Stern

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  Now, Stern's mother led forth Uncle Babe and said to Stern, “Look who I brought out for you. Uncle Babe. You always loved him.”

  Stern hugged Uncle Babe with great tenderness, as though to make up for all the wrongs done to him by heartless institutions, and Stern's mother said, “Get him to tell you about the market. To this very day, he has some head.” Stern sat alongside his Uncle Babe and the conversation took the usual course. Uncle Babe would make a few statements about the financial world, too generalized to be put to any moneymaking use, and then would slide into a monologue about the difficulty of getting a decent piece of fish, various smells in the air, and how certain shirt fabrics itched your skin.

  “He has some head if you can only keep him on the right track,” said Stern's mother.

  After a while, Stern arose and said, “I can't listen to anybody any more. I've come home today with an ulcer.”

  Stern's mother said, “I don't believe it.”

  Stern said, “I've got one, all right. With a large crater. In two days I have to go to a rest place for it. It hurts right now.”

  “That's what I needed,” Stern's mother said, puffing at a cigarette. “I don't have enough. That's the perfect extra thing I need to carry.”

  Stern's father, standing small and round-shouldered, shook his head gravely and said, “You've got to take care of yourself. That's what happens. I've told you that and I've told you that.”

  Uncle Babe leaned forward, staring widely, and said, “I like a piece of fish on a night like this, but I don't like the way it smells.”

  “I'm going to have a drink,” said Stern's mother. “And I don't need any comments either. Do you know where I'd be if I wasn't able to take a little drink?” She swallowed some Scotch from a shot glass and said, “I don't have any reason to drink, do I? No reason in the world.”

  “Maybe I'll just go upstairs and lie down,” Stern said. “It hurts plenty inside me.”

  “I'm not going to worry about it,” Stern's mother said. “I can't kill myself. I've had disappointments in my life, too. Plenty of them. I could tell you plenty.”

  “I am not interested in people's disappointments,” Stern said. “My stomach hurts me.”

  “All right, so I said something wrong,” she said. “Look, darling, stay downstairs awhile. Maybe it'll make you feel better. Talk to your Uncle Babe. You love him. You know his head.

  “Maybe we could all use a little music in our systems,” she said, instructing Stern's father to bring in a small accordion he carried in the trunk of his car. As a boy, Stern had sung at home to his father's accordion playing. His voice was not bad, and his mother had once taken him to a talent agent, who'd had Stern sing into his ear and then rejected him for poor head tones. But Stern's mother was rhapsodic over his voice, and now, as Stern's father played some warm-up trills, she sank into a chair and said, “Sing for me, darling. It'll make us all feel better.”

  “I'm not singing anything,” Stern said.

  “All right, don't sing for me, sing for your Uncle Babe,” she said. “He's never heard your voice, and he's come all the way out here. He'll faint when he hears you.”

  “Jesus,” Stern said. “I'm thirty-four.” But when his father played an old ballad, he began to come in with the words.

  “That voice,” his mother said. “The same voice. I could die.”

  When he reached the bridge of the song, Stern said, “I'm not doing any more of this. I told you about my stomach. Doesn't anybody realize my stomach hurts? I've got a goddamned ulcer. I have to go away to a home.”

  “Don't sing,” said Stern's mother. “What am I going to do—put a bullet through my head? I only had an idea. I thought it would be good for everybody.” Stern's father continued through the song, as though respecting a show-business tradition that no matter how adverse the circumstances, all numbers are to be completed. Uncle Babe leaned across to Stern's mother and said, “Listen, did you take a look at my shirt? I don't like the feel of it. It doesn't feel good on my skin.”

  “The crazy bastard doesn't even hear the music,” said Stern's mother. “He's in a world of his own.”

  Stern's father wound up the ballad with an elaborate trilling effect, and then Stern's mother said, “Isn't your wife home when you have an ulcer?”

