“I don’t think I’m unhappy,” she said. “As I told you, my work—Let’s talk about something else. Why did you come back to New York?”
“To begin again.”
“To begin what again?”
He stood up to explain, realizing suddenly that the painting on the wall—the childlike girl in black—resembled Lois, a much younger Lois, though not as he remembered her. “Do you ever think about the past?” he said, musing, the question asking itself.
In a moment, Lois was standing. “You never give up, do you?” she said, nervously lighting a cigarette, discarding it, walking across the room as if she were late for an appointment. “Do you want to know what I remember most about our marriage?” she challenged him.
What could he say? Yes, but not that answer. He nodded, closing his eyes, aware of what was coming as surely (as painfully) as if he had been through it before.
“I don’t blame you for it really,” she said, her voice tightly controlled, “but I don’t want to be continually reminded. I have the feeling sometimes of being so dirty, beyond hope of ever being clean again.” She turned, smiling. Her face tilted, collapsed.
He approached her, his right leg half asleep. “It was a mistake, Lois,” he said. “I shouldn’t have permitted it.”
She sighed. “Why did you?” Tense. Reproachful.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was afraid you’d do something to yourself if I tried to stop you.”
“You damn fool!” Her face blank, as if the words had come from somewhere else. “God, don’t you ever understand anything?”
He wagged his head, dumb.
“You knew,” she said. “It’s inconceivable to me that you didn’t know.” Her voice soft, her hysteria like a hum in the air.
“What should I have known?”
She tossed her head in a paroxysm of irritation. “If you had said, ‘Don’t,’ if you had taken a stand … You fool! You fool!” The room grew smaller, the ceiling plunged downward. She continued to rail at him.
And the worst of it was, he had no other place to go. There was no place to go.
| 8 |
“Don’t be afraid to talk to your passengers,” Sclaratti had advised him. “They expect it, compa. They think we’re all a bunch of goddamn characters.”
Thursday, when he lost her in the park, was the last time Peter saw Delilah. He missed her on Monday, late himself—he had taken a fare to Long Island, unable to refuse, had gotten lost coming back—it ruined the day for him.
That night he fought with Lois for no reason, because she wanted him to be a lawyer instead of a cab driver. And all the time defending himself like a lawyer.
On Tuesday, Peter was at Delilah’s school at two-fifteen, eager to see her, full of explanations. Hundreds of students poured out at once from several exits, and when Delilah didn’t show—had he missed her again?—he stopped a boy and girl and asked about her.
“Does she play the flute?” the boy asked, impatient to leave. Peter didn’t know—the cello, he thought, though he wasn’t sure.
He asked others.
“Oh, you mean Delli,” a pale blond boy said. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“Was she in school today?” Peter asked, looking around him at other girls, distracted. “I’m supposed to … it’s my job to drive her home.” Someone laughed.
“She hasn’t been in school since Wednesday or Thursday, if I’m not mistaken,” the pale boy said officiously, his delicate face sustained by the pleasure of self-acknowledged superiority. A small group, mostly girls, had assembled around Peter.
“She was in on Thursday,” a girl’s voice reported, “but she’s been out since then.”
“Where has she been?” said Peter, the question hurled at the group like an accusation, as if Delilah’s absence were the result of their conspiracy against him.
“If you’ve been hired to drive her, as you say, you ought to know,” the pale boy said.
“Delli is sick,” someone said, a short girl behind a taller one.
“We all know that.” The pale boy tittered.
“Shut up, you creep. I mean, she’s really ill. Delli is …”
“Don’t be so maudlin,” the boy said, winking at Peter. “You’ll make us all cry.”
“What’s the matter with her?” Peter spoke to his informant, an unbreasted robin with freckles and glasses. They walked down the steps together.
“I’m not sure,” the girl said in a confidentially reverent voice, as if they were standing at the sickroom door. “I spoke to Delli’s mother on the phone yesterday. They’re all very worried about her.”
