Days Like Today (9 page)

He’d recently heard some facts about the curative powers of sunlight. Putting a glass of bad water up on the roof of a house would kill the bacteria in it; if you kept the same water down in the cellar, those bacteria stayed alive. But he’d also heard about sunshine causing cancer. He thought it was interesting that the purifying agent was also the one that could kill.

Sooner or later, Franklin thought, they were going to get around to the war. He could feel an unexpressed urgency emanating from every part of Sherman. That was probably why the man had shown up: he wanted to talk.

When Sherman raised his glass and said, ‘The good old days,’ Franklin thought:
Here we go
. But it didn’t happen. Instead of reminiscing, Sherman said, ‘Only one thing I recall that was good about wartime: the women treat you better.’

‘If that’s the way you like it.’

‘Well, you liked it too, didn’t you?’

‘Sure. It was worth what we paid for it.’

‘And how much are you paying for all this?’

‘What I’ve got now is the real thing. It’s free. The best things in life, you know. Like the song.’

‘She made an honest man of you – is that what happened?’

‘What happened was: I woke up. I just suddenly saw how everything was. I realized that if I was willing to work for it, I could get anything I wanted. But if I didn’t get up and do something about it, nothing was going to happen, ever. I’d just live and die like a stone somebody threw into a field.’

‘Like a lonely flower by the wayside, as Roscoe used to say. Remember?’

‘Sure.’

Sherman had arrived just before the weekend. Beginning on Monday, the help started coming in: a cleaning woman
called Addie, and friends who took the kids away to play and who – on another day – would drive up to load their own kids on to Irene. A Mrs Hescott did the serious cooking when there was a party. She’d be assisted by a couple of teenagers who served as waitresses and washed up. Otherwise Addie did most of the housework and fixed lunch on the days when she was there, three times a week. Irene managed the kids. Even with help, for as long as the children were in the house, the noise never seemed to let up; at night they’d cry out in their sleep, causing Irene to excuse herself from the conversation or even to break off what she was saying: she’d move into the hall and part way up the stairs, listening.

Sherman liked some things about the kids. He liked the way they looked, like large toys; and the goofy way they had of talking, which reminded him of the hospital patient named Beech, whose first name he’d never discovered and who hadn’t minded when Sherman took to calling him ‘Nutty’. But the constant noise got on his nerves so badly that once or twice he’d really wanted to pick them up and smash them to pieces, especially their heads: all the little screaming heads and faces.

As for Irene, sometimes he thought she was going to come right out and say that he might be moving on. But she never quite broke. She was nice and polite; she was the one in control. And there were times when he was just about ready to hit her across the face, or rip her clothes off, or yell names at her: to see her eyes change. To see her really look back at him, looking into his eyes. He was sure she knew – she had
to know what he was thinking, and she was pretending not to. But it was hard to tell about wives. Sometimes when they got that dumb look, they were just thinking about how long to cook the pot roast.

He listened to her breathing at night, asleep. He heard her get up in the dark and go to the children. He heard her with Franklin, making love.

He got to know their routine: when she’d be surrounded by other young mothers and their children, or when she had time on her own because the kids were with a play group; when she was expecting the grocery delivery, the milk, the mail. In about a month things would be different because the oldest child, Portia, was going to be out of kindergarten and starting the first grade.

He took all of them out to a family restaurant. Everybody had fun and he didn’t have to make any effort. The waitresses were laughing and flirting and being nice to the whole group. Everyone was busy keeping the children from acting up. They were seated at a big, round table like a circle. And Sherman at one stage in the evening thought:
The family circle
.

The day after that, they were in the living room when the child named Hagen said, ‘Do your play, Mama.’ Irene struck a pose: one hand on heart, the other up in the air as she declaimed, ‘This by Calpurnia’s dream is signified.’

‘What play?’ Sherman asked.

Franklin told him: their daughter, Portia, had been named in honor of a production of
Julius Caesar,
given by Irene’s school class when she was fourteen. Portia was the name of
a woman character in the play but Irene herself, owing to the scarcity of boys who could remember the lines, had played a Roman senator called Decius.

They moved to the kitchen, where Irene sat the children down for their supper. The men leaned against the counters, shifting from place to place as she picked up pots and pans and dishes.

