Aloft (15 page)

Though that evening in the shower eight years into our marriage I wasn't so enamored of Daisy as I was hopeful for any break in her strange mood and behaviors. I thought (or so I thought later) that some good coarse sex might disturb the disturbance, shunt aside the offending system, and it might have worked had our little Theresa not opened the shower door and stood watching for God knows how long as I was engaging her mother in the doggie-style stance we tended to employ when things between us weren't perfectly fine. (Note: I've always A L O F T

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suspected that it was this very scene that set Theresa on her lifelong disinclination for whatever I might say or do, and though she's never mentioned it and would reject the notion out of hand for being too reductionist/Freudian, I'm plain sorry for it and hate to think that knocking about somewhere in her memory is a grainy washed-out Polaroid of me starring as The Beast or The Rapist.) Daisy must have peered around and seen Theresa standing there sucking on her thumb and shoved me off so hard I slipped and fell onto my back, providing a second primal sighting of me in my engorgement that made Theresa actually step back. I covered myself and asked her what she wanted and she couldn't answer and then Daisy yelled at her to tell us.

Theresa said, "The macaroni is on fire, and Jack can't put it out."

"Take care of her!" I said to Daisy, and then I grabbed a towel to wrap myself with and ran down the long bedroom hall and then the next hall down to the kitchen, where Jack was tossing handfuls of water at the frying pan roaring up in flames.

The steam and smoke were pooling at the ceiling, and I quickly pulled Jack away into the dining room; he impressively fought me a little, trying to go back, to fight the good fight. He was always a commendable kid, earnest and vigorous, and for a long time (right up through high school) I really thought he might become a cop or a fireman as most young boys say they want to be at one point or another; I could always see him donning a uniform, strapping on that studly
stuff
charging hard with his mind unfettered into the maw of peril, "just doing his job."

Sometimes it still surprises me how damn entrepreneurial he is now, what a
multitasking
guy he's become, as the term goes, though I wonder if being a CEO really suits him, even if it is heading a fundamentally working-class outfit like ours.

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"Dad, it's burning the metal," he said, pointing to the steel hood above the stove, its painted surface blackening.

"Stay right here," I told him, tamping clown on his shoulders, "okay?"

"Oka "

y.

I rushed in and knelt below the range top and opened the bottom drawer of the stove, where Daisy kept the pot lids, searching for one large enough to cover the big skillet. I found one and tossed it on but it was about an inch shy all around and the flames only flickered low for a second, then vengefully leaped up again. Daisy always used a lot of butter or oil, and so I took off my bath towel and folded it and tried to smother the whole thing, the fire licking up where I wasn't pressing hard enough, singeing my forearm and chest hairs and making me instantly consider all things from the narrow, terrified view of my fast shrinking privates. Then Tack ran forward and tried to help by tugging down the edge of the towel. I picked him up and carried him to the living room and practically hurled him into one of the as-yet-unreturned sofas, shouting "Stay put!" and also warning him not to soil the upholstery, if he valued his life. But by then the towel had caught fire and instinctively I did exactly what Jack had already tried, splashing on water with my hands and then a coffee mug, which did no good at all. So I finally took the skillet by the handle and opened the sliding door to the deck and stepped out. The deck was cedar and I didn't know what else to do but maybe toss it over the edge onto the back lawn. The firelight caught the attention of our back neighbors, the Lipschers, who were throwing a small dinner party on their patio. I'd spoken to the husband maybe once or twice, the wife three or four times; we'd invited them over a couple of times for barbe-cues but they never actually made it over. They were into tony,
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Manhattan-type gatherings, with candles and French wine and testy, clever conversations (you could hear every word from our deck) about Broadway plays or Israel or their favorite Caribbean islands, everyone constantly interrupting everyone else in their bid to impress, all in tones that said they weren't. Though the sight of me clearly got their attention. Someone at their table said, "Look at that!," and with the skillet in one hand I kind of waved with the other, the Lipschers and their guests limply waving back, and for some reason it didn't seem neighborly to chuck the frying pan and so I just held it out in full flambe, Daisy now stepping out in her towel with the kids in tow, all of us waiting for the fire to die out. It took a while. When it finally did Barry Lipscher said, "Hey there, Battle, you want to end the show now? We're still eating here, if you don't mind."

