The Collected Stories, page 21
When the policeman knocked at the door and told her about it, Samuel’s mother began to scream. She screamed all day and moaned all night, though the doctors tried to quiet her with pills.
Oh, oh, she hopelessly cried. She did not know how she could ever find another boy like that one. However, she was a young woman and she became pregnant. Then for a few months she was hopeful. The child born to her was a boy. They brought him to be seen and nursed. She smiled. But immediately she saw that this baby wasn’t Samuel. She and her husband together have had other children, but never again will a boy exactly like Samuel be known.
The Burdened Man
The man has the burden of the money. It’s needed day after day. More and more of it. For ordinary things and for life. That’s why holidays are a hard time for him. Another hard time is the weekend, when he’s not making money or furthering himself.
Then he’s home and he watches the continuation of his son’s life and the continuation of his wife’s life. They do not seem to know about the money. They are not stupid, but they leave the hall lights on. They consume electricity. The wife cooks and cooks. She has to make meat. She has to make potatoes and bring orange juice to the table. He is not against being healthy, but rolls baked hot in expensive gas are not necessary. His son makes phone calls. Then his wife makes a phone call. These are immediately clicked into the apparatus of AT&T and added against him by IBM. One day they accidentally buy three newspapers. Another day the boy’s out in the yard. He’s always careless. Naturally he falls and rips his pants. This expense occurs on a Saturday. On Sunday a neighbor knocks at the door, furious because it’s her son’s pants that were first borrowed then ripped, and they cost $5.95 and are good narrow-wale corduroy.
When he hears this, the man is beside himself. He does not know where the money is coming from. The truth is, he makes a very good salary and puts away five dollars a week for his son’s college. He has done this every week and now has $2,750 in the bank. But he does not know where the money for all of life will come from. At the door, without a word, he gives the neighbor six dollars in cash and receives two cents in change. He looks at the two pennies in his hand. He feels penniless and thinks he will faint. In order to be strong, he throws the two pennies at his neighbor, who screams, then runs. He chases her for two blocks. Her husband can’t come to her rescue because he’s on Sunday duty. Her children are at the movies. When she reaches the corner mailbox, she leans against it. She turns in fear and throws the six dollars at him. He takes the floating bills out of the air. He pitches them straight from the shoulder with all his strength. They drift like leaves to her coat and she cries out, “Stop! stop!”
The police arrive at once from somewhere and are disgusted to see two grown-up people throwing money at each other and crying. But the neighborhood is full of shade trees and pretty lawns. The police forgive them and watch them go home in the same direction (because they’re next-door neighbors).
They are sorry for each other’s anger.
She says: “I don’t need the pants. Billy has plenty of pants.” He says: “What’s the money to me? Six dollars? Chicken feed.”
Then they have coffee at her house and explain everything. They each tell one story about when they were young. After this they become friends and visit one another on Sunday afternoons when both their families are on duty or at the movies.
On Friday nights the man climbs the three flights out of the deep subway. He stops at a bakery just before the bus for his remote neighborhood picks him up. He brings a strawberry shortcake home to his wife and son.
All the same, things changed. Summer came and the neighbor took her three children to a little summer house on the Long Island water. When she returned, she was tanned a light tea color with a touch of orange because of the lotion she had used. It seemed to him that her first and subsequent greetings were very cool. He had answered her cordially. “You look real great,” he said. “Thank you,” she said, without mentioning his looks, which the vacation sun had also improved.
One Saturday morning he waited in bed for the house to become quiet and empty. His wife and the boy always went to the supermarket by 9 a.m. When they were finally gone with the cart, the shopping bags, and the car, he began to think that he and his neighbor had talked and talked through many Sundays and now it was time to consider different ways to begin to make love to her.
He wondered if the kitchen might not be the best place to start because it was narrow. She was a decent person with three children and would probably say no just to continue her decency a little longer. She would surely try to get away from his first effort. However, she would never get away if he approached at the dishwashing machine.
Another possibility: If the coffee were already on the table, he might be beside her as she prepared to pour. He would take the coffeepot away from her and put it on the trivet. He would then take her hands and look into her eyes. She would know his meaning at once and start all the arrangements in her mind about ensuring privacy for the next Sunday.
Another possibility: In the living room on the couch before the coffee table, he would straightforwardly yet shyly declare, “I’m having a terrible time. I want to get together with you.” This was the strongest plan because it required no further plan. He would be able to embrace her right after making his statement; he would lift her skirt, and if she wore no girdle, he could enter her at once.
The next day was Sunday. He called and she said in her new cool way, “Oh sure, come on over.” In about ten minutes he was waiting for coffee at her dinette table. He had clipped the first four flowering zinnias out of his wife’s lawn border and was arranging them in the bowl when he became aware of his neighbor’s husband creeping stealthily along the wall toward him. He looked foolish and probably drunk. The man said. “What … what …” He knew the husband by appearance only and was embarrassed to see him nearly on his knees in his own house.
“You fucking wop …” said the husband. “You ain’t been here twenty minutes you finished already, you cheap quickie cuntsucker … in and out … that’s what she likes, the cold bitch …”
“No … no …” said the man. He was saying “No no,” to the husband’s belief that she was cold. “No no,” he said, although he didn’t know for sure, “she’s not.”
