Easy and Hard Ways Out (2 page)

Back among the group of men, the accountant commented, “I tell ya, he is weird. He does that whenever he and Joan come. A real weird.”

c. A Shy Age

From the age of twenty-three to twenty-six, Brank would not take out money from the bank, feeling the tellers would talk about him when he left, perhaps even relate dozens of special teller withdrawal jokes to the other people on line, who would go paralyzed with laughter. During this period, he left several jobs; always too ashamed to quit directly, he would say things like “I'll be right back,” or “See you after lunch” to his supervisor, and then never return. Twice, he didn't even bother to collect his back pay. Although he had a stockbroker, Brank never called him, even to sell plummeting stocks, for fear his account wasn't big enough, his losses not significant enough compared with the broker's other clients', certain the broker would comment to colleagues upon hanging up, “These little guys, they lose a lousy grand and right away they hit the phones.” Brank insisted that his wife buy him prophylactics in the drugstore, but would never under any circumstances buy her sanitary napkins. Once, when she'd run out of them, and she had a fever, and it was snowing out, she'd pleaded with him, “Harvey, it's done all the time. Please. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Please. I'm sick.” He'd steeled himself then, and thought maybe he could drive to an out-of-neighborhood pharmacy and put sunglasses on and cover his mouth with his muffler. But then he asked what size Kotex she needed and she said, “The super,” and he'd folded completely, saying, “That did it, I could never ask for super.” And Joan had gone herself, with the fever.

d. Shatterproof Glasses

He was poor in athletics at age ten, and when there were four or more kids available on the handball courts he was the one who did not get to play. Sometimes, when they wanted to be nice, they'd ask him to stay around and ref, but mostly he would just kind of wander away by himself, pretending to be interested in something in the distance, carefully holding his face expressionless.

His parents could offer only indirect help, his nervous, overprotective father suggesting, for instance, that “You'll see, when you're twenty, you'll look back at this problem and you'll laugh.” His mother, who worked for an optometrist, said that perhaps he needed stronger glasses. Though Harvey had memorized the eye chart, thereby fooling the doctor for his last four visits, he was sure this had no bearing on his difficulty.

His own solution was hours of solitary practice hitting the ball against a wall, practice in which he imagined himself pitted against various friends, against famous athletes, practice under searing suns on sterilized schoolyard concrete so that it became almost a penance, a ritual, the goal of improvement secondary to the practice itself. He was leading Pancho Gonzalez 15-13 one day (his left hand was always the adversary and since he was a righty, his real self usually won) when two teenagers made their way through the schoolyard gate, approached him, and asked if they could use his court to play a game. Harvey said he'd be finished in fifteen minutes and suggested they use the adjacent court. The boys said that it had too many cracks and that they wanted his. He told them they'd have to challenge him.

Harvey resumed hitting his ball against the wall, a ten-year-old boy in a bathing suit, spectacles, and sneakers, with a straight, smooth, little-boy's back that had downy, light brown hairs and delicate, birdlike “wings.”

“This kid is asking to get the shit kicked out of him,” said the boy with the white bandanna on his head, moving in Harvey's direction.

The one with the curly hair stopped him. “Oh, leave him alone, Ennis. We'll play with him for two minutes and he'll be satisfied.” He was grinning.

They played with him for three minutes, but afterward Harvey still insisted they had to challenge for the court. He resumed throwing his pink ball against the concrete until a black ball buzzed past his shoulder and, smacked into the wall like a bullet.

“Now beat it!” shouted the bandanna, finger pointing, shoulder heaving. “Next time, I hit ya!”

Harvey didn't move, and the next thing he knew, a sweaty arm was lifting him off the ground and depositing him on the side of the court. He sulked as the boys began to play, watched from the sidelines as their lubricated bodies scuttled over the cement. He brooded and plotted, the oil of reason completely drained from him now, his mind seizing and locking on a plan.

