The World Is the Home of Love and Death

by Brodkey, Harold

  Is she going to burst into tears? Is she going to scream?

  The child might: he had not, after all, imagined the possibility of unhappiness here.

  Lila’s brightly red lipsticked mouth is half-threatening but flirtatious. Her breasts are like mad faces. Nonie’s voice is a bird-shriek: “I don’t like that color, Daddy!”

  “How can I steer a car like that, Sam Lewis?” Momma asked. In those days, cars had no power devices and steering took strength.

  The air trembled with possible further realities.

  Suddenly Daddy said as if with a broken heart: “Don’t be a bitch, sweetheart—your son Wiley picked it out.”

  I.e., you have no manners, no heart.

  Then he said it: “Don’t you have any manners, don’t you have a heart—I guess you don’t—you don’t have manners and you don’t have heart, sweetheart.

  I can’t remember him ever calling her by her name. Lila, ever.

  Her body now displayed a trembling that he was attacking her right to be considered an irresistibly attractive and knowing woman who was sensitive and rarely wrong, and so on.

  “What do you mean? What are you saying to me?” Her hand flew to her breast: “Wiley picked it out?”

  Daddy says now, “What do you think I mean? Are you getting so old, you don’t speak English anymore? Do you belong in a ghetto with your ugly mother? I’m telling you, he bought the car, I gave him the money, and he picked out the car he liked for his mother—he was an unhappy child, sweetypie, you bitch, and if you weren’t so self-centered, you might just have taken a look and seen for yourself that your son had a smile on his face which you have ruined again—look, sweetheart, he was happy—”

  “I don’t want a child picking out a car for me, S.L.!”

  I was staring at them. Momma looked at me. Daddy did too. Daddy blinked, grew tired at once, cautious and slack: “It’s a bargain—it’s cheap at the price, this year—it’s a special model, it’s a real good buy. So we bought it—they’ll really see you coming in this one.”

  “They’ll hang me! There’s a Depression on—where’s your common sense, S.L.?”

  “Bitch, don’t ask me about my common sense, where’s your heart, what common sense do you have, you’re all meanness.” Then as if in a bored attempt to make Lila generous, after all: “Wiley presents, with his compliments, a new car he bought with his very own money for his lady mother whom he’s unfortunate enough to think is a lady who cares about nice things.”

  “S.L.! What are you saying! You let a child pick out a car for me! A car that’s too big for me to steer! People will laugh at me in that thing!”

  “Goddamn it, pussycatkins, that’s a good car!”

  “Good! Maybe it’s good. But that’s not a small car! I have to have a small car, I told you I had to have a small car.”

  “Be nice—you look good in a big car!”

  “I can’t steer it. I can’t handle a big car. A car is a practical thing, you can’t make jokes about a car. I’m through with showing off for you, I don’t want a car because it tickles you, I have things to do, I have to live, too.”

  We are in the air-and-light by the corner of our house, in shadow, at the edge of reaches of outspread, burning, and sparkling air.

  “Darling—”

  “I have to have a small car! I’m not good at parking. I get all upset—I told you. ”

  Momma’s breast heaves. Her breath catches in her throat, in her mouth. The swift excitement of her dealing with the event is like a large fire in dry grass, hot and sucking out the air in her. She might die then and there. Her sun-and-shadow masked face was broken and reckless—practiced and complex—and airless and suffocated. Because of him. Her having been pretty has gone on for a long time. Her being something of a girl still and “adorable” and “redoubtable” gave her an unfair degree of fascination. The shadows under her eyebrows, in her mouth, under her chin made her a soft bandit, helmeted—turbaned. Sunlight sizzled on the gravel of the driveway. She is squeezed by the perpetually recurring injustice of not being listened to—but she has never listened to Daddy except with her body. She isn’t listening now. Her behavior is crazed, considering her desires. In her posture is a hint, a set of signs showing her as not to be taken as sweet as well as signs saying I’m not meek: it’s unpleasant; it rends you, that such a fragile and exposed system believes itself capable of things it is not capable of.

  Daddy stiffened. Anyone’s anger, anyone’s hurt is an attack on him, her upset especially.

  I blinked. I saw less well. I breathed noisily because I couldn’t really breathe at all if Momma couldn’t. I had no depth in me to accompany the disappointment in S.L. I have no compartments in me that open onto depths: I am a child. I reflected them—I am a satellite.

