George Mills

by Stanley Elkin

  “That’s what she kept telling the boy. That she wanted to die. Can you imagine? How old can he be? Eleven? Twelve? The kid home from school and making chocolate milk, Horlick’s, his Ovaltine. Slopping sardine sandwiches together and nibbling Fritos off some cleared portion of the dining room table. (Because the kitchen table’s overflowing. Not from breakfast, understand. Or anyway not from that morning’s breakfast, or even yesterday’s, but the cumulate dishes, spoons, knives and egg-tined forks of maybe three days’ meals. And more in the sink. Sure. There’s three in the family. Say they’ve got two sets of dishes, for dinner parties, for everyday. Service for twelve, say. The cleaning lady comes once a week. That’s four days of meals on the everyday. Another two or three on what they’d serve to their guests. But be fair. Audrey’s not eating. But be fair. They fill up her plate. Even she don’t eat they got to dirty a dish. And suppose the girl calls in sick? I mean she’s seen that mess. She hired on as a cleaning lady, not a pearl diver. Suppose she calls in sick. In eight days they have to take their meals on the coffee table in the living room. In two more they’re taking them separately. On the back porch, the stairs. The kid’s fixing his snack on the ironing board in the basement.)

  “So there’s, what’shisname, Danny, trying to make a simple sardine or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and drinking now out of the jelly and yahrtzeit glasses and actual Corky the Clown mugs from the old highchair days, wolfing it down because though he’s not athletic and is normally a housebound child content to stay home and read, do homework, it breaks his heart to hear his mom cry and he can’t stand absolutely to hear her complain how if there was a God she’d be a goner by now, and he’s got to get out of there, back to the playground to get in a game which he knows he’s not only bad at but hasn’t even learned the rules of yet, even the goddamn object. Not go for a walk, kick leaves, ride bikes with a pal, read books on a bench, but back to the playground where he doesn’t like to be even at recess, back to the actual goddamn playground where he knows damn well they’ll choose him, even choose him early, before the better players, the ones who’ve got it together, whose reflexes hum like gears in fine machinery, whose timing and power and speed and concentration make them good up at bat, who wear their fielders’ mitts as naturally and comfortably as Dan wears scarves, coats; who’ll choose him early for the simple good fun of just making them laugh, giving them by simple dint of picking him for their side the right—the right—to denounce his errors, mock his play, him. To call him bad names and nudge him with elbows and push him around.

  “Not, Victor says, as you’d suspect, to take his mind off things but to get it back on them. To see just what his mother meant when she told him each morning when he went to school that she hoped noon would find her stricken and when school let out dead.

  “ ‘I’m destroying it, Danny. I’m ruining your life, sweetheart,’ Victor says she’d tell him, remind him, in her soiled robe, over the greasy dishes and scummed silverware and smeared cups and glasses which by this time served as their everyday, almost unrecognizable now, almost, under the three- or four-day growth of mold, indistinguishable from the good stuff, the sterling and Aynsley china, the dirty novelty mugs and glasses, six-of-one, half-a-dozen-of-the-other, with the cups and crystals of sanity. Because that’s why Victor, who’d prepare the meals but wouldn’t do the dishes, who’d put fresh sheets on Danny’s bed every five days—the girl came every week but couldn’t get out of the damn kitchen—but wouldn’t change the ones he’d been sleeping on with Audrey for almost eleven, allowed the house to get in such a state in the first place.

  “Not, Victor says, out of narrow principle say, you-made-your-bed, lie-in-it say, not out of that principle at least. (He’s ridden with guilt, George. He tells me this, not the front desk.) As an object lesson, a lesson in objects.

  “ ‘I was trying to show her how easily the world is reclaimed by jungle. How simple it is to go mad. I thought I could shame her back into her senses. See? “See,” I’d have had that house scream, “see?” What makes you so special? I’ve gone bats too, the furniture has, the dishes and linen. Look at Dan, look at Danny. His clothes have gone nuts. It’s 80 degrees, he’s dressed for the winter!’

  “She must, Victor says, have thought he was crazy. She didn’t know where she was. There was soup in her bowl. She hadn’t made it. If she’d been paying attention to what he was saying she might have thought he’d lost his mind in some swell restaurant.

