Something Happened (15 page)

“The salad is good, Sarah,” my wife says.

“I did what you told me.”

I am not comfortable having our maids serve us our food at our places (neither are the children), and I won’t allow it (even though my wife, I suspect, would still prefer to have it done that way, as it was done in her own family when she was a child, as she still sees it done in good middle-class homes on television and in the movies, and as she imagines it is also done at Buckingham Palace and the White House). I am not comfortable being served by maids
anywhere
, even less so in other people’s homes (where I am never certain how much food I am supposed to take, always have difficulty manipulating the serving forks and spoons from a sideways position, and am in continual anxiety that I am going to bump the meat and vegetable platters with my shoulder or elbow and send them spilling to the floor. Of course, that’s never happened—yet). I suffer the same discomfort even when they are white (the maids, I mean, not the friends. I don’t have any Black friends and probably never will, although I do see more and more pretty Black girls these days that whet my appetite. They’re all out of reach for me by now, I guess, unless they’re Cuban or Puerto Rican).

“I think it’s good,” my wife says. “I hope it’s good.”

“I won’t like it,” my boy says.

“That’s enough,” I tell him.

“Okay.” He retreats quickly. He cannot stand it when I am displeased with him.

“What is it?” my daughter asks.

“Chicken livers and noodles in that wine sauce you like with beef. I think you’ll like it.”

“I won’t,” mumbles my boy.

“Will you at least taste it?”

“I don’t like liver.”

“It isn’t liver. It’s chicken.”

“It’s chicken liver.”

“Please taste it.”

“I’ll taste it,” he answers. “And then I’ll want my hot dogs.”

“Can I have mine?”

My wife and I watch with bated breath as my daughter pokes at the meat solemnly, almost lugubriously,
with her fork and touches a small piece to her mouth.

“It’s good,” she says without enthusiasm and begins eating.

My wife and I are relieved.

(My daughter is somewhat tall and overweight and should be dieting; but my wife, who reminds her endlessly to diet, makes such things as noodles and serves large portions, and my daughter will probably ask for more.)

“It’s delicious,” I say.

“Can I have my hot dogs?”

“Sarah, put up two frankfurters.”

“Can I have the bread back?”

I give my daughter the bread.

“I’ve got some good news,” I begin, and each of them turns to look at me. I am still brimming with excitement (and conceit) over Arthur Baron’s conversation with me: and in a sudden, generous welling of affection for them, for all three of them (they
are
my family, and I
am
attached to them), I decide to share my joyful feelings. “Yes, I think I may have some very important news for all of us.”

The three of them gaze at me now with such intense curiosity that I find myself forced to break off.

“What?” one of them asks.

“On second thought,” I hesitate, “it may not be that important. In fact, now that I think of it, it isn’t important at all. It isn’t even interesting.”

“Then why did you say it?” my daughter wants to know.

“To tantalize you,” I kid.

“What in hell does that mean?” my boy asks.

“
Do
you have something?” my wife asks.

“Oh, maybe yes,” I tease her jovially, “and maybe no.”

“To
tease
us,” my daughter exclaims to my boy with mockery and distaste.

(My daughter makes me feel foolish again. And again I have that powerful, momentary, spiteful impulse to injure her, to wound her deeply with a cutting retort, to reach out over the dining room table and smack her hard on the side of the face or neck, to
kick her viciously under the table in her ankle or shin. I can do nothing, though, but ignore her and try to maintain my facade of paternal good humor.)

“Then why don’t you tell us?” my wife inquires. “Especially if it’s good.”

“I will,” I say. “All I wanted to say,” I announce, and my spirit turns manifestly arch and tantalizing again as I pause to butter a piece of bread and take a bite, “is that I think I may have to start playing golf again.”

There is a thoughtful, puzzled, almost rebellious silence now as each of them tries to figure out before the others what it is I am waggishly withholding from them and presently intend to disclose.

“Golf?” asks my nine-year-old boy, who is still not certain what kind of game golf is, whether it is a good game or a bad one.

“Yes.”

“Why golf?” asks my wife with surprise. (She knows I hate the game.)

“Golf,” I repeat.

“You don’t even like golf.”

“I hate golf. But it may have to be golf.”

“Why?”

“I bet he’s getting a better job!” my daughter guesses. (In many ways, she is the smartest and most devious of all of us.)

“Are you?” asks my wife.

“Maybe.”

“What kind of job?” My wife’s reaction is suspicious, almost morose. I know she has assumed secretly for several years that I have been longing for a different job that would take me away from home more often.

“Selling.”

“Selling what?” asks my boy.

“Selling selling.”

For an instant, my boy is confused, almost stunned by the riddle of my reply. Then he understands it was meant as a joke, and he bursts into laughter. His eyes sparkle, and his face lights up joyously. (Everybody likes my boy.)

