Now and on Earth (17 page)

"Yes, you got rid of them! After I-"

"I got rid of them, and the people, and the book."

"And after you'd put me through all that, the book wasn't published!"

"Wasn't it?" I said. "I'd forgotten. It must have been quite a disappointment to you."

"Well," said Roberta, "I couldn't help it."

"Funny how it slipped my mind," I said. "But of course I wasn't really interested in the thing."

Roberta's mouth shut, and there was the old helpless puzzled sullen look around it. "I don't know why I can't ever say anything-"

"You're doing fine, honey. You've said quite a bit."

"Jimmie," said Frankie, "give up. What I want to know is-"

"I think that's the thing to do, Jimmie," said Mom, plucking absently at a safety pin in her dress.

"What-give up? I already have."

I knew that wasn't what she meant. She'd been having a long discussion with me-even if I hadn't heard it- and she (we) had reached a satisfactory conclusion. I knew it, but I wouldn't admit it. That is one trick of Mom's that exasperates me.

"Do what?" I said. "What are you talking about anyway?"

"Why-about the story. We can send it to this last magazine, they liked your work so well, and we could have a check back inside of a month. Frankie would pay you back, of course, but it would save borrowing from…"

I looked at her. I looked at Frankie and Roberta. Jo was grinning. Everyone else, apparently, seemed to think it was all right. Mom had pulled a rabbit out of a hat. She had dived down into the muck and come up with a diamond.

"Well, I will be goddamned!" I said. "I will be damned by all the saints and Christ and Mary. Willingly, by God. They can damn me individually and collectively, and I will not say a word. They can come in pairs and squads and regiments, in trucks and sidecars, on roller skates and bicycles, and they can damn me to their heart's content! What in the name of-"

I got the bottle out of the kitchen and had a slug.

"Don't pay any attention to him, Mom," said Roberta. "He's just acting crazy."

"Now look," I said. "Once and for all, I am not-"

"Jimmie! You're spilling that stuff all over the rug!"

"-I positively will not write another story. I'll peck horse-turds with the sparrows-"

"Jimmie! You dirty thing!"

"I'll swill slop with the hogs; I'll peddle French postcards; I'll bend over bathtubs-"

"Jimmie!"

"I'll adopt Frankie's triplets or whatever she has and give them the same thoughtful and tender rearing I'd give my own. But I will not- -I utterly by God will not write another story!"

I sat down again.

"He means he won't write another story," Frankie remarked idly to Roberta.

"Oh," said Roberta.

"Well," said Mom. "I don't see why not."

I choked on the drink I was taking.

"Mom," said Frankie.

"Well, I don't," said Mom. "Of course, this isn't the best place in the world to write, but you can't always have things just like you want them. Why look at the way Jack London did, Jimmie! He-"

"Now just a minute," I said. "I want to introduce a piece of evidence. Will you look at this for just a minute?"

Mom looked at the black-and-white photostat and handed it back. "I don't see what your birth-certificate has to do with it."

"It establishes the fact that I am not Jack London? It proves conclusively that I am not Jack London, but a guy named James Dillon? It-"

"You'd better stop acting so crazy, Jimmie," said Roberta. "You know how you'll get."

"No, you're not Jack London," said Mom, fumbling faster with the safety pin. "Jack London didn't give up just because he didn't have everything right like he wanted it. He wrote on fishing boats and in lumber camps and-"

"Yes, and I wrote in caddie houses and hotel locker rooms and out on the pipeline; I wrote between orders of scrambled eggs and hot beef sandwiches; I wrote in the checkroom of a dance hall; I wrote in my car while I was chasing down deadbeats and skips; I wrote while I was chopping dough in a bakery. I held five different jobs at one time and I went to school, and I wrote. I wrote a story a day every day for thirty days. I wrote-"

"I think we'd all better go to bed," said Roberta. "Come on, hon-"

"I will not go to bed!"

"I didn't mean anything," said Mom. "I was just saying-"

"You didn't read your Jack London far enough. He began slipping off the deep end when he was thirty. Well I'm thirty-five. Thirty- five, can you understand that? And I've written three times as much as London wrote. I-"

"Let's skip it," said Frankie.

"You skip it! Skip through fifteen million words for the Writers' Project. Skip through half a million for the foundation. Skip through the back numbers of five strings of magazines. Skip through forty, fifty, yes, seventy-five thousand words a week, week after week, for the trade journals. Skip through thirty-six hours of radio continuity. Do you know what that means-thirty-six hours? Did you ever sit down and write thirty-six hours of conversation? Conversation that had to sparkle; had to make people laugh or cry; had to keep them from tuning to another station. Did you? Did you?"