  “But then Victor came home one day from the office and the house was clean. Spotless. The living room had been cleared, the dining room, everything had been picked up, all the carpets vacuumed. There wasn’t a dish in the sink. This was a Monday. The cleaning lady wasn’t due till Wednesday. Victor says his heart turned over. He raced upstairs. Audrey was in bed, asleep on clean sheets.

  “ ‘I didn’t wake her. How could I? She must have been exhausted. Anyone would have been exhausted.

  “ ‘So I didn’t wake her. I just sat by the bed and cheered on her sleep. I sat there two hours. When she finally woke up she gave one of those great yawning stretches you imagine Rip Van Winkle must have given, or Sleeping Beauty, or someone recovered from coma. She blinked a few times to get her bearings and looked at me.

  “ ‘ “Oh,” she said, “hi. You home from work? God, it’s almost dark out. I’m sorry. I lay down for a nap. I must have fallen asleep.”

  “ ‘ “Who wouldn’t?” I said. “You worked like a horse. Are you feeling better?”

  “ ‘ “No,” she said.

  “ ‘ “You tried to do too much. You should have saved a little for tomorrow. Then Dorothy comes on Wednesday.”

  “ ‘ “Oh God,” she said, “what are you talking about now? Leave me alone, will you? Or kill me. I just want to die.” ’

  “Because he’d done the dishes. Danny. The boy. He’d cleaned the place up. Victor knew it as soon as he heard him and turned, and saw him standing there, in the doorway, whimpering, sucking his thumb.

  “He made the arrangements that night and packed her off to the asylum the next day.

  “ ‘Now,’ Victor says, ‘we’re just another broken family in July, me and the kid, driving back from Burger Chef in a blue K Car.’ ”

  “Poor kid,” George Mills said.

  “Who?” Messenger said. “Danny? The hell. He’s in the ninety-ninth percentile. The little fag reads six years above his grade level.”

  “That doctor’s wife was over, that student, Mrs. Losey?”

  “Nora,” Messenger said. “Yes?”

  “She was over to the house. Some sort of homework for her school. She took pictures.”

  “There’s this rehab project.”

  “She the one flunking out?”

  “On academic probation, right.”

  “Whose husband’s having the affair?”

  “With Jenny Greener, yes.”

  “A girl was with her. That was her name I think.”

  “They’re classmates,” Messenger said. “Nora introduced them.”

  “Then what happened?”

  Because he was listening now. Because there were only reruns on television anyway and he was listening now. Salvation or no salvation. Listening despite himself. Because they could almost have been more Millses.

  “He goes out of town,” Messenger said. “He’s much in demand. Symposiums. Universities. He’s an expert in the new microsurgical stuff. Sutures finer than spider web. Instruments no bigger than computer chips. He can sew on your fingerprints, he can take out your germs. Like the little cobbler in fairy tale. He’s much in demand. Sun Valley and Aspen, Fiji, the Alps. All the pricey climes of the medical——Palm Springs Memorial, the Grosse Point Clinic, Monaco Mercy, Grand Cayman General.

  “He goes out of town. He lectures his colleagues. He screws their wives. Never the nurses, never the help.

  “He says ‘I won’t touch a student. And my patients——forget it. If I touch a patient I’ve already scrubbed. I’m not talking wha
t’s ethical, what’s professional or ain’t. None of this has fuck-all to do with my Hippocratic oath. It’s just I still think it’s kicky I’m invited places. Maybe I’m spoiled. I won’t cross a street if it’s not on the arm. I won’t take a vacation. I’ve this thing for doctors’ wives.

  “ ‘Country club country. I love being made over, wined and dined, fussed. I never get used to it. I don’t think I will.

  “ ‘Lunch turns me on. Tennis-togged women, ladies in tank tops. I like to take off their sweat bands. I love those little bracelets of the untan, the wrist hair where it’s been pressed down under the elastic. I love the way it smells, sweat running with perfume and the better soaps. I like their jewelry, their diamond rings and great gold chains. I love the way their jewelry smells. You know what, Cornell? I can make out the karats, the troy grains in pearls. You believe me? It’s true. The expensive like a whiff of sachet. I can smell money in a purse, coins, even checkbooks, the stamps in their passports, plastic on charge cards, a Neiman-Marcus, a Saks.