To this Daisy unhooked her bath sheet and wrapped it around my waist, then turned to the Lipschers and guests in all her foxy loveliness and gave them the finger. If I remember right, Theresa did the same, Jack and .1 grinning idiotically as we trailed our women inside the house.

But in truth, I'm afraid, it didn't quite end up as nicely as all, that, young family Battle triumphant in solidarity, chuckling over the charred cabinetry and the toasty scent of burnt pasta.

"Clean this up," I said to Daisy, my voice nothing but a cold instrument. "We'll talk tomorrow."

The next day I instituted what Pop had suggested, basically placing Daisy under house arrest for the week (no car keys, no credit cards, $20 cash), and promising her that I'd never speak to her again unless she sent back all the samples and swatches and kept the house in an acceptable state and made proper meals for the kids and checked with me from that point on before she bought anything—I mean
anything other
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pies like milk and bread or underwear or school supplies. Back in those days I could actually titter such a thing, threaten someone like that, even a loved one, and I have to say that I regularly did. I naturally got into the habit at Battle Brothers, hollering at the fellas all day and lecturing my subcontractors and sometimes even talking tough to my customers, if they became too clingy or whiny or just plain pains in the ass, which at some point in every job they all did. But maybe it wasn't so much the habit itself as it was its effectiveness that I kept returning to, how reliably I could get all sorts of people to move it or jump or shut the hell up. People say that Pm like Pop that way, that I'll get this expression on my face, this certain horrific look, like whatever you're saying or doing is the most sickening turn, this instant disease, and that for you not to desist seems purely con-temptible, a veritable crime against humanity. And then I'll say what I want to have happen, what I want done, as I did that day to Daisy. She could hardly look at me as she sat on the edge of the tub as I shaved, her straight hair screening her face like those beaded curtains we all used to have, her palms pressed down against the porcelain, her elbows locked. I repeated myself and left for work and didn't call all day and when I got back (a little early, for I had the horrible thought that the house might be burning down) the whole place was peerlessly clean and quiet and the kids were in the den playing (Jack) and reading (Theresa) and there was a tuna casserole bubbling away in the oven, four place settings sparkling and ready on the kitchen table. The only thing missing was Daisy. I asked the kids where she was and they didn't know. I looked out back and in the street. Then I went into our bedroom to change, which was empty but trimmed out and neat, and when I walked into the bathroom, there Daisy was, still dressed in her pink robe with
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the baby blue piping, sitting on the edge of the tub exactly as she had been eight hours earlier, as if she'd been cast right into the cool porcelain.

"I fixed the house," she said, her voice husky, dried-out.

"Yeah," I said, just like I might to the guys, as though it was simply what I expected. It's always best, when you're trying to get things done, to utter the absolute minimum. You made it rain? Okay. You moved Heaven and Earth? Fine. This, too, was part of my general studies education a la Pop; he's the one who showed me how effective it can be to say grindingly little at the very moments you ought to say a lot, when you could easily be sappy and effusive and overgenerous with praise or forgiveness, when you could tender all you had and no one would ask for anything extra in return.

I know. I know about this. I do.

So when Daisy went on to say, "The other stuff, too. I got rid of it all. I did what you want, Jerry," what did I say back but simply, "Right," with a slight tip of the noggin, with a tough-guy grunt, which you'd think would be just what Daisy had had to deal with all her inscrutable Oriental/Asian life, and probably had, and was part of the reason she'd ended up with someone like me, some average American Guido she'd figure would have more than plenty to say, entreating every second with his hands and his hips and with his heart blithering on his sleeve.