"Please, Jimmie…"

"Of course you didn't. Why should you? What would it get you? What did it get me? Shall I tell you? You're damned right I shall. It got me a ragged ass and beans three times a week. It got me haircuts in barber colleges. It got me piles that you could stack washers on. It got me a lung that isn't even bad enough to kill me. It got me in a dump with six strangers. It got me in jail for forty-eight hours a week and a lunatic asylum on Sunday. It got me whisky, yes, and cigarettes, yes, and a woman to sleep with, yes. It got me twenty-five thousand reminders ten million times a day that nothing I'd done meant anything. It got me this, this extraordinarily valuable, this priceless piece of information that I'm not…"

I opened my eyes and said, "Jack London."

I was sitting on the divan. Roberta had her arm around me. Frankie was holding out a drink.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I guess I slopped over."

"I didn't mean you hadn't worked hard," said Mom. "I know how hard you've worked."

"You'd better go to bed, Mom," said Frankie. "I'm going to turn in as soon as-"

"No, I'm all right," I said. "Now that we've buried the dead, let's take up the living. 'What do you think we'd better do, Frankie?"

"Well-what do you think about Moon?"

"I don't know. He spends a lot. He might not have it."

"Yeah. I know."

"You could borrow the money if you had to? A hundred bucks is a pretty stiff loan for a shark."

"I know that, too. I could get part of it, though. Maybe I could get part of it one place and part another."

"You're not going to, though," said Mom. "And that's final."

I couldn't see, at the time, why Mom was so dead set against it. Frankie's got money from sharks before. And this was certainly an emergency.

"Why not, Mom?"

"Because there's other-because that Moon can just be made to come across."

"What if he won't?"

"Well, he'll have to."

"Oh, for-well, we don't have to decide anything tonight," I said. "We don't even know of a doctor yet, anyway."

"Jimmie."

"Yes."

"Are you asleep yet?"

I wanted to say yes, yes, I'm asleep, but I knew I hadn't better. "No, honey," I said. "I'm still awake."

"Well-Jimmie-"

"Yes."

"Did you mean all those things you-"

"No, honey. I was just raving. You know how I get."

"You said some pretty mean things, Jimmie."

I patted her on the bottom. Her nightdress was up, and it was bare. She turned, facing me.

"You really didn't mean them?"

"No."

"And you really do love me?"

"That's one thing you can count on. No matter what I say or do or where I am, I'll always love you."

And it was and it is true.

I had my mind on that-the abstract-and I didn't notice when she wiggled closer.

"You don't act like you loved me."

"I'm sorry, honey."

"You-you never kiss me or pet me any more."

"I'm sorry, dear."

"Well, you don't, Jimmie."

"Sorry."

She leaned over me and pressed her lips against mine in a long kiss, and her shoulder straps were down and one of her breasts slid under my armpit.

"Good night, Jimmie."

"Good night, honey."

Thinking. And worn out. And I had no more emotion to spend.

I was thinking of why I couldn't talk to Frankie; of how she had got to be like this.

A little girl who was big for her age, a little girl with yellow hair who was thirteen in years and eighteen in size; whose eyes were as innocent and blue as a ten-year-old's. Walking down Commerce Street, the little girl and I…

"Who was that woman that spoke to you, Jimmie?"

"No one."

"You know lots of women, don't you, Jimmie? Every time we go down the street-"

"Forget it."

"One of the girls in the coffee shop wants to come out to our place and live. I told her she couldn't sleep with you because Pop-"

"Don't talk to those tramps."

"A man gave me a whole dollar last night, and he's going to give me another one tonight. Can I put one of them in my bank?"

"I guess so."

"And he said if I'd meet him after work, he'd give me five dollars. He said-"

"You point the son-of-a-bitch out to me! I'll have him rode."

"But he's a nice man, Jimmie! He said he knew you and it would be all-"

"Just point him out."

And a big girl, living with relatives, taking magazine subscriptions from door to door, selling Christmas cards, going to school more and more infrequently. A big girl who could walk into a garage or a barber shop or a warehouse and hand back as good as she was given. A girl who studied
Harper's
and who read the
New Yorker
, who memorized good English and wisecracks because they were valuable to have.