“What you waste your time on that fat bag of tits …” said her husband. “Hey!” said the man. He hadn’t thought of that part of her much at all. Mostly he had thought of how she would be under her skirt and of her thighs. He realized the husband was drunk or he would not speak of his wife with such words.
The husband then waved a pistol at him in a drunken way the man had often seen in the movies but never in life. He knew it was all right for the husband to have that pistol because he was a cop.
As a cop he was not unknown. He had once killed a farm boy made crazy by crowds in the city. The boy had run all day in terror round and round Central Park. People thought he was a runner because he wore an undershirt, but he had finally entered the park, and with a kitchen knife he had killed one baby and wounded two or three others. “Too many people,” he screamed when he killed.
Bravely the cop had disarmed him, but the poor boy pulled another long knife out of his pants-leg pocket and the cop had then had to kill him. He was given a medal for this. He often remembered that afternoon and wondered that he had been brave once, but was not brave enough to have been brave twice.
Now he stared at the man and he tried to remember what inhibition had abandoned him, what fear of his victim had given him energy. How had he decided to kill that crazy boy?
Suddenly the woman came out of the kitchen. She saw that her husband was drunk and bloody-eyed. She saw that he held a pistol and waved it before his eyes as though it could clear fogs and smogs. She remembered that he was a person who had killed.
“Don’t touch him,” she screamed at her husband. “You maniac! Boy-killer! Don’t touch him,” she shouted and gathered the man against her whole soft body. He hadn’t wanted anything like this, his chin caught in the V neck of her wraparound housedress.
“Just get out of her shirt,” said the husband.
“If you kill him, you kill me,” she said, hugging the man so hard he wondered where to turn his nose to get air.
“O.K., why not, why not!” said the husband. “Why not, you fucking whore, why not?”
Then his finger pressed the trigger and he shot and shot, the man, the woman, the wall, the picture window, the coffeepot. Looking down, screaming, Whore! whore! he shot straight into the floor, right through his shoe, smashing his toes for life.
The midnight edition of the morning paper said:
QUEENS COP COOLS ROMANCE
Precinct Pals Clap Cop in Cooler
Sgt. Armand Kielly put an end today to his wife’s alleged romance with neighbor Alfred Ciaro by shooting up his kitchen, Mrs. Kielly, himself, and his career. Arrested by his own pals from the 115th precinct who claim he has been nervous of late, he faces departmental action. When questioned by this reporter, Mrs. Kielly said, “No no no.”
The burdened man spent three days in the hospital having his shoulder wound attended to. Hospitalization paid for nearly all. He then sold his house and moved to another neighborhood on another bus line, though the subway stop remained the same. Until old age startled him, he was hardly unhappy again.
In fact, for several years, he could really feel each morning that a mixture of warm refreshments was being pumped out of the chambers of his heart to all his cold extremities.
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
A young man said he wanted to go to bed with Alexandra because she had an interesting mind. He was a cabdriver and she had admired the curly back of his head. Still, she was surprised. He said he would pick her up again in about an hour and a half. Because she was fair and a responsible person, she placed between them a barrier of truthful information. She said, I suppose you don’t know many middle-aged women.
You don’t look so middle-aged to me. I mean, everyone likes what they like. That is, I’m interested in your point of view, your way of life. Anyway, he said, peering into the mirror, your face is nice and your eyebrows are out of sight.
Make it two hours, she said. I’m visiting my father whom I happen to love.
I love mine too, he said. He just doesn’t love me. Too too bad.
O.K. That’s enough, she said. Because they had already had the following factual and introductory conversation.
How old are your kids?
I have none.
Sorry. Then what do you do for a living?
Children. Early teenage. Adoptions, foster homes. Probation. Troubles—well …
Where’d you go to school?
City colleges. What about you?
Oh, me. Lots of places. Antioch. Wisconsin. California. I might go back someday. Someplace else though. Maybe Harvard. Why not?
He leaned on his horn to move a sixteen-wheel trailer truck delivering Kleenex to the A&P.
I wish you’d stop that, she said. I hate that kind of driving.
Why? Oh! You’re an idealist! He looked through his rearview mirror straight into her eyes. But were you married? Ever?
Once. For years.
Who to?
It’s hard to describe. A revolutionist.
Really? Could I know him? What’s his name? We say revolutionary nowadays.
Oh?
By the way, my name’s Dennis. I probably like you, he said.
You do, do you? Well, why should you? And let me ask you something. What do you mean by nowadays?
By the birdseed of St. Francis, he said, taking a tiny brogue to the tip of his tongue. I meant no harm.
Nowadays! she said. What does that mean? I guess you think you’re kind of brand-new. You’re not so brand-new. The telephone was brand-new. The airplane was brand-new. You’ve been seen on earth before.
Wow! he said. He stopped the cab just short of the hospital entrance. He turned to look at her and make decisions. But you’re right, he said sweetly. You know the mind is an astonishing, long-living, erotic thing.
Is it? she asked. Then she wondered: What is the life expectancy of the mind?
