Part One 5 страница

To protest the vicious social wound I felt this impromptu party was inflicting on me, I withdrew from the household after eating a long, sticky breakfast. I closed myself in my room—a ten by fourteen chamber that was beginning to tell more of the unpleasant truth about my physical self than a shoe or an old shirt would tell—where I dozed, read, and wondered what to wear. The reception was set for three o’clock (a time no one could expect to be given a real meal) and as the hour approached I began to think seriously of dressing for it. Rose had thrown away most of my old clothes but a blue suit bought for my high-school graduation had survived her raid. I put on a white shirt, a narrow black tie, and my old suit. There was no mirror in my room—the only mirror in the house was on the medicine chest; you’d have to leap into the air to see how your pants fit—but I checked my ghost-like reflection in the window glass. The suit was clearly too small for me and the sight of its snug fit—its tightness at the thigh, its narrowness at the shoulder and chest, the cuffs’ clumsy suspension above the tops of my shoes—filled me with a strangely powerful sense of unease. That tight blue suit ambushed me with the reality of my time away.

I lay in bed, fully dressed now, staring at the ceiling and stroking my narrow tie. The tie was altogether unfashionable but I doubted that my parents or any of their friends would notice. That set had a conscious disregard for fashion and products. (It had only been recently, for example, that Arthur learned a TV dinner wasn’t just anything you happened to be eating while watching the set.) I dozed off. While I slept, a few of the guests arrived; I might have slept through the day if my mother hadn’t awakened me.

“David?” she whispered through the door.

“I’m up,” I said. “Are they here?”

“May I come in?” Without waiting for an answer, Rose entered, contrary to established Axelrodian etiquette. She wore a U-necked pale green dress and green and white shoes. She held a glass of whiskey and water, clutching at it through the thickness of three cocktail napkins. “You’re wearing a suit,” she said, closing the door behind her.

“Observant,” I said.

“It’s much too hot, David. And that’s a wool blend suit. Look how you’re perspiring. Why not take that old thing off and freshen up with a nice cool damp washcloth?”

“No, I want to wear this,” I said, with all the maturity and sense of fair play that had made me such a hit at home.

The door buzzer went off. I could hear familiar voices from the living room. Laughter. A high, rapid hoot, like a mezzo- soprano owl. Then a man’s voice—Harold Stern’s—saying, “No. Don’t laugh yet. This isn’t the funny part.” This was followed by more laughter, over which a woman’s voice emerged to say, “Who the hell cares if it’s the funny part. We’re laughing now, aren’t we?”

“OK,” Rose said to me, after a panicky glance at the closed door, “you look fine. Why not just pop into the washroom and throw a little water in your face?”

As for the party itself, it went so smoothly and without incident that it could just as well not have happened. No one had an unexpected thought or said an unpracticed word; no one got drunk or ate too much; no cigarette ash was accidentally flicked onto the rug. I was allowed to drink my fill but I could not become drunk. I was led over to the sofa and placed next to Millicent Bell, who was later to help me enroll in Roosevelt University. I was also led into a conversation with Harold Stern, who would get me a job with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Yet I did nothing to secure these favors that day. They were mine because I was Rose and Arthur’s only child and because I’d been so silent and adorable passing out smoked meats during Party meetings in the past, during the best days of all of their lives.

