Frolic of His Own (7 page)

—Well I know that, no. He just does that, the teaching I mean, it just goes in to the bank every month I don't think he makes any connection between it and these students he detests no, there's a trust his mother set up for him before she died because Father married money that first time, just the way his father had, so what does Oscar show up with? Somebody whose idea of share the wealth is getting her purse stolen, but I mean all that was before Father married again, married my mother I mean so I've never known what it amounts to and Oscar's always been awfully careful about what's his and what's mine. Why is that funny.

—Careful.

—Well why is that . . .

—First time I met him, first time I came out to the country to see you? That downstairs hall bathroom, I hadn't closed the door tight and I hear Oscar's footsteps come creaking down the hall, suddenly as he passes his hand slips in and switches the light off and leaves me there sitting in the dark.

—I don't think that's odd at all, he's just not used to having strangers in the house, I mean with half the place shut off to save heat there's nothing odd about being upset by sheer waste is there? It's the way we were brought up, you get letters from him with the address pasted over some political fund raiser or cripple benefit or God knows what because be can't bear to see the postage wasted, you don't waste you don't want and putting up with my mother my God, you couldn't blame him. I mean if you're brought up like that you're going to go one way or the other when the times comes, throw your money out the window or separate the clean bills from the dirty ones, right side up, the twenties and tens inside and then the fives, the ones think about it, I mean you couldn't blame him. That egg he wouldn't eat at breakfast when he was what, seven? and she puts it in front of him again at lunch? Roast chicken for dinner and he's still sitting there gritting his teeth against that egg it went on for two days, he just wouldn't give in till that second night he finally went to pieces, threw the whole thing on the floor and shouted which came first! the chicken or the egg! and he was sent to bed, he went up the stairs singing it and he stayed there, he even managed to run a fever. God knows what went on between Father and my mother, he never said a word but I'd see him looking at Oscar sometimes, watching him with that cunning little smile he gets when you don't know whether he's pleased or that you'd better watch out.

—Tell you one thing, I'd hate to argue a case before him when he's sober.

—Well you only met him that once Harry, he was hardly at his best.

—Kept calling me counselor, that courtly manner and the gravy spots on his tie I'm not even sure he knew who I was. He seemed to think I wanted to discuss Justice Holmes' dissent in the Black and White Taxicab case, he's got total recall for the year nineteen twenty eight when he was clerking for his father on the High Court and now the press down there trying to heat things up over this Szyrk decision, madness in the family and all the rest of it, have you seen that ad for this damn Civil War movie? Based on a true story, have you seen it? All they'd need is a look in his chambers there, sweltering, cigarette smoke you could cut with a knife, must have been a hundred degrees and that Christ awful life size plastic
praying hands thing of Dürer's standing there on the window sill upside down like somebody taking a dive, think that's his idea of a joke?

—God only knows, he's . . .

—If it is it's a pretty good one.

—Well of course that's why Oscar's so frantic, I don't mean this mess about Father but this awful movie, you can't blame him. I mean that's why he tried to write his play in the first place, for his grandfather, you can imagine, I mean even after he'd retired from the Court he used to dress to go out to dinner and Oscar had this solemn little task, transferring his gold watch and chain and the gold pen knife and change from the pockets of the suit he'd had on to his evening clothes it went on right till the last, he didn't die till he was ninety six and then suddenly there's this little boy with his own mother gone and his father marching his new wife into the house dragging this little girl behind her, my God. Because he'd have died before he'd have taken a penny changing his grandfather's money from one suit to the other but now he'd watch his chance to go through the seat cushions in that big chair in the library where Father sat when he read the papers, I mean think about it. Because his grandfather was really the first friend he ever had.

—Fine . . . He ran a hand over her knee, drawn up that close to him on the seat there, —take a nap. Because I've tried to tell him, haven't I? that he can't copyright his grandfather?

—And the rain, Harry? her voice already falling away, —just don't drive so fast?

