The Misfortunes of Others

by Gloria Dank

  Weezy laughed softly. “Undervalued. Yes, Snooky, that’s your curse, to be undervalued. Like a piece of merchandise on sale. Marked down at K Mart. And Bernard? Does he appreciate you?”

  “Bernard treats me like a slave, or a piece of furniture.”

  “Well, so what? He’s always done that.”

  “Not as bad as this.”

  “Well, you can always crawl over here for a little appreciation, Snooky. I’ve always taken you at your full worth, whatever that may be. Stop whining about Maya. She’s allowed to act however she wants. She has a full-time job, gestating that wonderful genius baby of hers.”

  Snooky looked at her, her intelligent horsey face, her wide smile, the way her hair tumbled into her eyes and down over her shoulders. She smiled at him and dabbled her finger in her water.

  “You know, Weezy, I really do love you,” he said.

  “Oh, pooh.”

  “Really.”

  “Oh,” said Weezy. She smiled at him. “Why couldn’t you be ten years older and not my best friend’s little brother?”

  Snooky shrugged.

  Weezy sighed. “Men,” she said. “You’re all so pigheaded. You and Elmo. Two of a kind.”

  “Except that he has the same name as one of the characters on Sesame Street. Oh, and he also happens to be a great artist.”

  “Well, I’m sure you have many gifts also, Snooky, although nobody has ever been able to figure out exactly what they are. Would you like some more orange juice?”

  “I’ll get it,” he said, taking her glass and rising. “Orange juice and appreciation chez Weezy.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” she said, turning her face to the sun that streamed in through the large bay window.

  It was time for Maya’s monthly visit to her obstetrician. Bernard, who hated doctors, hospitals, illness, and all things medical, sat unhappily cracking his knuckles in the waiting room as she was ushered into the inner recess, the sanctum sanctorum, of the rat maze which made up the doctor’s offices and waiting rooms. On previous visits he had leafed nervously through the pile of magazines on the table, working his way unseeingly through Child, Parents, Child and Parents, Working Mother, Mothering, Newsweek, and Vogue. This time he did not have the mental energy even to pretend to be reading. He sat hunched miserably in his chair, his eyes fixed on a spot on the floor several inches in front of his feet.

  A blond child of indeterminate age and sex, dressed in a turquoise and red jumpsuit, with a lollipop in its mouth, came up to him and put a hand confidingly on his knee.

  “Mommy,” it said. “Mommy. Look at the big man.”

  The child’s mommy, busy reading Parents, put out a hand without looking and yanked the child away.

  “Mommy,” it said, like a wind-up doll, in a manner which Bernard found inexpressibly irritating. “Mommy. Look at the man.”

  “Shut up,” its mother said kindly, patting it on the head. “Play with your toys.”

  “Mommy!”

  Bernard shivered inwardly. Is this what was in store for him and Maya? Or would it be different if it were his own child, his flesh and blood, saying “Mommy” in that annoyingly high-pitched, nasal tone? The child sat down on the floor, took the lollipop out of its mouth, tossed it on the carpet, then picked it up and stuck it back in. Bernard shuddered.

  “That’s a good girl,” the mother said, turning a page. “Play with your toys.”

  The child took the lollipop out again and grinned at him, revealing small white teeth spaced alarmingly widely apart. Bernard could foresee orthodonture in her future.

  “Mommy. Look at the man.”

  “Shut up.”

  The child shut up. Bernard looked away in inward pain. The nurse came out, small, young, falsely cheerful. “Mr. Woodruff?”

  He lumbered awkwardly to his feet. “Yes?”

  “Please come with me.”

  He stepped over the little girl and was led through the maze into Waiting Room Three. His wife lay supine on the table, a white paper sheet covering most of her body.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Of course it’s all right,” said the doctor, a short dark middle-aged man with a beard and an Australian accent who resembled nothing more than a mountain troll. “Your wife wanted you to hear something.”

  He took out an instrument which looked like a large earphone, smeared it with jelly and placed it on Maya’s stomach. He moved it around experimentally.