  In the sunny and shaded Midwestern air, among the fat trees, I began to jerk with an explosion of pre-hilarity. The near and looming white clapboarded wall of the house jumps up into the air and the stippled hills and gullies of the graveled driveway leap out toward the shining street as my head jerks with the onset of nausea or madness or laughter.

  The hot air touched my bandages. Ignorance, hurt, extreme pleasure, extreme sophistication in a way and blankness had like electricities rushing in me drawn into existence an abundance of currents that now grabbed at one another and caused something like an epileptic seizure. Or an electrical and magnetic storm, a child’s lunatic seizure. Momma’s nostrils—the light goes through them so that they’re orange, and tiny droplets of sweat mark the edge of her lipstick which is almost without color in the sun so that she has a beading of spherical glares around a burned, a blackened mouth. A special radiance is in the fine hairs along her temples. The grass of the carefully mown but clovered and crabbed lawn spreads on a kind of whirring bladelike plane. White, small stones and gnawed restless shadows of the driveway and me gasping and yelling with childish laughter—is it hysteria?—near the new, large, blue, reflection-spotted car. The dreadful silver simplicity in me exploded everywhere in me; I am holding a making-a-white-party, a braying party. The ragged light, this grief-stricken hilarity, my black astonishment ate my face. “What does he think is so funny?” Momma asked. “I’m glad someone is enjoying himself; I suppose it’s nice to be a child, after all.”

  I started to cough—Daddy hit me on the back. A breeze disturbed the casual wall of leaves so that the ragged shadow fluttered to match my breath. A purple finch on the weigela canceled its whistle and waited in summer idleness for the laughter to be still.

  Nonie said, “He’s a dope.”

  Momma said, “Is he all right? I wonder if he’s all there, that child.” She’s always quick to defend herself. Then, remembering I was theirs, she said, “He thinks we’re entertaining.”

  I began to convulse.

  I was about to throw up.

  It stopped. Now everyone ignored it that I had laughed.

  Momma stood righteously pretty, sultry, and she scowled sadly and angrily, too, at Daddy.

  Daddy said, “It’s a good car, Lila, it has power to burn; it’s a bargain; people will know you’re coming. It’s what the doctor ordered for the woman who’s too busy to stay at home.”

  “S.L., the world’s not a fairy tale! I can’t appear anywhere in that. What does a child know? I don’t care what horsepower it has, why do you insult me like this? Why do you play silly games about what I want when I know what I want? Why don’t you ever listen to me? I think before I speak, I speak English, I have a mind.”

  But it is hard for him to listen directly, it is forbidden to him to hear her directly.

  Daddy said, “You look like an old crow when you get ugly, you get ugly just like your mother, you don’t know what you look like; I wish you could see how ugly you look, you ought to get hold of your temper before it ruins everything; you will, if you know what’s good for you. Watch out. Watch yourself. You’re no chicken anymore.”

  Momma said, “It’s not a joke, it’s not a joke when I
talk, I say things that mean something; I’m not a dummy: why don’t you listen to me? What have you done? We’re not children anymore, S.L. I don’t want my car picked out by a child. I don’t think you are ever in your right mind. What kind of trouble are we in now, S.L.? I’ll tell you this: I don’t want that car.”

  She was working on the death and threat in her voice, on the serious reaches of not being nice—of wanting to hurt someone.

  The hysteria and comedy start up again in the child.

  Lila casts a heated glance of wonder at me.

  I didn’t like her at the moment but I thought she was right.

  Daddy’s face under the brim of his hat was pink and patient and contemptuous, almost sweet—a tactic. He clearly looked as if he wouldn’t ever hear her so long as she was stubborn, so that I wanted to shout, DADDY, LISTEN! S.L.’s flushed and rosy obstinacy, his boyish, brave downcastness was a way of registering that his grown-up view of her was that she was a termagant.

  She was aware of the ferocity and stupidity of his temper and she liked baiting him and feeling that he was a frightening man and that she was a lion tamer. She could astound him by her being fearless—and so careless. She was stubborn in a dirty way. She put a dirty look on her face. He couldn’t make her show fear without being rougher than he would be able to excuse unless he went closer to being mad than he wanted since that would flatter her and show her she had power.

  And then she would laugh at him and keep a record of it.