And the rain, steady as the highway stretching out ahead like the day itself, lightened at last now the car turned south off the highway into a road, a byroad, as the —Sorry!

—Well my God! seizing the dashboard again, —you knew that bump was there didn't you? through the gates, past
PRIVATE ROAD MEMBERS AND GUESTS ONLY,
passing
STRANGERS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO ENTER
down a ribbon of disrepair prompted at discreet intervals along its way by names on the order of Whitney, Armstrong, here a Kalli-kak freshly lettered, even a Hannahan posting driveways off to the right, to the left turning in at a weathered Crease to splash up the pitted drive —and these dangling limbs look at them, twelve hundred dollars to those tree people they should pay us for damages, drive up as close as you can will you? by the steps there?

They heard the racket before she got out of the car, through the rain running up the wet steps of that veranda to tug at the door as he came round the side of the car for the grocery bag, a suitcase, newspapers, round the side of the house to the tradesmen's entrance where a door led through to the kitchen and —Harry? in here, we're in the sunroom, maybe you can help?

It was the obstinate chair of course, —a little safety lock down here Oscar, you must have brushed a hand against it.

—I did not brush a thing against it. Hello Harry. Christina's making some tea.

—Well it's late enough Oscar, I brought out some sturgeon, maybe we'll just want lunch? But he'd already ordered up tortellini for lunch, told that woman to fix it in some broth and then something in an Alfredo sauce and salad if anyone could find her, bad enough just trying to find anything herself, scissors, any scissors, those ginger preserves, his copy of Fitzhugh's Cannibals All! because he certainly couldn't scale the shelves in the library the mess it was in since they'd moved things around to put a bed in there for him where he couldn't reach the phone that had already ring twice since he'd been left sitting here in the rain, abandoned was really the word for it, he'd had her look in his room upstairs for his play in a black pebbled binder and she finally came down with an old address book and the papers, had they brought out the newspapers? Not that he could read them if they had because that was the worst of it, his glasses, —what that woman could have done with my glasses I haven't been able to read anything but the headlines since the day before the, the mail even the mail, wherever she's hidden the mail like every illiterate in this whole illiterate country I have to watch the news trimmed to fit that damned little screen between the hemorrhoid and false teeth commercials, can you imagine what the rest of the audience looks like? America has taken Spot to its heart, did you see it last night? Every idiot in sight down there with something to sell, dog candy, hot dogs, Free Spot! buttons, Free Spot! T shirts, Spot dolls with huge wet eyes and that whole hideous Cyclone Seven? peddling this take apart puzzle model and a game where you try to get the dog out with magnets shaped like a dog bone? Marching around for animal rights, artists' rights, black rights, right to life, abortion, gun control, Jesus loves and the flags, Stars and Stripes, Stars and Bars and then somebody . . .

—Oscar, just . . .

—Yes and then somebody throws a beer bottle and they . . .

—And Father right in the midst of it, that's . . .

—And why shouldn't he be! Why shouldn't he Christina he started it all didn't he? with that, that decision he wrote for this awful little dog? Schoolchildren sending in donations so this cheap sentimental vision of our great republic shall not perish from the earth, you know that story by Stephen Crane? A Small Brown Dog? where a lonely little boy and a simpering brown dog make friends and the whole thing gets so syrupy the drunken father finally throws the dog out the window? I'd do the same thing, it's being reprinted everywhere how the same man who wrote it could have written The Red Badge of Courage, you think they're not
making that into a television special too? Everybody grabbing part of the act, the Civil War nobody gives one damn for it till they see these headlines PATRIOTIC GORE IN NINETY MILLION DOLLAR SPECTACULAR, have you seen it?

—That review in the Times? It was . . .

—No the movie! the movie! Isn't that what I asked you? if you'd just go see the movie? They steal the whole, how many, two years? three years I worked on that play? They step in and steal the whole thing and you can't even take three hours to go see what they . . .

