The Collected Stories, page 7
He didn’t answer. “I’m having a lot of trouble at work” was all he said. Then I heard him push the chair back. He came up behind me, put his arms around my waistline, and kissed my cheek. He whirled me around and took my hands. He said, “An old friend is better than rubies.” He looked me in the eye. He held my attention by trying to be honest. And he kissed me a short sweet kiss on my mouth.
“Please sit down, Virginia,” he said. He kneeled before me and put his head in my lap. I was stirred by so much activity. Then he looked up at me and, as though proposing marriage for life, he offered—because he was drunk—to place his immortal soul in peril to comfort me.
First I said, “Thank you.” Then I said, “No.”
I was sorry for him, but he’s devout, a leader of the Fathers’ Club at his church, active in all the lay groups for charities, orphans, etc. I knew that if he stayed late to love with me, he would not do it lightly but would in the end pay terrible penance and ruin his long life. The responsibility would be on me.
So I said no.
And Barbie is such a light sleeper. All she has to do, I thought, is wake up and wander in and see her mother and her new friend John with his pants around his knees, wrestling on the kitchen table. A vision like that could affect a kid for life.
I said no.
Everyone in this building is so goddamn nosy. That evening I had to say no.
But John came to visit, anyway, on the fourth Thursday. This time he brought the discarded dresses of Margaret’s daughters, organdy party dresses and glazed cotton for every day. He gently admired Barbara and Linda, his blue eyes rolling to back up a couple of dozen oohs and ahs.
Even Philip, who thinks God gave him just a certain number of hellos and he better save them for the final judgment, Philip leaned on John and said, “Why don’t you bring your boy to play with me? I don’t have nobody who to play with.” (Philip’s a liar. There must be at least seventy-one children in this house, pale pink to medium brown, English-talking and gibbering in Spanish, rough-and-tough boys, the Lone Ranger’s bloody pals, or the exact picture of Supermouse. If a boy wanted a friend, he could pick the very one out of his neighbors.)
Also, Girard is a cold fish. He was in a lonesome despair. Sometimes he looked in the mirror and said, “How come I have such an ugly face? My nose is funny. Mostly people don’t like me.” He was a liar too. Girard has a face like his father’s. His eyes are the color of those little blue plums in August. He looks like an advertisement in a magazine. He could be a child model and make a lot of money. He is my first child, and if he thinks he is ugly, I think I am ugly.
John said, “I can’t stand to see a boy mope like that … What do the Sisters say in school?”
“He doesn’t pay attention is all they say. You can’t get much out of them.”
“My middle boy was like that,” said John. “Couldn’t take an interest. Aaah, I wish I didn’t have all that headache on the job. I’d grab Girard by the collar and make him take notice of the world. I wish I could ask him out to Jersey to play in all that space.”
“Why not?” I said.
“Why, Virginia, I’m surprised you don’t know why not. You know I can’t take your children out to meet my children.”
I felt a lot of strong arthritis in my ribs.
“My mother’s the funny one, Virginia.” He felt he had to continue with the subject matter. “I don’t know. I guess she likes the idea of bugging Margaret. She says, ‘You goin’ up, John?’ ‘Yes, Mother,’ I say. ‘Behave yourself, John,’ she says. ‘That husband might come home and hacksaw you into hell. You’re a Catholic man, John,’ she says. But I figured it out. She likes to know I’m in the building. I swear, Virginia, she wishes me the best of luck.”
“I do too, John,” I said. We drank a last glass of beer to make sure of a peaceful sleep. “Good night, Virginia,” he said, looping his muffler neatly under his chin. “Don’t worry. I’ll be thinking of what to do about Girard.”
I got into the big bed that I share with the girls in the little room. For once I had no trouble falling asleep. I only had to worry about Linda and Barbara and Philip. It was a great relief to me that John had taken over the thinking about Girard.
