicki found herself thinking, and wondered why she thought that.
There was a little bird
An itty-bitty bird,
And his name was Enza!
I opened up a window,
And in he flew!
In! Flew! Enza!
Vicki lightly applauded. “That’s some song, Missy. They don’t write them like that anymore.”
“Did you like it?”
“Sure did.”
“Want me to sing it again?”
“Sing it in your dreams,” Vicki said. “Time to take the trail to sleepy town.” She rose.
“Aw, Mom!” Missy whined. “I want to stay up!”
“I guess you are chilly after all,” Vicki said. “Your behind must be, anyway, because you’re acting like you want me to warm it for you.”
Missy sniffed indignantly. “I get it!” She stretched herself out on her back and lay as rigid as a plank.
In a moment, Vicki had both Missy and Pooh under the covers.
“You are very mean to me,” Missy said.
“I try. Kiss?”
Missy took a second to ponder the question of a kiss for a very mean mother. “I guess.”
Vicki kissed the child’s warm cheek. The brush of lips she received in return was perfunctory, but was followed a moment later by, “I love you anyhow.”
“I love you too, Missy,” Vicki said. “Sleep well.”
She stood watching her daughter as Missy, eyes closed, rolled on her side and curled up, and then she started toward the door. A gleam of light winked up from the floor, slipping just inside the peripheral boundary of her vision.
It lay on the carpet, Mickey Mouse’s nightlight nose pointing at it.
A rose, she thought, picking it up. The round glass paperweight rested on the flattened base of her palm.
She had never seen the paperweight before and wondered where Missy had gotten it. She couldn’t ask. The little girl who’d been “a whole lot awake” was already sound asleep. Perhaps this was a keepsake overlooked by the house’s previous owners when they were packing.
Whatever, Vicki Barringer did not like the paperweight. That was a feeling she had, not a thought. Sealed in the glass globe, the flower seemed a mockery of what was once alive, as insulting to life as a corpse too perfectly made up by a zealously artistic mortician.
She put the paperweight on Missy’s table. In the master bedroom, Vicki went back to People magazine but soon discovered she was reading words without comprehending.
Somehow her feeling of optimism, of the future’s glowing promise, was gone. Her mind was strangely burdened by ponderous thoughts of life and death.
And a rose.
— | — | —
Three
Look at it! He cranked page 68 out of the typewriter, the wrap-up of the dentist office scene, and read it aloud, in a low, flat voice, trying to keep his tone objective:
Mitchell’s eyes crossed as the needle
approached, and he braced himself for
the pain. But it wasn’t so bad, not so bad
that he couldn’t bear it.
And it came to him then in a moment of
drifting lucidity brought on by the oceanic
rushing of the nitrous oxide he’d been
inhaling that his entire life had been the
lengthy learning of pain acceptance, that
he could now withstand any pain, bear up
and get on, continue with a brute perseverance to live.
Yes, that was writing! That was solid. That was revelation and insight captured in words, and he, by God, he Warren Barringer, author, had written those words.
Not that it had been easy. Writing was never easy. It was racking your brain to find the right word, then struggling to find the right word to follow it, then hammering your mind still more to find the next right word—and the next and the next and the next.
Damn, he was writing well, better than he had ever written.
The house!
The thought came to him with stunning ice-blue clarity. Tense with concentration, he’d been hunched forward at the edge of his chair but now he slouched.
The house itself was helping him. It was the source of this new self-confidence, the feeling of inevitable achievement and accomplishment.
The house was right for him. Here he would become all he wanted to be, all he was meant to be. The house was imbued with a spirit that had summoned him here to his rightful place, as the sea had once beckoned Herman Melville.
Warren smiled to himself. He was being quite ridiculous and grandiose. A house was a house was a house.
Except the typewriter on his cluttered desk was not a typewriter; it was his typewriter. The green portable manual, an Underwood circa 1959, noisy as hell, was the typewriter he’d used to write the very first short stories, years ago, the machine which had produced his two novels, Fishing With Live Bait and The Endurance of Lynn Tomer. Certainly he could have afforded a new electronic typewriter or, the way prices were dropping every month, even a word processing computer, but he felt emotionally and spiritually linked to the Underwood
. Call it superstition, but Warren Barringer considered it gut-level intuition.
And he trusted his intuition because he was a writer!
A writer, by Christ!
A Civilized Man was going to be a masterpiece.
And if not? If the book goes nowhere, if things go bad, if things go so bad, if life goes bad, there’s the downturn, the down spiral, the down and down and going down, because, it can happen, amigo, it can happen, Jack, one day sailing along smooth, and then, Titanic…
Warren Barringer was prepared for the future.
He pushed back the chair and opened the right hand desk drawer.
He didn’t take out the gun, a loaded .25 caliber automatic. He just wanted to make sure it was there.
The gun was his secret, unregistered, bought from a lowlife he’d met in a lowlife bar during one of his lowlife bad spells. If he were forced to, if choice no longer existed for him, then he had the gun to put a final exclamation point to an intolerable life.
But hell, he had no reason to think this way, not now, not when A Civilized Man was shaping up so beautifully.
Warren slammed the drawer.
He checked his watch and was surprised to see that it was 11:45. When the writing was going well, he lost all track of time. He’d done enough for tonight. It was wrong to push it.
It was time for a drink. He’d earned a reward.
Drink number three, the nightcapper, so he could shut his eyes without his eyelids vibrating like the head of a snare drum. Only drink number three tonight, never more than drink number three in a day—Uh, what about that noontime Bloody Mary? That was different. There was a reason, so it didn’t count, all right? He was okay. He was doing fine. He had control.
He shut off the lights in his study and went down to the basement rec room. At the bar, he poured a shot of Johnny Walker Black into a highball glass. He plopped in two ice cubes from the freezer of the half-sized refrigerator under the counter.
He was about to add water but, three drinks a night, no harm in making the last one potent enough to not only take off the rough edge but to sand it down fine. Another full shot of Johnny Walker, then a splash of water, and he had a drink worth drinking.