I’d tell Joe to quit, to walk the fuck away, but I know what he’d say: My pension, Hal. For Carla. For the girls.
A light sneeze’d blow his pension away, but he doesn’t want to hear that.
Crazy for trying, crazy for crying.
Missy’s whispering now, “Things’ll be fine.”
“But what are we going to do?”
“We’ll work it out,” she says. She strokes his face with the Kleenex.
Carla shakes a yellow Bic lighter. It’s stubborn at first, then a flame pops out. She tilts her head, and I get the wild idea she’s praying. Asking for a miracle. It’s the wrong idea. Her cigarette kindles like the Queen of the Fireflies. “Damned ratty-nosed bastard,” she mutters.
I want to drive somewhere, with the radio low. I want very much to do nothing. I want to touch Missy’s hair.
Joe groans.
I give his arm a squeeze. For a moment, glancing at Missy, I hold him; my gesture doesn’t feel routine. She’s busy with the tissue, looking up my way and smiling, like it’s a real fine night.
Bliss
Frederick Becker had lived near Griffith Park in a grimy, sparsely furnished apartment for three weeks now, with only a week to go. He had a rocking chair and a lamp. He had a stove—an evil-looking thing, sheathed in hard, black grease, smelling of gas, waiting to explode in the corner, he was sure. He hated going near it. For eight years, Ruth had fixed his meals. He’d never learned to do more than set an oven, pull up a seat, and watch a frozen turkey sweat until he could eat it.
Roaches, tough as old toenails, scooted across his sticky orange carpets. The damn bugs here were big enough to nudge the books from his shelves. He imagined them laughing, wildly wringing their antennae, at the meager fare he fed his mind with these days. Mickey Spillane. Perry Mason. Just this morning he’d sold his broken-spined Wittgenstein (“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”) to a half-price bookstore down the street.
Philosophy was too thick a tongue just now; these days, whenever he opened his mouth, it was all he could do not to scream.
An old freezer, a recliner missing half its stuffing, a palm-sized transistor radio, and several unstretched canvases rounded out the apartment’s decor.
This evening, after eating his instant rice and Birds Eye peas, he switched on the radio. Kennedy again—the man was getting tiresome—warning Khrushchev out of Cuba. “I promise you, the Commies won’t bite,” Frederick said aloud to his dying yellow ivy plant. “Our missiles are bigger than theirs.” The ivy dropped a leaf. He lit a Chesterfield, unstuck a window. Houston slipped, volatile and dolorous, into the room, a faint scent on its breath of freshly mown grass, cow shit (the rodeo was in town), and car exhaust.
Hoffmann, Frederick’s tortoiseshell cat, rubbed his matted fur on the telephone receiver. Frederick dialed Ruth’s number, wondering if he should have mixed himself a drink first.
Of course, she was angry when she answered.
“Rough day?” he asked as pleasantly as he could.
“What do you want?”
“I was hoping to say goodnight to Robbie before the Sandman comes to visit.
“I sent him to bed early. He was a little monster all night. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sit still for his bath.”
Hoffmann chased a fire ant through the kitchen. Frederick rubbed his sleepless eyes. The whisper of a headache—sparklers, spitting hotly—sprinkled his vision. “Ruthie, is he still awake? Can I speak to him?” He tried to grasp the Dewar’s, just out of reach on a counter, without pulling the phone cord out of the wall. His throat, his brain, winced with need.
“No. I don’t hear anything now,” Ruth said. “Maybe he’s down finally.”
“That’s no way to treat him, Ruth.”
“His routine’s disturbed,” she said. Scolding, like a nun. “He keeps expecting Daddy to walk through the door.”
“All right, all right, I’ll come by tomorrow and he and I can rip the heels of your shoes off together. Something happy like that.” Always, in uncomfortable conversations, Frederick tried to make a distancing joke. He knew this about himself and attempted to relax more with people, especially those he loved. But Ruth … Ruth was so damned hard.
From his window he could see the park, the sculpture garden with its bright green benches, its steel birds and beasts, ceramic animals. Beyond the park’s brittle willows was the hospital Ruth had rushed him to one night when he’d accidentally cut his arm with an X-Acto knife. “What about Hoffmann? Please?”
