Typical American (23 page)

Sometimes he drove by the building, just to feel how dispassionately he could look upon it. What self-control he'd achieved!

He was Confucius. He was Buddha. He was his idling car motor as he looked, looked, looked — observing with some satisfaction how almost impossible it was to tell from the outside of the building that inside it was collapsing. There was that one letter missing, and the framing bulged slightly out of kilter, but overall, it looked as solid as ever. It was not a building to sag pathetically. It was firm in adversity, especially the well-designed addition, which showed no cracks at all.

If only he could separate his part of the building from the part that came from Grover!

But, of course, he couldn't. He accepted this with an equanimity so complete that he had to get out of the car and go for a walk. He paced. Was it fair, what Grover had done? Was it right?

He thought how sorry he felt for Grover, stuck with his hollow victories. He thought of Grover letting Chuck in on a little scheme he'd come up with: "How about we tell him I've been thrown in the slammer ..."

Ralph calmly paced faster. Just around the block, swinging his arms with nonchalant vehemence. It was a gray day, the clouds so low and heavy and ready to rain that they begged, Ralph thought, to be punched. How sorry for Grover he felt! How sorry, sorry, sorry! His sympathy was like one of those clouds in the even blue of his calmness — that's how sorry he felt, so sorry, and sorry, and sorry. What was this frenzy of sorriness? He felt so sorry that he gave a dollar to a panhandler, so sorry that, tears leaking from his eyes, he found himself holding a door for a woman with two shopping bags and a stroller. And when he came upon a couple trying to give away a box of snarling puppies, he felt so sorry that, quick, before it rained and the box got soggy, he picked out the noisiest tough of the litter as a present for the girls.

"A dog?" said Helen, at home. "Now we really are Americanized."

Ears back, the puppy yapped furiously at her, baring his teeth

*5*

as though he'd been assigned the kitchen cabinets to defend with his life. He was a shorthaired dog, gray with black and brown spots — to call him nondescript would be a kindness. He had a flat, triangular head like a crocodile's, and his legs were strangely spindly; they looked as though they were not his legs at all, but a charitable donation from a relative with a spare set.

"I felt sorry for him," explained Ralph.

Helen frowned. "Your sister got a cat not long ago. Did I tell you? Two of them, actually."

"This has nothing to do with that/' he insisted. "This is a present for the girls."

But the girls were terrified of the dog, who, growing more and more excited, barked and lunged at Callie, and nipped Mona's socks.

"Stop!" yelled Ralph, trying to catch him.

"He bites," wailed Mona.

"And goes xu-xu" said Callie, observing the several yellow pools dotting the kitchen floor.

"Can you bring him back?" asked Helen.

The dog, still yelping, was circling the girls, who huddled together in the middle of the room. Ralph chased after him. "Come here, dog! Come here!"

"Go away," yelled Callie. "Shoo!"

"How come he doesn't bite you?" Mona cried. "How come he bit me? "

"Because you're the smallest," explained Callie.

"How come he doesn't run after Dad?"

"Because I'm not afraid of him." Ralph ordered, sternly, in a deep voice, "Stop."

The dog looked up, cocking his head. His tongue lolled, long and unnatural, out the side of his mouth.

Actually Ralph felt leery of the dog too, but because the girls were watching, he picked him up. The dog yelped some more, then licked Ralph's hand and panted before struggling away.

*53

"Please give him back," Helen begged.

By the next morning, though, the girls had decided the dog was cute. Ralph came down to breakfast to discover that Helen and they had reinstalled some old baby gates; also they had set out newspapers for the dog to go xu-xu on, and put out a plate of food. His claws, clattering across the linoleum, sounded like mah-jongg tiles in play.

"He licked me!" said Mona. "We're friends!"

"We're going to call him Daddy," said Callie. "After you."

Mona tittered.

"Girls!" admonished Helen. "We're going to find him a nice

name."

"No, Daddy, Daddy," sang the girls. "We want to name him Daddy."

"No," said Ralph firmly; and just as it had worked on the dog, it worked on his daughters.

Momentarily, at least. "How about Uncle Grover?" Callie piped up then. "Can we name him Uncle Grover?"

