Talking in Bed (28 page)

"So what?" Paddy asked. "Black, white, pink—you punch him back, guy punches you. That's the way it works—boom, boom."

"No, it doesn't." Rachel gave him an impatient, silencing look. Sometimes she got this same look when he tried to sweet-talk her during sex.

"How does it work, then?"

"There are many other options besides 'boom, boom,'" she said vaguely.

Paddy sighed: well, it was her son, she could handle it, discuss options. He would stay for a few minutes, maybe drink a beer, then head home. They weren't going to bed anyway, that much was clear. And his hands were killing him; maybe this was the onset of arthritis. His father had had arthritis.

"If I'd hit him, then his friends would have maybe done something," Marcus said. It was the longest sentence the boy had ever addressed to Paddy.

"True," Paddy said. "But usually guys go one on one, you ever notice that? Usually the friends just step back."

"Really?" Marcus said, peering with his one slitty eye at Paddy.

"Absolutely." Paddy's last fight had been at a bar in Normal ten years ago. He frowned. "Well, maybe not with blacks. I've never hit a black guy. I've had words." Arguing over a bid, over a parking space, over a ding in the paint. Paddy could remember being in the wrong, which he decided not to mention to snotty little Marcus, who thought Paddy was always in the wrong anyway. "The thing about black people," Paddy said, "is that they seem wound tighter than us."

Rachel opened her mouth to disagree—Paddy could see that knee-jerk response—but Marcus said, "You're right!"

Rachel shut her mouth. Then Marcus launched into a long description of the black kids at his school. There were two types: the ones who hung back and made no noise, trying to become white, Marcus proposed, and the noisy ones who hung together, yelling, slapping each other, hooting in halls, jabbing at the air, swaggering, inexplicable. The quiet ones were fearful, the noisy ones unapproachable. He'd tried to be an exemplary citizen, encouraging tolerance, going out of his way to extend friendliness, and where had it gotten him? Punched in the face. The unfairness made him furious.

"I know what you mean," Paddy said. "Makes you mad, doesn't it? That's why you should punch back, just get really dang mad." He held up his hand, because he knew Rachel was going to disagree. She was going to disagree and then they'd have to discuss it later. Discussing it later would be a waste of their private time together; so Paddy tempered his advice, although he still felt Marcus ought to have punched the boy. "Ordinarily," Paddy said, "I would recommend punching back. But with black people, I just don't know. Haven't got experience. It shouldn't be any different, but maybe it is. Maybe you ought to go punch your bed? Or kick your bathtub?"

"Kick the bathtub?" Rachel said. "What sort of advice is that?"

Paddy shrugged, but Marcus was nodding. "Good advice," Marcus said. In his mind, he was back on the train, throwing his fist and foot over and over again into the boy who'd hit him, hoping blood or sweat might splatter the two women who'd witnessed the original punch and done nothing.

Rachel observed her lover and her son candidly. Paddy shrugged ■when she caught his eye, smiling in his friendly way; Marcus looked thoughtful, less pathetic than before holding his limas. It was as if agreement had been reached about a troubling and persistent problem. Almost palpably, the different disappointments that had bothered each of the three of them lifted; they shifted in their chairs and began looking forward to dinner.

***

"He should write his feelings down," Evan said to Zach. "He should explore the contradictory nature of his response. He feels singled out and unfairly attacked. Well, that's exactly how black people feel. That's exactly what prompted his attack."

Zach blinked, wondering what his father would serve him for dinner. Meals here had grown more and more incomprehensible. Instead of shopping at health food stores the way he used to, his father now bought takeout and then complained when the food was unhealthful. Typically he purchased the most wholesome-looking thing on the menu, which frequently was the least flavorful, and then criticized its blandness. It was Zach's experience that all the really good food was not good for you; you'd think his father would have figured this out by now. Down on Clark, they'd find Thai food, Ethiopian, Jamaican. Zach imagined steaming boxes on the table...

"But," his father went on concerning Marcus, "he probably did something to provoke getting hit."

"Why?"

"The boy didn't hit
you,
did he?"

"No."