  “She doesn't know about it yet,” said Stern.

  “She ought to be home if you're not feeling well,” said Stern's father.

  “I said she doesn't know. Listen, none of this is doing me any good. I'm going upstairs on the bed. I'm going to a home in a few days, and I've got to stay quiet until then. Nobody upset me about anything.”

  He went upstairs, and when his stomach touched the bed, it seemed to puff up with pain like great baby cheeks and he had to roll over on his back to be comfortable. A car moved into the driveway and he went to the window and saw his wife hop out, come around and kiss a man through the driver's window, and then run into the house. Stern got back into bed. She was downstairs for a while, and then she ran up the steps and knelt beside him and said, “What happened?”

  “I've come up with an ulcer and there'll be some kind of institution in a few days.”

  “Oh, that's not so bad,” she said, her great eyes wide, kissing his wrist. “You'll fix it right up in a few days.”

  “No, I won't,” said Stern. “It's a big thing and it'll be in there for a while. I may have to be away for a long time.”

  She was wearing a tight jumper that hugged her flaring thighs snugly; the crease of her underwear showed through, and Stern had a sudden fear that she had just thrown on her clothes in a great hurry.

  “Where were you?” he asked. “I thought you don't go anywhere out here.”

  “I went to a modern dance class today for the first time,” she said, her eyes shimmering with warmth. “I thought it would give me an interest.”

  “But I've come home with an ulcer,” Stern said.

  “I didn't know that,” she said.

  “Who was the one in the car?”

  “José,” she said. “The instructor. He picks up the students and takes them home.”

  “I saw a kiss,” said Stern, a slow and deadly beat beginning against his stomach walls, as though fists inside him were pleading for attention.

  “Oh, that's just a thing he does, like show business. It was nothing.”

  “But I saw tongues,” said Stern.

  “No, you didn't,” she said. “I can't help what he did. I didn't use my tongue.”

  “Oh my God, then there was a tongue.”

  Stern's mother and father came up to the room, followed by Uncle Babe. All three stood in the doorway.

  “That's some place for a wife to be when there's a sickness,” said Stern's mother. “Out of the house.” She downed a shot of Scotch and said, “And they wonder why I take a little drink.”

  “I'll be where I want,” Stern's wife said, and his small father came forth, shoved his nose into her face, and said, “You'll be home with him.”

  Uncle Babe came into the room, eyes wide in the pale glare of the single bedroom lamp, and said, “I smell gas; open the window, somebody,” and Stern had a picture of himself, thin and unshaven, sitting in oversized clothes on the bench of one of Uncle Babe's institutions, waiting for his son and wife to visit him, the boy carrying a box of pralines for him, his favorites. The fists within him stepped up the rhythm of their beat, and Stern began to roll from one side of the bed to the other, hands tight around his stomach, as though to keep it from falling apart. “Call Fabiola,” he said in a whisper. “Tell him no two days. I've got to go tonight. Oh, please, tell him I've got to get started tonight.”

  Fabiola told Stern of pills that would take him through the night and said he would arrange space at the home for the following morning. Stern awakened blinking to an agonizingly warm and lovely summer day. But the summer fragrance unsettled him; on such days his son would have to stand without playmates, sucking a blanket on a barren lawn, and Stern would at s
ome point have to stand outside and perhaps see the man a mile down the road. Dark and dreary weather made Stern rejoice, because on such days there was no shame in staying inside the house, where it was safe. Down deep at the center of him there was a small capsule of glee that he was going to the home on this day; if dark and terrible things happened then to his family, he could not be held responsible. How could he prevent them if he was away in a home?

  The midnight driveway kiss nagged at him now, and he reached for his wife as though to nail her down, to stake a claim in her during his absence, to mark her, change her in some way so there would be no smoothly coordinated backseat tumbles with José during his absence. She watched him like a great-eyed fourth-grade girl, but then her eyes closed, her skin became cold, and she clung to him with a nervous, clattering whimper, doing a private, rising-up kind of thing. He went at her with a frenzy, as though by the sheer force of his connection he could do something to her that would keep her quiet and safe and chaste for two weeks, but when he fell to the side he saw with panic that she was unchanged, unmarked, her skin still cold and unrelieved.