‘So you could have been a star?’ Sherman said.

‘Oh, not in the movies. It was the stage. We had such a good drama teacher: Miss Moody. It was really exciting. I think it was the best thing we ever did at school even though we didn’t put on the whole play, just part of it. That’s the way I remember it, anyway. God, my memory.’

‘Five cents,’ Hagen said.

‘Yes, honey, thank you. I meant to say, “Gosh”. No, we’ll get the cuss box later. No, Pixie. Now’s the time for eating.’

‘I’ll treat you,’ Franklin said. He reached behind a salt carton, lifted a glass jar, unscrewed the lid, threw a coin in, twisted the lid again and put the jar back.

Irene blew him a kiss. She wiped Pixie’s mouth and picked a piece of potato off the floor. ‘We had a good cast,’ she said. ‘Our Julius Caesar … who was it? Who played Caesar? My goodness, I must be losing my mind. Was it Heddy? I think it might have been. But she was in the Greek play we did when we were nine. Anne was the brother, or maybe the brother’s friend, and Heddy was the heroine. Or was she? This is awful – it wasn’t so long ago. And there isn’t anybody I can ask. So many people move away, that’s the trouble. I see their parents sometimes. It really is annoying:
I used to be able to tell the years apart by thinking about our school grade. Then it was jobs and vacations. And now it’s how old the kids are. Honestly, I can’t even remember what I did yesterday.’

‘But you can remember what you ate can’t you?’ Franklin said. ‘She can always remember the menu.’

‘Gee, yes. That was great last night.’

Gee,
Sherman thought.

Franklin said, ‘It sure was, but I meant in general. Just as a way of marking the time.’

‘It’s too early to be senility,’ she went on. ‘I know what it is: what you see here is a veteran of peace.’ She laughed wildly and then said, ‘When I was fourteen, I never missed a word in that part. I could have played any of the other parts, too.’

‘She should have been the main character.’

‘I was supposed to tell Caesar’s wife that the warning dream she’d had was nothing to worry about. I was one of the conspirators and we all wanted Caesar to go to work that morning so we could stab him – all of us: big assassination scene. We had special plastic daggers loaded with fake blood. When you hit somebody with them, the blade telescoped back into the handle and all this thick, red liquid came pouring out – so realistic. People gasped. During the performance some of the parents in the audience were almost screaming. The dress rehearsal was even better, but we got carried away: we all just kept stabbing and stabbing – it was so much fun. Definitely the highlight of the production. Caesar finally had to say, “Cut it out. I’m dead enough.”’

‘Like a fox in the hen coop,’ Franklin said.

‘Oh, you know that’s something I heard on the radio: they don’t do that out of viciousness. A fox is made to strike a flock of birds in the open, while they’re getting ready to take off into the air. So, his biology makes him hit as many as he can, just to make sure he gets at least one. He keeps on going until the birds have flown away. But if they’re cooped up and can’t escape, in that case he kills all of them, even though he can’t take away more than a couple. See, it isn’t his fault. It’s his nature. In a way, you could say it’s the farmer who’s to blame for putting the chickens into those unnatural surroundings.’

‘It isn’t the fox’s fault,’ Hagen said.

‘Yes, sugar. That’s what I said. Animals don’t have a sense of morals. They only have instincts. Eat up your peas, precious.’

‘I hate peas.’

‘Not hate. Dislike intensely.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘You may not like them, but they like you. They’re just dying to get into that little tummy to do you some good. Come on, now.’

‘Why do I have to?’

‘They’re so good for you. You want me to spoonfeed you like a baby? OK, open up. And it’s down the little red lane they go.’

Hagen chewed and then renewed his complaints. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I ate all the rest of them and everything else, too. Why do I have to finish these?’

She reached over and began to squeeze and tickle him, chanting, ‘Why, oh why, oh why, can’t I look in my ear with my eye? I’m sure I could do it, if I put my mind to it: you never can tell till you try.’

Hagen started to laugh.