  Suddenly, from a receiver in the doctor’s hand, the room was filled with the sound of a loud, rapid thudding. It went on without pause, amplified like thunder. Maya and the doctor turned toward him, their faces open and expectant.

  “It’s the heartbeat,” she said. “The baby’s heartbeat, Bernard.”

  Bernard stood there, his own heart quickening in response. “So early …?”

  “You can hear the heartbeat at ten weeks,” said the doctor.

  The heartbeat thundered on, rapid as a bird’s, strong and stable. Bernard tried to imagine it, that tiny being, the blood pumping, coursing through the arteries and veins, pulsing in and out like the sea. The doctor, bored, turned off the machine and put it away. Bernard reached under the sheet and took Maya’s hand in his.

  Snooky was stricken when he heard about the heartbeat.

  “You heard the baby’s heart, and you didn’t record it for me?”

  “Thoughtless of us,” said his sister. “We didn’t have a recording studio handy.”

  “A tape recorder, Maya. That’s all it would have taken. A tape recorder. I’ll give you one the next time you go.”

  She was picking at her potato salad. “Is this okay?”

  “What do you mean, okay?”

  “I mean, is it fresh?”

  “I just made it this morning. Doesn’t it taste right?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing tastes right anymore. I’m exhausted from seeing the doctor. He said that I’d be feeling better soon, but I don’t think so. I don’t think I’m ever going to feel better again. I’m going upstairs to lie down and stare at the willow tree.”

  “You do that. Do you mind if I finish your potato salad?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Where’s Bernard?”

  “He’s upstairs in his study.”

  Snooky forked a potato cube into his mouth. “How did he react to hearing the heartbeat?”

  “I think he was moved. Really moved. He hates my visits to the doctor, of course, but he couldn’t get over this.”

  Bernard, when he came downstairs half an hour later to pour himself a cup of coffee, frowned slightly when asked about the heartbeat.

  “It was interesting.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it make the whole thing seem more real?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that frighten you?”

  “No. Can I go now?”

  “Maya said you were moved. Were you moved by the sound of your baby’s heart beating?”

  “Honestly, Snooky,” Bernard said irritably. “Do I have to undergo the Spanish Inquisition every time I want a cup of coffee?”

  “Just wondering. Just trying to be a little bit friendly.”

  Bernard stirred milk into his coffee. He headed for the door and safety.

  “What’s it going to take to make you open up to me, Bernard?” yelled Snooky.

  There was no reply. He could hear Bernard’s heavy footfall on the stairs.

  “Apparently, the end of the universe as we know it,” he said to himself, opening up the newspaper to the television page.

  There was a small dispute later that afternoon about dinner.

  “I’m going to serve lobster,” said Snooky. “Fresh New England lobster.”

  Bernard shook his head. “I can’t eat lobster. Not while I’m writing about Sophie.”

  “Come on. Don’t be ridiculous. You mean you didn’t eat lamb the whole time you we
re writing about Mrs. Woolly?”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Maya, who was making herself a cup of tea. She wore an old ratty sweater with holes in it, one she had had since high school, which had once been white but was now a dirty gray. There were dark half-moons under her eyes where veins throbbed like underwater creatures. “He didn’t, as a matter of fact. Not for years and years.”

  “Would you eat lamb now, Bernard?”

  “No.”

  “Well, at least you have principles,” said Snooky, scratching “lobster” off his shopping list. “Weird, ridiculous, nonsensical principles, but principles nevertheless. What’s safe for me to cook, then? What won’t offend you?”

  “Anything else,” said his sister. “You know Bernard will eat anything.”

  “I always thought he would, but I was wrong. He won’t eat anything he’s been writing about. And here I was going to make rat stew tomorrow night.”

  Bernard frowned. He had written two very successful books about a swashbuckling rat named Mr. Whiskers. “Is there anything you’d like, Maya?”