  “Can you be a man again, my darling?”

  “No,” Stern said. “I've got something inside me. I've got to get up to that home. Listen, can you give up that ballet thing when I'm away?”

  “No, I don't want to. It's the first thing I've had.”

  “OK, then,” he said. “But no more tongues. Can't you drive home by yourself?”

  “He drives the students home. The kissing is just a show-biz thing. Can't you be a man one more time? I'm going to have to jump on a telephone pole.”

  “I don't want you to say things like that,” said Stern.

  Outside, on the lawn, it occurred to Stern that he had never seen his house during the week at this precise time of day. It was eleven in the morning, a time when he was usually at work for two hours. He had gone to work on schedule for many years, and in his mind he had felt that if he ever stopped and stayed home one day, or left his job entirely, he would die. And yet here he was, standing on the lawn, looking at his home, and he was perfectly alive. Perhaps that was it, he thought; perhaps all he had to do was to stop work for one day and see that he could live and he would not have gotten the ulcer. His son came out and said, “How long will you be away?”

  “A little while,” Stern said.

  “I can't wait for a little while,” the boy said.

  ‘I'll be back soon.”

  “I can't wait till soon. Listen, do you know where we are?”

  “Where?” Stern said.

  “In God's hand; right on his pinkie, as a matter of fact.”

  “Who teaches him God things?” Stern said to his wife.

  “The baby-sitter. She's inside.”

  Stern said, “She shouldn't.” He wanted to go inside and tell her to discontinue the God information, but he was afraid she would come after him one night with a torch-bearing army of gentiles and tie him in a church.

  Stern's wife drove the car, and as they passed the man's house down the street Stern ducked down and made himself invisible, as though he did not want the man to know of his triumph. Stern was certain that if the man knew he had put Stern in a home, he would fly a dozen flags thrillingly from every window.

  On the highway, Stern watched his wife's knees, apart as they worked the pedals; he imagined her dropping him off at the home, then going immediately to a service station and allowing the attendant to make love to her while her feet kept working the pedals so that she could always say that she had driven all the way home without stopping. She pulled into the driveway of the Grove Rest Home in the late afternoon and Stern, saying goodbye, squeezed her flesh and kissed her through her dress, as though by getting in these last touches he could somehow ward off the gas station attendant.

  A giant picture of a somber, bewhiskered, constitutional-looking man hung in the reception lobby. Stern took this to be Grove himself. The lobby was a great, darkened, drafty place, and as Stern passed the picture he instinctively ducked down a little, certain that Grove, in setting up the home, had no idea people such as Stern would be applying for admission. As Stern stood before the reception desk he expected an entourage of Grove's descendants to run out with clenched fists and veto him.

  A tiny, gray-haired nurse looked up at him and said, “What can I do for you, puddin'?” Stern told her who he was.

  “Of course, dumplin',” she said, checking her records. “You're the new intestinal. I'll get Lennie out for you. Does it hurt much?”

  Stern said he'd had a bad night and asked what the rate was. She said three dollars a day. “That includes your three meals and your evening milk and cookie.”

  Stern had been ready to pay ten dollars a day and felt ashamed at getting it for so little. She said, “Everyone pays the same rate, crumb bun,” and Stern said, “I'll donate a couch later when I get out.”

  A tall, handsome Negro with powerful jaw muscles came out on steel crutches, moving slowly, adjusting clamps and gears as he clattered forward. He was pushing a baggage cart, and he threw his legs out one at a time behind it, as though he were casting them for fish.

  “This is Lennie,” said the nurse. “You'll like him. He's a sugarplum. Lennie, this is Mr. Stern, your new intestinal.”