John was sincere. That’s true. He paid a lot of attention to Girard, smoking out all his sneaky sorrows. He registered him into a wild pack of Cub Scouts that went up to the Bronx once a week to let off steam. He gave him a Junior Erector Set. And sometimes when his family wasn’t listening he prayed at great length for him.
One Sunday, Sister Veronica said in her sweet voice from another life, “He’s not worse. He might even be a little better. How are you, Virginia?” putting her hand on mine. Everybody around here acts like they know everything.
“Just fine,” I said.
“We ought to start on Philip,” John said, “if it’s true Girard’s improving.”
“You should’ve been a social worker, John.”
“A lot of people have noticed that about me,” said John.
“Your mother was always acting so crazy about you, how come she didn’t knock herself out a little to see you in college? Like we did for Thomas?”
“Now, Virginia, be fair. She’s a poor old woman. My father was a weak earner. She had to have my wages, and I’ll tell you, Virginia, I’m not sorry. Look at Thomas. He’s still in school. Drop him in this jungle and he’d be devoured. He hasn’t had a touch of real life. And here I am with a good chunk of a family, a home of my own, a name in the building trades. One thing I have to tell you, the poor old woman is sorry. I said one day (oh, in passing—years ago) that I might marry you. She stuck a knife in herself. It’s a fact. Not more than an eighth of an inch. You never saw such a gory Sunday. One thing—you would have been a better daughter-in-law to her than Margaret.”
“Marry me?” I said.
“Well, yes … Aaah—I always liked you, then … Why do you think I’d sit in the shade of this kitchen every Thursday night? For godsakes, the only warm thing around here is this teacup. Yes sir, I did want to marry you, Virginia.”
“No kidding, John? Really?” It was nice to know. Better late than never, to learn you were desired in youth.
I didn’t tell John, but the truth is. I would never have married him. Once I met my husband with his winking looks, he was my only interest. Wild as I had been with John and others, I turned all my wildness over to him and then there was no question in my mind.
Still, face facts, if my husband didn’t budge on in life, it was my fault. On me, as they say, be it. I greeted the morn with a song. I had a hello for everyone but the landlord. Ask the people on the block, come or go—even the Spanish ones, with their sad dark faces—they have to smile when they see me.
But for his own comfort, he should have done better lifewise and moneywise. I was happy, but I am now in possession of knowledge that this is wrong. Happiness isn’t so bad for a woman. She gets fatter, she gets older, she could lie down, nuzzling a regiment of men and little kids, she could just die of the pleasure. But men are different, they have to own money, or they have to be famous, or everybody on the block has to look up to them from the cellar stairs.
A woman counts her children and acts snotty, like she invented life, but men must do well in the world. I know that men are not fooled by being happy.
“A funny guy,” said John, guessing where my thoughts had gone. “What stopped him up? He was nobody’s fool. He had a funny thing about him, Virginia, if you don’t mind my saying so. He wasn’t much distance up, but he was all set and ready to be looking down on us all.”
“He was very smart, John. You don’t realize that. His hobby was crossword puzzles, and I said to him real often, as did others around here, that he ought to go out on the ‘$64 Question.’ Why not? But he laughed. You know what he said? He said. ‘That proves how dumb you are if you think I’m smart.’ “
“A funny guy,” said John. “Get it all off your chest,” he said. “Talk it out, Virginia; it’s the only way to kill the pain.”
By and large, I was happy to oblige. Still I could not carry through about certain cruel remarks. It was like trying to move back into the dry mouth of a nightmare to remember that the last day I was happy was the middle of a week in March, when I told my husband I was going to have Linda. Barbara was five months old to the hour. The boys were three and four. I had to tell him. It was the last day with anything happy about it.
Later on he said, “Oh, you make me so sick, you’re so goddamn big and fat, you look like a goddamn brownstone, the way you’re squared off in front.”
“Well, where are you going tonight?” I asked.
“How should I know?” he said. “Your big ass takes up the whole goddamn bed,” he said. “There’s no room for me.” He bought a sleeping bag and slept on the floor.