  “No. All this talk about lobster and rat stew is making me sick. I’d just like a quiet cup of tea. Use your imagination, Snooky. You do have one, don’t you? And listen, if you’re going out shopping, will you drop this book off at Weezy’s? She lent it to me ages ago and I just found it on the shelf. I’m not sure whether I read it or not. Tell her it was wonderful and I loved it, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “It was wonderful. Maya loved it,” he told Weezy later, handing her the book.

  Weezy tossed it aside. “She never read it, huh?”

  “I don’t think so. She said she couldn’t remember.”

  “I knew when I gave it to her she wouldn’t read it,” she said cheerfully. “That’s Maya. She asked to borrow it one day when she saw it in my apartment in New York, years ago. I told her she’d never read it.”

  “I don’t think she did.”

  “Doesn’t matter. At least she eventually returned it, unlike most of my friends. By the way, have you met Sao?”

  Sao was a slender, dark-haired woman who at the moment was on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor.

  “Sao helps me out around the house. I’m so disorganized. Aren’t I, Sao? Sao is from Portugal. Isn’t that wonderful? She came over here to live with her relatives. She speaks a minimum of English, and I speak absolutely no Portuguese. We get along marvelously. I can’t stand people in my house, but with Sao I have total privacy. She understands not a single word I say. We communicate with gestures on a very primordial level, like apes.”

  Snooky glanced at Sao, who was wringing the cloth out in a pail of soapy water.

  “Boa tarde,” he said.

  The young woman flashed him a delighted smile. “Boa tarde, senhor.”

  “Tenho muito prazer em conhecê-la.”

  She laughed.

  “Compreende-me?”

  “Sim, sim, senhor.”

  “Meu nome é Snooky Randolph. Sou um amigo da Weezy.”

  “Tenho muito prazer em conhecê-lo.”

  “À sua saúde,” said Snooky. The woman’s smile broadened. “Qual é a especialidade da casa?” he continued. “Senhor, gostaria de beber um uísque com soda. Estão incluidos os impostos e o serviço?”

  Sao began to laugh helplessly. Weezy, nearby, was tapping her foot with impatience. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. I’m just showing off some of the very useful Portuguese I picked up last time I was in Lisbon.”

  “What are you saying to poor Sao? You seem to be terrorizing her.”

  “I asked her what the specialty of the house was. Then I ordered a whiskey and soda from the bartender, and I inquired whether tax and service were included.”

  “How fascinating. I don’t mean to be rude, but I must get to my studio. Elmo and Jennifer are coming, and Mrs. Castor will be along later. I’d like to get some work done before they arrive. Sao …”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to work now. Work now. In the studio.” Exaggerated gestures accompanied this information. “No, no, don’t translate for me, Snooky. You’ll destroy my perfect peace here. Sao and I understand each other marvelously. Don’t we? I’m going to work now. If you’re gone when the lessons are over, I’ll see you next week. All right? Good. You see, Snooky, you don’t need to be such a show-off with languages. Sao understands everything. Good-bye now. Tell your sister I’m glad she enjoyed the book. It’s so important that these illusions be maintained, even between the closest of friends. Good-bye now, good-bye.”

  “Adeus,” said Snooky to Sao, who waved her hand at him. “Até logo.”

  “Até logo,” she said, giggling, as Weezy ushered him to the door.

  After that visit to Weezy’s, it rained for an entire week. It was the end of April, and the rain poured down relentlessly day after day as if the floods were coming. Snooky, staring out the window, rivulets of water running down the clear glass past his face, began to feel that it had always rained and always would rain; that nothing had ever been different. He and Maya and Bernard, holed up in the great creaky Victorian, began to turn on each other, snarling and snapping like caged beasts. They forgot what the sun looked like. Gray day followed gray day in an endless, ominous progression. Maya, in particular, was miserable. She still felt weak and ill, contrary to her doctor’s cheerful prognosis; she still felt vaguely queasy most of the time and sharply queasy part of the time; she still, if she did not eat several hundred small meals a day, had to take to her bed with a splitting headache, her body throbbing, her blood sugar dipping dangerously low. She cried in her husband’s arms and snarled at her brother. She was sullen with her best friend when Weezy braved the storms and arrived, dripping, at their front door, decked out in a gaudy red raincoat and pink scarf.

