Expensive People

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The editor returned to his subject but something had gone out of his spirit. Father sat facing him, shifting his buttocks and agreeing, “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” and with every grunted agreement the editor weakened, losing his grip on his sentences, stuttering over the phrase, “the whitewashed society and its brainwashed morality.” Everyone else listened in the way Cedar Grove people listen to all things— immensely polite, enthusiastic, generous, showing interest especially around their mouths. Finally Father eased sideways into the conversation by saying, “Now, what you've said about freedom is, you know,one of my favorite topics of conversation. I've spent many hours discussing it with various people. However, as our Yugoslav man says, one cannot always define such things—freedom for me might not be freedom for you—so in the meantime what's left?”

  He had taken on a slight “British” air, just as Nada, when excited, took on a “Russian” air.

  “Freedom through legislation … or … or revolution,” the editor stammered.

  “Ah-hah, it was some Founding Father, I believe, who said, this wonderful man said, ‘Who cares about understanding the world? We're going to change the world!’ Yessir, and we Americans have changed the world forever, you can bet your last dollar!”

  The editor stared at Father. There was a moment of silence, then Mr. Bone said amiably, “Elwood, was it by any chance Thomas Jefferson who said that?”

  “Probably,” said Father.

  The editor looked around. He began to say something, then thought better of it.

  By the time dinner came and went the editor was inclining his head toward Father and flushing with agreement, yes, uh-huh, his hand with its pointless circular gesture adjusting itself to Father's more masculine sweeping gesture, which reminded you of nothing so much as a jetliner taking off for London in the early gray light of the American continent.

  Much later that evening, when all of Nada's guests were gone and only she and the editor and Father remained downstairs (Father had fallen asleep in his chair), and I was at my drowsy perch on the stairway landing, the editor began to speak to Nada in … in a certain tone I had been dreading. “Natashya, this is fantastic. This. Him. What is this, where are we?”

  “Not so loud,” Nada said.

  “Is this a location in space or a condition of the brain?” the editor said drunkenly “This? All this? Who is that man? Years ago I knew you, and since then this man appears, this mansion of a house, and a child! Natashya, are you quite serious about all this?”

  “Of course I'm serious,” Nada said vaguely.

  “And the child too?”

  “Of course.”

  “You've had a child, you, you've become a mother? Is it possible?”

  “Will you shut up about that?”

  “But you, you're not even a woman, I mean, you're in essence not really a woman, and yet you've had a child. It's monstrous …” He sighed heavily. “Natashya, you frighten me. I'm a wreck. That man there, that massive man, he frightens me. He unmanned me tonight, he devastated me, and do you know why?”

  “You're drunk.”

  “He devastated me because he is not contemporary with me. No. That man, what's-his-name, Elmwood? Elwood? That man is out of Charles Dickens and he should not exist today, Natashya, not as your husband, you know that very well. Don't look so disgusted, of course I'm drunk. Natashya, I see you've sold yourself and well done too, but don't you sometimes feel rotten about it? You're a beautiful woman, Natashya. I will always regret turning down that novella of yours. You were very spiteful about it—it broke off our friendship. You took everything too seriously in those days, but, my friend, imagine a reader struggling through the thoughts and impressions of a fourteen-year-old girl who has become demented! Imagine! You expected too much of your readers in those days, Natashya. Now you've loosened up and wised up. The other day I read your story in galleys at Esquire, and it's very nearly a New Yorker stoxy—think of how far you've come!”

  “Jesus Christ,” Nada said in disgust.

  “But a husband out of Charles Dickens—”

  “He is not out of Charles Dickens but out of Proust, you bastard,” Nada said.

  “Well, anyway I haven't read either of them. Look, Natashya, I'm not as nervous as I seem. My hands shake like this after midnight. No, don't laugh, I am being quite serious … even tragic. I think I must have been in love with you at one time. Because other women remind me of you. I have an extraordinary fixation upon beautiful women! But then I read those novels of yours, and all those stories, you dumped thousands of pages on me and I couldn't possibly … couldn't get through them. Does your husband always sleep so peacefully? What is his secret? I have insomnia every night. Why is there such terror in him, in his weight? Even asleep he looks like a torpedo, or like a certain kind of deadly fish. Tell me, how much money does he make in a year?”