Daisy didn't say anything and neither did I and for a moment our normally cramped en suite bath got very large in feeling, the only sound coming from the running toilet tank, this wasteful ever-wash I've always meant to fix but never actually have, even to this day. Daisy got up then and brushed past me and I could hear her walk out of our bedroom and down the hallway to the kitchen. I showered and changed and when I got to the A L O F T

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table the kids were already eating their dinner, as usual furiously wolfing their food like a pair of street urchins who'd stolen into a cake shop. Daisy was making up my plate. As little kids, Jack and Theresa were forever hungry, a trait only parents must know to be peerlessly endearing, and the only time I can remember them not eating was after Daisy was buried and we had a gathering at the house, the two of them sitting glumly on the sofa, a plate of cold shrimp and capicola balanced between them on their legs.

Daisy set down my dinner and she sat, too, but wasn't eating.

After serving all of us seconds she took our plates and began cleaning up. The kids chattered back and forth but Daisy and I didn't say a word to each other. In the morning, breakfast was the same, and it was like that for the rest of that week and the next. Finally I got tired of the whole thing and when he asked I told Pop his method was fine save for the rageful misery and silences. He told me to keep it in my pants a bit longer, that I'd break her and also break myself of "the need to please her all the time," and that he and Nonna would stop by on Saturday to run interference. I asked him to just come over and play with the kids, so I could patch things up with Daisy, maybe take a drive to Robert Moses and sit on the grassy dunes and tell/beg her that I wished for our life to be normal again, though in truth their visit would mean that Nonna would take the kids out to the playground or to a matinee and then somehow cobble together a gut-busting dinner of meatballs and sausages and pasta and a roast, with Pop haranguing me about the state of our business and then inevitably bringing up Bobby, which he did anytime we spent more than an hour together.

When my folks arrived Daisy was still in the bedroom getting dressed. No matter her state of mind or what was going on she
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always pulled herself together for them, and particularly for Pop.

She'd wear her newest outfits and full evening makeup and jewelry and maybe she'd tie a little rolled silk scarf around her neck, which gave her a fetchingly game barmaid look. Pop of course lapped it up. He loved how she made silly mistakes with her English and always laughed at his jokes and patiently listened to all his stories and theories and opinions about the brutality of man and falsity of religion and the conspiring forces of a New World Order that would enslave all good men in a randy socialist vise-grip of eco-feminism and bisexuality and miscegenation (not withstanding my and Daisy's lovely offspring). Daisy, I really have to say, always kissed his ass, and I don't really know why, as there was never anyone else but Pop who could elicit that kind of humoring and attention from her, no one I'm sure except for Bobby Battle, M.I.A. (the best degree, for Immortality), whom she met a couple of times only but I know would have loved.

Daisy floated out in a new hot-pink-with-white-polka-dot silk mini-dress and matching scarf tied around her throat as mentioned, with a white hair band holding up her black-as-black tresses. As annoyed as you might be with her you couldn't help but think she looked good enough to eat. She kissed my mother, who was already unloading the fridge of everything that we might possibly eat for dinner, culling as she went for mold and wilt and freezer burn. My mother, God bless her soul, was nothing if not dependable. It's a terrible thing to admit, but I used to think she wasn't the swiftest doe in the forest, because she rarely did anything else but keep house and feed everybody and try to make Pop's life run smoothly and comfortably, even as he was often a jerk to her and had several love affairs and was universally acknowledged to be a Hall of Fame jerk. She rarely read the newspaper and never read a book and wasn't even in-A L O F T

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terested in movies or television, her main personal activity being shopping for clothes, not haute couture but sort of Queens Boulevard country club, bright bold colors and white patent leather bags and shoes and bugeye sunglasses. Every once in a while on no special occasion Pop would spring for a marble-sized diamond ring or a string of fat pearls, and I suspect it was my mother exacting tribute for his latest exposed dalliance.

Lately I've been thinking that her lack was more emotional than intellectual; it wasn't because the gray matter didn't work well enough but that she preferred to keep her life as uncomplicated as possible, more thought and rumination leading only to misery and remorse and the realization that she could never leave him, that she could never really start over again.