“Hoffmann’s your problem. I hate that cat. You found him, you keep him.”
“I can’t take him to Manhattan, Ruth. He was born for this humidity.”
“Well, you should’ve planned your exit a little better.”
Now Hoffmann was batting the wilted ant around a stack of Frederick’s papers: sketches, letters, the rough draft of the catalog preface for his buddy, Mark Jarvis—Frederick’s last official business as a citizen of Houston.
“I didn’t plan any of this, honey, you know that—” He didn’t finish the thought; he’d only make a mess, much worse than the one Hoffmann had just made of his work. Besides, he was lying, and he knew Ruth knew it.
“Whatever,” she answered bitterly.
She hadn’t responded to his little slip. The word “honey” had startled him, filling his mouth, as surprising as his memories, attaching now to meals they’d shared together in the old days. She’d always made the most wonderful Italian sauces, Frederick recalled, with bacon or prosciutto. Now, as they talked, he tasted her pasta carbonara.
They agreed on a time for his visit tomorrow with Robbie. The moment he hung up, he went for the Scotch. This was the last bottle he’d buy. Ever. As soon as he got to New York, he’d flush his system, disappear into his paintings and Bliss, the new art journal he’d recently been hired to edit.
The booze steadied his hands. The glimmers in his eyes subsided. He considered unplugging the phone. His number was one digit different from a suicide-prevention hotline’s. Each night he was assaulted by misery, as sharp and immovable as Mark’s statues in the park, but he left the damn thing alone. Robbie might wake, sick, in the middle of the night. Or Ruth’s heart, wrapped in rancor as tight as tinfoil, might warm up a little. If not, he figured he could live with the agonizing wrong numbers another week.
Marlon Brando yelled from down the block. Next to the corner superette where Frederick bought his snacks, a second-run theater was screening Elia Kazan movies all month. The ushers left the back doors open in the city’s summer broil; the actors’ voices soared above the ratcheting sounds of crickets, just gearing up in the park.
It didn’t matter if people snuck into the building, the theater manager told Frederick One night as On the Waterfront’s final credits rolled. The place was losing money anyway, like all the rest of the neighborhood. Charlie’s Drugstore had closed after twenty-five years; the junior high couldn’t replace its busted windows. The city council simply ignored this part of town. That’s why Mark Jarvis, who loved the south side, had volunteered to provide, free of charge, a series of playful sculptures for the Griffith Park Renovation Project, an attempt by local residents to rejuvenate the neighborhood. He lived nearby in an old auto-repair garage that doubled as his studio. Its walls were covered with nailed-up 2x4s, sheets of rusty metal—fodder for his sculptures—and maps of Paraguay, where he hoped to visit his favorite former lover someday.
He’d found this apartment for Frederick when the marriage with Ruth gave way. In return, Frederick agreed to write a catalog piece for Mark’s upcoming show at the Contemporary Arts Museum.
Yellow fog—mosquito spray released by big white city trucks—hung now in the park’s thick trees, settled on the backs of Mark’s glorious stone butterflies, his bow-tied lizards. Follies, Mark had called them, “useless and fanciful,” defining his own work for Frederick’s preface. “Someday,” he’d added, when Frederick pressed for details, “I want to make something so per
fect, so light and airy, it can’t be sullied by language.” Frederick planned a breakfast picnic over there tomorrow morning, to inspect the sculptures in more detail.
He poured himself another drink—only half a glass this time. The phone rang. “There’s no reason,” the caller, a young woman by the sound of her, said. “No reason at all.”
“Excuse me—”
“I swear, if I don’t get some help, my wrists’ll be ribbons. You hear me? I’ve got the knife right here. I’m not kidding around—”
“Excuse me. I’m sorry,” Frederick said. “But you’ve got the wrong number.”
“What?”
The Scotch soured his mouth. He swallowed awkwardly. “This isn’t the hotline.”
She shouted, “Is this MU8-7385?”
“Eight four,” Frederick said softly.
“Oh. Well, then. Sorry. Thank you.”
“Sure,” Frederick said. “Good luck.” He didn’t mean it the way it sounded.
