A Strange Commonplace (12 page)

Saturday Afternoon

1
WHAT A GREAT DAY, WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY! IT WAS raining, but that meant nothing at all, surrounded, as he was, by his wonderful daughter, Janet, healthy and sure of herself now, beautiful, really; and her son, Jack, his terrific grandson, bright and tall and personable. And, of course, Warren, his son, finally employed by a company in which his intelligence and considerable skills were being put to
use.
“Cutting edge, Dad,” Warren said, his arm around Claudia, his fiancée, a grade-school teacher, all of whose pupils were reading at grade level. “Or better,” Warren said, looking at her adoringly.

2
THERE WAS LASAGNA, THAT HE’D MADE FOLLOWING Irene’s recipe, two big baking dishes of it, and a green salad with a savory, tangy vinaigrette, and plenty of crusty bread from Mazzola’s. “Great bread, Grandpa,” Jack said. “Yum, yum,” his mother said back. And, of course, two or three bottles of an excellent California Cabernet. For dessert, fruit and cannoli and sfogliatelle and rum baba and lots of strong coffee. Hennessy V.S.O.P. for those who wanted it. “Aren’t these Mom’s best dishes, Dad?” Claudia said. “About time, I’m glad.” “Wow!” Jack said, looking at the platters crowded with pastries.

3
JACK HAS MADE HIM A LITTLE BOOKCASE IN SHOP, EVEN though his real talents lie in math and science. “A whiz at physics,” Claudia said. “
I
can hardly add,” Warren said. Everybody laughed, and Jack blushed as Claudia kissed him on the cheek. “Didn’t take after your uncle,” Janet said. It looks as if Jack will have his pick of the good schools, given his grades: Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech. “He is
so
smart I could choke him!” Janet said. She looked fantastic now that she’d stopped drinking the way she’d been drinking. Absolutely fantastic!

4
HIS SON AND CLAUDIA, WHO IS A LITTLE OLDER, IT seems, than Warren, will be married in the spring. She’d been married twice already, to men whom she supported until it became impossible. “They were cheating on her too, Dad.” “What are you two whispering about? Have some dessert.” They’ll be moving to Ohio, Cincinnati, where Claudia’s mother lives. Claudia’s brothers live nearby, but, well, “Brothers!” The old lady needs someone to look in on her from time to time, run some errands, do a little shopping, cleaning, the laundry once in a while. “She’s not as young as she used to be.” There are apparently plenty of cutting-edge jobs out that way too. “Plenty.” Cincinnati, it appears, is really the next big high-tech area. “Oh, sure.”

5
BEFORE THEY LEAVE HE IS DELIGHTED TO LEND THEM some books, what a pleasure, what a real pleasure to see them reading again, after all those years of fun and, well, this and that. Janet borrowed Thomas Hardy’s
Collected Poems
and
The Pictorial Key to the Tarot;
Warren,
Ficciones;
and for Claudia,
In Cold Blood.
“Oh, great, I’ve heard so much about this book,” she said.

6
“SO LONG, SO LONG, BYE, SEE YOU SOON, KEEP IN touch, Give me a call, Give
me
a call, Enjoy the books, Stay dry, You have an umbrella?, Claudia will drop us off, Bye, Bye, Bye, So long,” and etcetera.

7
HE LOOKED OUT ON THE WET, COLD SATURDAY STREETS, growing dark now. Something is missing, what? His children seem to be doing well, he has a grandson to be proud of, look at the bookcase he made me, what a sweet thing to do. It will be perfect for his reference books. And Claudia seems very nice, a pretty woman, too, and lots of women are married more than once nowadays, more than twice even. Warren knows what he’s doing.

8
IT’S STILL RAINING, BUT HE’LL GO OUT AND RENT A video, something light and elegant and brilliant to help him shake off the curious sadness that possessed him.

