The Evening News (6 page)

Even schoolchildren can recite the scenario, Paul thinks. No wonder they smoke angel dust and impregnate one another by the time they are thirteen.
Carpe diem.
He knows it is insane. It is insane to sit in the faculty dining room of the student cafeteria and actually discuss with the young assistants how the world will end. His theory is that the planet itself will remain intact after the bombs are unleashed, but mammals, reptiles, birds, and most of the fish will be destroyed; plant life will be devastated, but some insects will survive, and some fish, so deep in the oceans that they continue to defy discovery. These forms of life will be left. So it will not really be the end of the world, Paul argues. Only the end of
us.
Then the analogy is humanity as dinosaur—human as extinct, lumbering beast. Our skeletons will adorn the insect museums of the future, he jokes, and future praying mantis larvae will ask their mothers what happened to the mammals, the reptiles, the birds, the large fish. Mommy, why did they become extinct? Oh, the wise praying mantis mother will say, we have any number of theories. They might have been destroyed by a supernova. Maybe large meteors fell from the sky and raised so much dust it erased the sun. Perhaps they burned too much fossil fuel and as a result of the greenhouse effect the polar icecaps melted. Some think man learned nuclear fission, but that's an extreme viewpoint. Even the ignorant aphids know not to experiment with
that.

The ground ball skips back to the pitcher. He picks it up easily and scoops it underhand to first. Out. The ball game's over.

Maria leaves the room now that the news is on. She leaves, but cannot help but listen. “Paul,” she says, “do you have to watch it?”

“What would you rather I do?” he says. “Shut my eyes? Turn on ‘The Beverly Hillbillies'?”

“Anything,” Maria says, pouring a glass of valpolicella in the kitchen. She touches her growing abdomen, is aware of the fullness of her breasts. Everything makes her think of the fate of her coming baby. The face of the Argentine widow staring grimly at the flag-draped coffin. The Irish children throwing back canisters of tear gas in the Ulster streets. Women wearing babushkas in food lines in Poland. The crack of automatic rifles in EI Salvador. The very worst are the pictures of the starving children in Africa. Arms like wooden spoons, distended stomachs, flies crawling on their nostrils and open lips. Why can't the news limit itself to the weather? she thinks. Cars abandoned in ragged rows on a highway after a blizzard, homes that shouldn't have been built on mountainsides in the first place sliding down a lake of mud. These are the things Maria can watch, can understand. Hurricanes. Floods. A tragic fire. Children playing with matches. Her baby will never play with matches. Already she has started to childproof the house.

Can the world be childproofed for her and Paul? she wonders.

They always end the evening news with a light note, a humorous touch. Exit laughing. A story about the grandmother in Florida who opened her house trailer to hundreds of foster children over the past thirty years—“There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.” The Oklahoma cowboy who lived in a cage full of rattlesnakes for several months but who now wouldn't be listed in
The Guinness Book of World Records.
Pathos and irony. In Virginia Beach a man hacked his mother-in-law to death with a hatchet and claimed as his defense that he thought she was a raccoon.

Absurd. A commercial for something called Intellivision begins, and a shill praises it over other video-game systems
because only Intellivision offers the total destruction of a planet. So their gravest fear is now a feature on a video game? The glass of red wine falls from Maria's hand. It shatters on the linoleum like a destructing planet. Paul rushes into the kitchen. And that's the way it is—

Later that evening, the television off, Paul sits on the couch with Maria. Her head rests against his chest. His arm hangs over her shoulder. They have sat like this since the room began to darken. Neither has wanted to disturb the other, to get up and turn on a light. The open window next to the sofa flutters the thin curtains that hang over it. From the even way he is breathing, Maria thinks Paul is asleep.

“Are you sleeping?” she whispers.

Paul's breathing stops, then starts again. “No.”

“You never told me why you came home early today.”

He lets out a long breath. “My three o'clock didn't read the assignment, so I told them to go to the registrar and withdraw from school.”

“Why?” Maria asks.

“Sometimes the best way to get people's attention is to exaggerate.”