“Do you mean it?” probes my wife, studying me. She is still unsure whether to be pleased or not.

“I think so.”

“Will you have to travel more than you have to travel now?”

“No. Probably less.”

“Will you make more money?” my daughter asks.

“Yes. Maybe a lot more.”

“Will we be rich?”

“No.”

“Will we ever be rich?”

“No.”

“I don’t want you to travel more,” my boy complains.

“I’m not
going
to travel more,” I repeat for him, with a trace of annoyance. “I’m going to travel
less
.” (I begin to regret that I brought it up at all. The questions are coming too swiftly; I can feel my self-satisfaction ebbing away, and an army of irritations mobilizing too rapidly for me to keep track of and control. I am already replying to them with my slight stammer.)

“Are you going to start talking to yourself again?” my boy cannot resist baiting me mischievously.

“I wasn’t talking to myself,” I declare firmly.

“Yes, you were,” my daughter murmurs.

“Like last year?” my boy persists.

“I was not talking to myself,” I repeat loudly. “I was practicing a speech.”

“You were practicing it to yourself,” my boy points out.

“Will they let you make a speech this year?” my daughter asks. “At the company convention?”

“Oh, yes,” I respond with a smile.

“A long speech?”

“Oh, yes, indeed. I imagine they might let me make a speech as long as I want to at the company convention this year.”

“Will you be working for Andy Kagle?” my wife asks.

The question brings me to a halt.

“A little something like that,” I stammer evasively.
(The fun goes out of my family guessing game, and now I
am
sorry that I started it.) I laugh nervously. “It isn’t definite yet. And it’s all a pretty long way off. Maybe I shouldn’t even have mentioned it.”

“I’m glad you’ll be working for Andy Kagle,” my wife asserts. “I don’t like Green.”

“I didn’t say I’d be working for Kagle.”

“I don’t trust Green.”

“Don’t you listen?”

“Why are you snapping at me?”

“I don’t want you to be a salesman,” my daughter exclaims with unexpected emotion, almost in tears. “I don’t want you to have to go around to other people’s fathers and beg them to buy things from you.”

“I’m not going to be a salesman,” I protest impatiently. “Look, what’s everybody talking about it so much for? I haven’t got it yet. And I’m not even sure I’m going to take it.”

“You don’t have to shout at her,” my wife says.

“I’m not shouting.”

“Yes, you are,” she says. “Don’t you hear yourself?”

“I’m sorry I shouted.”

“You don’t have to snap at everybody, either.”

“And I’m sorry I snapped.”

My wife is right, this time. Without my realizing it, I have moved from optimistic conceit into a bad temper; and without my being conscious of it, my voice has risen with anger, and I have been shouting at them again. We are all silent at the table now. The children sit with their eyes lowered. They seem too fearful even to fidget. I am guilty. My forehead hurts me (with tension. Another headache is threatening). I am numb with shame. I feel so helpless and uncertain. I wish one of them would say something that would give me a clue, that would point the way I must follow toward an easy apology. (I feel lost.) But no one will speak.

I pounce upon an energetic idea. I whirl upon my son without warning, shoot my index finger out at him, and demand:

“Are you mad or glad?”

“Glad,” he cries with laughter and delight, when he recognizes I am joking again and no longer irate.

I spin around toward my daughter and shoot my index finger out at her.

“Are you mad or glad?” I demand with a grin.

“Oh, Daddy,” she answers. “Whenever you make one of us unhappy, you always try to get out of it by behaving like a child.”

“Oh, shit,” I say quietly, stung by her rebuff.

“Must you say that in front of the children?” my wife asks.

“They say it in front of us,” I retort. I turn to my daughter. “Say shit.”

“Shit,” she says.

“Say shit,” I say to my son.

He is ready to start crying.

(I want to reach out instinctively to console and reassure him and rumple his soft, sandy hair. I am deeply fond of my boy, although I am not sure anymore how I feel about my daughter.)

“I’m sorry,” I tell him quickly. (I have the shameful, shocking apprehension that if I did put my hand out to comfort him, he would cringe reflexively, as though afraid I were going to strike him. I recoil from that thought in pain.) I turn to my daughter. “I’m sorry,” I say to her too, earnestly. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. I do act like a child.” Now it is my eyes that are down. “I think I want another drink,” I explain apologetically, as I stand up. “I’m not going to eat anymore. You go on, though. I’ll wait in the living room. I’m sorry.”

They continue eating after I leave, their voices subdued.