  “ ‘Christ I’m a bastard. I cheat on my wife. If I had a dollar …’ he tells me. (And I listen to this stuff, who got lucky maybe a dozen or so years ago, and that with a drunk, a woman under the influence, who may have been a little crazy behind the alcohol. But who celebrates the occasion—March 19—like some dear anniversary.) He tells me this shit. Me. So I tell you. You can’t cheat on your wife, you cheat on your friends.

  “ ‘We’ll have left early,’ he says, ‘gone separate ways to the parking lot. She gets in my rental car or I get in hers, but I love when they drive, when they take me ’cross bridges and she grabs the toll. When she picks the place, where we can go. Listen, it’s Cairo, what do I know? It’s Cairo, it’s Russia, it’s somewhere South Seas. It isn’t the money, you know that, Cornell. I’m the one being fussed. I’ve published the paper, made the keynote address.

  “ ‘And maybe they are nurses, or were before they married their husbands and became doctors’ wives. Hell, I suppose lots of them were nurses, most of them maybe. But up from the nursery and doctors’ wives now. So it’s all right, it’s okay.

  “ ‘Because I’m this snob of betrayal, this rat of swank. Your fop of collusion, your paste asshole. And nothing against their husbands. On the contrary. They’re pals, I like them. Every professional courtesy. I second their opinions. We wave on the slopes.’ ”

  So Messenger told Mills of Losey’s code.

  “Code?” George said. “He’s got fuckall to do with the Hippocratic oath, he’s got a code?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Messenger said. “He goes out of town. He makes love on the beaches, on cruises, off shore. Everything handled, you know, discreet. Shit, Mills, I don’t know. Maybe there are gentlemen’s agreements. Maybe they don’t go to each other’s papers. I don’t know how it’s done. A guy tells me he’s been with a groupie I don’t ask to see the matchbook from the restaurant. I’m an old-fashioned guy. People get laid it’s a wonder to me you don’t read about it in the paper. It’s amazing there’s no extra or the programs ain’t interrupted. Someone makes love … But that’s just the point. That’s Losey’s code. You can wing it like birdies, do anything, everything. Just don’t fall in love. Though that’s the part I don’t understand. I’d wonder who’s kissing them now.

  “ ‘The family,’ Losey says. ‘The family comes first. The home.’

  “It’s the long view, you see. The long view he takes. Marriage like principal. Not to be disturbed. He’s a doctor, a surgeon. He hates a complication. Side effects spook him, they give him the willies. Sure, that’s got to be it. The principles of science carried over into life. Well, why not? What the hell? I’m glad we had this chat, George. It’s clearer to me now.”

  But not to Mills.

  “Well,” Messenger said, “he has trucks.”

  “Trucks.”

  “And an interest in freight cars.”

  “I don’t——”

  “That he bought with some guys, that he leases back to the railroad.”

  “I don’t——”

  “Because a lot of this shit must have been in her name, joint tenancy, something sufficiently complicated so that even if he’s audited and they find against him it’s probably a judgment call. And, oh yes, meanwhile he gets the use on the money, the interest compounding against the penalty even if there is one. A divorce could … Well, you can see for yourself. And maybe that’s what he means by ‘home.’ Maybe it’s only his pet name for tax shelter. The horror, the horror, hey Mills?”

  Who wanted names and dates, the places of these horrors, whose own interest was compounding now too, but in a different direction, so that when he again asked “Then what happened?” Messenger only looked at him. “What happened?” he repeated.

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know, that it got out of hand.”

  “It was his idea that Nora become a graduate student.”

  “I see,” Mills said, but didn’t.

  “He even picked the discipline. And picked it mercilessly, pitilessly. Architecture. She’d need math, she’d need mechanics. She’d need drawing skills. She’d need calculus and physics, statics and dynamics, and a knowledge of mechanical systems. She’d need to know stresses. She’d need acoustics and drafting, axonometrics and isometric projections. She’d need to know project financing. She’d need a knowledge of real estate and whose palm you greased to get round the zoning codes. So she’d need political science, and a little law too. You see?”

