Something Happened

by Джозеф Хеллер

  "That boy. Oh, that boy of yours. He is really something."

  We think so too (we are somewhat vain and braggarty about those precocious intuitions and idiosyncracies of his in which we can take proprietary delight) and (like rigid, high-powered machines not really in charge of ourselves) operate automatically to change him — to harden him, soften him, smarten him, desensitize him — lying to him and to ourselves (as I lied, and knew I was lying, when I filed my mother away into that repulsive nursing home that I described to her and others with false energy as being beautiful, new, and comfortable as a modern hotel) that it is for his own good. (And not for ours.)

  "Be good," we fire at him. "Don't be afraid. You can do it. Try. Try harder. You can be anything you want to be. Don't do that. You're getting me angry."

  (Maybe it is for his own good.)

  (And maybe it isn't.)

  And even the nurse we have for Derek now, who is considerate to none of us (and especially dislikes my daughter, who is defiant and impolite to her and never truckles at all), not even to Derek anymore, I suspect, singles my boy out periodically for loud flattery that embarrasses him and clumsy, possessive hugs that make him miserable as he sees her scowling reproachfully at the rest of us in taunting contrast, even though she does not approve of the way he acts toward Derek either.

  "It's no wonder he doesn't want to play with him," she has censured the rest of us in his presence, "when he sees how the rest of you treat him. None of you want to play with him."

  My boy does not like Derek's nurse or the harsh spotlight of her praise. (I think he senses he is being used by her to get at us.) He is actually afraid of her, as he is afraid of most of his teachers and the school nurse, and wishes, without evincing any of his dislike (he is always afraid to show antagonism to anyone), to avoid all possibilities for conversation with her and to escape her pinches, touches, and embraces. (He finds her obnoxious.)

  "Get rid of her," I decide on cranky impulse and snap at my wife.

  She sighs. "I don't want to have to start again."

  "She isn't even good to him. She doesn't keep him clean."

  "Where should I go?"

  "Get someone young this time, can't you?"

  "Where?"

  "I wish we could get someone who would really like him. You can't. I know. They don't want to have to take care of him either."

  "Maybe I should do it. Maybe I should devote my whole life to taking care of him."

  "Holy you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Become a nun."

  "Maybe I should."

  "Not if you think about it that way. You don't mean it. You'd probably be worse to him than any of them."

  "Fuck you."

  "I like the way you swear now," I joke. "You say 'Fuck you' much better than you used to."

  "Practice. You taught me."

  "I'm proud."

  "Only with you. You make it very easy to say 'Fuck you' to you."

  "You do it better too."

  "Any complaints?"

  "Not at this moment."

  "Well fuck you again."

  She rolls away from me. We are nearly naked. I continue laughing.

  "I'm trying to," I tell her, coaxing her back. "I'm trying to get you to."

  "Maybe we should start thinking about sending him away someplace."

  "Maybe we should stop talking about nun now."

  "I want to."

  "No."

  "Where he'll be much better off."

  "No, I said."

  "We'll have to, sooner or later. Think about it, I mean. You never want to think about it."

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  "We'll have the money now. Won't we?"

  "You don't understand, do you?"

  "I'm asking."

  "If I decide to take the job. I've got money enough for that anyway. It isn't money."

  "Maybe you should decide to take it."

  "I don't want to talk about it now."

  "I'm talking about the job."

  "I don't want to talk about that, either. No, you're not. You're not talking about the job. You lie a lot about yourself."

  "We have to talk about it sometime. We're going to have to decide. Stop a minute, will you? You can't keep ducking away forever."

  "I can till I die."

  "Don't joke about it."

  "And leave you with him?"

  "Don't joke about that, either."

  "And her. And him too. Won't you be busy."

  "None of that's funny."

  "Don't you want me to die?"

  "You know I can't stand talking about things like that."

  "He's still too small. I don't want to talk about him now. When the kids might hear."

  "Should I lock the door?"

  "You're just as bad," I remind her. "If I say yes, you say no. When I say send him away, you say we can't."

  "It's for his own good."

  "No, it's not."

  "Maybe we should send them all away," she observes hopelessly.

  "What do you mean by that?"

  "I don't know what I mean," she retracts. "The kids are embarrassed by him. Ashamed. Maybe we should send them both away and keep him."

  "How would it help to send them away?"

  "I didn't mean it. You know that. I'm just feeling bad. They don't like to have their friends come to the house and have to see him. Neither do we."

  "Talk about yourself. I'm more comfortable about him than you are."

