Neighbors: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  At his belligerent approach Harry changed his own style. He lost his snarl. He fell back and raised his hands: "Wait a minute, Earl," he said vulnerably, "don't do something you'll be sorry for. I wanted to tell you, I swear I did. It was Enid who's to blame."

  "Coward," cried Keese, "hiding behind a woman!"

  At this Ramona awakened, unless she had been playing possum all the while. She proved much more effective at this juncture than her husband.

  "It's very simple, Earl," said she. "Our bed is still dismantled over there. When Enid heard this she insisted we stay the night. Naturally we assumed she would tell you."

  Keese sucked his lips judiciously. "All right, I'll go along with you—for the moment. Where is Enid?"

  "In your girl's room," said Ramona.

  Keese pointed his finger at her. "Do you realize there's only a single bed in Elaine's room?"

  "No, I didn't," Ramona said civilly, and turned to her husband. "Harry, did you know that?"

  "How would I?" said Harry, his eyebrows assuming the worried look of a hound's. "Gee, Earl—"

  He seemed genuinely sympathetic, but Keese wouldn't be taken in again. "Am I supposed to sleep on the floor?"

  "Well, I wouldn't say that," said Harry.

  "What would you say then?"

  "The thing I'm wondering," said Ramona, "is why you pretend you don't have anyplace to sleep when the guest room is there all the while."

  "For the simple reason that the guest room is presently being used for storage and is jammed full of extra furniture."

  "I'm sure you can find some place to burrow in it," said Ramona, starting to roll over on her side as she spoke. "After all, it's only for a few days." She closed her eyes.

  "Days?" cried Keese. "You've got another think coming!" But she was asleep or pretending to be.

  Harry shrugged, nodded at her, and smirked for Keese's benefit, as if she were an amusing eccentric who must be humored.

  "Oh, yes," Keese shouted, "it's quite a joke, isn't it? So laugh at this!" He seized handfuls of sheet and blanket at the foot of the bed and walked backwards with them, exposing his new neighbors, in more ways than one: they were both naked. He sputtered incoherently for a moment, and then he dropped his end of the bedclothes. Ramona pretended to sleep through all of this. Her body was decorous: one polished hip in the air, and her near breast was beneath her elbow. But Harry, flat supine, was blatant and obscene: "A feast for the eyes," he crooned while spreading his legs.

  "You dirty dog," said Keese, "I'll get you for this." He picked up the end of the bedclothes and flung them over the terrible couple.

  "So we didn't have our nighties with us," said Harry. "Can't you take a little joke?"

  Ramona groaned as if in her sleep. "Gawd, how long are you gonna keep this up? Either get in or get out."

  Keese couldn't believe he heard her accurately, and therefore he ignored this speech, but Harry smiled at him and said: "There you are, Earl, what could be more generous?"

  "Oh, thank you very much," Keese said with acid irony. "Are you inviting me to share my own bed?"

  Harry stared for a moment and then nodded violently. "Come on," he said to Ramona, "it seems we ain't welcome."

  This was to call Keese's bluff in another way: now he was supposed to feel guilty about routing them from bed. Where would they go? But his experience with them thus far had cured him of a tendency to assume responsibility for the difficulties people got themselves into of their own volition. If a man has willfully discarded his supply of food, by what obligation am I expected to feed him?

  "That's right," he said boldly now. "Get out and be damned."

  Ramona peeped at him over her shoulder. She spoke in a piping, little-girl's voice. "Why be such a mean old man? We're your neighbors. You should be nicer."

  "All right," said Keese, "don't start that stuff. I began by being hospitable, if you will remember, but your technique is guaranteed to turn any normal person against you in short order, I'd say. I can't explain the Abernathys."

  "Who?" Harry asked, leaving the bed deliberately and regardless of modesty.

  "Enough of that," said Keese. "I've talked with them, you see."

  "So?"

  "So they insist they're your dearest friends."

  "That's a laugh." Harry began idly to scratch his groin. Keese had seen nothing like that since his army service, many years before.

  He was embarrassed by it now. He turned and asked Ramona: "I suppose you maintain you don't even know them?"

  But she asked defiantly: "Are you going to stand there and play with yourself while I get dressed?"

  He was onto this tactic by now, the diversionary attack. "It's my bedroom, isn't it?"

  "O.K.," she said, extending one arm from the bedclothes, pointing to the chair nearby. "Please?"

  He saw her clothing there, and went to fetch it. It consisted of no more than the shiny blouse, the high-waisted slacks, and the shoes. No stockings. And no underwear? He surveyed the room: no, not a stitch. Harry, across the bed, was getting into his, though. His bulging Jockey shorts looked a size too small. He stretched insouciantly. He seemed vain about his body.

  Keese took the clothes to Ramona. She had retracted her hand and was staring at him in an intense fashion. But he refused to play more games, and dropped his burdens onto the bed.