And a woman. An overweight overdressed woman with blondined hair and too much lipstick who sat behind the cash register in coffee shops and barbershops and cigar stores:

"Hi-ya, Jack. What you got up your pants leg besides your sock?"

"Say, Frankie, you got to hear this one. This one'll slay you."

"Just a minute… How do you do, Mr. Pendergast. Was everything satisfactory?"

"Very. Something for you."

"Thank you, so much… Now what were you saying, Jack?"

A woman who knew there was something wrong and wanted to get out of it. A woman who would marry the first man who came along to get out of it. A woman who could never feel anything very deeply, regard anything very highly.

I sat up.

Roberta raised her head.

"Where are you going?"

"Just to the bathroom."

"Oh. When are you coming back?"

"Do you have to go?"

"No. I just wondered."

I got my cigarettes out of my pants and went into the bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror and blew smoke out at myself and looked sinister, and heroic, and solemn. No reason. I just did it. I sat down on the stool and started thinking, and somehow a crazy story I'd read came into my mind. Crazy isn't the right word. It was by a writer named Robert Henlein, and it was one of the finest pieces technically I've ever read. Here's the gist of it:

An inmate in a private nut-house is talking to a psychiatrist. The latter is drawing him out, trying to get at the basis of the persecution complex from which the inmate is obviously suffering. The lunatic is firmly convinced that the whole world is in a conspiracy to make him do things he doesn't want to do. Everyone is plotting against him, and they always have. When he was a little boy (he relates), the other children dropped their games when he came around, and stood off by themselves, whispering and looking at him. When he entered a room where adults were talking, they stopped until he had left-

The psychiatrist laughs: Well, there's nothing very unusual about that.

Oh, but that isn't all, says the nut. When I entered college
they
wouldn't let me study the things I wanted to.
They
made me study the things that-

But you had to be equipped for a job, says the psychiatrist. Their judgment of what you needed to fit into life was probably better than yours.

No, it wasn't, insists the lunatic. When I got out, I got a job, and it didn't make sense, and
they
made me stay there against my will.

They?
Who are
they
, anyhow?

Well, my wife and my employer and all the Others. Maybe you were in on it, too.

I see, says the psychiatrist. But how do you mean-the job didn't make sense?

Why it just didn't. I slept all night so that I could be rested enough to go to work in the morning, and I got up and ate breakfast so that I'd have strength enough to get through until noon, and at noon I ate so that I'd have strength enough to get through the afternoon, and I went home at night and ate and slept again so that I could go to work the next morning, and the money I made was just enough to keep me strong and rested so that I could work so that I'd be strong and rested so that-

The psychiatrist throws up his hands: But those things are true of any job.

No, no, says the patient. No, they're not. There is work that does make sense. I know there is, if I could just find it.
They
are keeping me from it.
They
keep putting things in my path. Making me see things that aren't real. Trying to make me do something I don't want to do.

The psychiatrist shakes his head sadly and gets up and walks out.

Then comes the final scene:

The man's wife, his employer, his college teachers, and a host of other demons-yes, demons-are in conclave. There
is
a plot.

He's getting on to us, says the wife. I think he's going to run away again. What'll we do this time?

Let him go, says the psychiatrist. We'll get him back. We always get 'em back.

I guess I don't tell the thing very well. But if you read it, it'll stick in your mind for days. You get to wondering-

"Jimmie."

I jumped.

Roberta was in the doorway. Her breasts were completely bared, and her gown was hiked up. But I was thinking, and she often sleeps that way, with the thing just tied around her middle, when the weather is warm. Her breasts are so full that the gown bothers her, it seems, and she likes to spread her legs wider than it will allow, so she sleeps that way. I've asked her why she doesn't do without a gown, because there's not, much left to expose. But she says she gets cold there, and maybe she does. My unspoken theory is that she simply knows the value of understatement.

"Aren't you ever coming to bed?"

"Oh sure. Right away."

"Well come on, then."

She went back into the bedroom, and I sat there a moment longer, thinking about that crazy story that wasn't crazy. And then she hollered again and I went in to her, but I was still sort of dreaming.

I lay down and-

And there was a Fury upon me; sobbing, mad with impatience, shivering with heat: an angel-Fury with cream-yellow thighs who had made herself over, and who would never be able to unmake herself. A Frankenstein monster with silky lashes and a white smile, with breasts that turned outward with their fullness.

"
You better! You always better! You hear me? You better! What would I do if… Not-now… Don't… answer… now
…"

I don't think I had realized until then how impossibly hopeless it all was.