Daylight lingered in the windows and the reception in my honor seemed never to end. What one could or could not ask about my long absence was a mystery to my parents’ deferential friends. The deepest into the personal area anyone dared wade was a hearty Welcome Home, that would have been just as suitable if I’d returned from a two-year study of socialist genetics at the University of Leningrad. Even those who had written me and sent me presents during my stay in Rockville avoided touching the truth of my absence. Did they fear what might accidentally appear in their own eyes if they mentioned my incarceration—the tears, or perhaps the scorn? Or were they respecting my mother’s ardent desire that everything, everything in all the world, be absolutely as normal as possible? History owed Rose a normal afternoon and even the children of my parents’ friends were determined to keep anything reminiscent of pain at bay. Meredith Tarnovsky, sixteen and finally beautiful, with the pure, animal attractiveness of someone whose sexual drive is not yet social but purely hormonal, was just returned from a few weeks in Cuba, where she’d cut sugar cane and attended lectures. She was often at my elbow, talking to me about Castro, who I actually happened to like, though not with Meredith’s wholehearted passion. Her dark eyes glistened, the perfume of her bath lifted off her soft skin, the Havana sun had turned all the soft hairs on her arm bright platinum. I drank gin after gin, wondering if the purpose of this party was to encourage me to violate my long celibacy and drag Meredith into my room. “You were in Cuba,” I said to her, “and I was in a fancy little nuthouse. Talk about your separate paths, huh?” She lowered her eyes and shook her head. Meaning what? That it was ironic? Sad? Or that we weren’t supposed to talk about it? The other representative of my “peer group” was Joe Greenbladt, an ex-runt who once was called Little Joey Greenbladt and who now, at twenty- two, towered over me. He wore a red shirt, powder blue corduroys, and cowboy boots. I’d never had enough to do with him to join the ranks of his childhood tormentors, yet today he avoided me and glanced at me with a certain dark irony as if his presence in my parents’ apartment was somehow settling an old score. He was apparently a great favorite in my parents’ set. Meredith may have gone to Cuba but Joe (Josef on his birth certificate) had read all of Kapital and referred to the civil rights movement as “the Negro question” and to his own friends as “today’s youth.” Joe’s parents, Leo and Olga, remembered my birthday while I was in Rockville and now and then had sent me a book or a magazine. The year before, they’d gone to the Soviet Union and brought back a small reel tape recorder, which they gave my parents to give to me. Along with the tape recorder was a taped message. “Helloooo, David, this is Olga speaking to you.” “And this is Leo.” “David,” Olga had continued, “we’ve just returned from the Soviet Union. We had the most marvelous experiences, too numerous to mention. It was very cold but our hotel was perfectly warm. And the people, David, the people… ” “Very happy,” Leo said. “Joyous and dignified.” I had listened with tears in my eyes, overwhelmed by the stupidity and tenderness of their message. Without realizing, I’d lain my hand on the machine and it got in the way of the reel. Olga and Leo’s voices got slower, lower, and they sounded now like stroke victims—that preview of their mortality had gone through me like heat lightning.

Around seven, the rains began. The sky turned a vivid electric green and the rain pounded against the windows and battered against the air conditioner. Like a pack living in the wild, the guests moved in unison, making plans to leave, to share rides, to drop each other off. It seemed the rain panicked them, though I suppose they were seizing a good excuse to leave. Tom and Natalie Foster were the last to go and even they were gone fifteen minutes after the rain began—they’d lingered only to gossip about the Tarnovskys, Meredith’s diminutive, gaudily dressed parents. The Tarnovskys owned a movie theater on the North Side and had taken to booking in an occasional sex film to pay expenses. “We told them it would come to this,” Tom Foster said, feigning sadness and concern.

When they finally left, Arthur closed the door and leaned on it. “The first to arrive and the last to leave,” he said.

Rose laughed loudly. “What a pair of characters.” Then she said, “Hmmmmn,” as if she’d overheard herself and found it puzzling.

I sat on the sofa eating a piece of ham that I’d placed on an apricot sweet roll and drinking a gin and tonic. I felt blurry but not tired enough to sleep.

“Well, how did you like it?” said Rose as she began her rounds, collecting glasses and emptying ashtrays.

Arthur stood at the window and gazed out at the rain. I wondered if he wanted to look quite that dramatic. “It wasn’t much of a party for you, was it?” he said.

“It was fine,” I said.

“Everyone was so glad to see you,” Rose said.

Arthur paddled across the room and lowered himself into what we still called Arthur’s Chair. He heaved a glutinous sigh and placed his smallish feet on the battered oxblood ottoman. “It could have been a lot worse,” he said.

“No, it was good,” I said, injecting some conviction into my voice.

“You know,” said Rose, in her “family secret” voice, “your dad and I have been shopping around for a welcome home present for you.” She sat really quite close to me on the sofa. “Would you like to know what it is?”

“You don’t have to buy me anything,” I said. “You’ve already spent a goddamned fortune on me.”

“On this party?” asked Arthur.

“No. On the new lawyer. On Rockville.”

“Well, money has to be spent on something, doesn’t it, Arthur?” Rose said.

“Not necessarily, but I know what you mean,” Arthur said.