Maria thinks about exaggeration. Then she swallows. “I can't tell you how much I want to get high.”

“Let me give you a backrub.”

“I don't want a backrub.”

“Have a glass of wine.”

“I'm sick of wine.”

“I'm sorry.” Paul doesn't know what else to say.

Her hand clutches his arm. The strength surprises him. “Are you sure having the baby is the right thing?”

“Yes,” Paul says, too quickly. He isn't sure.

“I wouldn't do this for anyone else, you know.”

“I know.” His hand pats her hand. “It's the right thing,
Maria.” The hand squeezes her wrist. “Everything will be O.K.”

She turns her head, trying in the darkness to look at him, but she can't see any of the features of his face. She can only hear his even, reassuring voice as he begins to explain that even though an event seems likely it is never guaranteed to happen, that it's useless to walk through life feeling depressed and powerless, that the birth of a baby is an affirmation, an act of great courage, faith, and hope. For all we know, Paul continues, when things look their very bleakest we'll be visited by spaceships from a distant galaxy, and the alien life forms will help us solve all our problems. Maria scoffs at the idea, though it's tempting to believe. Paul softly laughs and says it comes from a movie, a classic,
The Night of the Living Dead.
Maria doesn't laugh at the joke. No, Paul says, it was
The Day the Earth Stood Still,
the best science-fiction movie ever made. Maria says she wishes the earth
would
stand still. It can't, Paul says, suddenly serious. He tries to think of something else to say.

“Sometimes when I come down here in the morning I still expect to see Bingo,” Maria says. Paul's eyes dart in the darkness, looking for the dog. Maria sits up and faces him. She places her hands in his. “Why did she have to die?”

Paul feels on safer ground now. He knows the answer to the question. “Free enterprise. We were ripped off. We were suckered. We live in a country where salesmen can dress up like doctors and lovable little puppy dogs can grow up allergic to life.”

“And we're not?” Maria says.

Paul reaches for all the hopefulness he has to offer. “No,” he says. “Maria, we're the luckiest people in the world. Look at us. We're both alive and healthy. Our baby's on its way. We have a house, work, food. Ninety-five percent of the world would give their arms and legs to have half of what we have.”
Paul's voice is high, speedy. “And maybe our baby will be the one who helps solve the world's problems. Maybe not. But if the child ever asks me why we agreed for it to be born—” He hesitates. His eyes search the darkness for the answer. “I'll say I thought having a chance to live was better than no chance, even if we live to see the world destroyed.”

Maria laughs, terrified. “I can just see it. The bombs will be falling down around our heads and you'll be explaining all of that to our baby.”

“I'll be digging a hole, Maria. I'll wear the colander on my head. You and the baby bring the cans of beans. We'll do what we can to survive.”

“I'll just stand in the backyard and hold my baby and weep.”

“No, you won't.” Paul shakes her shoulders. “We'll struggle. We're not cynics. We'll march in the streets. We'll influence opinion. We'll do what we must to survive.” He takes her in his arms and holds her tightly.

Maria feels his arms around her and relaxes, thinking about her coming baby. Choose us, she prays, because we're not cynics. Choose us because Paul is so stubborn. Because I'll hold you to my breast until I die. The idea of holding her child gives her comfort, and Maria imagines that at this moment a very special and wise and trusting soul chooses the body floating in the warm waters of her womb. She believes she can feel the soul as it enters her body. Yes. The child within her stirs. Tears of wonder fall from her eyes.

Paul feels Maria's tears and thinks she is despairing. “Please,” he says. “Let's not think anymore. Maria, please.”

She cries freely now, rejoicing.

Paul goes on thinking. He gives full play to his doubts. Maybe this
is
the very worst moment to be alive, especially in America, the eye of the dragon, belly of the beast. Maybe this
is
the absolutely worst moment to have the audacity to give
birth to an innocent. Maria's shoulders shake with what Paul thinks is great sadness.