  “Very good,” said the Negro. “Bags on the cart, Mr. Stern. Patients to the left of me as we walk.”

  “I can handle them,” said Stern. The Negro's jaw muscles bunched up, and he said, “Patients to my left. Bags on the cart.”

  Stern, afraid of his great jaw muscles, tossed his bags on the cart, and the Negro began to clatter forward, clamps and gears turning, leg sections rasping and grinding out to the side, one at a time. Stern fell in beside him, hands in his pockets, feigning a very slow walk, as though he, too, took days to get places.

  “Are you originally from New York?” Stern asked. “I just came from there and it's funny, but the last guy I saw was a Negro artist friend of mine.”

  “There'll be no dinner,” said the Negro, sweat shimmering on his forehead as he pushed the cart, looking straight ahead. “That's at five. You're late for milk and cookie, too. One lateness is allowed on that, though. Did the nurse furnish you with milk and cookie?”

  “No,” said Stern.

  The Negro's jaw muscles tightened again, and he glared violently at Stern. He released the cart, turned around after much shifting and switching of gears, and began to make his way back to the nurse. Stern walked several steps behind him. When the Negro got back to the reception desk, he asked the nurse, “Did you give this intestinal milk and cookie?”

  “No, I didn't, old stocking,” said the nurse.

  “That's what he claim,” said the Negro, freezing Stern with another glare. Once again he shifted gears, arranged clamps, tugged and yanked at elaborate mechanisms, and finally turned and walked complicatedly down a dark ramplike hall, Stern falling in beside him. The darkness was dropping swiftly; parallel to the ramp and off in the distance were the blinking lights of a building that seemed to be set off by itself, deliberately isolated. Crowd sounds were coming from it, as though from a bleachers group that had remained long after a ball game.

  “Is that where we're going?” Stern asked the Negro.

  “You're not to go there,” he said. “That's Rosenkranz, where mentals are to be taken. And you're not to be social with attendants at Grove, such as myself.”

  He looked straight ahead as he took his zigzagging, clanking, spastic steps, and Stern was somehow convinced that this man was doing the most important work in the world. That there was nothing of greater moment than being the attendant for intestinals and being in charge of baggage carriers. Despite his complicated legs, he seemed a terribly strong man to Stern, who felt that even were he to flee to the Netherlands after a milk and cookie infraction, getting a fifteen-hour start, the Negro would go after him Porgy-like and catch him eventually. He wondered if somehow he might not be able to enlist the Negro and his great jaw muscles to
fight the man down the street. He saw the man knocking the Negro down seven or eight times and the Negro disgustedly wiping off his clean intern's jacket, making clamp and gear adjustments, and then, handsome face serious and determined, great jaw muscles bunched, coming on to squeeze the life out of the kike man's throat.

  They came finally to the end of the ramp and to a two-story dormitory, which Lennie identified as Griggs. He pointed to a room right inside the entrance and said, “One is not ever to enter the staff room. There is to be a line outside for medicines and, later, for milk and cookie. There'll be no leaving the grounds either; otherwise, strict penalties will ensue.”

  Stern's room was on the second floor. It took double the usual number of gear shiftings and fastener slidings for the Negro to mount the stairs, and when he was up there his jaw muscles were lumped enormously and his white intern's jacket was soaked. Stern said, “Thank you for all your trouble,” and the Negro, after opening the room door, said, “One is to obey all rules here on the premises.”

  Stern's room was long and thin and rancid, as though aging merchant marine bosuns with kidney difficulties had spent their lives in it. A small middle-aged man with a caved-in chest and loose pouches under his eyes sat on one of the two beds in the dim light and said, “Hey, what's this?”

  “What?” asked Stern.

  The man had arranged his hands in a tangled way, as though he were scrubbing them, and was holding them against a lamp so that a clumping, knobby shadow showed against the wall.