9
Singin’ in the Rain.

10
“CUTTING EDGE, DAD, OR BETTER. GREAT BREAD, Grandpa, yum, yum. Aren’t these Mom’s best dishes, Dad? About time, wow! I’m glad! A whiz at physics, I can hardly add! Didn’t take after your uncle, he is
so
smart! I could just choke him. They were cheating on her, too, Dad, cheating on her. What are you two whispering about? She’s not as young as she used to be, and my
brothers?
Plenty! Fantastic! I’ve heard a lot
about
this, what a sweet thing to do.”

11
ETCETERA, ETCETERA, ETCETERA. “THAT’S WHAT STORMS were made for.” So they say.

The Alpine

H
IS BITCH OF A WIFE HAD GONE BACK ON HER PROMISE, as usual, of course. So that when he got to the apartment she told him that she and the boy were going on a picnic with her latest
wonderful and understanding
boyfriend, some horny bastard at least ten years younger than she looking to get laid regularly. The
upright and noble
young man had called that morning to say that he was closing his cute little organic greengrocery for the day to drive them all up to White Plains to a lovely little park that had a beautiful picnic grounds. Including a lovely little pond with lovely little ducks that the boy could feed lovely little bread crumbs. What a prince this humble shopkeeper was! For the love of Christ! he yelled, for fucking Christ’s sake! After I come all the way down here from Washington Heights on the subway you pull this shit? This is not our deal, our arrangement, this is
my
Saturday! She’d tried to call him earlier but he wasn’t home, it wasn’t her fault. Her
amazing and stalwart
boyfriend
never
took a day off or even closed early, this was special, couldn’t he understand? Couldn’t he
try
to understand? He could take the boy the next two Saturdays to make up for it, but now—he was so excited to go on a picnic, he’d never been on a picnic. She gave him a look of saintly patience, one that said
I hold no grudges and I will never point out to you your past and present grievous failings and flaws of character.
This is my Saturday he yelled again,
this!
God, how he’d love to slap her fucking silly. Well, where
were
you on a Saturday morning? I tried to call you a half a dozen times. None of your business where I was. And where’s the kid? Ah, the boy was out with her
warm and attentive
companion buying cold cuts and salads and baguettes and soda and wine and such, he wanted to help, he’s so excited about this, really. Do you want to wait and see him and tell him—Tell him what? he said. That I came all the way down here to let him know that we were gonna go out but now he’s out of luck? That’s
O.K.
, though, he’ll have a wonderful day with the super boyfriend, who, when he’s not
fucking
his mother in every hole upside down and twice on Sunday, he can give him potato salad tips and how to feed the duckies. What a guy! I should have put the make on him myself. You’re a bastard, she said, sober or not, a real bastard. And you’re a whore bitch. He left, and for no reason, walked over to the Alpine, where he’d planned to take the boy to a Tarzan-revival matinee, then for a snack in Holsten’s, with a chocolate frosted, and then for a walk in the park down to the promenade to watch the ships for a while. The kid would be able to see that he wasn’t the drunken slob of a rotten father she’d certainly told him he was and had always been—born drunk, according to her. And the kid would slowly, after a while, get the idea maybe that
he
was his father, his real father, not the parade of bums, including this latest clown with the fruits and vegetables, in his mother’s pants every night. How did she get to be such a whore? He sat in the theater, loud with kids, the movie probably half over by now, as if it mattered. There they were, Tarzan and Jane and the weird monkey, everything was perfect, peaches, they never argued, never a cross word, they just laughed and swam and swung through the trees and ate bananas and coconuts and papayas, all the animals loved them, and at night they humped each other blind. Tarzan never looked at another woman, not that there was much to look at, a bunch of crazy jigs running through the jungle yelling
ugga bugga bongo dongo
while Tarzan and Jane looked down from their tree house, feeling each other up. He left before the movie was over and went into the bar next door for a drink. He hoped the hero storekeeper of a boyfriend choked on his sandwich up in the woods in Yonkers with the ducks in the fucking pond. Her
heroic and hardworking
pal was choking on some organically produced pâté! How could he screw her while gasping for breath? Help! He settled himself on a bar stool and lit a cigarette, ordered a Fleischmann’s and a beer chaser. Tarzan was probably up under Jane’s little skirt made of hides or leaves or grass by now, they ought to show you that in the movie. He knocked back the whiskey and signaled the bartender for another as he drank down the beer. This was a nice bar, calm and quiet on a Saturday afternoon before the chumps came in with their whore girlfriends and two-timing wives. He’d sit for a while and have a few more, maybe, what the hell, get swacked. The alcohol had moved softly into his brain and, once again, the world was perfect. Tarzan’s world.