  "No, you're not. You just pretend. You put on an act. He makes everyone uncomfortable. He makes everyone who comes here put on an act."

  "Fire the old cunt."

  "How would that help?"

  "It would help us. She's rude to everyone."

  "Don't use that word. You know I don't like it."

  "That's why I use it. You ought to get used to it by now. I am. In fact, I'm starting to get very used to it right now."

  "It's easy for you."

  "Sure."

  "I know you. You'll probably be out of town the day I tell this one she has to go and the day the new one comes."

  "You bet."

  "You can laugh about it. You don't even want to interview them."

  "I don't know what to ask."

  "And then you're disappointed. You're never satisfied with the one I get."

  "I'm just glad you can get anybody at all."

  "Until you get used to them. Until you can't stand them and then want me to fire them."

  "Get a young one, can't you? Can't you get a psychology major or something?"

  "We need someone full tune. She has to do everything for him. He can't do anything. You never like to face anything unpleasant."

  "Do you?"

  "Don't you ever feel guilty doing this while we're talking about the children, or even Derek?"

  "No. Why?"

  "Even the day my grandmother died you wanted to make me do it."

  "I wanted to make you do it the day your father died too."

  "Don't say that. You know how I felt."

  "What does one thing have to do with another?"

  "I do. I don't feel right about it."

  "Why should I?"

  "It doesn't seem right."

  "Do you want me to stop? I will if you want me to."

  "It seems all wrong now. It seems dirty again. I don't know. I don't feel right."

  "Don't you like feeling dirty?"

  "No. You do."

  "You feel fine."

  "Am I coarse? Am I ever common?"

  "Now I do. Yeah, I guess I do feel guilty. You did that. You do that a lot. We don't do it that often when we're talking about the kids or something serious."

  "I feel dirty."

  "Then I will stop. It's no fun for me. Do you want me to?"

  "Lying here talking about sending him away."

  "You were doing that. I wasn't. Is that what's making you feel dirty? Or me?"

  "Do you love me?"
<
br />   "I'm trying to. My hardest. Feel how hard I'm trying to love you."

  "Don't do that."

  "This?"

  "You know what I mean."

  "This?"

  "Fuck you again."

  "Lock the door."

  "You lock the door, since you're feeling so peppy."

  "Fire the old cunt."

  "Christ, you're vulgar," she says, and means it.

  "You're profane," I answer. "Suppose your new minister could hear you now. I bet he'd like to see you now. Aren't you glad I'm vulgar?"

  "No feelings."

  "Feelings," I maintain. "Plenty of feelings. Feel my feelings."

  "No, I'm not glad."

  "What do you want?"

  "I don't know. I'm ready."

  "I'll lock the door."

  "I'll start looking around."

  "I think he's getting much better, isn't he?"

  "No."

  "Don't you?"

  "He isn't. You always say that."

  "If I don't, you do."

  "I know," she admits.

  "I think he listens more. He understands now. He keeps himself cleaner."

  She shakes her head firmly. "I don't think she's doing him any good at all."

  "Don't you see it?"

  "No. He's not supposed to get better. He's never going to. That's what they say."

  "Then let's fire that fucking old cunt. None of us like her. She doesn't like us. She reminds me of old Mrs. Yerger, falling into decay."

  "Who's Mrs. Yerger?"

  "A woman I used to work for. When I was a kid."

  "Did you ever do it to her?"

  "Christ, no. She was worse than my mother."

  "I'm ready, I said. Why do you keep doing that?"

  "I like it. You're supposed to like it too. All bosom and no breasts."

  "Like me?"

  "Unlike you."

  "I've got small breasts. You keep telling me."

  "They're big enough. I like them small."

  "You've tried any other kind?"

  "Never."

  "Did you lock the door?"

  "Yeah. How come you're so worried?"

  "Locked it?"

  "Open up."