I couldn’t believe it. I would start every morning fresh. I couldn’t believe that he would turn against me so, while I was still young and even his friends still liked me.
But he did, he turned absolutely against me and became no friend of mine. “All you ever think about is making babies. This place stinks like the men’s room in the BMT. It’s a fucking pissoir.” He was strong on truth all through the year. “That kid eats more than the five of us put together,” he said. “Stop stuffing your face, you fat dumbbell,” he said to Philip.
Then he worked on the neighbors. “Get that nosy old bag out of here,” he said. “If she comes on once more with ‘my son in the building trades’ I’ll squash her for the cat.”
Then he turned on Spielvogel, the checker, his oldest friend, who only visited on holidays and never spoke to me (shy, the way some bachelors are). “That sonofabitch, don’t hand me that friendship crap, all he’s after is your ass. That’s what I need—a little shitmaker of his using up the air in this flat.”
And then there was no one else to dispose of. We were left alone fair and square, facing each other.
“Now, Virginia,” he said, “I come to the end of my rope. I see a black wall ahead of me. What the hell am I supposed to do? I only got one life. Should I lie down and die? I don’t know what to do anymore. I’ll give it to you straight, Virginia, if I stick around, you can’t help it, you’ll hate me …”
“I hate you right now,” I said. “So do whatever you like.”
“This place drives me nuts,” he mumbled. “I don’t know what to do around here. I want to get you a present. Something.”
“I told you, do whatever you like. Buy me a rat trap for rats.”
That’s when he went down to the House Appliance Store, and he brought back a new broom and a classy dustpan.
“A new broom sweeps clean,” he said. “I got to get out of here,” he said. “I’m going nuts.” Then he began to stuff the duffel bags, and I went to the grocery store but was stopped by Mrs. Raftery, who had to tell me what she considered so beautiful—death—then he kissed and went to join some army somewhere.
I didn’t tell John any of this, because I think it makes a woman look too bad to tell on how another man has treated her. He begins to see her through the other man’s eyes, a sitting duck, a skinful of flaws. After all, I had come to depend on John. All my husband’s friends were strangers now, though I had always said to them, “Feel welcome.”
And the family men in the building looked too cunning, as though they had all personally deserted me. If they met me on the stairs, they carried the heaviest groceries up and helped bring Linda’s stroller down, but they never asked me a question worth answering at all.
Besides that, Girard and Philip taught the girls the days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Johnday, Friday. They waited for him once a week, under the hallway lamp, half asleep like bugs in the sun, sitting in their little chairs with their names on in gold, a birth present from my mother-in-law. At fifteen after eight he punctually came, to read a story, pass out some kisses, and tuck them into bed.
But one night, after a long Johnday of them squealing my eardrum split, after a rainy afternoon with brother constantly raising up his hand against brother, with the girls near ready to go to court over the proper ownership of Melinda Lee, the twenty-four-inch walking doll, the doorbell rang three times. Not any of those times did John’s face greet me.
I was too ashamed to call down to Mrs. Raftery, and she was too mean to knock on my door and explain.
He didn’t come the following Thursday either. Girard said sadly, “He must’ve run away, John.”
I had to give him up after two weeks’ absence and no word. I didn’t know how to tell the children: something about right and wrong, goodness and meanness, men and women. I had it all at my fingertips, ready to hand over. But I didn’t think I ought to take mistakes and truth away from them. Who knows? They might make a truer friend in this world somewhere than I have ever made. So I just put them to bed and sat in the kitchen and cried.
In the middle of my third beer, searching in my mind for the next step, I found the decision to go on Strike It Rich. I scrounged some paper and pencil from the toy box and I listed all my troubles, which must be done in order to qualify. The list when complete could have brought tears to the eye of God if He had a minute. At the sight of it my bitterness began to improve. All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad, or peculiar.
As always happens in these cases where you have begun to help yourself with plans, news comes from an opposite direction. The doorbell rang, two short and two long—meaning John.