I do such things to them, I know, even when I don’t intend to. But I cannot admit this to my wife or children. My wife would not understand. I cannot really say to my wife: “I’m sorry.” She would think I was apologizing. My wife and I cannot really talk to each other about the same things anymore; but I sometimes forget this and try. We are no longer close enough for honest conversation (although we
are
close enough for frequent sexual intercourse). She would respond with something as vacuous and
frustrating and galling as “You should be,” or “You didn’t have to snap at everybody,” or “You don’t have to shout at me that way.” As though my snapping or her snapping at me (she can snap too), were any part of the problem. She would say something exactly like that; and I would be brought to a stop again, as though slapped sharply; I would be stunned; I would feel abandoned and isolated again, and I would sink back for safety again inside my dense, dark wave of opaque melancholy; I would feel lonely and I would be brought face to face again with the fact that I have nobody in this world to confide in or reach toward for help; I would miss my mother (and my father?) and my dead big brother, and I would begin daydreaming once again about some new job with a different company that would take me far away from home more often. Someday soon someone may be dropping bombs on us. I will scream:

“
The sky is falling! They are dropping bombs!
People are on fire! The world is over! It’s coming to an end!”

And my wife will reply:

“You don’t have to raise your voice to me.”

What happened to us? Something did. I was a boy once, and she was a girl, and we were both new. Now we are man and woman, and nothing feels new any longer; everything feels old. I think we liked each other once. I think we used to have fun; at least, it seems that way now, although we were always struggling about one thing or another. I was always struggling to get her clothes off, and she was always struggling to keep them on. I remember things like that. I remember the many times I had to pull my wife’s dress up and her panties down because she didn’t like to make love outdoors, or even indoors if anyone else was even remotely in the vicinity: in the same house or apartment, in the next room (even at hotels! She would be petrified if she heard someone stirring in the adjoining room), in the
next
apartment, in the
next
house! I remember the way I’d unbutton her blouse almost anywhere to get at her bra and
breasts. (Pale blue brassieres still do drive me crazy more than black; she used to wear them.) She was always afraid we’d be caught. I didn’t care (although I might have cared if we’d ever been caught). I was always ripping open her slacks or tearing off her bathing suit or tennis shorts and flinging them away somewhere over my back as I went at her as hard and fast as I could every chance I had. I was a pretty hot kid once. I didn’t care whether she enjoyed it or not; just as long as
I
got
mine
. I was always trying to jump her. We were with her parents and her younger sister a lot then, and I would grab at her the second they all went out and try to bang her before any of them got back. In the country, during the summer, or at the seashore, I would try to lure her outside the rented house after dark and do it to her on the porch or right down on the ground or sand (although I didn’t like the sand in my clothes and hair afterward—and she didn’t like the ground, because it hurt her ass and made it black and blue). I was always pulling at her buttons and zippers and clutching and scratching at the snaps and elastic of her underthings. I was absolutely wild for her when she was a girl and I was a boy, absolutely out of my head with volcanic lust. I was all cock and hard-on. I wanted to come, come, come. I would give her no warning, no time to deliberate or converse or prepare or find any excuses for delay, and often she did not understand fully what was happening to her until I had her half undressed and was already swarming all over her, wholly on fire and stone deaf to all her objections and premonitions, and it was too late for her to make me stop. (Sometimes I would sit scheming about her all through family dinner, plotting where and how I would spring at her the moment I had the opportunity and selecting the way in which I would ravish her this time.) No matter where it was I trapped, seized, and finally overcame her (if it was anywhere outside the bolted door of our own bedroom; often it was even
behind
the locked door of our own bedroom), she would recline and heave submissively beneath me with her eyes wide open in gleaming fright, turning her gaze from one side to the
other rapidly and distressfully to make certain no one was seeing, listening, or approaching. (I think now that I probably enjoyed her terror and my violence.) I didn’t mind that her eyes were open and darting all about and that her strongest emotions were not those of passion or entirely on me, just as long as
I
had her when
I
wanted her and got what
I
wanted; it might, in fact, have added something, that tangy, triumphant sense of frenzied danger, that ability to dominate rather than merely persuade, and I often wish I were driven now by that same hectic mixture of blind ardor, haste, and tension. (It might, in fact, have added a great deal.) Maybe that’s what’s missing. I lay girls now that are as young as she was then, and much more nimble, profligate, and responsive but it isn’t as rich with impulse and excitement and generally not as satisfying afterward. (There is no resistance.) I have more control and maturity now and can manipulate and exploit them coolly and skillfully, but it isn’t nearly as much fun anymore as it used to be with her, and I miss her greatly and love us both very deeply when I remember how we used to be then. I have large rooms now with big beds and all the privacy and time I want; the girls have places of their own, or I have Red Parker’s apartment in the city and hotel rooms and suites on business trips out of town; but it’s all rather tame now, rather predictable and matter-of-fact, even with someone I am with for the very first time (and I often wonder, even while I am in the act of doing it, why I bother. I am no sooner in than I’m thinking about getting out. I no sooner come than I want to go).