Expensive People (27 page)

A friendly pilot skimming low over Cedar Grove would see as much of it as anyone else, but once in a while there are little cracks that let light through. One day I was downstairs doing my math homework (I was enrolled in a double-session geometry class at school; it was mid-July of an unforgettable summer) when Nada came into the den. She was chewing on something. She sat on the sofa and for a moment said nothing, was probably not even looking at me. Then she said, “How old are you?”

I looked up, surprised. She was chewing on a piece of celery. “Eleven,” I said.

“Eleven,” she said vaguely, as if counting mentally on her fingers to make sure I was legitimate. “You know, Richard, I'd like us to talk but there doesn't seem to be anything to talk about. Have you noticed that?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Do you have friends? What do you do? What are you always reading? Would you like to go to camp this summer? Your father said you might be interested in the Little League team, is that true?”

“I don't remember saying that.”

“I'm sure you don't. He must have imagined it,” Nada said sarcastically. She finished the piece of celery and wiped her fingers lightly on the sofa covering. “What have you been reading lately, Richard?”

I laid down my pencil reluctantly. What if I told her I spent my time reading the things she had written, understanding nothing except to know that the sympathy she showed in her stories must have used up all the sympathy she had in her? You would think nothing would be easier to get than sympathy from Natashya Romanov, but here was Natashya Romanov herself, in yellow silk slacks and a yellow and green blouse, staring at me as if I had just crawled out of a crack in the wall.

“Science-fiction stories,” I said.

She looked disinterested at once. “Richard, did you miss me while I was gone?” she said. “Why didn't you answer my letters?”

“When?”

“When I was gone, silly. When I was gone.”

It pleased me to be called “silly” by her. “I was busy with school.”

“Oh, that ridiculous Johns Behemoth, that disgusting Nash! But did you miss me?”

“Sure.”

“Did your father take away the letters I wrote to you, or did you see them?”

“I saw them.”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes, Nada.”

“He wanted to come between us, but it's over now and I don't blame him. Your father and I are friends now. Everything is forgiven.”

“Father was very nice—”

“He wants you to call him ‘Daddy’”

“Daddy
—”

“But call him anything you want. I don't care.”

“He was very nice, he took me to the movies and bowling. He was nice all the time,” I said miserably.

“Did he drink much?”

“Drink?”

“Richard, you don't really know your father. He's a man you haven't met yet. Don't let him fool you.”

“Yes, Nada.”

She stared at me. “What the hell do you mean? You sound as if you're imitating someone. What is it? Are you imitating the person I'm supposed to think you are? Who do you talk to? Listen to? How will you grow up normal if you keep listening to the wrong people? I know you were eavesdropping on me the other day when I was on the phone. I heard you upstairs, my little friend, but I was too polite to accuse you.” She had been speaking seriously, but now she laughed. All of Nada's words were canceled out by her destructive laughter. She gave me the same sideways look a boy had given me the other day, except that boy had been wearing a sweatshirt with JESUS SAVES on its front
and dark sunglasses, so that as a matter of fact one shouldn't have expected a “look” from him at all.

Out in the hallway, at the bottom of the door that led to the basement, something moved suddenly—a tiny face and paws emerged for an instant and then disappeared. It was not enough to wake me from my stupor so I said nothing to my mother. Maybe I had imagined it anyway. Nada talked on and I noticed that she had taken on a new style of talk, this “my friend” business, and that this meant she had herself taken on a new friend. When she fell silent I was afraid she would leave, so I said quickly anything that came to mind. “Mrs. Hofstadter cut Gustave's fingernails and toenails the other day, with a clippers, and she almost severed his little toe.”

Nada frowned. “You say the wildest things, Richard.”

“It's true. Mrs. Hofstadter has been acting funny.”

“You're too critical of adults,” she said. “Anyway, my little friend, if a mother wants to clip off her son's little toe, or indeed his big toe, who has a better right?”

“Don't you like Gustave?”

“Of course. He's nice.” She stretched out her legs and sighed lazily. “What say for a treat, friend? Should I drive us out to Ho-Jo's and get you a cone, or would you like to go down to the cellar and stick your head in the freezer? There are some vanilla cones down there.”

“I don't want to go down in the cellar.”

