Donald Barthelme

by Donald Barthelme

  Q: What about coveting your neighbor’s wife?

  A: Well on one side there are no wives, strictly speaking, there are two floors and two male couples, all very nice people. On the other side, Bill and Rachel have a whole house. I like Rachel but I don’t covet her. I could covet her, she’s covetable, quite lovely and spirited, but in point of fact our relationship is that of neighborliness. I jump-start her car when her battery is dead, she gives me basil from her garden, she’s got acres of basil, not literally acres but— Anyhow, I don’t think that’s much of a problem, coveting your neighbor’s wife. Just speaking administratively, I don’t see why there’s an entire Commandment devoted to it. It’s a mental exercise, coveting. To covet is not necessarily to take action.

  Q: I covet my neighbor’s leaf blower. It has this neat Vari-Flo deal that lets you—

  A: I can see that.

  Q: I am feverishly interested in these questions.

  Q: Ethics has always been where my heart is.

  Q: Moral precepting stings the dull mind into attentiveness.

  Q: I’m only a bit depressed, only a bit.

  Q: A new arrangement of ideas, based upon the best thinking, would produce a more humane moral order, which we need.

  Q: Apple honey, disposed upon the sexual parts, is not an index of decadence. Decadence itself is not as bad as it’s been painted.

  Q: That he watched his father play the piano when his father could not play the piano and that he was reading a book while his father played the piano in a very large hall before a very large audience only means that he finds his roots, as it were, untrustworthy. The father imagined as a root. That’s not unusual.

  Q: As for myself, I am content with too little, I know this about myself and I do not commend myself for it and perhaps one day I shall be able to change myself into a hungrier being. Probably not.

  Q: The leaf blower, for example.

  A: I see Althea now and then, not often enough. We sigh together in a particular bar, it’s almost always empty. She tells me about her kids and I tell her about my kids. I obey the Commandments, the sensible ones. Where they don’t know what they’re talking about I ignore them. I keep thinking about the story of the two old women in church listening to the priest discoursing on the dynamics of the married state. At the end of the sermon one turns to the other and says, “I wish I knew as little about it as he does.”

  Q: He critiques us, we critique Him. Does Grete also engage in dalliance?

  A: How quaint you are. I think she has friends whom she sees now and then.

  Q: How does that make you feel?

  A: I wish her well.

  Q: What’s in your wallet?

  A: The usual. Credit cards, pictures of the children, driver’s license, forty dollars in cash, Amex receipts—

  Q: I sometimes imagine that I am in Pest Control. I have a small white truck with a red diamond-shaped emblem on the door and a white jumpsuit with the same emblem on the breast pocket. I park the truck in front of a subscriber’s neat three-hundred-thousand-dollar home, extract the silver canister of deadly pest killer from the back of the truck, and walk up the brick sidewalk to the house’s front door. Chimes ring, the door swings open, a young wife in jeans and a pink flannel shirt worn outside the jeans is standing there. “Pest Control,” I say. She smiles at me, I smile back and move past her into the house, into the handsomely appointed kitchen. The canister is suspended by a sling from my right shoulder, and, pumping the mechanism occasionally with my right hand, I point the nozzle of the hose at the baseboards and begin to spray. I spray alongside the refrigerator, alongside the gas range, under the sink, and behind the kitchen table. Next, I move to the bathrooms, pumping and spraying. The young wife is in another room, waiting for me to finish. I walk into the main sitting room and spray discreetly behind the largest pieces of furniture, an oak sideboard, a red plush Victorian couch, and along the inside of the fireplace. I do the study, spraying the Columbia Encyclopedia, he’s been looking up the Seven Years’ War, 1756–63, yellow highlighting there, and behind the forty-five-inch RCA television. The master bedroom requires just touches, short bursts in her closet which must avoid the two dozen pairs of shoes there and in his closet which contains six to eight long guns in canvas cases. Finally I spray the laundry room with its big white washer and dryer, and behind the folding table stacked with sheets and towels already folded. Who folds? I surmise that she folds. Unless one of the older children, pressed into service, folds. In my experience they are unlikely to fold. Maybe the au pair. Finished, I tear a properly made out receipt from my receipt book and present it to the young wife. She scribbles her name in the appropriate space and hands it back to me. The house now stinks quite palpably but I know and she knows that the stench will dissipate in two to four hours. The young wife escorts me to the door, and, in parting, pins a silver medal on my chest and kisses me on both cheeks. Pest Control!

