Jernigan, page 26
When I came back in, Judith’s face looked softer. “My thing broke,” she said. I thought she was talking about the string of African trade beads her brother Rick had given her as consolation for feeling fat and hideous. “Can we go?” she said. “We better go, I think. Am I going to need a jacket?”
“A jacket?” I said, not as nicely as I might have. “It’s ninety degrees out there.” I suppose I was terrified. Though I was also just being a prick because now I wouldn’t even get to sit for a second in front of the God damn fan.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You find out you just don’t know anything.”
The rest I remember only in patches. The point is, we got to St. Vincent’s okay and our son, Daniel, was born at about eleven-thirty that night. In the waiting room—that was how long ago this was—I tried to concentrate on making sense of “The Comedian as the Letter C,” figuring I might as well use the time intelligently. That was how young I was. I kept staring at this one line—“The ruses that were shattered by the large”—and wondering how personally I should take it.
They brought me in when it was all over and Judith was lying exhausted and at peace. Stoned, the nurse told me later, on Demerol and whatever else. The baby bundled at her side.
“Oh Peter,” she said. “Isn’t it amazing? But I really really thought I was going to die.”
I sat down on the tight sheets and put a hand over her hand.
“They told me you had a tough time of it,” I said.
“You have no conception,” she said. “Little joke.”
“I love your little jokes,” I said, relieved that she was still Judith.
“You better, pal,” she said. “You’re stuck with this one for life. You want to hold him?”
“Can I?”
“Can you?” she said, and laughed. “He’s yours, Peter. Sure you know how?”
“You just be careful, right? Support the head and everything?”
“You’ll figure it out,” she said. “God, listen to me. I sound like the Voice of Motherhood. I don’t know anything either, you know?”
I picked up my son and looked, for the first time, into his tiny face. I recognized neither Judith nor myself: just generic human. Branching blue veins under the red, delicate skin. He was sleeping, lips parted. Tiny tiny lips.
“Cat got your tongue?” Judith said. I don’t know how long I’d been staring.
“Yeah,” I said. “We just have to be so careful with this little guy.” Already I thought I could see my eyebrows and her upper lip, with its wide philtrum. And then something else, which wasn’t either of us: first intimation of Danny, himself.
“You’re going to be one of the all-time great fathers,” she said. “You can teach him all about baseball and Chekhov.”
“Enemy wessel approaching, sir,” I said. She laughed. “Oops,” I said. “Guess you meant the Cherry Orchard one.”
“All of the above,” she said. “He has to have everything in the world.” She was talking very drifty.
“You want to go back to sleep, babe? I’ll hold him for a while and then give him back to the nurse if you want.”
She shook her head, but slowly, and with her eyes already closed. “Don’t want to miss any of it,” she whispered. Then her eyes flew open. “Peter don’t let them put him in the wrong thing. You know people end up getting different babies.”
I was confused for a second about why that would be so terrible at a stage when our baby was so undifferentiated from all others. Then I remembered that wasn’t the way it worked.
“Easy,” I said. Carefully I leaned over, still holding the baby, and kissed Judith a soft kiss on the cheekbone below her staring eye. When I opened my eyes after the kiss, her eyes were closed. “You sleep tight,” I said. “I’ll take care of him.”
And I did, in however half-assed a way.
Until now.
4
I sat at the kitchen table, still in my coat, and listened to Danny trudging back upstairs. I refreshed myself (little joke) with a good big burning suck on the gin bottle and, when my eyes stopped watering, another one. And now heigh-ho for some coffee. Need that coffee, boy, if you’re seriously shooting for New Hampshire tonight. So I got up and ran some hot water, dumped I don’t know how much instant coffee into a glass, filled the glass with water and stirred the mess with a spoon until the lumps went away, leaving a dingy foam on top. Then I quaffed the son of a bitch like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And sat down again to wait and see if I could feel it take hold. Drank a little more gin while I was waiting. Now what the hell, I wondered, was a gun doing on the kitchen table? Then I remembered. I stuck it in my pocket and went down to the basement.