He stares past her at the television squatting smugly in the corner of the room. Before the end comes, he thinks, everyone will see it, in living color, splashed across a hundred million TV screens. The multicolored maps, areas of greatest risk, perhaps even the warheads' trajectories. Certainly the assurance that the war is winnable. Certainly the glib warnings to stay calm. Maria is filled with joy. I'll make the colors so intense they'll blind me, he thinks. I'll turn up the volume until I grow deaf. He squeezes Maria so fiercely that she makes a squeak. Then I'll open all the windows, and I'll throw open the front door, and I'll turn on the water in the bathroom and the kitchen, and I'll flick on every light, turn on the stereo, the oven, the furnace, the air conditioner— Then I'll wait in the backyard with Maria, with our baby. Paul's nightmare stops. His hand reaches down and touches the swelling roundness of Maria's belly. She is soft and warm, happy, in his arms. He feels the darkest despair he has ever known.

The curtains over the open window next to them billow suddenly like an enormous cloud.

My name is Thaddeus Alexander Cooper III, but you can call me Thaddeus. I'm sitting here in Marsha's bedroom looking out the window and writing this, and I'm wondering when it's going to rain. I know that it will rain. That and the fact that I'm writing this to save my goddamn life are the only two things I'm certain of. So try to hear me out. And realize, as well, that I plan to milk this. For all that I can get. You've been warned. As my father, may his dear dead soul rest forever in peace, always used to say, “Move away from the window, lady, can't you see I'm driving?” I ask that you give me room.

My mother once told me, “Thaddeus, someday you're going to meet someone who's just a little bit bigger than you are and he's going to kick in your ass.” She'd wave her big spoon at me and wipe her hands on her apron when she'd say that. Now that I think, she's told me that countless times.

But neither my father nor my mother, nor my Uncle Karl, nor Marsha, for that matter, has anything to do with this story. This story will be about the rain. You should know that my father is no longer with us; he pulled the cord and got off this bus blocks ago. That my mother is a maker of soup. I dislike soup. That my uncle is my uncle. That Marsha is a writer. These are the facts.

I'll tell you this: this is lie. You be my judge. I'm writing
this to get into Marsha's underpants. That's the truth, my reader.

Marsha is the kind of girl who likes—how shall I put it? Marsha likes the kind of boy who does things with seriousness, with direction, as she puts it, adding that the world already has more than its share of buffoons like me. Obviously, I disagree. Thaddeus Alexander Cooper III is no buffoon, and if you'd like to compare philosophies, Horatio, I'll tell you now that mine is the one that best enables me to survive. That's what it's all about, isn't it? I pound these drab green dormitory walls and argue; I make suggestive comments and pray that Marsha will understand. I quote to her the wisdom of my father: “If you wanted to be let off in front of your house, my pretty, why the hell didn't you take a taxi?” I hope you, reader, can catch my drift. “I'm not here delivering pizzas,” I tell her. “Marsha, you'll get only what I have to give.”

Which isn't pizza, seriousness, or direction, though I do badly want to direct something between her legs. I know what I know; I have what I need. I am the son of my father, the son of a bus driver, the son of fixed routes and scheduled stops. I have what I need.

With the exception of the story that will save me. That my dead father failed to leave me, and I've looked for it in soup bowls and not found it. My uncle offers me only the back of his hand. And Marsha? Marsha claims to be saving herself.

“For what?” I ask.

She shrugs. Her nipples brush against her blouse as she does this.

“The world could end tomorrow,” I tell her.

She shakes her silly head.

And I shake mine. These students, you realize, haven't yet learned how to live. Sometimes they make me feel like a wolf in their midst. I'm not a student, you see. I attend no classes. I pay no tuition. I don't have an I.D.

Though you've seen me around. I'm the guy who holds up the line trying to explain how I left my I.D. in my other pants. I'm the guy who sits in the frantic cafeteria during finals week sipping water and doing double acrostics. I'm the guy leaning against the tree on the first day of spring. I smile. I nod. I wink as you walk by.

You too shake your head.

But Marsha didn't the night I met her, though I can't be entirely certain since it happened over the phone. I have a friend named Stuart who has a friend named Jo who was Marsha's roommate until very recently, and I first heard from them that Marsha was a wonderful and beautiful girl.