  A: Yes, one could fit in in that way. It’s finally a matter, perhaps, of fit. Appropriateness. Fit in a stately or sometimes hectic dance with nonfit. What we have to worry about.

  Q: It seems to me that we have quite a great deal to worry about. Does the radish worry about itself in this way? Yet the radish is a living thing. Until it’s cooked.

  A: Grete is mad for radishes, can’t get enough. I like frozen Mexican dinners, Patio, I have them for breakfast, the freezer is stacked with them—

  Q: Transcendence is possible.

  A: Yes.

  Q: Is it possible?

  A: Not out of the question.

  Q: Is it really possible?

  A: Yes. Believe me.

  Edwards, Amelia

  AMELIA EDWARDS was washing the dishes when she noticed that a dish that she had already washed had a tiny piece of spinach stuck to the back of it.

  I am not washing these dishes well, she thought. I am not washing these dishes as well as I used to wash them.

  Mrs. Edwards stopped washing the dishes, even though half of them remain unwashed in the sink. She dried her arms on a paper towel and went into the bedroom. She sat down on the bed. Then she stood up again and looked at the bed.

  The bedspread had been placed on the bed in a somewhat sloppy manner. She thought: I am not making the bed as well as I used to.

  She sat down on the bed again and stared at the floor. Then her eyes moved to the corner of the room near the closet. In the corner, in the place where the two walls met, there was a gray dustball the size of an egg.

  I have not vacuumed this room correctly, she thought. Is it because I am thirty-eight now?

  No. Thirty-eight is young, relatively.

  I am young and vigorous. George is handsome and well paid. We are going to Hawaii in June.

  I wonder if I should have a drink?

  Mrs. Edwards went out to the kitchen and looked at the vodka bottle.

  Then she looked at the plate with the bit of spinach stuck to the back. She scratched the spinach from the plate with her fingernail. She poured some vodka into a glass. She went to the refrigerator to get some ice cubes, but when she opened the door to the freezing compartment it came off in her hands.

  Mrs. Edwards regarded the door to the freezing compartment, a rectangular piece of white plastic.

  The door to the freezing compartment has come off, she thought.

  She placed it on the floor next to the refrigerator. Then she moved a tray of ice cubes from the freezing compartment and made herself a vodka-tonic. The telephone rang. Mrs. Edwards did not answer it. She was sitting on the bed looking at her vodka-tonic. The telephone rang eleven times.

  Perhaps I should listen to some music?

  Mrs. Edwards arose and walked into the living room. She found an Angel record. “Don Giovanni Highlights,” with Eberhard Wächter, Joan Sutherland, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. She placed the record on the turntable and switch
ed on the amplifier. Then she sat down and listened to the music.

  She remembered something she had read in the newspaper:

  GIRL, 8, FOUND SLAIN

  Mrs. Edwards drank some of her vodka-tonic. Then she noticed that something was wrong with the music. The turntable was slow. The music was dragging.

  She got up and lifted the arm of the turntable to see if there was anything the matter with the needle. She scratched the needle with her finger. A scratching noise came out of the speakers. Behind the cabinet on which the turntable sat—between the back of the cabinet and the wall—there was a pair of black socks.

  Black socks, she thought.

  Mrs. Edwards turned off the amplifier and carried the black socks to the closet. She placed them in the dirty clothes hamper.