  “Cheerful, isn’t she?” was Weezy’s comment, later, sharing a comforting cup of coffee in the kitchen with Snooky.

  “She’s been biting my head off several times a day.”

  “Being pregnant doesn’t seem to have improved her personality.”

  “I don’t care if she is pregnant, one of these days I’m going to lose my temper. Especially if it keeps on raining like this.”

  “The weather’s been terrible. I suppose it must be hard, being hormonal and everything, and having it so gray day after day.”

  “You’re too kind to her.”

  “She needs a friend. You and Bernard look like you’re going to murder someone. She needs a friend to recount later, at the trial, how you fingered a steak knife and talked about losing your temper.”

  Snooky guiltily put down the knife. “Everything’s getting on my nerves. I’m not myself.”

  “It’s the weather. Low barometric pressure does that to everybody. There are more murders and robberies on rainy days.”

  “Is that true?”

  “I don’t know. I just made it up. Probably.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do if the weather doesn’t change soon. I can’t believe I left the Caribbean for this.”

  “It is incredible.” Weezy drank her coffee. “Mmmm, you do make the best coffee. Just right. Heaven to my taste buds. Are you sure you won’t marry Sao and become my second-in-help?”

  Snooky looked bitter. “Why should I do that when I have such an enviable position, slaving away here for nothing?”

  “If they’re going to hire you, they could at least pay you.”

  “Sometimes Bernard forgets, and I have to spend my own money to buy stuff for dinner.”

  “Life is so terribly unfair.”

  “In St. Martin I didn’t have to pay for anything. I didn’t even have to cook or clean.”

  “You shouldn’t have left.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “The weather’s probably lovely there.”

  Snooky did not reply. He was sunk in gloom.

  “I have an idea,” said Weezy. “I have to go to New York City the day afte
r tomorrow. You know, about my show. The gallery owner and I have to talk over some details. Would you like to tag along? You could see friends, go to a museum, have a little time to yourself.”

  “That would be wonderful. I accept with gratitude. Thank you.”

  “Bernard and Maya might like to have some time to themselves also.”

  “I don’t see why. All they do is snap at each other, and sometimes Maya cries.”

  “Oh, you’re simply jealous, sweetie. Theirs is a great romance.”

  “I don’t see what’s so great about it. They don’t seem to get along at all anymore.”

  “Which is why they need a day off, too,” Weezy said wisely, patting him on the shoulder.

  Maya was disturbed at the idea of Snooky going off for the day.

  “Is it because you’re tired of us?” she asked, clutching the bedspread to her thin body. Instead of getting rounder, she looked more emaciated than ever. “Is it because I’ve been mean to you? Is that why Weezy asked you?”

  “Mean to me?” said Snooky. “Mean to me? You think calling me a pinheaded weaselnosed dwarf is being mean to me? You think gagging on my food and calling it simply inedible is being mean to me? You think saying I make too much noise when I’m walking around in my room upstairs is being mean to me? No, no, Maya, far from it. I’m enjoying myself so much I can barely tear myself away.”

  Maya lay back on the pillows. She looked very tired. “I’m in a bad mood these days.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m pregnant. I’m allowed to be bad.”

  “Well, I’m not pregnant,” said Snooky. “I’m allowed to go away for a day.”

  “I’m worried that you hate me,” said Maya fretfully. Her eyes filled with tears. She plucked nervously at the bedspread. “I feel like you hate me, Snooks.”

  “I don’t hate you. Why do you say that?”

  “Because I’ve been so mean.”

  “You haven’t been mean.”

  “I did call you a pinheaded weaselnosed dwarf. I remember that. I called you that the other day, didn’t I?”

  “I didn’t take it personally, Missy.”

  “I don’t know why I’m being so impossible,” she said with a half-sob. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I never was before. I was always a nice person.”