“Are you interested in what we’re getting for you?” Rose asked me.

“Sure.”

“A little car.”

“A little car?” I said, holding up my thumb and forefinger.

“Not quite that small,” Arthur said, smiling—I was never more his son than when I made a simple joke, especially if it was at my mother’s expense.

“If you’re not interested…” said Rose.

“I’m interested. It would be great. But I don’t even have a license. Mine expired.”

“What does that matter?” said Rose. “You’ll bone up and take the test. You were a wonderful driver.”

“Yes,” I said, “like driving you crazy.”

“Or driving me to drink,” said Arthur.

“Are you happy about the car?” asked Rose.

“Yes. But I don’t want you to get it. I don’t need presents.”

“It’s Millicent Bell’s car, you know,” my mother said. “A green Plymouth sedan. As soon as her new car’s delivered, we get to pick up yours.”

“So it’s a slight case of hurry-up-and-wait,” said Arthur.

“That’s not the worst thing that ever happened in this world,” said Rose, with a brave, incongruous smile. “But how about this? In the meanwhile we’ll get you something else, another welcome home present. What would you say to that?”

“Fieldmouse,” I said.

“What?” Rose said.

“Nothing, no, that would be great.”

“What would you like?” Arthur asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t need anything.”

“Some clothes?” said Rose. “For when you start school, or whatever.”

“That would be nice,” I said.

“Clothes aren’t a present,” said Arthur. “He’d get clothes no matter. How about something special, David? Something a little off the beaten path?”

I wondered if he were tempting me deliberately. “Like what?” I said.

“Name it,” said Arthur.

“Well,” I said, leaning back and preparing my insides for the worst, “there is one thing.”

“What?” said Rose.

“And it wouldn’t cost a penny,” I said. “It’s something of mine. I’ve been looking around for it and I can’t find it.”

My parents exchanged glances; it seemed they knew what was next.

“Anyhow,” I said, “I’d like you to give it to me. It means more to me than any old Plymouth, I can tell you that.”

“What are you talking about?” said Rose.

“A bunch of letters. The letters from Jade. The ones you showed to the judge.” My voice was suddenly unstable, feathery, and overheated—not a voice that could command attention. “And I think there were some letters I sent to her. I’d like to have them, all of them.” I took a deep, notched breath and added, “They’re mine,” because they were, they were completely and irrevocably mine, and it tore at my tenderest parts to have to ask for them.

Rose and Arthur explained as simply and calmly as they could that the letters were gone and I, to prevent making a fool of myself, tried to look as if I believed them and, at the same time, to prevent myself from losing all hope, told myself they were clearly lying.

Later that evening we sat in the kitchen over a light supper. Rose and Arthur yawned frequently from exhaustion and tension. No one was hungry and with the topic of the letters having been instantly elevated to a taboo, there was nothing anyone cared to talk about.

Rose was the first to leave the table. Then I went into the living room and turned on the TV. Arthur followed and sat at a respectful distance from me on the sofa.

“Did you talk to What’s His Face about a job?” Arthur asked.

I nodded. A White Sox game was on, tied 6 to 6 in the fifteenth inning.

“You know there’s no rush,” said Arthur. “You don’t have to get a job. I hope you know that.”

“I’ve got to get a job. That’s what they told me. It has to look like I’m getting adjusted.”

“You’ll adjust. It doesn’t have to happen right away. I told you what it was like for me when I came home from the Army.”

I nodded, but Arthur went on.

“I was of course glad to be back. The war was over and I was alive. I had people I wanted to see and places to go. The whole country was celebrating. But I couldn’t do it. Everyone thought your mother and I were having a little second honeymoon but the truth was I couldn’t leave the house. It was the damndest thing. I was just stuck here as if I was paralyzed.”

“I know, I know,” I said. And then, looking away from the TV but not quite at my father, I said, “But there’s a big difference between coming home from World War II and coming home from a fucking insane asylum where you’ve been sent because you burned your girlfriend’s house down. No one wants to see me.”

Arthur shook his head. “Stop it. With an attitude like that you can’t expect very much.”

“That’s fine. I don’t expect anything.”

“Don’t you understand? Everyone is willing to grant that what’s behind you is behind you. Look at all the people here today. I know you don’t care very much about them but that’s not the point. They were all happy to see you again. It was almost like you’ve never been gone.”