  Take clothes to laundromat, she thought.

  Then she went into the kitchen and made herself another vodka-tonic.

  Which she did not drink. She placed the second vodka-tonic on the small table beside the big chair in the living room and looked at it.

  I used to put lime juice in my vodka-tonics, she thought. Now I just put in the vodka and the tonic, and the ice. When did I stop putting in the lime juice? I remember buying limes, slicing limes, squeezing limes . . .

  If we had had children, I could have interested myself in the problems of children.

  I once won a prize for whistling with crackers in my mouth, she remembered. I whistled best. At a birthday party. When I was eight.

  The telephone rang again. Mrs. Edwards did not answer it. Because she was afraid it was the Telephone Company calling about the telephone bill. The Telephone Company had already called once about the telephone bill. She had told the woman from the Telephone Company that she would send a check right away but had not done so.

  The telephone bill is one hundred and twelve dollars, she thought.

  I can pay it on the fifteenth. Or I can send them a check and forget to sign it. I have not done that for a long time. Probably that would work, at this time.

  Mrs. Edwards drank some of the second vodka-tonic.

  Do I not put the lime juice in because of the war? she wondered. The incredible war? Is that why I don’t put the lime juice in?

  Behind her—that is, behind the chair in which she was sitting—a large picture fell off the wall. There was a sound of glass breaking.

  Mrs. Edwards did not turn around to look.

  I never liked that picture. George liked that picture. Our taste in pictures differs. I like Josef Albers. George does not understand what Josef Albers is all about. Only I understand what Josef Albers is all about. Our tastes differ. I have not been courted properly in three years. It is ridiculous to have a reproduction of Marie Laurencin hanging in one’s home. In the living room.

  Once, I would have refused to have a reproduction of Marie Laurencin hanging in my home.

  Not that she is bad. She is not bad at all. She is rather good, if one likes that sort of thing. Once, I would have fought about it. Tooth and nail.

  She thought: A long time ago.

  She thought: Did I remember to have photostats made, front and back, of the two checks for $16.22 each that the Internal Revenue Service says we didn’t send in for the maid’s Social Security for the first two quarters of 1970? That we did send? Because I have the cancelled checks?

  No, I did not. I must take the check to the photostat place and have the photostats made front and back and then send them with a letter to the Internal Revenue Service.

  I will not have another vodka-tonic. Because I have will power.

  When I lived in the city I had a dog. I would go out and walk my dog at ten o’clock in the morning. I would see all the other people walking their dogs. We would smile at one another over our dogs.

  If I have will power, why don’t I take my anti-alcohol pills?

  Because I would rather drink.

  Marie Laurencin had a good time. In life. Relatively. 1885–1956.

  Am I a standard-issue American alcoholic housewife? Assembled by many hands, like a Rambler, like a Princess telephone?

  But there is my love for the work of Josef Albers.

  But perhaps every one of us has a wrinkle—kink would not be too strong a word—which enables us to think of ourselves as . . . Marginal differentiation, as they call it in George’s business.

  Three years.

  Mrs. Edwards looked at her fingernails. There was a time, she thought, when I cared about my cuticles.

  Mrs. Edwards thought about Duke Ellington. She knew everything about Ellington there was to know. She thought about Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Ivie Anderson, Tricky Sam Nanton, Ray Nance the fiddler, Jimmy Blanton. She thought especially hard about Barney Bigard. She thought about “Transblucency,” “What Am I Here For?,” and “East St. Louis Too-dle-oo.” This music had made her happy, when she was young.

  But the turntable—

  I have done something wrong, she thought.

  At this point, the water, which had been accumulating for many days, walked up the stairs from the basement and presented itself in the living room.

  Living room, Amelia thought. What does that mean?

  There is water on the floor of the living room.

  Chagall is soft, she thought. All those floating lovers. Kissing above the rooftops. He has radically misperceived the problem.