  Near me, the finch launched itself, it flew suddenly. Its wing-strokes enlarged it. It flew straight and then curved upward and made the air strange and then it was gone.

  She said scaldingly, “I’m sorry if it upsets your pride but my life is a serious matter: I don’t play with everything the way you do. I mean what I say.” She retreated suddenly to a somehow threatening, angry politeness. “It makes me laugh, you say you’re a gentleman. And you think a child can pick out my car.”

  I blinked but the giggles, the laughter in my mouth, the hot and cold fish swimming there made me splurt out loud again.

  How come Daddy hadn’t thought about that, about a child picking out Momma’s car?

  Or the salesmen’s pride?

  Some things don’t matter, and some things do, and a man has to pick and choose.

  Dad had a sarcastically reproachful look. His shoulders in his coat were lumpy with muscle. He puts a sterner look on his face. “Bitch. You are a real bitch. You really, truly are, Mrs. Silenowicz. I am ashamed that you are Mrs. Silenowicz.” Plea and warning and contempt. Then, “My wi-i-ife.”

  “You make me say things over and over, all that machine is good for is to cart politicians to an Irish funeral.” She was being glamorous and quick and valuable: fascinating, funny. She was stealing the world. I began to laugh in strangled snorts. Momma said, “I’m not that charitable a woman, as you know, S.L.—I don’t even like Jewish funerals. Irish ones give me pimples.”

  “Don’t you like your son, Madame Mother ? He chose the car for you—”

  “What does that mean? That I’m stuck with it? You put the idea in his head. You made the trouble. He knows enough to know what’s going on. You’re the silly one, you get so silly, you make me a crazy woman! Do you know you talk so crazily, it makes you ugly? You’re getting so ugly, I don’t know what you’re going to do, you don’t like anyone, you’re just a middle-aged, ugly, crazy man.”

  She looks as though she might explode with madness.

  Daddy made a face at her, a you’re-an-ugly-woman accusation: “Can’t you ever appreciate what’s going on here? What’s wrong with you, haven’t you any love in you?”

  “S.L., it’s a car, it’s not a valentine. I want a car. How much of what’s stupid do I have to live through? This is making me crazy.”

  “I can’t stand this ugliness. You’re destroying me.”

  Nonie said suddenly, staring bulging-eyed at Daddy, she said in a high voice, “I don’t like that car, Daddy, I don’t like that color.”

  She loves him—she is mad with the urge to have him care for her the most.

  Momma said, “Wiley, if I had your eyes, I’d like that color, too. Your father should have given you the right advice, I don’t blame you, don’t you blame me; blame him.”

  “Christ and hell on a crutch, you bitch—why ruin what that kid had today! You ruin everything every chance you get! No one can be happy around you! Why do people have to put up with witches like you!”

  “I can’t stand this! I don’t want that car! I’m dying of aggravation! Don’t talk to me about love, and who I love and what I ruin. This has nothing to do with love! So don’t start on that, not with me, not today, I’ve tied the rag on.”

  She doesn’t have that smell or the anguished and long-necked frightened-bold carriage she gets, so that’s a tactic—her degree of sanity and hurt seems to slide around, often, so that you can’t tell with her.

  Nonie started to open the rear door of the car, I don’t know why, and when the door swung open, as it moved on its own weight, when it was perpendicular to the car, it began to wobble outward away from the car toward Nonie, who had taken her hand from the handle.

  Then—I think—she touched the door to fix it, to put it back, and to fend it off: she was very quick and athletic.

  The door turned sideways so that its inner side faced upward, toward the tree branches. While Nonie’s hand was on its edge. She held the door—it looked like that—the inside handles shone in the clear air. Nonie jerked her hand free and made a wheeing scream. She has both her arms near her body and the door is sailing in its lateral posture and is seesawing a little toward her while she screams and pulls in her stomach and dodges a little. She was staring and at a certain point she began to scream—it was a grown-up, a real end-of-the-world scream. This is really true. You can guess what I did. I began to heave with laughter and to snort with childish bellows and wheezes, a truly stupid sound.

  And Nonie screamed on: What is this? and I didn’t do anything!

  Her fine hooked nose was white with disbelief, with horror at so painful and expensive a humiliation.