“I see,” he said, worrying not seeing, haunted by premonitions of possibility.
“Delli told me all about you. My name’s Nancy, by the way.”
“My name’s Peter, Nancy,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
“What did Delilah tell you about me?”.
“Just that she knows you … that you drive her home. I really have to go now. I have a ballet lesson.” She extended her hand.
Peter shook the hand, returned it, offered Nancy a ride home, on the house—an opportunity to find out about Delilah—which she promptly refused.
“I couldn’t,” she said, looking away.
“Why not?”
“You know.” Her face reddening.
“What do you mean?”
“Delli’s my best friend. Good-bye, Peter.” A coy smile.
“What do you think’s the matter with Delilah?” he called after her—prettier from behind, he noticed—but Nancy went on, sighed, turned the corner without looking back.
For hours afterward, for the rest of the day Peter worried about Delilah’s illness (like, what does really ill really mean?), worried that it had been brought on by something he had done, or something he hadn’t done. He was vulnerable either way. And anxious.
So in the evening, concerned about Delilah, Peter decided to call her home to say that he was a friend from school, and inquire, as a friend might, about how she was, but once inside the phone booth he lost his nerve. Afterward, driving around aimlessly, he tried to make sense of his behavior. What was he afraid of? he wanted to know. The only answer that came to mind was Nancy’s insinuation: You know. But of course he didn’t. And he did. A woman he had never seen before waved at him. He smiled back at her. “Taxi, taxi,” she called as he passed her, and Peter looked around, surprised that there was no cab in sight. For a moment, abstracted, he had forgotten that he was driving one. He was sometimes haunted, sometimes forgetful.
Lois, coming up from the quicksand of a dream, had wakened abruptly during the night, caught in the grip of some dim terror, alone—Peter asleep, unavailable. And the dream, which remained only a shadow, returned to taunt her, repeating itself in her mind, against the knowledge of her will. A small girl again (almost, it seemed, a dwarf), she was walking on the boardwalk at Coney Island; a faceless boy, who reminded her of Stanley, was holding her hand. Carnival music blaring from a loudspeaker somewhere overhead. And fireworks in the sky like waves of light, like bomb bursts, like acrobatic clouds. “Is it the Fourth of July?” she asked her companion, who didn’t know. “It’s somebody’s birthday, I think,” he said. Then, among the explosions of firecrackers there was a louder noise; a real explosion, it seemed, shaking everything, water and sand spilling over onto the boardwalk, drenching her ballet slippers. Her companion said not to worry; it was part of the display. She wanted to believe him, but in front of them the boardwalk came to a sudden, jagged end, falling off like a cliff into nothing, into unending black space. And people, other couples, were walking blithely over the edge, some were even singing. Her companion began to sing, “Allons enfants de la patrie, vive la guerre, vive la guerre, vive la guerre,” which wasn’t the way it went. People around them cheered. What worried her most was that because of the explosion, there wouldn’t be any way of getting off the boardwalk. “Follow me,” her companion said, an older man now—a
nd soon, without much difficulty, they were on the beach. It was lovely: the sand bone-white and gleaming, as though it were made of glass. And everyone there seemed to be in love with someone else, as if it were impossible to be there and not be in love. Her mother and father were embracing on a blanket at the water’s edge when a wave went over them. When the water receded they were gone. “Don’t panic,” her companion said, “people drown at the beach every day. It’s an ordinary occurrence.”
The next moment she saw her mother, waves buoying her up, floating like a log toward the shore. The man put his hand over her eyes.
“I want to see,” she said. “Please.”
“It’s better that you don’t know,” he said, leading her to another part of the beach. She tried to free herself of his hold, but he was so much stronger than she that there was nothing she could do; it was pointless to struggle—her fate, such as it was, in his hands.
He was stroking her hair, consoling her.
“I didn’t hate her,” she said, crying. “I didn’t.”