—Oscar it's not that simple. You know Harry's up to his eyes in work and you don't really know what they've done after all, I mean you haven't actually seen the movie yourself yet and . . .

—Yes I know I haven't actually seen the movie myself yet! I haven't actually been out playing baseball myself yet either! if that's what you, why I asked you to go see it I can't even read about it where is it, that review will you look over there? on the sideboard there? unless she's burned it, all I could read was that headline. And that ad. Did you see that Harry? that full page ad? Based on a true story with the picture of that idiot Christina wait, where are you going.

—I'm just going to look for . . .

—I just told you I can't read it didn't I? without my glasses? If neither one of you can bother to go to the movie can you at least take a whole minute and a half to read me the review?

—Oscar try to calm down. Here it is, Harry can read it I'm just going to look for that woman, I mean you know it's quite rude of you to call her that don't you, I'm sure she has a name and Harry? that bag of groceries?

—In the kitchen, on the floor by the sink, no look Oscar. The whole point of the . . .

—That ad yes. Based on a true story, did you see it?

—That's what I'm talking about, that's the . . .

—And the review there it is yes, there it is read it. Read it.

—Do you want the credits and all the . . .

—No no no later, no just read it.

—PATRIOTIC GORE IN NINETY MILLION DOLLAR SPECTACULAR. The full fury of what remains our nation's most searing rite of passage, the American Civil War, bursts from the screen in the epic proportions of this three hour, ninety million dollar saga of historical artifice and grisly reality, The Blood in the Red White and Blue, produced and directed by Hollywood's reigning wunderkind Constantine Kiester. Unlike the big budget pictures which followed Mister Kiester's initial gory box office triumph, the Africa extravaganza Urubu . . .

—Do you believe it? He made a big movie about Africa with these special effects that made you throw up so they give him ninety million
dollars to make a Civil War movie with battle scenes that make you throw up, Constantine Kiester. Do you believe it? Nobody's named that. If you were named that you'd change it no but go on, read it. Go on.

—Unlike the big budget pictures which followed Mister Kiester's initial gory box office triumph, the Africa extravaganza Uruburu, both the Vietnam comedy Armageddon Blueplate Special and his ‘twenties gangster satire The Rotten Club appeared to have been filmed unfettered by the restraints of a script, with a story patched together as an afterthought, whereas here he is fortunate in dealing from the start with a story line strong enough to accommodate even the severely limited talents of Robert Bredford in the leading role, that of a young man who resolves his divided loyalties in the country torn asunder by Civil War by sending up substitutes to fight in his place in both the Union and Confederate armies, where both are killed in the bloodiest . . .

—At Antietam isn't it! Isn't it?

—in the bloodiest single day of the war, September seventeenth eighteen sixty two, at the Antietam creek in . . .

—There, I told you! It's the same story it's exactly the same, they stole it. It's that simple, they stole it.

—You'd have to prove they stole it, Oscar.

—Well of course they did, it's my grandfather isn't it? the play I wrote about my own grandfather, it says it right there in their ad. Based on a true story, they . . .

—What I'm trying to tell you Oscar, don't you see? That can put it right out in the public domain where they can claim fair use, where anybody can use it, it's even been in some of the papers down there hasn't it? This trash they're printing about madness in your family? Trying to use these stories about your grandfather to get at your father over this Szyrk case they'll dig up anything they can, if you . . .

—Do you think they haven't called here? One of these, these mush-mouths from something called the South Georgia Pilot and how familiar was I with my grandfather's voting record on the Holmes Court back in the twenties pretty far over to the left he thought, maybe a little tainted with a breath of antiSemitism? antiniggra? That my great grandfather was in the diplomatic corps over there in France when the communists were acting up back in the eighteen forties and maybe I could tell him a little about my grandfather's second marriage? Ask him what the hell business that is of his and he says not his, no, the public, that it's history, it's the public's right to know, that the . . .