  Wearing T-shirt and drawers, Harry rubbed his blond head, the curls springing up as his fingers went by. "Listen," he said, "how's about paying you for the use of the room for a night or two?"

  "For God's sake," said Keese, "I don't run a hotel."

  "Neither does anyone else around here," Harry said. "The long and short of it is that the house is not habitable at the moment. It needs some work before we can actually live there. But we want to be nearby while the work is done, because you can't trust 'em unless you keep an eye on 'em."

  "Just a minute," Keese said. "The Walkers lived there up to the moment he died. I've seen that house: it's perfectly O.K."

  "Full of vermin," Harry said. "Roaches behind the wallpaper. I hate that. Mouse turds on the kitchen shelves. But the structural weaknesses are serious. You can put your finger through the beams down cellar: dry rot. I wouldn't be surprised to look out your window and see the whole place collapse at any moment."

  "Don't turn around," Ramona warned Keese. "Your heart's not strong enough." A sequence of rustling sounds indicated that she had risen.

  Keese was stung by this. He squeezed his fingers into fists and, glaring murderously at Harry, he said to Ramona: "Go to hell, you bitch."

  He was not as amazed as he might once have been to see Harry throw back his head, laugh, and congratulate him: "That's telling her!"

  "Look here," Keese said when he had cooled slightly, "I don't believe what you're saying. The house couldn't have degenerated that much since I last saw it. It wasn't three years ago that Walker showed me his basement: it was just fine then."

  "Just a minute," said Harry, who had not made a move to don more clothing than his underwear. Keese noticed suddenly that he was slightly bowlegged. "Why did he show you his basement? You're lying, Earl."

  Keese shook his head over the futility of trying to talk with either of them about the simplest matters. Anyone who is determined to frustrate an inquiry has an easy time of it: a ridiculous question can be made of every particular of life.

  "Take it on faith, Harry," said Keese. "Meanwhile, put on the rest of your clothes."

  "I wish there were some way I could convince you we need shelter," Harry said.

  "Get going," said Keese.

  Harry found his trousers on the floor: he had apparently undressed as he walked towards bed. "You wouldn't consider it?"

  "No," said Keese. "I don't want to be hateful about this, but I'm afraid I really can't stand either one of you, alone or together. It's as simple as that. I'm not making a moral judgment, calling you wicked or anything. I'm even willing to entertain the idea that you mean well. I'm not consigning you to
perdition, but I wish you would henceforth make your way through life without involving me. Now, that's as nice as I can put it."

  Harry received this speech expressionlessly, while putting on his trousers. When Keese was finished he said, quietly zipping up his fly: "That's pretty devastating, Earl. Nobody would say something like that and not mean it. Personally, I feel as though you kicked me in the nuts."

  "I assure you—" Keese began.

  "No, no," said Harry. "I understand your position: you have stated it only too well. I don't need to hear it again."

  "It's nothing personal," said Keese.

  "Bullshit!" cried Ramona from behind him.

  He turned. She was dressed now, and for the first time he realized that she had worn the turban even to bed. She was bald, was that it?

  "What is it if it's not personal?" she asked.

  Keese smirked. "Well, you know what I—it's a matter of fundamental differences of principle. What you might see as a friendly approach repels me. I take it as an attack. We're all different, you know."

  "I wish you'd quit dwelling on it," said Harry. "Step on our faces if you will, but don't grind your heel. You hate our guts, pure and simple. What more's to be said?"

  He wasn't exactly right, but Keese decided not to insist on an agreement that must respect the precise nuances. It was true in a general way that he detested them.

  "O.K.," he said, "fair enough."

  "Fair my ass," snarled Ramona. "It's your house, your bedroom, and your bed. What's fair? Do we get any kind of vote?"

  Harry snorted. Keese decided to get out of their crossfire and stepped away so that he did not have to turn so far to see one after addressing or listening to the other. This movement brought his rump against Enid's dresser top.

  "What is fair," he said, "is that you have a perfectly good house sitting empty over there while you're both over here, pestering me. There's no great vermin problem, and the beams are not rotted. In fact, it's a good sound building in all respects. If you are too tired, or too lazy, to put your bed together, then sleep on the mattress, on the floor. I've done that more than once. It can even be fun, like camping out."

  Ramona continued to sneer at him: she had been nursing a grudge against him since the first, he had no idea why. Harry on the other hand was not exactly inimical even now: he seemed basically a hopeful sort. And in return one could hope he would eventually straighten out.

  Keese stepped up to him now and said: "I'm sorry it worked out this way. I apologize if I hurt your feelings, but in life interests often conflict. Maybe as neighbors we can at least be neutrals, if not active enemies. I certainly hope so and will do what I can to make it so." He put out his hand. Harry took it and applied such crushing force with his own large and muscular fist that the agony was too much for Keese, who began to sag.