In the Diner

H
E SAT AT THE COUNTER IN THE DINER WITH A CUP OF coffee and a cheese Danish, trying to remember, with a degree of clarity, something that had happened long ago, something fragile and insubstantial, so much so that it might as well have happened to someone else, and not necessarily someone else who was actual: a someone else who could have been his invention. An invented incident from a blurred past would surely be no less acceptable than his present poorly constructed, or, perhaps, arranged life. Or this someone else could have been a flesh-and-blood cipher that had once been him, but was no longer. Perhaps this was the best or the only way of thinking of the attenuated memory, that its protagonist had been a childish simulacrum of him; more perversely, perhaps he was but the adult simulacrum of the faded, all but obliterated figure of the child—who was standing in snow, in crepuscular gray light, and in—what was it?—a tunnel. A tunnel dug through snow banked on either side above him. His father was at the end of the tunnel, in a navy blue overcoat, a gray snap-brim fedora, and a silk scarf, snow-white with blue polka dots. His mother, a young woman of virginal beauty, holds his hand in her gloved hand, she smells of winter, a clean cold edged with a light perfume of delicate and unearthly flowers. It is intoxicating to the child. His father, now, is embracing his mother, their bodies pressed close to one another’s, and they kiss, they kiss in the snow before the door of the house. He has his arms around his mother’s legs, his face pressed into the soft wool of her coat, into her warm hip, he holds tightly to her legs, he wants to be embraced, he wants to be kissed, he wants to be his father. He is eating a green salad and a baloney sandwich with mustard in the bright kitchen. His mother pours him a glass of milk and says something to him, what? What does she say? She is still wearing the black dress with golden things on it that his father calls a
knockout,
a word that he really likes. He steps back to look at her, she’s flushed and smiling, and now, at the counter, he looks at her because he knows that he did not then know that she would never look that way again, because his father was disappearing, receding into winter days and nights, and that, by spring, his mother’s magical dress would be put away or given away or thrown away. He ate his baloney sandwich and felt, eating his cheese Danish at the counter, the emptiness of that little boy at the kitchen table, who could not understand the oddly desolate feeling that touched him. His father entered the kitchen, smiling, but his voice was hard and angry, and he could no longer remember what was said or done. There came to him an image of the table, on which stood a bottle of ketchup and one of Worcestershire sauce: there came to him an image of heaven.