“No one’s blaming you, dear,” he said gently. He was holding her down, one of his hands inadvertently touching the inside of her thigh. He, her guardian, seemed to be undressing her—for what purpose? she wondered—when it struck her that she was being raped, by a man old enough to be her father. She tried to scream but no sound would come out, the sound of her terror knotted in her throat; she kicked him to free herself, hitting him in the neck with the side of her shoe. Afraid that he would attack her again if she gave him the chance, she continued to kick him until it was clear that he was helpless. Someone was coming. She ran. The water getting deeper as she went, impeding her progress. A voice calling to her, several voices, a police siren. She decided to turn around, to face what she had done—the enormity of it gripping her—when she awoke.
The more she thought about the dream—the dream haunting her against her will—the more frightened she became. She felt terribly alone, as if everyone she knew (or had ever loved) had suddenly died.
“Peter,” she said, leaning over him, “are you awake? Peter?” Shaking him. “Talk to me.”
He grunted, moved imperceptibly.
“Peter, help me. Talk to me. Please,” she begged him.
“Impossible to stop at every traffic light,” he moaned.
“Peter … please!” She knew, though she continued to shake him, that it was no use, that when he was like this, he was impossible to wake up. “I’m alone,” she said to his ear.
He rolled from his back to his side. “The traffic,” he mumbled.
“Peter, I need to talk.” He wasn’t there.
“You’re a bastard,” she said, kicking him. “Peter … you …”
He mumbled something wordless, the crumpled sounds of indifference, then began to snore as if he didn’t know that she was there and needed him. She climbed over him onto the cold linoleum floor. “You don’t love me,” she said to the bed, to her husband who was there and wasn’t there. He moaned. She couldn’t find her slippers.
The room—the living and bed room of their marriage—was, she discovered, full of monsters. Shivering, she wended her way across the room, awful wings careening above her; but as she was brave, afraid only of the future, no monster dared to touch a hair of her. She went into the bathroom and put on the light.
When Peter stirred—the alarm waking him—he was alone in bed.
“Lois …” A light spilling from under the bathroom door, a liquid running out, freezing yellow. He followed it, holding its tail as he went, arriving, finally, at the sun, which originated in fact—why hadn’t he noticed before?—from the seat of the toilet. And the sun, he discovered—its brightness dazzling him at first—was in reality made of piss. The sun was made of piss. He was the first man to know. As he was about to tell Lois of his discovery, he came awake, amazed to find himself still in bed. He felt the beginnings of a headache over his right eye.
Where the hell was she? Remembering the light and something else—the fragment of a dream … something … what?—he pounded, rubber-legged, to the bathroom and found it empty.
“Hey, Lois,” he called, maddened by the absurdity of continually misplacing his wife. “Answer me, Lois, for God’s sake. Where are you?”
He found her sitting in a corner of the kitchen, staring at the stove, sipping her fingers.
“Why didn’t you answer when I called?”
She continued to stare at the stove as though she were catatonic. “I don’t know,” she said.
He made an effort to control his rage, knocking a cup off the table with his elbow. Barely raising her head, she looked up at him mournfully, then turned away.
“What’s the matter?” he said softly.
She mouthed the words without speaking them. “You are.”
He turned on his heels and went out, without a word, the bile of his rage choking him.
When he felt in control of himself he returned to the kitchen. Lois, baleful in her grief, waited for him. And again, as before, they rehearsed their grievances.
“Now I know why I don’t want your child,” she said at the peak of her anger.
“Are you sure it’s my child?” he yelled back.
And when she didn’t answer, he grew wild. “Who have you been screwing?” he bellowed, kicking a chair across the room.
“Fuck you,” she said contemptuously, her face ashen with a mixture of hate and fear. He raged, wanted to kill her.
“If you so much as touch me,” she said, challenging him with her contempt, “I’ll scream for the police.”
“I’ll never touch you again,” he growled, retreating to a chair in the far corner of the room.