The ball hit on the ground, near the short line. Harvey took two quick steps, grabbed it, glanced once at Ennis's outstretched, expectant hand, and heaved the ball as far as he could over the fence into the wooded area around the court. He turned and had managed to run two steps before he felt the fist smash into his ribs and a cloud of pain burst in his chest and chin and knee as he hit the ground. He began to cry.

The bandanna went to look for the ball, and several minutes later, when he couldn't find it, Curly went to join him. “You'll be okay,” he said, bending over briefly as he passed Harvey, still lying on the cement. “Just get your breath. Why did you have to do that for anyway?”

After supper, Harvey's father asked essentially the same question.

“I mean what were you trying to prove?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why didn't you let them have the court?”

“Because it was my court.”

“But you knew they wanted it, didn't you? And you knew they'd get mad if you didn't get off.”

“Yes.”

“And I'm sure you didn't deliberately want to get hurt, did you?”

“No.”

“So?”

“It was my court.”

“All right,” said Harvey's father. “Someday you'll look back on this incident and you'll laugh. Although I still don't see what you were hoping to accomplish.”

Harvey looked at him, and for the first time it occurred to him that he and his father were very different. He wanted to explain that throwing the ball was something he had to do for himself, that Pancho Gonzalez would have done the same thing, that it had nothing to do with accomplishing anything, or getting the court. But the right words wouldn't come.

“They smiled at me and pretended to be nice when they weren't,” he said. “I'm glad I lost their ball for them. And I won't laugh about this ever.”

At his mother's insistence, however, he did get shatterproof glasses.

e. Probably Nothing

It seemed to Joan Brank that she might not end up divorced after all. Though she had pictured herself as a Sophia Loren—type loner, her gutsy coping with life's cruel setbacks making her hopelessly attractive to sensual though protection-minded men, the image had never really settled in. In the first place she had small, un-Loren-like breasts. (Harvey said, when he wanted to be nice, that the smallness there was a sign of sensitivity.) Secondly, a man could have protective impulses but still not want anything much to do with a bony, thirty-four-year-old woman and a three-year-old boy; who, after all, was
that
protection-crazy? But now, it had begun to look as if lawyers were not in her future. Harvey's father had stopped calling every day with the weather report, the incredible lawn and cesspool problems with their house had begun to ease, and best of all, Harvey had been at Auerbach Labs for over a year and a half and seemed, finally, finally, to have settled down. Her friend Sheila had invited them to a lawn party this weekend, and for the first time almost since she could remember, Joan did not have to worry about feeling trapped and embarrassed when the girls discussed their husbands' jobs and their pension benefits and vacations.

She told Harvey about it at supper.

“Sheila invited us for Saturday and I accepted. We haven't seen them since the spring. Ron and Ellen will be there and some other people and all the kids.”

Brank nodded. “You hear that, Brucie?” he said to his son. “All the kids, too.”

“Am I a kid?” asked Bruce.

“Yes.”

“Are you a kid?”

“No. I'm an adult.”

“You mean you're the biggest?”

“Yes.”

“When will you be little again like me?”

“In three months,” said Brank.

“Oh, Harvey,” said Joan. “Stop. He believes you.”

“He does not,” said Brank. “Do you believe Daddy, Brucie?”

“No,” said Bruce, dropping a piece of meat to the floor, which Joan retrieved. “When you get little, Daddy, will you be able to wear my pants?”

“Yes.”

“Your legs will be little?”

“Yes.”

“And your eyes?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And your penis?”

“No. That will stay big.”

“Harvey!” said Joan.

“I'm telling him the truth as best I perceive it,” said Brank.

“All right,” said Joan, “all right. So how was work today? Bruce, you're spilling the soda!”

“Okay,” said Brank, “Usual Friday.”

“Dull?”

“A little. Still working on the plane.”

“Oh. Isn't that supposed to be nearly finished?”

“Couple of weeks. The Air Force is coming soon to inspect.”

“Is your part okay? Bruce, if you touch that knife once more you're going right up to sleep.”

“Hard to say. It just failed a temperature test today.”

“Daddy,” said Bruce.