“Right. I noticed.”

“Now it’s your turn, David. It’s time for you to realize to yourself that what’s in the past is in the past.”

“I don’t think I know what the past is. I don’t think there’s any such thing.”

“You want to know what the past is?” said Arthur. “It’s what’s already happened. It’s what can’t be brought back.”

“The future can’t be brought back, either. Neither can the present.”

“I’ll show you what the past is,” said Arthur. He clapped his hands together once, waited a moment, and then clapped them again—the sound was hollow, forlorn. “The first clap was the past,” he said with a subdued yet triumphant smile. If we had shared the sort of life that Arthur had wanted for us it would have contained hundreds of conversations just like this one.

“Then what was the second clap?” I said. “That’s the past too, isn’t it? And right now, while I’m saying this, isn’t this the past too, now?”

Rose came in holding that week’s National Guardian. She wore a light blue robe and her summer slippers; she was smoking her nightly Newport. “I’m going to bed now,” she announced. It was something she used to say to hurt Arthur, to make him feel he was being avoided and to emphasize the point that they wouldn’t be making love. There had been a time when Rose had felt she could protect her position in the marriage, and protect her privacy, by simply (and it was simple) withholding her love. But now that her love was no longer sought there was no advantage to be gained in rationing it. It was clear that the power she once had was not real power—it had been bestowed upon her, assigned. It had all depended on Arthur’s wanting her, depended on his vulnerability to every nuance of rejection. He had, she realized now, chosen her weapon for her. He had given her a sword that only he could sharpen.

Arthur checked his watch. “OK,” he said. “Good night.” Then, to me, “I think we’d better turn down the TV so we won’t keep your mother up.”

I sat forward quickly and turned off the set. “I’m going to wash the dishes.”

“There’s a million dishes,” said Arthur. “Save them for the morning.”

“I don’t see anything wrong in doing them now,” said Rose. “It’s about time people started pitching in around here.”

“I agree.”

“It doesn’t have to be done now,” said Arthur.

“What do you care?” said Rose. “You don’t lift a finger around here. You’re like a rabbi sitting around for people to wait on you.”

Arthur forced a burst of air through his lips, to signify a superior laugh that supposedly just happened to escape, and then shook his head to signify patience wearing thin.

I went into the kitchen. At the party, plastic forks and paper plates had been used, but still nearly every dish in the house was soiled. Ordinarily, they would have put them into the dishwasher, but even after the rain the night was too hot and they couldn’t run the air conditioner and the dishwasher at the same time. I felt relieved to be alone and felt somehow clever for not having retreated to my room.

I turned on the water, hot and loud, and stared at the window over the sink. (The window looked out on an airshaft, which my mother found depressing, so she had pasted on the window a picture of Leningrad, clipped from Life magazine.) I squirted some emerald soap onto a big tawny sponge, then picked up a flowered cake dish, washed it clean, and ran it beneath the hot water. As the water touched my hands I felt my eyes go molten and then I bowed my head and cried. Before, when I had wept, I thought of Jade, and wondered where she was and if I would ever see her again, or I thought about all the time that had been lost, or I thought about how absurd and awkward I felt, how out of place and helpless, or I just remembered past happiness—happiness that had been mine and no longer was. But now, standing before the sink in a cloud of steam, I thought only of those letters, picturing the ink upon the page, recalling the endearments. Those letters were all that I had that wasn’t invisible. They were the only tangible proof that once my heart had wings. I had known another world. It is impossible to give it a name. There are words like enchantment, words like bliss, but they didn’t say it, they were stupid words. No words really said it. There was nothing to say about it except that I had known it, it had been mine, and it still was. It was the one real thing, more real than the world. I was crying steadily now, aware that I wasn’t really alone, trying not to make too much noise. I felt myself sinking, literally falling to pieces. I tried to direct my thoughts toward anger with Arthur and Rose for separating me from those letters, for destroying them in a panic, or hiding them, or for whatever they had done, but the anger, even the hatred seemed thin, insignificant. I tried to turn my thoughts toward my own helplessness, my inability to get on with life, to begin again. But the truth was that I had no will and no intention to begin life again. All I wanted was what I’d already had. That exultation, that love. It was my one real home; I was a visitor everywhere else. It had happened too soon, that was for certain. It would have been better, or at least easier, if Jade and I had discovered each other and learned what our being together meant when we were older, if it happened after years of tries and disappointments, rather than that vast, bewildering leap from childhood to enlightenment. It was difficult to accept, and it was frightening too, that the most important thing that was ever going to happen to me, the thing that was my life, happened when I was not quite seventeen years old. I wondered where she was. I thought about those letters, in a trashcan, in a dump, or in a fire. My hands were paralyzed beneath the hot-water tap and they were turning red.

