“Members of the family,” Clarice whispered behind him.
“More as members of the family than as real people who were special individual people. All they thought about was the family, and all they thought of themselves as was family-parts.”
Clarice picked up from the floor four red masks that had just generic features and the words FAMILY-MEMBER stamped in white across the forehead, and the Spaniards all put one of the masks on, which was cumbersome, given the presence of the original masks, too.
Stoney stepped back and Alvin stepped to the television. “This was both a good thing and a bad thing, apparently. It was a good thing because each family member felt a strong and secure sense of identity and identification with a unit larger than he. Or she. His or her concerns were not his or her concerns alone, and he or she could count on the things and ideas and feelings he or she valued as having value not merely for him or her, but also for the whole organic/emotional unit of which he or she was a part. There was sense of identification, of unaloneness, in short one of security and warmth, emotional shelter. Four individual people were a unit.” The audience applauded warmly.
Spatula stepped forward. “But it was a bad thing, too. Because everybody in the ... family felt like all they were were parts of the family. So in case anything bad happened that was bad and made the family not as much a family anymore, it also made the people in the family not as much people anymore, and then they were alone and invisible and unhappy, and things exploded very fast in bad ways.” The Spaniards took off the FAMILY-MEMBER masks and put on plain white featureless masks with red cracks down the middle, and very tiny holes for breathing, and they all took three steps away from each other and turned their backs. The audience whispered. Lenore began to eat her lime. She could see Stoney discreetly picking his nose under his mask.
/d/
I am in receipt of the following communication, dated 1 September 1990, from a Mr. Karl Rummage, of the legal firm of Rummage and Naw, Cleveland, acting at the corporate behest of Mr. Stonecipher Beadsman III, President and Chief Executive Officer of Stonecipheco Baby Food Products:
Dear Mr. Vigorous:
Having been exposed to and in admiration of Frequent and Vigorous Publishing Inc.’s performance with respect to the publications “Norslan, Big Iron, and You” and “Norslan: The Third-World Herbicide That Likes People,” etc., for some time, Mr. Stonecipher Beadsman III, President and Chief Executive Officer of Stonecipheco Baby Food Products, Cleveland, Ohio, has authorized me to extend to you an offer to undertake for us the publication of three product-information packages concerning a new infant benefit service currently in the final stages of development at Stonecipheco Baby Food Products. Initial drafts of said informational packages have been composed and compiled by Stonecipheco’s Division of Advertising and Product-Perception-Gauging, and are enclosed under separate cover.
Mr. Beadsman has authorized me to extend to you an offer of significantly generous compensation for the firm of Frequent and Vigorous, and an even more significantly generous personal bonus for you, Richard Vigorous, for the acceptance of and satisfactory realization of the goals set forth under the proposed contract (see also enclosure).
Stipulations attached to the tender of such an offer include, but are not necessarily exhausted by, the following: (1.) The retention by the firm of Frequent and Vigorous of some personnel familiar with the culture and language of the inhabitants of the island of Corfu (see enclosure); (2.) The withholding of information concerning the tendering of and details concerning any part of the proposed contract from Ms. Lenore Beadsman, East Corinth, Ohio, with whom you are known to enjoy some personal connection, until such time as such withholding is deemed inadvisable by Mr. Stonecipher Beadsman III; (3.) The firm of Frequent and Vigorous’s granting Ms. Lenore Beadsman a leave of absence of two (2) days from switchboard duties, for a trip to see her brother, Mr. Stonecipher Beadsman IV, on Beadsman family business at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, an institution of which I am given to understand you are an alumnus. Your accompanying Ms. Beadsman on this trip, with travel accommodations provided and all legitimately incurred expenses absorbed by Stonecipheco, Inc., would be welcome, but should not be regarded as a stipulation attached to the tendering of the original contract offer. Etc. etc. etc. etc.
What are we to make of this? I have yet to open the enclosure. I can feel the Erieview shadow creeping over and through the lamps behind me, at the licorice window. It is noon. Today Lenore and I do not lunch. Tonight she goes to visit her sister. Another day of missing.
/e/
Stoney was addressing the television audience. “Since every member of the Snapiard family thought of themselves just as family-members, it meant that if there was less of a family, they were less people, and if there wasn’t a family, they weren’t people.”
“... in the full sense.”
“Weren’t people in the full sense.”
Alvin stepped to the television. “Each family-member, then, in a natural and understandable attempt to preserve individual identity and efficacy of will ...”
Spatula made knee-motions indicating that she needed to go potty. Lenore continued eating her now not quite so frozen peas.
“... sought to restore identity, and a sense of belonging, by attaching themselves to things in the world, extrafamilial objects and pursuits; they sought identity and shelter in things. Alvin held up his Spiro Agnew watch; Spatula hugged English Muffin the teddy bear to her chest as she bobbed; Stoney made motions as if to kiss his Richard Scarry cut-out book, while Clarice made as if to tango with her Visa Gold Card. The cracked white faceless masks came off, and so everyone was back to his or her original mask. The audience made soft sounds. And now extremely tiny but still accurate Clarice-, Alvin-, Stoney-, and Spatula-masks were affixed to the objects by their owners.