Often at night, on his walks back home from the corner superette, Frederick stopped in Griffith Park, near the medical center, and watched the rain of roses, lilies, daisies drift to the ground from the hospital’s narrow ninth floor.
He’d learned of this odd display one afternoon in the park from a doctor, who’d told him, “The schizophrenics are on nine.” The man had been taking a break, a quick smoke in the sculpture garden. Frederick was strolling, worrying about his family, his upcoming move. Surrounded by exquisite winged tigers, mermaids, griffins, the men passed a few minutes talking.
“Schizophrenia,” Frederick said. The word, stilted and ugly, unsettled him. “It’s probably more common than we think, right? I mean, I can’t even go shopping without developing a split personality.” He laughed nervously. “Do I want the frozen carrots today or the frozen corn? I can never make up my mind.”
“Schizophrenia’s a breakdown between emotions, thoughts, and actions,” said the doctor, a young man with a slightly pinched resemblance to Buddy Holly. He politely agreed that warring impulses fueled the disease, but insisted it was far more complicated than split personality. “It’s frequently accompanied by hallucinations and delusions.” He ground his cigarette on the concrete head of a waist-high beast. Willow limbs trembled above the park’s stiff grass.
Frederick felt ashamed of his feeble joke. He didn’t say anything.
The doctor stretched his arms. “Well, I hate to miss this sunshine, but I’ve got to get back now and check on Sal,” he said.
“Who?” Frederick said.
“Hm?”
“Sal?”
“Oh, sorry. Patient of mine. Interesting case.” The doctor wiped his glasses on the light-green tail of his medical smock. “I’m not really supposed to talk about this.” But he went on, laughing, when Frederick nodded his interest. “Sal’s a former salesman—Bibles or something, religious icons. Charismatic, quite forceful. He’s certain he’s an angel.”
Frederick smiled, wondering now if the doctor was joking with him.
“The others in the ward have followed Sal’s lead. They get bouquets, you know, from their families. Each night they toss petals through the bars of their open windows. Somehow, Sal’s convinced them they’re sowing blessings on the earth.” He was serious, Frederick saw. The doctor sighed, a weary mixture of frustration and amusement. “I’m not quite sure what to do with them all. Well. Can’t put it off. Heaven’s waiting.” He moved in the direction of the hospital. “See you later.”
“Nice chatting with you,” Frederick said.
Most evenings since, he’d found a bench among the sculptures, a seat near the elves. He clutched his grocery sacks bulging with heat ‘n’ serve snacks and waited for a blessing.
Tonight the rain came at dusk: pink, violet, purple blossoms swaying on the breeze, the thin mosquito mist, nesting, finally, in the park’s managed thickets. Frederick squinted up at the ninth-floor windows, glimpsed, now and then, pale, slender hands. He recalled the fleeting, bemused figures flying through the paintings of Chagall.
“Stell-a!” Marlon screamed from down the street. Faint laughter and applause from the theater audience.
Dizzy from staring—seraphim-struck—Frederick ambled back to his apartment. He unpacked his food. True to the vow he’d made himself, he hadn’t bought more booze, though the Dewar’s was nearly gone. He switched on his radio. Saber-rattling over Cuba. He turned it off, blotted the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. Ungodly heat swarmed the apartment. Even Hoffmann, usually alert for critters scrabbling across the kitchen floor, had sunk in front of the lone portable fan by the bed.
A mighty, mighty thirst. No, Frederick thought. When you finish this bottle, that’s it. Save it till the end of the week.
He picked up Perry Mason. The phone rang. He groaned. Pills? Gas? Gun? Lord, he couldn’t face another human extinction. Not tonight.
Besides, he thought, smiling now, rousing himself from his chair, Mark will offer me something to drink.
Sure enough, Mark was deep into a bottle of bourbon. His garage, thick with blazing light, pale, swirling bugs, was a sweat lodge. He was hammering on some kind of claw foot in a vise on his workbench when Frederick walked in, calling, “Knock-knock.”
“Hey, man! What’s up?”
“World War Three.”
“Tell me about it. Grab a glass from the shelf over there. Let me introduce you to an owlamander.” He held up a pudgy piece of steel, fashioned to evoke part bird, part reptile. “This’ll go in the museum show.”