  The telephone rang but Mrs. Edwards did not answer it, because she knew the caller was a professional woman-terrorizer who was not very good at it: too tentative. She had talked to him before. His name was Fred.

  I do not want to talk to Fred today.

  Mrs. Edwards looked at herself and noticed that she had forgotten to put any clothes on. When she had gotten up, after George had left for the office. She was not wearing any clothes.

  Then she went into the kitchen and washed the rest of the dishes. Very well, very well indeed. Very carefully. Nobody could object to the way she washed them, nobody in the whole world.

  A Man

  A FIREMAN woke up one morning to find that his left hand was gone.

  My left hand! he thought.

  Then he thought: This is going to be damned inconvenient.

  The fireman cursed for a while. “God damn it! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! God damn it to Hell! Bloody Hell! Dumb ass! Christ Almighty! Son of a bitch!”

  But the stump is not bad-looking, he reflected. A neat separation. Not offensive to the eye.

  He got out of bed and took a shower. Washing his right side, which he customarily did with his left hand, was difficult. It was also difficult to dry himself with one hand. Usually he took a large brown towel in both hands and zipped it back and forth across his back. But he discovered that one cannot zip a towel with one hand. One can only flop a towel with one hand.

  Putting on socks with one hand is not easy. Shaving, however, presented no particular problems.

  At the firehouse nobody said anything about the hand. Firemen are famously tactful and kind to each other. Harvey read The New York Times until there was an alarm. Then he put on his rubber coat and boots and climbed up on the engine in his regular place, second from left, in the back.

  “No,” the captain said.

  “What do you mean, ‘No’?”

  “You can’t go to the fire,” the captain said. “You don’t have any left hand.”

  “I can cradle the hose in my arms as one would a baby and pull it in the right direction!”

  “Get down off there, Harvey. We’re in a hurry.”

  Harvey stood in the empty firehouse.

  My livelihood is threatened! he thought.

  My livelihood!

  And it wasn’t even an on-the-job injury. It was, rather, a “mysterious occurrence.” No compensation!

  He sat down in a chair. He placed his fireman’s hat on top
of The New York Times.

  I must face this problem intelligently. But what is intelligently? Prosthesis? Prosthetic device concealed under black glove? A green glove? A blue glove? The cops wear white gloves on traffic duty. But a man would be a fool to wear a white glove to a fire. A brown suede driving glove from Abercrombie—the Stirling Moss model? Probably there is such a thing in the world.

  He got up and went to the place in the firehouse where the whiskey was hidden and had a shot, neat.

  He thought: Why don’t we buy better whiskey for the firehouse? This stuff tastes like creosote.

  A twelve-year-old girl who hung around the firehouse a lot entered at this moment.

  “Harvey,” she said. “How come you aren’t out on the run with the rest of the men?”

  Harvey waved his stump in the air.

  “What’s with the hand?” the girl asked. “I mean, where is it?”

  “It fell off, or something, last night, while I was sleeping.”

  “What do you mean, fell off? Was it in bed with you when you woke up? Or on the floor? Or under the bed?”

  “It was just . . . missing.”

  “Man, that’s strange,” the girl said. “God, I mean that’s weird. It gives me a funny feeling. Let’s talk about something else.” Then she paused. “Is there anything I can do? I could go out on your runs with you. Function as your extra hand, as it were.” There was a look of childish eagerness in her eyes.

  The fireman thought: This child is childish. But a good kid.

  “Thank you, Elaine,” he said. “But it wouldn’t work. There’d be union problems and stuff.” Delicately he avoided mentioning that she was a twelve-year-old girl.

  “I’ve been studying the Civil Service exam for fire lieutenant,” Elaine said, producing a study guide to the Civil Service examination for fire lieutenant published by Arco Publishing Co. “I know it backwards and forwards. Ask me anything. Just dip in anywhere and ask me anything. At random. I know the answers.”