  "Pull that sentimental stuff on me," said Harry, grinning brutally down upon him, "and you'll be punished." He gave Keese's helpless hand a final vicious squeeze and released it. Keese plunged to his knees, and his hand fell limply to the floor.

  All the fight had gone out of him. He wonderingly sat back on his heels and asked himself for the nth time, as a man will, how he had got into this predicament. He dully watched Harry & Ramona exit. He heard them go downstairs, open the front door, and leave.

  With the use of his left, unmaimed hand he helped himself to his feet. His strength was slow to return. Perhaps he was finished. But no, he refused to accept that. He hurled himself into the bathroom, found his old clothes in the laundry hamper, and got into them. Then he returned to the bedroom closet and searched its dim recesses for the cane he had used, many years before, while recovering from a broken leg. He intended to flog Harry within an inch of his life. Aha! There it was, but unfortunately much lighter than he remembered, not so formidable a weapon as he required. He threw it back and, unarmed, dashed into the hall. The lights were on. He ran down the stairs and threw open the door. Perhaps by hurling himself against the back of Harry's legs he could hamstring him.

  Elaine stood just outside, upon the mat. She held the key in her hand but had not had time to use it.

  "Dad!" she said. "I decided to come home on the spur of the moment."

  "Thank God," said Keese, pulling her inside and slamming the door.

  CHAPTER 7

  ELAINE," said Keese, "did you see anybody out there?"

  "Daddy, I refuse to say a word until you greet me decently."

  "Sorry, dear," said Keese. He embraced her quickly and kissed her brow, then pushed himself away. "To what do we owe this honor? Certainly didn't look for you this weekend. Spur of the moment, eh? How'd you come, then? Get a ride?"

  "Hitchhiked," said Elaine, watching him closely.

  Keese gasped. "You don't mean it! Tell me it isn't so, Elaine. Admit that you are joking."

  "I admit," said Elaine, seizing him in the elbow crook. "I just wanted to be cruel to you for a moment."

  "I wonder why?"

  "Just because," Elaine said. "Just because you're my very own dad. You're mine, you belong to me, you're my property." She swung around and punched him in the belly, none too lightly, as it happened. He always brought that sort of thing out in her. He was beginning to feel normal again—in fact, much better than. Harry's image was fast fading, and it was as if Ramona had never existed.

  "Are you hungry, dear?" He struck himself. "If anything's there to eat! Eggs maybe." Elaine shook her head. "Who gave you the ride? You probably didn't invite them in because the lights were out. We are retiring earlier than usual, you will note. We had an unusual evening, and it seemed the wisest course to wait for tomorrow, in the idea that a new day might shed new light."

  "I'm exhausted, myself," Elaine said, stepping out to demonstrate, with sagging shoulders and drooping tongue, her fatigue. "I'm going right to bed." She would have started for the stairs then, but remembering where Enid had bunked, Keese drew his daughter into the living room.

  "Now, you just sit here for a moment," said he, leading her to the sofa. "You've embarrassed us by coming back without warning. We rented your room to a family of migratory workers, and I have to run them out now."

  "Ah," said Elaine, and she tried to smile at this jest, but failed to sustain her effort.

  "Seriously," he said, "your mother stripped the bed today to launder the mattress cover, and it hasn't been remade."

  Elaine finally managed to smile. "I could insist on making the bed myself," said she, "but I'm not going to. I come home to be spoiled. I can't get away with that anywhere else in the world."

  Hearing this, Keese felt as if lifted on a massive wave. He knew he should guard against inordinate pride, but he could not resist gloating: he had the better part of a weekend in which to serve Elaine as lackey. This was the one kind of abasement that did not degrade. Keese had always been like this with his daughter. As he so often thought, it was a wonder that she had turned out well after leaving home, i.e., going into the "real" world from an artificial atmosphere. In point of fact Elaine had been immediately successful at college. Apparently she was that sort of person. In his own university years Keese had been a moody type in private and socially supernumerary: genial, anonymous, crewcut, and chunky.

  He now mounted to the second floor and, going past the master bedroom and bath, arrived outside the similar suite that had been Elaine's quarters since the Keeses had moved into the house. She came home about once a month during the academic year, from a university that was a hundred miles away. In between, her rooms were considered sacrosanct. That Enid would quarter herself in Elaine's room was remarkable, but then Enid's behavior had been strange throughout the evening. Also, it was true that the proper guest room had been made uninhabitable by the extra furniture stored there, former living-room pieces that were a bit too good as yet to be surrendered to charity.

  Keese burst in now without knocking. He took pleasure in the assumption that he would startle Enid from sleep, but in point of fact she was sitting up, reading. An
intense blue was the predominant color in Elaine's room, but its effect was subdued after dark, with only the bedlamp as a source of illumination.

  "Elaine's just come home."

  Enid closed her book and lowered it. She stared severely at him over the half-glasses. "I hope this is not one of your ruses."

  "She's downstairs," Keese said brusquely. "Go see for yourself. Meanwhile I'll put this room in order."