Sherman dropped his eyes and stared at the edge of the table. He’d been despising her and now suddenly he knew that he wasn’t good enough for her. He also realized that all the child’s complaints and her persuasion were part of a game. The boy was now eating whatever food had been left on the plate and he was having a good time. It was seduction. This was how you learned to do it. This was how far back it had to go, otherwise whenever people disagreed with you, you just did what had been done to you: knocked them across the room.

During the day he went for long walks in order to get out of Irene’s way. The cleaning woman, Addie, didn’t like him; that was another reason why he couldn’t hang around the house. If he’d come at a different time of year, he’d have offered to chop wood or undertake some similar task to show that he was trying to help out and not just freeload. But now he wasn’t able to do much of anything except invite Franklin out at night and pay for the drinks. He did that. He was doing it every night.

The summer was almost at an end, which meant that the season of vacation and parties was over, but there were a few dates coming up when Franklin and Irene had issued invitations or were invited out themselves. Big parties were
easy; they could ask Sherman along. If they had to go out to anything with a few friends or to have one or two couples in for a sit-down meal, Irene would offer Sherman the choice of meeting some new people and he could say that he thought he’d go see a movie that night.

The one successful celebration at which he was included was their barbecue in the back yard. Even then, Irene said to Franklin afterwards, ‘Mrs Anderson asked him, “And what do you do, Mr Oliver?” and he said, “Oh, nothing much. I’m just a vet.” And then she said, “Oh, maybe you can tell me what I should do for my dachshund, Bismarck. He’s having back troubles again and Dr Dalmers is out of town.” God, I didn’t listen to the rest of it. I thought: he got himself into it, he can get himself out. And anyway, she’s right. It’s years ago now: it’s time he moved on to something else. He wasn’t even very badly wounded, was he?’

‘Head wounds are always bad,’ Franklin said.

One morning after Franklin had left for work, Sherman lit up a cigarette. From the next room, where she’d moved with a stack of plates, Irene said, ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t smoke, Sherman. We don’t smoke in this house.’

‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘No shit.’

‘That’s a quarter,’ Hagen said. ‘A whole quarter.’

Portia brought a large glass jar to him. Inside there were a few pennies, nickles and dimes. He recognized it from the time when Franklin had paid for Irene saying ‘God’.

‘What’s this?’ he asked. ‘Is this for me?’

‘It’s the cuss box.’

‘Well, I never seen one of them before.’

Both children refused to smile back. The one called Portia unscrewed the lid and held the jar out to him.

He put his hand into his pocket, found a quarter and dropped it into the jar. ‘What are you going to do with all that money?’

Portia said, ‘We take it to church.’

‘It’s for the children in foreign countries,’ Hagen added.

Portia breathed in and began to sing: ‘Remember all God’s children, in far-off distant lands.’ Irene joined in from the next room.

Hagen was too embarrassed to sing in front of a stranger. Sherman said to him, ‘I guess it might be a good thing for those foreign kids if I did a lot more cussing.’

Irene came back in to the kitchen. She said, ‘No thank you, Sherman. We can do without that.’ Her voice was noncommittal but she had a set expression on her face. The kids understood straight away. So did Sherman. He cleared his throat and looked around, trying to think of something to say. At last he mumbled, ‘Well, I sure am impressed at what a good boy old Franklin is. There’s hardly any money in there.’

‘It’s like Portia said,’ Irene told him. ‘We usually put everything into the collection plate on Sundays.’

‘Gee,’ Sherman said.

The morning after that, he lost his hold on a coffee cup. As it fell, it broke. He whispered, ‘Fuck.’ Irene heard. She said, ‘Mr Oliver, I’m afraid that’s two dollars in the cuss box. Unless,’ she added pointedly, ‘my husband wants to
pay for his friend. We don’t really like that kind of language around the children.’

Sherman threw Franklin a look. Back in the days when they were under fire, Franklin hadn’t worried about what was nice or not. He’d cursed and sworn with the best of them and even gone back to saying ain’t, which everyone in his home town said up to the age of seven or eight, only after that age being straightened out by somebody who was interested in things being nice. Going into battle he’d dropped all the niceties. And then, under the noise and the light, the terror and confusion, the cold and the darkness, he’d have given anything – he’d have given the rest of his life – for one hour of everything being nice, clean, orderly, safe and just like the commercials.