“Hell of a lot of masks, here,” Lenore muttered.
“The problem, again, however,” Alvin continued, “was that in making their own sense of self and rightness-with-themselves-as-people depend on things outside them, the family-members were letting themselves in for riskiness and trouble. Things couldn’t be people, not even the people they belonged to.” The tiny masks on the objects were taken off and discarded with wide arm-motions. Alvin said, “And now a lost or a misplaced thing meant what, for the Snapiard family?”
“What?” shouted the audience on the television.
There was silence. Alvin took Clarice’s Visa Gold Card, and she the watch, and they traded masks. Alvin’s nose had been sweating heavily, and Clarice was clearly less than pleased about putting his mask on. Clarice took English Muffin and gave Spatula the Alvin-mask. Soon each member of the family was wearing an incorrect mask and was twirling around, symbolizing disorientation and despair, although the despair-effect was compromised somewhat by the fact that Spatula really liked to twirl, and was giggling.
/f/
Lenore’s sister is ravingly lovely, if one likes the ravingly lovely type, with soft honey hair and dark blue eyes and breasts like artillery; but she is cocky and serious and dull and utterly (and un-attractively unaware that she is utterly) dependent on the Latest Thing for her sense of direction and worth. Her husband is a civil man, though that he lusts after Lenore I do not for one second doubt. Alvin Spaniard is randy. My understanding—which is arrived at via Lenore and so is of course vague—is that on four occasions early last year Alvin Spaniard had sexual intercourse with his Georgia peach of a receptionist. Clarice Spaniard found out about the incidents from Sigurd Foamwhistle, Stonecipher Beadsman III’s executive aide and possibly the half brother of Lenore’s younger brother, and in any event a man about whose unsavory desires with respect to Clarice and Lenore both I am in no doubt whatsoever. So Clarice found out, and there were, for a while, various kickings of emotional ass. They subsided, and Alvin and Clarice finally sat down and conferred, and it was decided marriage therapy was needed, Alvin agreeing vigorously, obviously—loving his wife, also likin
g his job. Marriage therapy degenerated into family therapy. God knows what all went on. I know there were stages concerned with human sculpture, in which each member of the family molded the others into those positions reflecting perceived relationships, etc. There were fights involving toy clubs made of Nerf material. The Spaniard vogue now is apparently drama, carried on in front of a fabricated audience; rather, at least tonight, at least one real person—regardless of what that person herself may happen to think. Lenore and Clarice are not close. As are not Monroe and I. She says she avoids going over. But where does she go, then?
A bad day. The urine dream has so upset me that I find it hard to function. As it were. I miss Lenore. I feel physical pain, now, when I am absent or apart from Lenore Beadsman. Which is, of course, always. Too bad a day to think actively of what her father might be trying to do. On the face of it I must say that it seems to me that whatever I can do to establish connections with Lenore’s family, to deepen and strengthen the personal bonds that join Lenore and me, can only hasten that day when I am able truly and completely and finally to take Lenore Beadsman inside myself.
A bad, bad day. Dark, soaring feelings of important tasks yet undone. Yet unknown. I am afraid to go to the bathroom.
/g/
All the excitement of the twirling and giggling, and the tension of live performance, but especially the twirling, had been responsible for a slight crisis with respect to Spatula. Things were quickly put right again, though, with Lenore helping with paper towels, and the audience was put in a FREEZE mode, and finally unfrozen, and things got back underway.
Stoney: “Disorientation and sadness resulted when the family-members tried to depend on things that weren’t them and weren’t the family for their own happiness and being-themselves-ness.”
“Sense of self.”
“Sense of self. So they ... they ...”
Clarice stepped forward and gently pushed Stonecipher out of the way:
“So they did what any smart family-members would do. They talked with one another, and aired the things they weren’t comfortable with as people right then, and meaningful dialogue and personal interaction was established, and the family-members began to grow emotionally both as individuals and as members of an emotional network of shared interests and values and emotional commitments, and then the growth and development and dialogue was facilitated by their going and seeing an outside party whose whole life was directed toward helping family-members grow and see themselves clearly both as selves and members, and so come to a fuller and happier sense of self.”
The invisible orchestra on the television now struck up a tune, and in the living room in Cleveland Heights there took place a sort of dance, with involved connections and motions and gestures, each directed by family-members at other family-members, while the audience clapped its hands. The dance would have been better, except Alvin wasn’t participating with full enthusiasm, and kept gravitating back to the sofa and looking down through his mask at his notes from the Kopek Spasova interview.
The dance ended. Lenore looked at the clock on the mantel. Spatula, damp but cheerful, stepped forward.