  “But——”

  “Medical school would have been a breeze, compared.”

  “But why did——”

  “Because he really is your paste asshole, your rat of swank. Only I didn’t know he was so clever. Christ, he must have studied the catalogue like a doting daddy. He must have pored over that fucker. He must have laughed his ass off when he had to look a term up.

  “But I don’t know. I don’t know why he did it. Maybe it was only that same hierarchical predilection for profession that put nurses off limits but drove him into their arms once they were doctors’ wives. Maybe that’s why he married her in the first place, maybe it’s why he loved her. Maybe he was just showing off. Because once he got his license to practice he could, by the simple act of marrying her, take any girl off the street and turn her into a doctor’s wife. Any girl. A typist, a beautician, someone in trade school.

  “Maybe excitement quits on you. Maybe it pales. Maybe pride is the least complacent of the qualities, and it’s true what the songs say——the thrill is gone, the blush off the rose. Passion like the seasons, like land that gives out.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want her around at those doctor conventions,” George said.

  “Symposiums, conferences,” Messenger said. “Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think he’s better than that. I take him at his word. I believe he really is this rat of swank, that he has this toney, back-of-the-book vision. The couple—she’s a brain surgeon, he sits on the Supreme Court; she skydives for relaxation, he’s into archeology; they swig tiptop scotch and lie around listening to old 78’s—that has it made. The best condo at the fanciest address, who weave great salads and whip up Jap foods which they eat off the carpet before great open fires. (He gets closed-circuit TV, pulls big Vegas bouts from his dish in the yard.) Because he really thinks like that. And what I think, what I think, is that he was honestly trying to make her over. Take this perfectly nice, ordinary girl whom he’d already turned into a doctor’s wife pretty as any he screws in Europe, well dressed as any, tricky as any in bed, well heeled and knowing as any, and go for it. That’s why he chose architecture to be her fate. Out of love and an honest pleasure and pride in just more gracious living. And that could explain Jenny Greener, too.” Mills looked at him. “Think about it.” Mills shrugged. “They’re classmates. They’re classmates, George. She came to your house. What did you think?”

  “I didn’t think anything. Why? What should I think?”

 
“Did you notice anything special about Jenny?”

  “Jenny?”

  “Jenny Greener, yes.”

  “I’m trying to remember.”

  “That’s right. Do you?”

  Mills tried to recall the polite, somewhat nervous young woman who’d come with the doctor’s wife that day. She was, he’d thought, ill at ease, and had given him the impression—stiff, unmoving, perched on the edge of their sofa, holding herself carefully, almost tenderly, as if she were sore, as if she held a saucer and teacup in her lap, a napkin, invisible cakes—of restrained fidgets. She hadn’t talked much. He couldn’t remember that she’d said anything. She hadn’t asked questions, as Nora had, about the house, the neighborhood. Louise had said afterward that Nora had taken Polaroids of the house, flashes, three or four rolls. That she’d gone around shooting one picture after another, of the cellar steps, the ceiling, the basement, their closets and doorways, their small backyard. “I tell you, George, she could have been from the insurance,” Louise said, “taking pictures of water damage, busted pipes.” He couldn’t remember Jenny Greener having a camera.

  “I think she was embarrassed,” George told Cornell. “I don’t recall what she looked like.”

  “Plain?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Nora Pat. Mrs. Losey. What did Mrs. Losey look like?”

  “Oh, she was beautiful. Very well dressed. She had on this linen suit. Boots. She had beautiful boots. Sort of a blonde. I don’t know. I can’t describe people’s looks. She was very pretty. I remember she was very pretty.”

  “A smasher?” Messenger said. “A knockout?”

  “Yes,” George Mills said. “She was very beautiful.” He remembered that when they were introduced she’d taken his hand and held it in both her own.

  “You were with Judy,” she said. “You’re the man with the back.” And she’d touched Mills there, where his back ached, and her touch had radiated comfort through his shirt, warming him.