Eighty years, said her father, glad to be useful. Once he had explained electrical storms before you could find the Book of Knowledge. Now in the cave of old age, he continued to amass wonderful information. But he was sick with oldness. His arteries had a hopeless future, and conversation about all that obsolescent tubing often displaced very interesting subjects.
One day he said, Alexandra! Don’t show me the sunset again. I’m not interested anymore. You know that. She had just pointed to a simple sunset happening outside his hospital window. It was a red ball—all alone, without its evening streaking clouds—a red ball falling hopelessly west, just missing the Hudson River, Jersey City, Chicago, the Great Plains, the Golden Gate—falling, falling.
Then in Russian he sighed some Pushkin. Not for me, the spring. Nye dyla menya … He slept. She read the large-print edition of The Guns of August. A half hour later, he opened his eyes and told her how, in that morning’s Times, the Phoenicians had sailed to Brazil in about 500 B.C. A remarkable people. The Vikings too were remarkable. He spoke well of the Chinese, the Jews, the Greeks, the Indians—all the old commercial people. Actually he had never knocked an entire nation. International generosity had been started in him during the late nineteenth century by his young mother and father, candleholders inside the dark tyranny of the tsars. It was childhood training. Thoughtfully, he passed it on.
In the hospital bed next to him, a sufferer named John feared the imminent rise of the blacks of South Africa, the desperate blacks of Chicago, the yellow Chinese, and the Ottoman Turks. He had more reason than Alexandra’s father to dread the future because his heart was strong. He would probably live to see it all. He believed the Turks when they came would bring to New York City diseases like cholera, virulent scarlet fever, and particularly leprosy.
Leprosy! for godsakes! said Alexandra. John! Upset yourself with reality for once! She read aloud from the Times about the bombed, burned lepers’ colonies in North Vietnam. Her father said, Please, Alexandra, today, no propaganda. Why do you constantly pick on the United States? He remembered the first time he’d seen the American flag on wild Ellis Island. Under its protection and working like a horse, he’d read Dickens, gone to medical school, and shot like a surface-to-air missile right into the middle class.
Then he said, But they shouldn’t put a flag in the middle of the chocolate pudding. It’s ridiculous.
It’s Memorial Day, said the nurse’s aide, removing his tray.
In the early evening Dennis stood at the door of each room of Alexandra’s apartment. He looked this way and that. Underuse in a time of population stress, he muttered. He entered the kitchen and sniffed the kitchen air. It doesn’t matter, he said aloud. He took a fingerful of gravy out of the pot on the stove. Beef stew, he whispered. Then he opened the door to the freezer compartment and said, Sweet Jesus! because there were eleven batches of the same, neatly stacked and frozen. They were for Alexandra’s junkies, whose methadone required lots of protein and carbohydrates.
I wouldn’t have them in my house. It’s a wonder you got a cup and saucer left. Creeps, said Dennis. However, yes indeed, I will eat this stuff. Why? Does it make me think of home or of something else? he asked. I think, a movie I once saw.
Apple turnovers! You know I have to admit it, our commune isn’t working too well. Probably because it’s in Brooklyn and the food co-op isn’t together. But it’s cool, they’ve accepted the criticism.
You have lots of junk in here, he pointed out after dinner. He had decided to give the place some respectful attention. He meant armchairs, lamps, desk sets, her grandmother’s wedding portrait, and an umbrella stand with two of her father’s canes.
Um, said Alexandra, it’s rent-controlled.
You know what I like to do, Alexandra? I like to sit with a girl and look at a late movie, he said. It’s an experience common to Americans at this hour. It’s important to be like others, to dig the average dude, you have to be him. Be HIM. It’s groovier than a lot of phony gab. You’d be surprised how friendly you get.
I’m not against friendliness, she said, I’m not even against Americans.
They watched half of A Day at the Races. This is very relaxing, he said. It’s kind of long though, isn’t it? Then he began to undress. He held out his arms. He said, Alexandra I really can’t wait anymore. I’m a sunrise person. I like to go to bed early. Can I stay a few days?
He gave reasons: 1. It was a Memorial Day weekend, and the house in Brooklyn was full of tripping visitors. 2. He was disgusted with them anyway because they’d given up the most beautiful batik work for fashionable tie-dying. 3. He and Alexandra could take some good walks in the morning because all the parks to walk in were the lightest green. He had noticed that the tree on the corner though dying of buses was green at the beginning of many twigs. 4. He could talk to her about the kids, help her to understand their hangups, their incredible virtues. He had missed being one of them by about seven useless years.
So many reasons are not essential. Alexandra said. She offered him a brandy. Holy toads! he said furiously. You know I’m not into that. Touched by gloom, he began to remove the heavy shoes he wore for mountain walking. He dropped his pants and stamped on them a couple of times to make sure he and they were disengaged.
Alexandra, in the first summer dress of spring, stood still and watched. She breathed deeply because of having been alone for a year or two. She put her two hands over her ribs to hold her heart in place and also out of modesty to quiet its immodest thud. Then they went to bed in the bedroom and made love until that noisy disturbance ended. She couldn’t hear one interior sound. Therefore they slept.