“Do you need some help with those?”

It was Arthur. I didn’t dare face him; I tried to stop crying and I shook with the effort.

“I’ll grab a towel. You wash and I’ll dry,” Arthur said. He was standing next to me now. His shirt was open and the long dark hairs on his chest glistened with sweat. He glanced at me briefly—then dried the one dish in the drainer.

Desperately, I tried to compose a sentence in my mind: I guess I haven’t made much progress with these dishes, is what I came up with. But I couldn’t say it. My tears had become familiar to me yet I couldn’t control them. They had a life of their own. I washed another dish and handed it to my father and he dried it.

“David,” he said. I shook my head and he fell silent. We were silent for a few dishes, for all of the dishes, and then I began on the glasses. I was getting myself under control; my breathing was regular again. I glanced over at my father. His eyes were cloudy and his lips were pressed until they looked ivory and transparent. Oh God, I thought, with a flash of annoyance, he’s worried about me, he wants me to take him off the hook.

“I’m exhausted,” I said. It wasn’t much of an excuse but at least it was true.

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the hot glass in his hand. He turned the dishtowel around and around inside of it, until it cracked a little. “Talk to me, David,” he said, in a voice full of holes.

I knew how to avoid the curiosity—or even the concern—of others and could do it as easily as a cheat can deal off the bottom of the deck: it was basic, rudimentary, and sometimes I did it even when I didn’t altogether want to. I watched myself doing it. “What do you want to talk about?” I said.

“Anything. Whatever’s on your mind.”

I shrugged. I was going to start bawling again and I didn’t know how to stop myself—I didn’t know how to want to. I placed the sponge and a soapy glass on the side of the sink and pressed my hands over my face. I felt the tears running through my fingers, warm and oily.

“I wish I could help you.”

“I’m just very tired,” I said, though I don’t know if it was understandable. I was sobbing heavily now and speech was washed away.

“Is it the party?” Arthur asked. “Did you feel strange with all the people here?”

I shook my head.

“Tell me, David. Talk about it with me. Let me in.” He leaned forward and turned off the water.

“I’m in love,” I said, through my hands and tears.

He touched my shoulder. “I know, David,” he said. “I know.” Then—and I don’t know how to explain this—I heard something that he didn’t say, I heard, “I am, too.”

“What can I do for you, David?” my father asked. “Please. What can I do?”

I heard my mother come into the kitchen. I waited for her to say something but she felt excluded and shy. I turned to face her, with my red ugly eyes. She stepped back and touched her face, looking at me open-mouthed, both embarrassed and ashamed. I turned back toward the window. I felt the misery radiating inside of me, going deeper, getting fiercer and more immense, and I was suddenly very afraid that I wouldn’t be able to stand it. I rubbed my forehead; I clenched my teeth; and then, suddenly, horribly, without even a moment’s warning—or perhaps just one moment, a freezing, sweating instant—my insides contracted and sent spewing up the day’s gin. My vomit splattered onto the sides of the sink and sunk into the soap bubbles.

“Oh God,” said Rose, only half in disgust.

My father grabbed my elbow to support me if I were to swoon. “Press your tongue behind your bottom front teeth,” he said, urgently. I heard a scraping sound behind me. My mother was pulling a chair away from the kitchen table.

“Sit,” she said, in that stern, bossy voice some people adopt when they want to sound reassuring and which has never reassured me.

“I’m all right,” I said, hoarsely.

“You’re not all right,” said Rose.

“If he says he’s all right then he’s all right,” said Arthur, squeezing harder on my elbow.