  “You'd better go up to bed, you're drunk.”

  “But I have something to say to you. I won't pretend I came all the way out here just to say it… I'm honest… actually I need the money and five hundred dollars is a lot to me, I'm broke. But I wanted to see you again, Natashya, and tell you that I think of you often, and I admire you … but must you publish all the time, must I see your name everywhere and feel like puking, Natashya, when I should admire you? Look … I will tell you about the most beautiful evening of my life.”

  “Really? What was it?” Nada's voice had become rather eager.

  “Don't mind my hands shaking like this, it's the hour, and also I feel very sentimental. Look … you must promise not to tell anyone about what I'm going to say.”

  “Of course I promise.”

  “You know my life. A rotten childhood, like everyone's, the years at Harvard … the early years fighting for the integrity of The Transameri-can, rescuing it from the Trotskyites. Jesus, what I've given of my life to that magazine! And last year the paid subscriptions, library and individual, went down to eight hundred! And my writing, always my own writing, that took years off my life, my translations of Rilke … and my first marriage … and … and the twins … this is very maudlin, Natashya, and I forbid you ever to put this in a story, in fact I beg you, for both our sakes—”

  “But what happened? What was this wonderful event?”

  “It was in New York last winter. By then I had made it, you know, all the years of struggle added up, my anthology of radical essays was reviewed by Harry for the Times Book Review, and by Linda for The Nation, and Joey Kay was all set to do it for Newsweek when he got sick … well, anyway, I had made it to the top, I was invited to six parties a week, to ten parties a week … and … and—”

  “And you were a judge for the National Book Awards, you bastard,” Nada said.

  “And, Natashya, listen to me. I'm not drunk, I mean I am not simply drunk … with alcohol… I am drunk with this memory. I was invited to Pandora Bright's apartment. You know, she owns a television station and some magazines, in fact, she owns my magazine. She owns everything. And there, there at a late supper, at a large gathering of only the best people in the city, there I was introduced to Princess Margaret, who was visiting Pandora that week …”

  There was a dramatic moment. The moment passed in silence.

  “You what?” Nada asked.

  “My dear, I was introduced to Princess Margaret! I, Moe Malinsky, the ordinary, insignificant, intellectual Moe Malinsky, I was introduced to Princess Margaret!”

  The Transatnerican Quarterly, with which some of you are familiar, is an excellent magazine, I believe, though reading it gives me a headache. I don't think I ever read it through, even in the old days when I suspected Nada of… I suspected the editor of… but never mind, that will come. The magazine gives you a general frontal headache, a dull glow of a headache that can't be concentrated upon and so can't be shaken, as you think, Just what is the New Radicalism? after you've read fifteen smudgily printed pages. And what is “Action Theater,” after all? (” Action Theater' tears away the walls of the bourgeoisie and
destroys totally the idea of Theater; it is the only art form that will ultimately bring about the long-awaited synthesis of ethics and aesthetics …”) Pieces on “Soviet Economic Growth” and “China: The Sound of Tomorrow,” de rigueur and harmless enough; also, “An Open Letter to Our Young Friends of the New Left.” Lyric reviews: “This young poet has vitality, wit, paradox, firm technical control— and yet—and yet curiously enough his poems do not succeed …” “It has become increasingly difficult for me to take American art seriously …” And on and on, uh-huh. The stories are all experimental, though not as good as Nada's (or am I prejudiced?), and you've all read the poetry:

  stroking her hair, singing

  the Teevee goes on, I weep

  Oh, she is sleeping!

  … I read late and reconcile

  Abraham Lincoln, the Talmud, and God.