I got down on hands and knees and dragged my suitcase out from under the ping-pong table, little brass tits scratching across the cement floor. When I raised my head I was looking into the single pink eye of a white rabbit. You saw only one of a rabbit’s eyes at a time. As with the jacks of clubs and spades, I think it is. What kind of a world must a rabbit reconstruct, with each eye pointing at opposite sides of things? Peter Jernigan, say, superimposed on the wrong wall of the basement, as if in a cheesy process shot. Like Cary Grant drunk-driving in North by Northwest.
I carried the empty suitcase back upstairs, made a quick stop-off at the gin bottle, then went on up to the bedroom. Danny and Clarissa’s door was shut. Voices behind it: council of war, obviously. What there was to pack didn’t take long. I folded the one suit and laid it flat in the bottom of the suitcase. On top of that, the four shirts, one white, three sport. Old sporting Jernigan. On top of them, the pair of blue jeans, the pair of chinos, the long-sleeve crew-neck sweater, the V-neck sweater-vest, socks, briefs. Put the other pair of shoes on top, soles up. Wasn’t there a sweatshirt? Gray sweatshirt? Probably in the dirty clothes. And that was it. The rest had been left at Heritage Circle, a whole closet-and-dresserful, now at a thrift store perhaps, waiting perhaps for some frugal Martha-type to come scanning the racks for a bargain to please a thankless man.
I carried the suitcase down and set it by the kitchen door, then went into the bathroom and pocketed the Pamprin. A handful of these would blur me out enough to sleep when I arrived. If I arrived. I took a couple more angry-tasting swallows of gin and stuck the bottle in my shoulderbag. Which I shouldered. And headed up the stairs for the last time, telling myself to look at everything and let it burn in. Drunk and sentimental. You’d have thought this place had been dear to me.
They were still talking in there, but my knocking put a stop to that. Martha opened the door and tried to stare me down. Ooh: stern mother. Clarissa got around behind her. I started to giggle. Old Martha looked like she was right out of Farmer Gray, boy, some kind of barnyard thing where the mother hen’s so mad her feathers get all big. Yes, yes, I know the word bristled, but I’d rather have something that’s blunt. At any rate, old Martha seemed to swell up big and protective and I was laughing and laughing and she was staring down at my dick. I thought she was giving old Dr. Johnson the evil eye, trying to wither him or something, until I looked down and saw that I’d pissed myself, the whole front of the pants and down the left leg. (I dressed left.) And now that I thought about it a minute, fuck if it didn’t feel wet down there.
“You are really falling to shit, Peter,” she said. And I guess it actually must’ve looked that way, especially since the pissed pants had only got me laughing more.
So I made an effort and got it together a little bit. Not that hard to do, really. It was like climbing up one level, up out of the laughter level and onto something else. It wasn’t that hard, but it wasn’t that easy. I don’t know how to say it was.
“Hey, I’m off,” I said. “Wish me luck.” Keeping it jaunty. I honestly don’t think I would have pissed myself if I hadn’t had that whole thing of coffee on top of everything else.
“What do you mean you’re off?” said Martha.
“I told you,” I said. “Going to New Hampshire. Ayup.”
“After midnight and you’re starting out for New Hampshire,” she said. “In a blizzard, drunk out of your mind.”
“Mrs. Peretsky, don’t let him do it.” That was Danny. I think.
“Another county heard from,” I said. This was an expression. I think it comes from politics. County: it would make sense. Like election returns. “What everybody seems to be forgetting is that I—ta da!”—and I pulled it out of my coat pocket—“have the gun.” I gripped the thing with both hands, bent my knees—you’ve seen this on television, the arrest pose or whatever it’s called—and aimed at Danny’s big guitar amplifier. They had the tv sitting on it. I was just more or less fucking around; the amplifier was in the corner away from everybody. You want to be very careful if you’re going to fuck around this way with guns. They all stood there cow-eyed.
Well, this got me hacked off. Absolutely the worst thing they could’ve done.