“Why not?”

“There are some mice or something down there.”

“Oh, you're crazy!” She laughed. “We don't have mice here. What do you think this is, a slum? We could drive out to Ho-Jo's then.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Why, mice out there too? Mice everywhere?”

“I'm not sure if it's mice.”

Nada straightened. She had heard our maid, Libby who was in the kitchen doing something; some pans clattered. “That woman can't suppress her unconscious hostile feelings,” Nada said. “Listen to her banging around!”

“She's nice.”

“Oh, everyone's nice.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. Then the telephone rang
at Nada's elbow. She said, “No, I'm sorry, I wish I were Natashya Everett but you must have the wrong number. No, I wish I
were
that woman.” She hung up and winked at me.

“Seriously, Mother, there are mice or something down there—”

“What's this, now you're calling me ‘Mother’? Weaned at last? Don't give me that solemn weepy look through your glasses, my friend, I don't particularly care to be called ‘Mother’ by anyone. I don't respond to it. I'm trying to hold my own and that's it. No ‘Mother,’ no ‘Son.’ No depending on anyone else. I want you to be so free, Richard, that you stink of it. You're not going to blame me for anything.”

“Who should I blame then?”

“Nobody.”

“Not even Father?”

“Especially not him.”

“Isn't there anybody?”

“My own father, my drunken madman of a father,” Nada said, but without her usual melodramatic conviction. It was plain that she regretted having hung up on that call. “If you don't be quiet I'll buy a Home Clipper-Cutter from the Discount Mart and cut your hair here at home and ‘almost sever’ your ears, little chum. You and Gustave both.” She reached over and stroked my hair.

She was right, it did need to be cut. Father took me out on Saturdays when he had his own hair cut, but sometimes he was far away and forgot about me; it was possible for me to go a long time without having a haircut. Like most things about me, my long hair did not quite matter.

“You know, Richard, once I spent two days tracking down a single lie of your father's. Two days of my life. And I discovered that he hadn't lied, no, but when he told the truth he told it in such a way that one thought, Good Christ! That
tnustbe
a lie. That's your father.”

“Nada, what is an ‘abortion’?”

She sat up and her hand moved away from me. There was something too casual about her expression.

“An ‘abortion,’ if you must know, is something that fails to come off. Let's see: we plan on Father grilling steaks for us tonight, but at the last minute Father fails to come home. Hence, the steak barbecue is ‘aborted.’”

“Is that what it means?”

She was silent for a moment, not exactly looking at me. It was never possible to tell what she was looking at or thinking. After a moment she said, “What say we drive out to Ho-Jo's then, Pal? Stuff ourselves on some cheap tasty food? Father will be gone tonight and tomorrow night, so we can eat anything we please and at any time we please.”

“You never tell me the truth, Nada,” I said bitterly.

“Oh, you're making me tired. Leave me alone, you little pest.”

The telephone rang and she picked it up at once. “Yes, hello. Yes,” she said quickly.

Sunk in my lethargy, I watched her and thought how strange it was that she was my mother, that there was so much that should be said between us but which would not be said. The time in which to say it was running out like that breeze drifting gently past us as she dawdled and talked with that Other Person …

“Oh, I can't talk now, don't annoy me,” she said in the same voice she had used with me. “When, tonight? No, not tonight. Tomorrow. Yes, he won't be back. Look, I can't talk now. I've told you not to call me. Yes. Good-by”

“Who was that, Nada?” I said.

“Don't Nada me, you little fake,” she said. She rose lazily, happily. Her voice was slightly detached, as if she were still on the telephone. “Look, are we going out to dinner or what? Why do you sit there?”

But we never got out to dinner that night: a strange thing happened. Libby slipped down the three steps that led to the back porch, spraining an ankle, and we had to tend to her. We had been about to leave when this happened, and dutifully we came back. That's how it is in ordinary life. Scenes move toward sensible conclusions, then someone slips and falls and ruins everything. Now, years later, I still nurse an unreasonable hatred for Libby.