  I close my eyes sometimes when I'm making love to my wife and try to think of somebody better than Mrs. Yerger or Derek's old hag of a nurse to spice things up. I try to think of pink and fecund Virginia and can't: she is all silk and exotic fragrance when we begin, but my imagination lets me down and she withers rapidly in my mind into what she would be today if she hadn't gassed herself in her prime (although I doubt she thought of it as her prime, ha, ha), a short, dumpy pain-in-the-ass (like just about all the rest. I wish these women's-lib people would hurry up and liberate themselves and make themselves better companions for sexists like me. And for each other) of an offensively chattering woman ten years older than my wife, nearly (Oh, God dammit, why can't some things other than stone remain always as they used to be?), and much less attractive physically, with large pores, a shrill, grating, demanding voice, low-cut dresses with tops of wrinkling boobs, and too much giggling and red makeup. I am much better off with my wife, I know; so I open my eyes and look at her (and that delays my coming until I am ready. I wish I did have some sensational young sexpot in the city I could use in my erotic reveries at home. But I don't: just about all the girls I do succeed in getting and keeping are sad in one way or another and faintly insipid. So I tend to utilize my own wife in my sex fantasies, even while I'm right there fucking her. That's the kind of faithful husband I am. Sometimes when I'm in bed with another girl in the city or out of town and find I'm already sorry I started, I close my eyes and pretend I'm fucking my wife. Such fidelity. My wife should be honored to learn she rises in my thoughts on such occasions when we are apart, but I don't think I'll tell her. She might not like it as much as I do).

  I know my boy doesn't like it when our bedroom door is locked (and used to say so before he began to intuit secret sex inside. I think my daughter said to him once:

  "They fuck in there.").

  Or when Derek's nurse reaches out to snare him in gnarled fingers on bloated hands and crush him against her musty, collapsing bodice (neither would I. Like Mrs. Yerger's, there is massive, slovenly, thrusting front with no suggestion of anything else in back but stale and folding space), and more than once, in debased supplication, he has wretchedly admonished my wife:

  "It's your fault. Why do you let her do it to me? I wish she'd stop touching and pushing and squeezing me like that. I don't even like her. Can't you make her leave me alone?"

  "Please try to leave him alone," my wife has said to the nurse countless times politely and awkwardly. It has done no good. "It upsets him. He doesn't like anyone to pay too much attention to him. Don't do things for him. He'd rather do them himself. And try not to touch and hug him so much if you can. He's funny. He doesn't like to be touched and kissed. He really doesn't like it from anyone."

  "He doesn't mind it from me," the warted witch cackles back. "I have a way with children. He likes me. I can tell. He likes the way I cuddle him and he likes the way I smell. I always keep myself very clean because I know how children feel about smells."

  He doesn't like to be hugged or kissed or touched by anyone, in or out of our family, although he has the mannerism of bumping slightly against me with his shoulder when he is feeling close to me or leaning a moment against my wife (except my daughter, with whom he likes to roughhouse and wrestle, and who enjoys tussling with him when she has time. When he was younger, two, three, four, or five, he used to get hard-ons regularly with my wife when she was bathing, powdering, or dressing him, point to them and comment and inquire about them to both of us with pleased and open curiosity. They even tickled and felt good, he let us know. And we would reply to him intelligently and frankly because we did not want to inhibit him. It was okay with us if he had hard-ons; if anything, we were proud to see them. Today he no longer waves them gloriously in front of my wife or me and doesn't talk about them to us. I can't remember if I had hard-ons at nine. I think I can remember having sneaky, scary, tinglings in my tiny cock much earlier as I sat or hovered near my mother in her bedroom and watched her dressing or removing her street clothes to drape herself into one of her housecoats that always hung shapeless and looked faded. I remember her pink or colorless corsets with those dangling garter snaps and bone or celluloid stays that were always going in or out, although I don't remember knowing what a corset was for. I know I remember sitting mute and devious in her bedroom just to watch. Why else would I want to, if not out of sexual longing? I also remember having dreams later about exactly the same thing: my mother is in her corset and slip and I am prowling about her bedroom pretending to be occupied with something else. My boy gives money away to other kids. I know I shouldn't care), but he has a special aversion to Derek's nurse (to all Derek's nurses, and so do I. And to all of our maids. When he comes into the kitchen for something to eat, he would like to be able to get it himself, and so would I. None of the nurses are young; and all seem to have a peculiar and individual ugliness about them, a lantern jaw, missing tooth, scarred eyebrow, or infected lip. Even when they don't, they do), for he senses some potential destiny for him, some crippling danger, in the fact that she is called a nurse and that she has come to dwell with us only because Derek has a damaged brain, that she came to us from somebody else who had a damaged brain, and that, when she asks for a day off and never returns or when my wife fires her, she will move from here to somebody else with a damaged brain. (He never imagined, I bet, and neither did I, that there are so many people with damaged brains.) She is a veiled harbinger, a jinx, a spinning pointer, a bearer of fatal tidings (he confuses cause and effect, I think, blaming her presence in our home for Derek's condition, instead of Derek's condition for her presence in our home), and he does not want to be singled out by her as next. Yet, he does not want to be forgotten.