“Lighten up, for Christ’s sake,” I said. Although naturally with a gun being waved around (not that I was really waving it per se) you couldn’t expect them to get into the spirit of anything.
“Pyew-pyew!” I went, and then I really did pull the trigger, and the gun gave a little pop, just a nasty little snapping pop. And bing, there was a tiny hole in the grille that covered the front of the amplifier. I was in the kind of head where you just think of a thing and do it. Thank God the bullet apparently just lodged someplace and didn’t go ricocheting around the room.
“Bones?” I said to Danny. “Do what you can.” I moved catlike into the room toward the amplifier. They all edged away from me. That gave me a feeling I liked. “Hey,” I said. “Now I like this.”
I laid my hand on the amplifier, as if taking its temperature or something. I turned to Danny again and said, “He’s dead, Jim.” Not a laugh, nothing. Then Clarissa burst into tears. Martha put an arm around her. “Hey now,” I said, motioning with the pistol. “Away from the door, okay?”
They all obeyed. I thought, If only I could have taken charge of them like this a little sooner. Although this really wasn’t the way to run a family. What you actually wanted was moral suasion grounded in quiet authority. Clarissa was sobbing away; Martha had her in both arms and was glaring at me, nothing left but contempt. So actually, if you think about it, I was already helping to begin the healing process. Only kidding, folks.
I backed into the doorway, looked at Danny. “Train’s pulling out, big guy,” I said. “Change your mind?” He looked down at his feet.
“Dad,” he said. “Don’t do it, okay? I mean if you’re really going to go, get some sleep now and do it in the morning, okay?”
I shook my head. “No can do, big guy.”
“Listen,” he said. “Dad, please? You’re really scaring me. It’s like Mom, you know?”
“Mom was Mom,” I said. “And never the train shall meet.” The train, I said, imagine. “Last chance Texaco here.”
“Danny,” said Martha, taking an arm from around her daughter and laying her hand on Danny’s forearm. “Just let him go.”
“Oh really,” I said. “Sick. Very sick. Big guy, piece of fatherly advice. She likes it up the heinie.”
She threw Clarissa off and came at me. I stuck the gun right up in her eyes and that backed her off, you bet, like a cross backing off a vampire. She stood there, her whole body swelling and shrinking as she breathed out and in. An amazing sight, assuming I wasn’t just imagining it. With the gun in my right hand, never taking my eyes off them, I crouched and felt around for my shoulderbag with my left hand. Finally I located the son of a bitch and reshouldered it. This was some midlife crisis, boy, if that’s what this was about.
“Want everybody just stay in this room,” I said, backing out the door. “You don’t come out until you hear the car drive away.” I looked at Danny. “Think you can handle that, big guy?” He stepped closer to Martha, then reached out and took Clarissa’s hand. “You’re the man of the family now,” I said.
Wouldn’t even look at me.
“Dad,” he said, “just go if you’re going, okay?”
“Rrrighty-o,” I said, and slammed the door right in their foolish faces.
There was the suitcase, sitting right by the kitchen door where I’d left it, like faithful Old Dog Tray. God’s sustaining mind had kept the son of a bitch there while I was busy making my adieux.
Outside, the snow was still coming down like a bastard. I threw the suitcase in the back of the car, the shoulderbag onto the passenger seat. Car started up the way it had years ago, when it was young. And then I remembered I still had the God damn gun in my pocket. So one last ethical conundrum: on the one hand, Martha and the kids might need it to protect themselves if what’s-his-name took it into his head to come back; on the other hand, Danny had asked me to put the thing where Clarissa couldn’t get at it. Maybe he’d actually meant where he couldn’t get at it.
I got out of the car, leaving the engine running, and trotted back to the house. I burst open the door and there was Danny standing in the kitchen, bottom teeth working away at his upper lip, obviously afraid to come any closer, yet so glad his father had changed his mind and turned around.
“Here,” I said, holding up the gun.
He looked at it.
“This belongs to Mrs. Peretsky,” I said. “You see she gets it, okay?”