Frederick appraised his friend’s progress. An aviary, a menagerie, all shaped from the city’s detritus: belt buckles (fishes’ open mouths), garden spades (the long snouts of dogs), rusted forks (feathered plumes). The cars Mark repaired to pay his bills were parked outside: crumpled Chevies, sun-blistered Fords.
Frederick poured himself some whiskey; calm now, he watched his friend putter. Mark was short, shaped like a pear. With gentle pressure from his fingers, with screws and nails and fire, he populated his little corner of the planet with a witty, whimsical brood. Sometimes, one of them bit. “Godfrey Daniel!” he cried now, swaddling his left thumb in the crotch of his shorts. He’d nicked himself with the hammer.
Frederick offered him the bottle. “Doctor’s orders,” he said. “Need some ice? A cold cloth?”
“Naw. It’ll be okay.” He sat on a stool. “It’s just a three-minute throb, I can tell.”
One night, a year or so ago, Mark’d been nailing a pair of golf cleats—fangs—into a tin oval shaped like the mouth of a snake. Frederick was drinking with him that evening too, watching Mark work, relaxing in the pure, dumb wordlessness of someone else’s concentration. The tin warped under pressure; the snake struck. A cleat fired upwards like a bullet, hitting Mark in the left temple, knocking him cold to the floor. Panicked, Frederick had carried him, limp, beneath the willows, all the way through Griffith Park to the medical center.
He hadn’t prayed since childhood, forced to kneel on cold chapel floors by his Jesuit teachers. Now, his pleas to God for Mark’s recovery sounded to him thin and insupportable.
For three days after regaining consciousness, Mark could answer only “Paraguay” to any question put to him. Frederick explained to the doctors that maps of Paraguay lined Mark’s studio. “He has an old lover from there.”
“Do you know who you are?”
“Paraguay.”
“Where do you live?”
“Paraguay.”
“Does this hurt?”
“Para … Paraguay.”
The whole time, an insane smile, almost angelic, fixed his face. “Brain trauma” was all the doctors said. On the fourth day Mark recovered full speech. He had no memory of the accident. “I feel fine,” he insisted; tests proved him fit.
Later, to Frederick, he confided a mild depression. “At first I was frustrated when I couldn’t speak,” he said. “But then … it was like the world fell away without any words to glue it in place.”
“No Pay the following amount, no Reserved Parking. I don’t know … I was free, unencumbered except for that sound. Paraguay. Like living in a bell, in the ringing of that word. No worries. No deadlines. I tell you, man, it was bliss. The perfection I’m always chasing in my work. I miss it.”
Ever since, his already prodigious drinking had increased, and Frederick joined him most nights, searching for the beauty of “brain trauma,” the bleaching out of the harsh, heavy world. Ex-wives. Dying neighborhoods. Bills. But drunkenness didn’t deliver Frederick from worry, from the evils of a lonely apartment, a time-bomb stove. “Still,” Mark said, clattering and banging through junk—his way of thinking out loud—“it’s what we have.”
Now, Mark strained a painful smile, gripped his hammered thumb. “So. Painting?” he said.
Frederick shook his head. “I’ve already shipped most of my materials to New York. Just trying to wrap things up here—and finish your preface.”
“I really appreciate it, man. I’m going to miss you.”
“Me too.” He raised his glass. “Better now?”
“Some. How’s Robbie?”
“I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“Ruthie’s still—?”
“Stone.”
“Hey, you gotta do what’s best for the work,” Mark said.
Frederick nodded. Above the bench, Mark’s largest, most colorful map of Paraguay curled in the heat. Moths ticked against the great, wide plains, the sand-like spires of Asunción. “How’s your friend?” Frederick asked.
“Saucy as ever. Called me last night.”
He’d met Serena a couple of years ago, in a bar, when she was visiting a cousin here in the States. “Another saucy señorita,” Mark had said at the time. “I’m telling you, they know how to package the goods down south.” Now he said, “If I sell some pieces at the show, maybe I can afford to go see her. Frolics and bliss, man, the moon and the stars. Fellow can’t labor all the time. Remember that when you get to the Apple.”
It Takes a Worried Man Page 7