"That's what I mean. That is exactly what I mean. You don't get in fights, you don't show up with a broken nose, you don't go around..." Evan stopped. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes and forehead and hair roughly, as if trying to scrub out thoughts. He looked sick, in Zach's opinion, like he was coming down with a cold, like he was coming down with whatever Zach's grandfather had had before he died. In Zach's opinion, Ev needed to go home, too, down to their warm apartment in Lincoln Park, to a tableful of food, to Rachel.

"I don't think he did anything to make that boy hit him," Zach said, remembering that it was his own clutter of bags that had started the whole thing. "What are we going to eat for dinner?"

"Why didn't Marcus come with you?" his father asked, his glasses now back on his face, resting on his wrinkles.

Zach shrugged, trying to look innocently perplexed. His father's apartment was cold and loud, lacking all the soft things, like curtains and rugs and pillows. Other people in the building had televisions, but not his father. Other people had food on their shelves and a lot of lights on, but not his father. "Could we go see Gerry?" he suddenly asked. Since his mother and brother were clearly out of the question, he resorted to his uncle, whom he hadn't seen in months. "I'd like to see Gerry," he said, desperate to see somebody besides his father.

So, with some difficulty, Ev located his brother, who was staying not with the first people Ev phoned but with the eighth, a linking chain like a relay race that intrigued as well as irritated him. "What do you mean, 'Who's this?'" he shouted into the receiver. "Who's
this?
" Gerry had sequestered himself like a celebrity, was hidden behind many layers of people, all of whom required proof of Ev's right to know where his own brother was. Finally, it was left that Gerry would telephone within the next half-hour if he wished to be in touch. Ev slammed down the phone and glowered at Zach. Outside, it had grown dark.

"You happy?" he said.

Zach sighed. "I guess," he said bleakly, hoping his uncle would phone soon.

Instead, Gerry showed up at the apartment door forty minutes later. He'd called Rachel to get directions. He stank, but he hugged Zach long and hard.

"How's it hanging, men?"

Evan absorbed his brother's new persona: confident, well dressed. He wore a suit under his coat and muffler, a navy one, and black shoes. He looked theater-bound, and as if he'd been eating a lot lately; his disposition was not strung-out but jolly, as if he'd had two stiff drinks at a rollicking party just before coming up. His face held the high color of gin blossom; his nose was a merry alcoholic berry on his face.

"New digs," he said of Ev's apartment. "Why do you suppose they call it
falling
in love?" he asked his brother and nephew, apropos of nothing, as usual.

Zach laughed. He'd convinced his father not only to find his uncle but to order pizza. Now he busied himself with the pepperoni and cheese—his piece plus the whole surface of his father's, which Ev had scraped off—pouring on crushed red pepper as a way of warming himself up. His uncle was silly, as always, and that cheered him. He couldn't figure out what bothered his parents so gravely about Gerry. You could forget he didn't have a home or a job; he seemed perfectly content, as if he didn't know people considered him incomplete. He always left something behind when he went, a gift of some sort, and tonight he bestowed on Zach both a two-dollar bill and a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar. Zach loved exclusive mementos; Gerry had given him countless unique tokens, including an Oscar Mayer wienie whistle and a first-day cancellation Elvis stamp.

"Who'd you
fall
in love with?" Zach asked.

"Where'd you get the suit?" asked his father.

"Oh, Ev, you always want to spoil things." Gerry sagged like a sad clown onto the futon. To Zach, he said, "I
fell
in love with Yolanda, an improv girl."

"Improv!" Zach said. He licked his greasy fingers and smiled.

"Yes, she improvises. When you meet her you ask her to show you an assembly line or a country-western singer dry-out retreat." Gerry slid from the folded futon onto the floor, as if still in the process of falling, complaining of the lubricity of the furniture.

"Lubricity." Zach giggled.

His father had brought a kitchen chair into the room and was sitting on it with his legs crossed. Zach's father didn't mind sitting like a girl, with his legs crossed up high and his fingers laced together. Only recently had Zach begun to notice how feminine his father's gestures were, how if he imitated them he got ridiculed by classmates. Sometimes he wanted to tell his father, in case he didn't know. Other times, he suspected his father of
wanting
to be misunderstood, to be thought of as pussy, just to be different from other men. For gestures, Zach had begun looking to Paddy, who liked to pull up chairs and sit astride them like a coach, who flung open the refrigerator and then closed it with his foot.