And then suddenly: the dull pressure of silence, as if it was over, as if there was nothing more to be said. Not really a truce between them, but a point in which their war seemed beside the point, both sides conceding death.
I’m sorry, he thought of saying to her as she was putting on her coat, getting ready to leave for school, but since it was untrue, he couldn’t. So he let her go without saying it, sorry as soon as she was gone that it remained unsaid. Saying nothing was worse than nothing.
Enraged, he smashed whatever dishes remained in the sink, then had a good cry, in love with his wife, whom he hated (whom he loved).
That evening, his eye on his troubles, Peter got robbed and mugged in Queens—of all places—by a well-dressed, rather gentle-looking middle-aged man. Before he knew what had happened, he was being shaken awake by a policeman, a spotlight moving in and out of his face as if it was searching for something. “What’s a matter, Jack, you have one too many?” The voice from behind the flashlight.
“My head …” Peter explained.
“You’ll have to sleep it off somewhere else,” the cop said, pointing his flashlight at Peter’s neck.
“Sleep what off?” Peter wanted to know.
“You’re in a No Parking zone, Jack, and I’m doing you a favor by warning you, so don’t get wise with me. I’m giving you a minute to get your cab moving. You have fifty seconds now.”
Fuck you, he didn’t say, withheld it like a belch. It choked him.
The cop stood at the door of the cab, holding his watch up to the eye of the flashlight, as though he were studying the time, trying to make sense of it. “You have thirty seconds,” he said. “Twenty-five … twenty …”
Peter drove off, cursing under his breath—his head, a tubular balloon, miles away from the rest of him. When he turned his cab in he discovered that he was missing fifty-five dollars. And his head, what was left of it, hurt like hell. What had the bastard hit him with?
And when he came home he almost thought he was in the wrong apartment, Herbie and Gloria sitting in his living room, his only room, finishing off his only bottle of bourbon, talking to his only wife. He couldn’t believe it. Yet it was too much like a bad dream, actually to be one. Peter closed and opened his eyes several times, but Gloria and Herbie remained sitting in his living room lik
e relatives. And Lois, apparently still angry at him from the morning, refused to look at him.
While Herbie was lighting a cigar, Gloria whispered something to Lois and they went off together, like club women or conspirators, into the kitchen. And what was it about? It made Peter sweat, his head beginning to ache again.
“How’s business?” Herbie asked, squinting at one of Peter’s paintings, hanging lopsided in an unlighted corner. Herbie straightened it. “Nice,” he said dubiously.
“Why did they go in the kitchen?” Peter said, suspicious of Herbie, of everyone, his head itself plotting against him.
Herbie shrugged modestly. “Gloria’s telling her what to expect.”
“What to expect?”
‘You know …”
Peter was horrified. “Look, Herbie, I don’t want … .
“Forget it,” he said, his arm on Peter’s shoulder. “Don’t worry so much about everything.”
It was too much to bear. Rage burning his chest, Peter swung his arm, heavier than he remembered, at Herbie’s thick mouth, the object of his animus. He missed—Herbie had stepped back—and tumbled through fires of pain onto the red linoleum floor, asprawl, face down, half conscious, aware of too much.
“Never telegraph your punches like that, kid. If you’re going to throw a surprise punch, look the other way …”
Peter sighed, didn’t move.
“Hey, Pete, you’re all right, kid. Take a deep breath.” Herbie bent over him. “I’m not sore at you. For God’s sake, the back of your head’s bleeding. Glory, come here, will you? How did it happen, kid? That didn’t happen when you fell, did it?”
“I was robbed,” Peter mumbled.
Herbie, with Gloria’s help, lifted him onto the white bedspread. “I would have let him hit me if I had known,” Herbie said.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“It looks like someone hit him on the head. Let Glory look at it; she used to be a nurse or something.” “I was a dental receptionist, not a nurse.” “Look at it and shut up.”
A Man to Conjure With Page 11