  The unattached and sailing and slowly falling door teetered, skimming lower and lower—Nonie’s eyes are twisted like snails—I have both hands over my mouth, then at my temples—the door floats and falls toward the gravel. A breeze rippled the leaves above us. Momma’s eyes are blinking. The door skidded onto the gravel, it crunched and slid for several inches. The grinding and tearing noises were serious sounds, strange, rough, long-drawn, convincing. Then it was over. The door had ground and scraped its way along and crunched itself to a stop. Daddy was bent forward as if to listen—there was something helpless in the posture of his hands. He was horrified.

  He leaps toward the now stilled door—he looks dextrous.

  Momma is saying, “Oh my God, oh my God, what is that, S.L.?”

  The door lay, upholstery side up, on white gravel.

  I was laughing with true wildness. A blue jay began to make anxious jarring sounds at my noise: it jars, jar-jar-jar—is it jeering at us? I think it’s nervous.

  Momma said, “My God, S.L., will they take the car back now or are we going to be stuck with it because of what Nonie did to that door?”

  Daddy said, “I’ll be damned, I’ll be goddamned.” I don’t think he was listening to Momma.

  Nonie said, “I didn’t do anything, YOU BITCH!” to Momma.

  Momma ignored her.

  Nonie said in an odd—mad—voice, “I don’t like that car, Daddy.”

  Lila said quasi-philosophically—a little like a detective, as well: “Why did the door do that? What do you call a thing like that, when something like that happens—to a new car? To a door like that?”

  “Leave me alone for a minute,” he said. “Let me figure this out.”

  I was still laughing.

  He was red in the face, puzzled, upset, angry. Dad’s luck. His day was odd inside him. He thought and then, red-faced, he
turned to Nonie and said, “What did you do to that door?”

  Nonie shouted, “I DIDN’T DO IT, WILEY DID IT! I DIDN’T TOUCH THE DOOR, HE MUST’VE DONE IT.”

  If she was upset enough—if she put enough upset in her voice—if she was near to being destroyed, he had to be concerned about her.

  He hadn’t the energy to say, You touched the door, you opened it, I saw you; just tell me what happened, or to be logical about her or hinges of the door (the pins hadn’t been inserted in the hinges on that door). Partly because she never could tell a straight story—it was embarrassing usually to watch her try—and then settle for lies and dull things and self-praise.

  The sunlit reaches of the air, the stretched linen of the sunstruck Portsmouth air, the sunwarmed wall of the house, the baked and slightly smelly old paint, the not very dark shade beneath the copper beech, enclosed the enormities and obliquity of our lives.

  Her defense of herself was not intended to be harmless for me, and Daddy didn’t want to fight with her. He’d consoled me and worn himself out, I guess. It’s the end of the afternoon, the shank—he took Nonie’s “facts” and her lies in ways that I did not, as truths about her soul and its sadness. Partly I am his other self—if he hurts me, he punishes himself. S.L. strode toward me, his trouser legs flapping in the hot air, he grabbed my shoulder—he didn’t want to deal with Nonie and look at her just then—he grabbed the little laugher, I was nutty with laughter. He had a huge look of hatred—engorged and passionate—his big face was puffy with it, with true hatred because I hadn’t protected him or his gesture or made his life worthwhile since I’d been consoled and I wasn’t consoling him. I felt his emotion boiling near the small kettle of hilarity that was me. Then his emotion boiled in me and raced back at him. I used to pretend to myself I didn’t know what he felt. But that was a lie. We knew that the larger one of us two was enraged with hurt. So much had gone wrong today and no one took care of him. I hadn’t held his hand when the scene started, I hadn’t cried or taken his part. At this very moment I don’t look at him with the love the car buying had left in me. I am not loyal—or obsessed with him. It’s better to hate me than the others since I’m the one he likes and I’m not as good at hurting him as they are. At this stage of almost any afternoon or evening he has no interest in justice, only in lessening his pain, his solitude. The heated air in the torn blue-green baize of the shadow of the copper beech has the effect of desert distances. In my dreams, Daddy and I often are Arab chieftains alone in a desert. The pain inside his ribs, Christ, near his heart—I feel it, I felt it then. I see the angry look in his poor, staring roan-colored eyes often in my dreams still. I did nothing nice for him that day. Nothing. His face came so close to me, it entered my comprehension and remains in me as part of the shape of my own. I can still smell in the present tense his sour breath. He shouted at me, “WILEY, WHAT DID YOU DO TO THAT DOOR?”