She was a greedy woman, my Nada. You know the story of the old grouch Juvenal eating until he was sick, out of pure spite at the heaven of sensuality he could not enter, and if you know that you also know the story of Laurence Sterne and Charles Churchill come to London
(but not together), lunatic, depraved gluttons of clergymen whose only aim in life was to devour as much of anything as was available!— and all of history gives us these weird writers whose scribbling must in itself have been a kind of grossness, but not enough to satisfy, coming to London or Paris or Rome or New York, anywhere, to fill their stomachs and brains with whatever was handy. But even as Juvenal vomited as he ate, so Nada did vomit back out much of what she took in so eagerly; and even as Sterne and Churchill met their ends in excess, so did Nada invite her finish by an excess of greed.

On the evening following Libby's fall Nada went out at about five. She said, “Richard, will you be all right? I have to see someone.”

I heard her drive out and watched the yellow car disappear down Labyrinth Drive and wondered whether I should follow her on my bicycle; but no, you don't do that. And at five-thirty what should turn in our drive but another yellow car? It was Father come home a day early.

He drove up but did not drive the car into the garage. I noticed that. I was sitting in the kitchen, in the darkened breakfast nook, waiting. I heard Father's car pause, stall, stop. I heard him sit there for a while, looking in at the empty garage. Finally he got out and came to the back door.

“Father?”

He stumbled up into the kitchen. “Oh, it's you,” he said. There was a moment when his smile did not work, then it worked. He rumpled my hair as if this were an obligation to me. “Nada not in just now, eh? Is she shopping for food?”

“I don't know.”

“Did she say where she went?”

“I don't remember.”

“Yes, hmmm,” he said meaninglessly He wandered into the dining room and turned on the lights. I followed him into the hall, then into the living room. This living room was rather long. You could not be certain, standing in the doorway, if the room was really empty or not. There was always the feeling that someone was sitting down at the other end, screened by a giant plant or disguised simply by distance. In the instant before Father switched on the light I thought I saw someone sitting by the fireplace.

“When did she leave?” Father said.

“A few minutes ago.”

“So late? Very strange,” he said. We wandered back into the hall. Father switched on another light, and we heard the scratch of tiny nails down at the far end of the hall, by the basement door. “What in good Christ is that?” he said, genuinely astonished.

I ran to open the basement door, and we saw two chipmunks dashing madly down the carpeted stairs.

“What's that?” Father cried. “Rats? Mice?”

“Chipmunks.”

“But what are chipmunks doing in here? In our house?”

“They must have gotten in by mistake.”

Father was panting hoarsely. We listened and heard the scratching of tiny, frenzied toenails downstairs, then something happened to Father. He grunted and took off his suit coat and thrust it at me. “I'll get 'em,” he said. “Little saucy bastards!”

He ran downstairs two and three at a time, a big, heavy, sweating man, and at the landing he grabbed the broom Libby had left and, wielding it like a great weapon, made his way into the main room of the basement. Three chipmunks scattered, panicked, and Father started after them with the broom raised and his chest sending out great bursts of rage. “Hyar! Hyar!” he cried, like a mythical Texan routing a maverick steer.

I sat at the foot of the stairs and hugged my knees. I watched. Father rushed at one corner, swinging the broom, and slapped it down hard. The chipmunk flew out to one side and, its tiny legs pumping wildly, ricocheted off the wall and fled in another direction.

“Hyar, you little bastard!” Father yelled. His eyes bulged as he brought the broom around in a great muscular arc, this time scooping the chipmunk off the floor and slamming it hard against the wall. It fell with a soft plopping noise, and he hit it again and again with the flat of the broom, grunting. “Oh, you little bastard,” he said softly, in just the same tone Nada had once used on him.

Then, flushed with victory, he turned from the lifeless and battered chipmunk and rushed into another corner, where another terrified creature darted out blindly—and he swung the broom around again in a most skillful, graceful arc, at the last moment scooping the broom up in the air so that he could bring it down flat on the chipmunk. And again. And again.

After a few threshing minutes he got the third chipmunk, and then,
panting wildly he whirled around to see yet another chipmunk making its cautious way in from the laundry room. “Stupid rodent!” Father yelled and rushed at it and chased it back into the laundry room. I did not follow. I heard the broom fall again and again. My heart beat calmly and regularly O my readers, and I will not be so sophisticated as to deny that I felt sorrow for those poor beasts, and something beyond sorrow.