“And after a long time of trying, the Snapiards ...,” she giggled, “... discovered the easiest thing in the whole world. They all discovered that they couldn’t try to depend for their feelings of being themselves on just the whole family, because they each weren’t the whole family.” The Spaniards all went and stomped on their FAMILY-MEMBER masks. “And they couldn’t get their feelings of themselves from things, because they weren’t things.” They all pretended to stomp on their things, but didn’t really, especially Alvin and his Spiro Agnew watch. “They found out that what they needed to get their feelings of being themselves from was, themselves ... ,” Spatula smiled wonderfully at the television as a murmur went through the crowd, “... because that’s what they were. The easiest thing in the world is what they saw.” And Alvin, Clarice, Stoney, and Spatula took off their Alvin-, Clarice-, Stoney-, and Spatula-masks, and stared deeply into the empty eyeholes of their own faces. Through one of her eyeholes Spatula said to the television, “The End.” The television audience rose as one.
/h/
“Dum de dum de dum de dum.”
“La de da de da de da.”
“Jesus shall not want.”
“ ”
“Jesus shall not want.”
“What?”
“Pardon me?”
“What in the Lord’s name?”
“The Lord is my supper. Jesus shall not want.”
“Sweet Mother McCree.”
“You fill me up.”
“It’s a miracle.”
“Lay your sleeping head, my love.”
“Dear Father in heaven.”
“Human on my faithless arm.”
“The bird has been touched by God.”
“The bird has been touched by God.”
“Yes.”
“I have to do what’s right for me as a person.”
“Thank you Lord. Thank you for touching this house. Oral, I did, I expected a miracle.”
“The sins of the fathers.”
“Charlotte’s Web. It’s like Charlotte’s Web.”
“A camel, like this.”
“Dare I touch you?”
“Women need space, too.”
“Ow! Well, the dear little thing still bites.”
“Clint Clint Clint. It’s like Charlotte’s Web.”
“Oh Martin Tissaw, why aren’t you here?”
“Maybe we could get him on ‘Real People.’ ”
“What?”
“Maybe we could get him on ‘Real People.’ ”
“Is that what You direct me to do, God? To get this bird, this animal through which You have chosen to make Yourself heard, on ‘Real People’?”
“Anger is natural, let it out.”
“To deliver Your message of anger and love?”
“Human on my faithless arm.”
“Then that is what I shall do. Get up off your knees, woman!”
“Get up off your knees, woman!”
“Go forth and do the work directed.”
“ ‘Real People.’ ”
“Yes, ‘Real People.’ Disgusting mirror and all. But first I call Martin.”
“ ‘Real Birds.’ It may get torn, I’m warning you. Care for a mint?”
“Forget dusting.”
“What’s with Vlad the Impaler?”
“I’ve been called.”
“Make me come.”
“Come you shall. We shall go together, but first let me call ‘Real People,’ ”
“Goodbye.”
“Thank you, Lord.”
11
1990
/a/
“I think maybe it’s time for me to just hop on my horse and git.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I feel like I need to get the fuck out.”
“Out of what?”
“How much time we got here, Melinda-Sue?”
“You said you loved Scarsdale. You said you loved me.”
“I think it’s turning out there’s problems with that analysis. I think what I unfortunately meant is that I loved fucking you, is basically all. And I just don’t think I love fucking you anymore.”
“....”
“... my razor...”
“Why not?”
“....”
“How come?”
“I’m not sure I really know. I’m hopin’ to give it some more thought. It’s just not wonderful anymore. Nothing personal. It’s just not wonderful.”
“Not wonderful? What do you mean, not wonderful?”
“Well, look at your leg.”
“What’s the matter with my leg? I’m only twenty-seven. I’ve got nice legs. I happen to know for a fact they’re nice.”
“You irritate all kinds of hell out of me when you don’t listen to what I say, Melinda-Sue. I never said you didn’t have nice legs.
All I said was to just look at your goddamn leg.”
“....”
“We’re just missing the wonderfulness. Your leg, for an example. It’s all smooth and firm and shapely and all. It looks good and it feels good and it smells good. God knows you keep it real well shaved. It’s all beautiful and artistic and all that shit. But see, it’s just a leg. That’s all it is for me, now, is a fucking leg. It could be my leg, if I shaved my leg.”
“What difference does that make?”
“It makes all kinds of difference, honeypot. You put your thinkin’ cap on about it for a while.”
“You’re being immature. You’re being totally unrealistic. You’re deliberately trying to hurt me.”
“No, what I’m deliberately trying to do is say fuck off, is what I’m deliberately trying to do.”
“Well then what am I supposed to do?”
“It’s weird how I’m not at all worried about that. You got your work, if I get to use loose terms. You got your goddamned voice, still. I know that for a undeniable fact. It comes at me forty times a day. I can’t get the fuck away from you. I get in the car and there you are. I feel like all the air I breathe you’ve already breathed.”
“....”
“Is cryin’ supposed to make me feel bad? ‘Cause it don’t. I don’t feel bad. I just feel like I need to get the fuck out, still.”
“You’re just drunk.”
“I’m a tinch drunk. No bones about it. But I’m sincere, here, ma‘am. No more fucking, no more love.”
“....”
“Take your robe off a second.”
“....”
“Take it off please I said.”
“Ow! God, what are—?”
“Thank you. Don’t worry, no rape on the horizon this morning, ma‘am. Look, mine comes off too, to be fair. Let’s just have us an objective look at the situation, here.”
The Broom of the System Page 19