I turned on the faucet and drank from it, shamelessly squishing the water around in my mouth and then spitting it into the sink. Then I ran some water on my wrists, filled my cupped hands with water, and threw it inaccurately onto my face.

“Are you sick, David?” Rose asked.

I leaned against the sink. Staring into the dark, stinking water, I said, “Why did you throw my letters away?” I waited for an answer but there was silence. Their silence somehow encouraged me—I didn’t want an easy answer and now they seemed to be struggling with my question, my accusation. “Why did you do it?” I said, my voice getting steadier. “I mean, why? That’s all. Why?”

I stood up straight. The sickness was gone. Arthur was looking at Rose, he seemed to be demanding that the answer come from her. I followed his eyes to her guarded face and now both of us were staring at her.

“We did what we thought was best,” she said, calmly, but with an unstable, evasive quality right at the center of her voice.

“Best for who?”

“We didn’t want them around,” she said.

“Then best for you?” I said. “You threw them away because getting rid of them—my letters—was best for you?”

“Why do you want them?” she said, gripping the back of the chair she’d pulled out for me. I thought: I am that chair. And I watched her fingers go white from squeezing it. “Why do you want to repeat every mistake you made, to, to… wallow in something that just about ruined your life?”

“Wallow?” I said, my voice rising in volume and pitch.

“I don’t want to argue over words,” she said. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t care what you mean,” I said. “I want you to know what I mean. Those letters were mine. They were all I had. I just want you to know that I’ll always want them, I’ll always know that you did this. Nothing will make this memory go away. What’s happening right now, in this room, happens forever.” I stared hard at her; my eyes colored the air between us. It seemed for a moment that she might cry but she clamped her mouth shut and tried to think of how to answer me.

“Don’t you speak to me in that way,” is what she finally said.

“We try to do what we think is best,” Arthur said.

“Oh stop it, stop it, for God’s sake, you are both such liars.” I heard my voice as an alien thing, the words clumsily attached to my emotions. My truest, most solid impulse was to push them down, to kick at them, to cause them some physical agony—I knew there was no inner pain I could inflict that would match mine. And I knew, as well, that I was not going to hurt them, I was not even going to touch them.

“You’re not allowed to see her anyhow,” said Rose. “If you even try to, they can revoke your parole.”

“They’re not going to revoke my parole for reading old letters.”

“We’re afraid for you,” Arthur said. “That’s why the letters aren’t here.”

There was nothing to say. I didn’t want to argue with them. It might have been good for me to enunciate my fury but I wasn’t interested in that sort of psychological housekeeping. I was angry but I was peculiarly bored with my anger. It was connected to a part of my world that I didn’t care very much about—it didn’t connect me to the letters. If I couldn’t live in the center of the life I had known, once, the only life I believed in, then I would rather live in dreams. And so I may have said more. The argument may have sputtered on for another few minutes, but I no longer cared and I don’t remember anything about it. I was gone, elsewhere. I was listening to my heart beat—it was pounding, really. It was going faster than it should but I followed its beat and it took me in, took me away. My eyes remained on Arthur and Rose but what I saw was Jade walking through that enormous model heart in the Museum of Science and Industry, touching the veins with her small hands, gazing this way and that, her mouth a little open, stumbling but not seeming to notice that she had. Then we walked home, back to her house on Dorchester. I took her hand, and she stroked mine with her thumb, knowing that if I wasn’t reassured I would lose courage and let it go. When we reached her house she said she hoped her whole family was home. I asked her why and she said she wanted them all to see me. I was so startled that I asked her why and she did me the kindness of pretending she didn’t hear. Then we walked up to the big wooden porch that circled halfway around the house, like a broken Saturn ring. There were bicycles parked on the porch. A wicker couch, yellow with white cushions. A footstool, a flyswatter, an open book. On a little oak table was a glass of iced coffee, milky, with ice cubes stacked in it like bricks. There were tiny flies swimming around the top of the glass, their wings the size of commas, trying to stay alive. Jade saw this—we both looked in the glass at the same instant, but that kind of thing would always happen to us, until it would no longer surprise us but just make us laugh—and she said something like Oh those poor things, or Poor little beasts—the whole family liked that word: beasts—and she threw the coffee over the railing, emptying it out onto their overgrown lawn. Just then Ann came out. It had been her coffee. She had only gone in for a cigarette…