  6

  And now it is time to tell about “A Doctor Looks at Love and Life for Teen-agers,” and about my mad spell in the flower bed outside the Cedar Grove Bank of the Republic, and about Mavis Grisell's sister who cracked up in her new Lincoln, unable to get it out of a parking spot in the village and therefore driving it into the car ahead, jerking it into reverse and slamming it into the car behind, back and forth, back and forth madly, desperately, while a small crowd watched and a mother cautioned her son, “Don't say anything, she could sue” (actually, the sister's crack-up was Mavis' reason for coming to Cedar Grove), and …

  Here is my problem: I am afraid to die, and when I finish this memoir I will be faced with suicide. I have made up my mind. There's no turning back. But still I am terribly afraid, which is why my memoir keeps going on, going on. But no matter. I had several other digressions in mind which I will not indulge in; I will be concise. The business about the doctor did not seem to me at the time to have anything to do with my behavior, but now, seven years later, I am not so certain. Though my criminal act was committed with all freedom, still it might have been influenced by one or two things in my environment. (It's difficult to analyze yourself.) I know I am completely to blame for what I did; I was free then and I am free right now. As Nada said, “I want you to be so free, Richard, that you stink of it.” Well, yes, I do stink. And I am free also.

  Well, one morning Father said to me on his way out, “Kid, I think I know what your trouble is. This moodiness, this out-of-focus look … no, don't be frightened, Kid, just sit still… it's typical of young teenagers, I mean, pre-teen-agers, I know all about it. I was your age myself once! Greg Hofstadter and I were talking yesterday at the club, and he said yes, now that I mentioned it, Gustave was the same way, all moody and bookwormy doesn't want to go out and play and we hit upon a solution. You and Gustave are going tonight to the high school to hear that Doctor what's-his-name give a talk. It's all very educational, Buster, okay?”

  He was backing out, his briefcase in hand, and he filled even that large doorway with his brimming holy energy. I said “yes” but he didn't hear me, so I said “YES” and he grinned and winked and was gone.

  Nada said, “It's all right if Bebe doesn't drive you,” but when Mrs. Hofstadter drove up that evening with Gustave, Nada was not even home to notice. I climbed into the car and said a polite hello to mother and son; Gustave and I were both a little embarrassed. It was clear that he did not want to go to this talk any more than I did. Mrs. Hofstadter chattered as she drove. She was a frail, stern-voiced partridge of a woman, always perfumed and attractive, but, unlike Nada, she looked as if she might come off in peelings with her clothes. I could not tell at once whether she was worse or the same as usual or slightly better. Gustave often reported her condition to me in a terse impersonal whisper, but tonight he was strangely silent and seemed to be paying no attention to his mother's chatter. She had a habit of driving in the middle of our narrow Cedar Grove lanes whether she was ascending a hill or not, and she had a habit of brushing rather close to parked cars, and she often glanced around into the backseat at me while she drove.

  “There were these Egyptian sailors, you see, and they had been commissioned by one of the Pharaohs. I would date this at about 400 B.C. or maybe 400 A.D. They certainly had invented things in those days! You would be fascinated to learn about it, Richard! Well, the point of this was, that to disprove their findings the European navigators thought it was enough simply to measure their routes according to the existing maps, but—and this is the marvelous thing—the Egyptians were measuring according to below the Equator, and the Europeans were of course above … and so … it's a wonderful example of how we must not leap to conclusions.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said shyly.

  I felt my brain begin to click off, part by part. The low buzzing and ringing began. Mrs. Hofstadter chattered on, occasionally creasing her powdered neck to look back at me. We passed a drive-in restaurant in front of which sullen Negro women, of middle age, were walking with picket signs. “That is one thing you would never see me doing, never,” Mrs. Hofstadter declared. “I would never in my life carry a picket sign!”

  “Mother, you're swerving to the left,” Gustave said.

  By the time we got to the high-school auditorium and sat down near the back, the talk was well under way. A middle-aged woman stood on the stage, looking out into the lighted auditorium. I heard her say the word “sex,” and another part of my mind turned off, in a panic, but then it focused upon Nada and That Editor, and so I plugged myself in again to the good doctor and her talk.