“Is that serious?” said Joan, her pulse quickening slightly.

“Nah,” said Brank.

“Daddy,” said Bruce.

“What?” said Brank.

“Will my penis be as big as yours someday?”

“Almost,” said Brank.

After supper, Brank played with Bruce in the living room for a half hour, the play mostly wrestling and fooling around since Bruce could not seem to concentrate on any more constructive activities. Near the beginning, Brank had tried to play a game in which each player moved a plastic piece to various squares on a board, the location depending upon the color of a card drawn from a deck. When the shouting and screaming became very loud, however, Joan had yelled from the kitchen, “What's going on there?”

“He moved his man to a green square even though he drew a red card,” Brank yelled.

“I love the green,” said Bruce.

“But it's not the
game
,” said Brank.

“Oh, play something else,” Joan yelled.

Later, during a break in their wrestling, Bruce brought over a drawing of an amoeba with two birdlike claws protruding from it. “It's you, Daddy,” he said.

“Oh, that's beautiful,” said Brank, wondering if continual minor encouragements might lead Bruce to attempt a career as an artist, only to learn at age twenty-three from a crotchety watercolor teacher that his work showed the talent of a tree stump.

Brank knew, of course, that the next day or two days later he'd find the drawing shredded somewhere, or crumpled in a corner, something Bruce did with all the cutouts and paintings and artifacts he made. Though at first Brank had found the boy's lack of regard for his own work faintly amusing, he'd lately become disturbed by it. When he asked Bruce why he did it, however, all he would say was, “Because I love to,” and never elaborate further.

After the play period, Bruce went pliantly to bed in his upstairs room, his small body lost and floating in an ocean of mattress and blanket. Later, Brank came up for a minute to watch him sleep, to check on the puffs of breath passing in and out through the slack cherub lips, to feel the perspiration soaking through the tiny pajama top, to see the miniature foot flex and rock in comforting womb-rhythm. His son.

He came down and read the paper, then he and Joan hung flap-jawed before the TV, scarcely watching as they massaged each other's backs and legs. He threw the garbage out after the 11
P.M.
news, then went upstairs to brush his teeth before going to sleep. She spoke to him from the bedroom as he raised a great blue lather in his mouth.

“I got those special pellets for the cesspool.”

“Uh, guh.”

“And I got that poison for those bugs.”

“Guh.”

“And I bought that toilet pipe you told me to.”

“Ah vuh guh.”

There was a pause as he reached in and got a usually untouched rear molar.

“It's not your fault, is it, Harv?”

“Wha?”

“That temperature test?”

He spit out. “Oh, that. No, it just happened, that's all. It just means we might not be able to pass all the tests at the inspection.”

“Does anyone else know? Did you tell your supervisor?”

He swished, spit out again, then repeated it once more. His mouth felt clean, especially the molars. “Yeah. He said he'll discuss it with the chief engineer, but no matter what, we'd have to pass those tests.”

He walked into the bedroom and lay down beside her.

“What did you say?”

“I told him it might be impossible.”

She faced away from him. “You're not going to get in trouble, are you, Harv?”

“Trouble? No. I did my job. I told him.”

He shrugged, turned off the light, brought her face over to his, and kissed her deeply on the lips. Later, after they'd moved away from each other, after she'd lain motionless for many minutes, her mind alive with possibilities, with memories, with premonitions, she heard him say in the dark, “It's really a very minor thing. It's probably nothing.”

AUERBACH LABORATORIES

Inter-Office Memorandum
10/29/66

From: V. Fish

To: W. Murphy

cc: N. Klapholtz, file

Subject: Soap expenditures

N. Klapholtz has forwarded me your memo dated 10/28 regarding the increase in lavatory soap expenditures. Further investigation has shown that the specific item involved is bar soap, and that the volume requisitioned of this commodity has increased 22%. Since staff size and working hours have remained constant over the past 3 audit periods, there is no apparent reason for the observed increase. I have therefore asked Security (Sam Brine will probably be in touch with you) to look into the matter.