Brothers

W
ARREN AND RAY, BROTHERS WHO HADN’T MUCH TO do with each other since their late adolescent years, had been carrying on, as they might say, with each other’s wives. The latter were women whom both men had known as girls since grammar school, and as young women through high school and on into the years immediately following, years of loud saloons, louder parties, stupendous hangovers, and night classes at various public colleges. In point of fact, although it might fairly be thought of as point of fact ordinary in the extreme, both brothers occasionally dated each other’s wives before, of course, they were each other’s wives.
Dated
is probably the wrong word:
saw, went out with, ran around with
were the euphemisms in vogue at the time of these somewhat diffident and unsatisfactory liaisons. How these brothers and their wives began, some twenty-five years later, to betray each other, is a story so common as to make one weep with sad ennui and need not be told, or, to be candid, will not be told here. But let me note, for those who must have background information, that the sexual possibilities inherent in the reawakened relationships among these four people flickered into life at two parties, which, it is obvious, both couples attended. At one, Ray sang “Prisoner of Love,” a song learned from his mother—their mother—and delivered in what he mistakenly thought of as Russ Columbo’s style. Perhaps the mediocrity of Ray’s performance made Warren’s wife feel tenderness for him, or perhaps she saw, in the paunchy, balding, half-drunk shipping-room supervisor who was wreaking meticulous havoc on the sweetly despairing old song, the boy who had been the first to touch her bare breasts, the first to bring her to orgasm with his fingers. Why did I marry Warren? she may have thought, although such thought seems rather coarsely literary. It may be of interest to note at this point that Warren’s wife, post-“Prisoner of Love,” managed to tempt or lure or inveigle—or simply ask—Ray up to the roof where, to his astonishment, she performed fellatio on him, and, perhaps, thought about the old days. Why, she may have thought again, did I marry
Warren?
a thought, I grant you, as crudely literary as it earlier was. Ray realized that he loved Warren’s wife, that he’d always loved her, although this realization was, you might agree, suspect. And their affair began. Why Ray’s wife, at the same time, decided to throw herself—her unspoken phrase—at Warren is not known, and there seems little point in inventing good reasons for the amour. Let us take for granted that Ray’s wife and Warren, at another party during the same febrile holiday season, had much the same experience as their spouses’: backyard or roof or basement or hallway or closet or bathroom as erotic locale; a limited repertory of sexual acts, dictated by the constraints of time, place, weather, clothing, and experience: however combined, such elements were triggers for the release of love, or love’s counterfeit, fascination, which, as the old song has it, implies a line between itself and love that is hard to find on an evening such as this, or, in this case, an evening such as that. So
their
affair began. The women, or so it seems, never found out about each other’s regularly occasioned adventures, but the brothers found out about everything after a few weeks. How it happened that the women remained ignorant—blissfully ignorant, I’m tempted to say—is beyond the means of this somewhat thin narrative, and it isn’t, after all, important. The brothers met on a rainy evening at Rockefeller Center for some reason or other, something to do with an insurance policy of their mother’s: a rare meeting, indeed. They walked in a drizzle over to a bar off Father Duffy Square and, inevitably, after some business of their meeting had been settled, talked about their mutual betrayals of each other as well as, of course, the mutual betrayals of and with their wives. After a few drinks and the most halfhearted denunciations of each other’s despicable practices, it became clear that they were not only not angry with each other, they were, on the contrary, content, even, perhaps, a little happy. Neither was so crude, or, perhaps, brave enough to say so, but it was obvious by hint and indirection, a smile, a glance, that their couplings with each other’s wives had made them feel, if tritely, young again; but, better than young, reckless, daring, thrillingly transgressive, in a word, immoral. As they were getting ready to leave, Ray reminded Warren of the time, so many slow years ago, when they had gone, for the first time, to hear Charlie Parker. It was at the Three Deuces, you remember, Warren? Ray said. Bird and Kenny Dorham, with Roy Haynes and Al Haig. But who was the bass? Slam Stewart? but he never, right? played with Bird? Tommy Potter! Warren said. Right,
right,
Ray said, Tommy Potter. They stood in the doorway, buttoning their coats, remembering themselves as inept boys in their cheap one-button lounge suits from Buddy Lee, hiding behind their hipster sunglasses. They looked at each other, deep in their luscious sins, knowing the secrets of each other’s wives, their yielding, lustful bodies. You want a Charms? Warren said, I use them to cut down on smoking. Cut down? Ray laughed. You smoke like a fucking chimney. Warren put a lozenge in his mouth and lit a cigarette. Well, my intentions are good, kid. The road to hell, Ray said, and smiled. Sure, he said, gimme one, and a smoke, too. Jesus, Charlie Parker, I still remember how I felt. And Bird wore a purple tie, too, remember? Purple. Those were the good old days, really. Not too bad now, either, brother mine, Warren said, and winked.