His uncle Gerry was talking about Yolanda and comedy, but Zach's father had become impatient and stood up. Gerry immediately stopped talking. "What?" he said.

"I've got a headache," Ev said. "I think I'll lie down." He first crushed the pizza box with unnecessary force and then strode off to the bedroom and shut the door.

Gerry said, "He doesn't look so good."

Zach agreed. They smiled at each other. "There's not much to do here, is there?" Gerry said eventually, looking around the empty room.

"No," Zach said.

"I've only been here this once, and I could be wrong, but I think I like your old place better."

"Me, too."

"Maybe Evan will go home soon."

"Maybe."

"You want to go cruise around?" Gerry asked. "I don't have a car or anything, but we can ride the trains for a while if you want."

"O.K.," Zach said, eager to get out of his father's depressing apartment. He couldn't imagine what his father did here all by himself. It was the kind of place where homework became entertainment.

From his bedroom, Ev heard his son and brother laughing. He liked having them there, on the other side of his door. He liked being near them yet not with them. He liked their existence on the other side of the door from his existence. It was a peculiar satisfaction, having guests in another part of the apartment.
Apartment,
Ev thought: apart. Yet together. Then Zach rapped on his door to tell him he and Gerry were going for a train ride.

"Be careful," Ev said, opening the door. He found that he actually
did
have a headache now, as if his power of suggestion were that potent. He handed Zach a ten-dollar bill surreptitiously while Gerry used the toilet. "Don't tell Gerry you've got it unless you run into trouble. You know my number here?"

"Duh, Dad."

Ev crossed the room to open the front door for them. He resisted asking the things that most interested him: where had Gerry's suit come from? Who was this Yolanda person really? "Be careful," he told his brother noting now the frayed jacket collar, the sheen of thrift store garment, the odor of used belongings. "Be back in a couple of hours, O.K.? And walk him all the way to the door here. He's only ten," he said, indicating Zach.

"Eleven," Zach corrected him.

"Eleven," Ev amended. But he knew Gerry had no full way of processing cautionary information—never had, never would; Ev set down the rules mostly for Zach's benefit. "Have fun," he added as they thumped down the four floors. He wished they would stay, laugh some more where he could hear them.

Later he would remember his scorn for Gerry's mothball-scented suit, his dress shoes. Later, after Zach returned alone, ambling from the station, Ev would curse Gerry, not yet knowing it was the last time he would see his brother alive.

I
N HIS APARTMENT
, a nest directly in the city's flow, uncushioned beside elevated trains and busy police station, above liquor store, next to taquito shop, and catty-cornered from newsstand, Evan dreamed of the wilderness. In the hubbub of urban uproar, he dreamed fervently of serene vistas, places he, city cynic, had never visited in his waking life, blinding blue skies, luscious green trees, mountains the color of which he had to concoct out of whole cloth (they were purple, as in the song). In bed he heard and felt the lumbering rumble of traffic and commerce and the strident tone of crime, and even knew, in the way self-conscious people know, that he was lying above the thick city squalor but he
felt
the sun, unadulterated, resurrecting something dormant, something embryonically hopeful, in himself. In his dream, he felt pleasantly intoxicated, as if high, reveling in the moment rather than experiencing his customary dread of the impending. In his dream, he ignored his anxieties. In his dream, he knew Joni was dead, but he was also holding her hand, nothing more, and they were walking in the overwhelming, luminous, yet fragile landscape where she'd last been. In his dream, he knew he was deluded—his knowledge was the black smoke that floated the illusion, that crept along the periphery of his vision, bubbling up in ominous vapors—but he also knew he could control it, could will a few more moments of abandon, could ride the ghostly crest before crashing once more into Chicago's stark gray morning.

***

Paddy dreamed of the Coles' coffee table again, only this time he'd broken it (he'd known all along he would end up breaking it, he could have predicted it from the beginning; it was smart and art, and he wasn't). He'd put his foot through the glass right into the girl's stomach, the way a farm boy could be expected to. Her hand had fallen to the floor and then he'd managed to crush it, too, as he stumbled in the rubble. Rachel was shaking her head, not even angry at Paddy, just so sad to see her table ruined. She certainly wasn't surprised that he'd done it; they both seemed to understand that Paddy couldn't be trusted to walk through a room without knocking over a few things.