My first thought was to wake the children and make them happy. “No! No!” he said. “Please don’t put yourself to that trouble. Virginia, I’m dog-tired,” he said. “Dog-tired. My job is a damn headache. It’s too much. It’s all day and it scuttles my mind at night, and in the end who does the credit go to?
“Virginia,” he said, “I don’t know if I can come anymore. I’ve been wanting to tell you. I just don’t know. What’s it all about? Could you answer me if I asked you? I can’t figure this whole thing out at all.”
I started the tea steeping because his fingers when I touched them were cold. I didn’t speak. I tried looking at it from his man point of view, and I thought he had to take a bus, the tubes, and a subway to see me; and then the subway, the tubes, and a bus to go back home at 1 a.m. It wouldn’t be any trouble at all for him to part with us forever. I thought about my life, and I gave strongest consideration to my children. If given the choice, I decided to choose not to live without him.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to my careful list of troubles. “Writing a letter?”
“Oh no,” I said, “it’s for Strike It Rich. I hope to go on the program.”
“Virginia, for goodness’ sakes,” he said, giving it a glance, “you don’t have a ghost. They’d laugh you out of the studio. Those people really suffer.”
“Are you sure, John?” I asked.
“No question in my mind at all,” said John. “Have you ever seen that program? I mean, in addition to all of this—the little disturbances of man”—he waved a scornful hand at my list—”they suffer. They live in the forefront of tornadoes, their lives are washed off by floods—catastrophes of God. Oh, Virginia.”
“Are you sure, John?”
“For goodness’ sake …”
Sadly I put my list away. Still, if things got worse, I could always make use of it.
Once that was settled, I acted on an earlier decision. I pushed his cup of scalding tea aside. I wedged myself onto his lap between his hard belt buckle and the table. I put my arms around his neck and said, “How come you’re so cold, John?” He has a kind face and he knew how to look astonished. He said, “Why, Virginia, I’m getting warmer.” We laughed.
John became a lover to me that night.
Mrs. Raftery is sometimes silly and sick from her private source of cheap wine. She expects John often. “Honor your mother, what’s the matter with you, John?” she complains. “Honor. Honor.”
“Virginia dear,” she says. “You never would’ve taken John away to Jersey like Margaret. I wish he’d’ve married you.”
“You didn’t like me much in those days.”
“That’s a lie,” she says. I know she’s a hypocrite, but no more than the rest of the world.
What is remarkable to me is that it doesn’t seem to conscience John as I thought it might. It is still hard to believe that a man who sends out the Ten Commandments every year for a Christmas card can be so easy buttoning and unbuttoning.
Of course we must be very careful not to wake the children or disturb the neighbors, who will enjoy another person’s excitement just so far, and then the pleasure enrages them. We must be very careful for ourselves too, for when my husband comes back, realizing the babies are in school and everything easier, he won’t forgive me if I’ve started it all up again—noisy signs of life that are so much trouble to a man.
We haven’t seen him in two and a half years. Although people have suggested it, I do not want the police or Intelligence or a private eye or anyone to go after him to bring him back. I know that if he expected to stay away forever he would have written and said so. As it is, I just don’t know what evening, any time, he may appear. Sometimes, stumbling over a blockbuster of a dream at midnight, I wake up to vision his soft arrival.
He comes in the door with his old key. He gives me a strict look and says, “Well, you look older, Virginia.” “So do you,” I say, although he hasn’t changed a bit.
He settles in the kitchen because the children are asleep all over the rest of the house. I unknot his tie and offer him a cold sandwich. He raps my backside, paying attention to the bounce. I walk around him as though he were a Maypole, kissing as I go.
“I didn’t like the army much,” he says. “Next time I think I might go join the Merchant Marine.”
“What army?” I say.
“It’s pretty much the same everywhere,” he says.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” I say.
“I lost my cuff link, goddamnit,” he says, and drops to the floor to look for it. I go down too on my knees, but I know he never had a cuff link in his life. Still I would do a lot for him.