“We don’t want it here,” he said. “Could you just take and throw it away someplace, Dad?”
“You really might need it,” I said. “Not going to deprive my own flesh and blood.” And I laid the thing on the table. As a gesture of trust, the way a dog will turn its belly up. And because he really might need it. And because better him than me.
The next thing I remember is fishtailing up the hill, making it over the crest and then not being able to stop at the stop sign and skidding sideways across Maple Avenue. Then being on some highway, I assume the Garden State northbound. I was the only car out; everyone else must have been home safe from their holidays. Snow was coming at the windshield the way stars come at the viewing screen of the Starship Enterprise. And I remember wondering if that might actually have been where they got the idea: old Gene Roddenberry or somebody just driving along somewhere in the wintertime and thinking, Hey. At least it was cold enough so the snow wasn’t sticking. That kept the going reasonably good: instead of lying there wet and heavy it blew around, grainy white clouds swirling on the blacktop, making the road look bottomless. Better not look at that shit too much.
Afraid to listen longer to the white noise of wind, tires and engine, I fumbled one-handed in the dash for the Walkman. Then steered with my elbows to get the things adjusted over my ears. Whatever was already in there would do. What it turned out to be was Webb Pierce, so on we drove with all those songs going—“Missing You,” “Wondering,” “There Stands the Glass,” “Backstreet Affair”—each one such a sad, if necessarily sketchy, story, but at least a story with contours you could hang right on to, thing by thing by thing.
5
Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote.
—STANISLAUS LEC
They wrote this on a piece of paper torn from a spiral notebook and taped it to the wall above my bed. I’d been here a week then, long enough for them to think they’d gotten the hang of me. Hey, no problem, they said when I asked what the fuck that was doing there: you don’t want to have it up you don’t have to have it up. Catch was, though, that if you took it down you had to choose something to put up in its place. That’s the rule here. Well, of course I knew better than to get into all that. I considered trying the old IITYWYBMAD routine on them. Probably would’ve worked, too. These people, are you kidding? But after I’d explained that I wasn’t really asking them to buy me a drink and we’d all had our little laugh, I would’ve been in for a round of the let’s-talk-about-its. So I just left the son of a bitch up there, radiating its timeless truth. Whatever the fuck it was. The waves and particles penetrating the old skull and doing their healing work. I mean, these are people who believe in words.
I do the minimal shit you have to do to keep them off your back. Daily shower, make your bed—surprisingly difficult at first with only one of your opposable thumbs—and go to meals and to group. Resist any of this, I find, and you’re in for the let’s-talk-about-its. Did I already say Uncle Fred has been up to visit a couple of times? He’s the only one I’ll see. And I don’t have a lot to say, even to him. Especially when he starts with the messages from Danny.
I watch all the tv I can, which they try to discourage, though I don’t see how they could control a fucking zoo like this for two hours without it. Read books and magazines from the little library they’ve got, which is how I’ve been able to stick in those long passages from this and that. (Obviously no one could recall these things verbatim.) So when I say I read x on the train or y at Uncle Fred’s apartment, you can be pretty sure it was just something I found in the library here and transcribed to stretch this thing out as long as possible. My horror-hand helps too: eight-finger typing, at least in this five-and-three configuration, is probably as slow as straight hunt-and-peck.
But obviously, pad my story as I will, I can’t keep this going much past today. I mean, unless I write a thing where I go, So I put a piece of paper in the machine and typed the following: “I ended up driving all night. The snow eased off after a while—or, more likely, I’d driven past the edge of the storm—and I just kept going. Stopped for gas where you get off the interstate, then …” So today or tomorrow I’m going to have to think up some reason I can’t show this to them right away. Tell them I need to change the names to protect the innocent? See, the problem is, fuck with them too much and you’re out of here completely. It’s happened twice in just the time I’ve been here: the guy who wouldn’t go to group and the guy who kept screaming. I just feel I’m getting closer and closer to a real crisis here. Keep harking back to Jon Nagy’s Television Art Book: what looks like a road just going and going and going to the horizon is really two lines coming together.