  “… And so, you see, there is this vast, marvelous area of human life called sex, and we know so very little about it, so very little! But I think that, after our discussion tonight, many of you will feel that the problems you have are not so gigantic after all. Many times a young person is like a driver in a new car, inexperienced and giddy with excitement. He is more interested in the looks and the speed of the car than he is in safety and the laws of the road, drawn up for him by his somber, well-meaning parents. Yes, some of your parents are well meaning!”

  This brought forth a ripple of appreciative laughter.

  “Now, I hope there will be many, many, many questions. I think that you must have many problems of your own or many curiosities about sex which you have kept back or expressed only to your peers. Are there any questions? Did any of you feel shocked or worried about what I said earlier? Do you think that such things should not have been voiced?”

  An awkward moment. There were muffled whispers and the creakings of seats, then a girl put up her hand. You could tell by her taut, un-worried throat and her confident voice that she was a Leader. “Dr. Muggeridge, may I ask a pretty far-out question?”

  “My dear, nothing is far-out in the twentieth century,” Dr. Muggeridge said, beaming. She was a handsome, muscular woman.

  “Well, Dr. Muggeridge, I got to thinking that some of us are going to go home, and maybe our parents are … I mean … they might be mad when they hear about this talk …”

  “Yes?”

  “They might get mad or something because … well, you know …”

  Everyone except Gustave and myself chuckled sympathetically. Oh, it was a warm, harmonious group! I felt my mind begin to drift slowly away.

  “You know how parents are!” The girl giggled.

  “My dear, I know only too well. I have had enormously pitiful conversations with pregnant teen-aged girls who waited far too long to talk over their problems with a responsible adult. Yes, I know, I know! But what can we do, we, all of us, toward educating the parents of teenagers into discussing these things openly?”

  A few seconds of excited silence, then another girl said, “Dr. Muggeridge, I think a talk like yours should be offered to our parents too. They need it even more than we do.”

  “Do you think that your parents are perhaps afraid?”

  “Afraid?”

  “Afraid of sex, themselves?”

  Everyone hesitated at this. So Dr. Muggeridge went on in her gentle, kindly voice, “It may be that the parents of young people are simply afr
aid, and that they need help. I have often come to this conclusion in my talks with troubled teen-agers. If some understanding adult had only been available in time! But I can see so very few young people. Now that I am traveling on this lecture tour, and the tight demands of my television show, I'm afraid even these few teen-agers I could have helped personally will have to go without anyone to talk to. Incidentally, may I ask, how many of you here tonight feel you can talk openly to your parents about sex?”

  Everyone looked stealthily around. One boy started to put his hand up, then thought better of it. Gustave and I sweated and did not look at each other.

  “How pitiful!” Dr. Muggeridge cried. “How very tragic! Tragic! But surely some of you girls talk to your mothers, at least about mild problems?”

  A few girls raised hands. “But not openly and freely, Dr. Muggeridge,” someone said. Other girls agreed.

  “And you boys, with your fathers?”

  A few boys laughed. One boy said, “I'm afraid I can't talk with my father about anything.”

  “This is much more serious than I thought,” Dr. Muggeridge said, shaking her head. “How do you account for this strange secrecy?”

  No one knew.

  “Well, fathers are like that,” a boy said slowly.

  “You mean they are difficult to approach? They are embarrassed?”

  “They get all red and funny,” a boy said. “You know. They start coughing and can't stop.”

  “And why is that, do you think?”

  “Who knows? It's just easier to talk to a friend, or someone like you.”

  Dr. Muggeridge smiled. “Thank you, but flattery is out of place here. I wonder, have you ever thought that perhaps your parents don't discuss these enormously important and complicated problems even with each other? That perhaps they are simply afraid? There are extraordinary cases of non-communication between married people.”

  For some reason I thought of Nada a few years before, standing on the stairs with her back to Father, who was yelling certain names at her. (I was peeking around the dining-room louver doors.) But I shook this image away and uncrossed my legs.