"He's not your uncle."

"He used to be."

"He's not anymore."

"Anyway," said Helen, "those are people, and this is a dog."

"How about —" The girls thought. "How about —"

"Grover," mused Ralph.

"Grover!" the girls shrieked. "We'll name him Grover!"

Grover wagged his spotted tail, lifted his flat head and, sidestepping the newspaper, went xu-xu again.

"He needs," said Ralph sternly, "to be trained."

Ralph had never heard of taking a dog to school, but Helen said that was exactly how dogs got trained in America, so he signed up for a class. It was good to have to be someplace every once in a while, and though he did not like the way the dogs nuzzled each other — such familiarity! it was obscene — he took intense pleasure in the classes themselves. Who would've believed people

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could reach an understanding with dogs? Ralph burst with pride when Grover was paper-trained; and when he'd shrunk the paper down and moved it successfully outside, he felt such a profound sense of accomplishment that all his organs seemed to relax and settle. He had been having some trouble with his stomach; Helen thought he was swallowing air, but it felt more like fire. Anyway, his appetite now seemed to be returning to him, and eating more put the flames out.

Ralph taught Grover to sit, and to sit and stay longer than any other dog in the class. Teaching him to stop straining maniacally on the leash was harder, but Ralph kept at it like a man who knew what he wanted, and after a while it was sheer joy to take Grover out for a walk. Particularly as Grover never bit anyone, but often looked as though he might; so that Arthur Smith, for one, was much more respectful when Ralph ran into him. A few months before, he'd asked what Ralph was going to do with the restaurant, and when Ralph answered, "We have so many buyers, we have to consider which to choose," he'd more or less snickered. "I had me a business once too," he said. Now he unsquinted his eyes and unbunched his mouth and edged away, and he wasn't the only one. In general, Ralph did not have to talk to people for as long as he used to, unless they had dogs; and then, as the dogs socialized, he could chat dog-owner style. He'd learned all the things he should say in dog training class — What kind of dog is that? How old is he? What's her name? It was easy.

With Grover, he patrolled the neighborhood calmly, like a man of steel. This gave him time to evaluate different people's grass and bushes and cars, and to ponder. "What are we going to do?" Helen had asked a hundred times. Meaning, Ralph knew, what was he going to do.

"Do?" he joked. Of course, he realized they had to do something. Why else would he spend so much time walking around with the dog?

"We have to do something" she said.

,

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"Don't worry," he told her. "Relax. You'll see. 'Dying ashes will burn again.' We'll 'rise again from the East Mountain.' Believe me." He hadn't been able to tell her about Grover's pretending to be away when he was not; even so, she wasn't sleeping very well, he'd noticed. "I'm investigating possibilities" he said. "I have a feeling we may be wrong about the taxes. Maybe we can still cheat some."

"How can we still cheat? What do you mean, don't worry?" She didn't seem any more able to have faith than to sleep. "Are you doing anything?"

"Sure. I have ideas."

"What kind of ideas?"

Since when did she cross-examine him? He didn't like her tone; he thought he ought to train her the way he had Grover. Step one, remain unfazed. "Well, for instance, maybe we should take the addition off. Take the beam back out."

"You said before you didn't think that would work."

He hesitated, then smiled. Unfazed. Watching the fire from a distant bank. "I'm joking."

She had no faith. To Ralph's mind, that was the main problem. Just when he was thinking, for example, that maybe he should call up Old Chao and find out what was going on at school, Helen spoiled his initiative, saying, "If you want to sign up to teach some summer courses, you'd better call right away. They're doing assignments now."

"How do you know?"

Helen blushed violently. "Janis told me," she said, though it was not Janis, actually, to whom she'd spoken, but Theresa.

"Janis told you? Janis? And what did you tell Janis?"

"Nothing." True enough.

"Nothing?" Ralph glared at her. "And what is she going to tell Old Chao? Did you think of that?"

"I didn't."

"You didn't? But I think you did. You must have."

Helen blushed again.

"I know" said Ralph. "You think I don't know? You think I'm like Grover here, I know nothing? I know."

"You can't just walk around training Grover forever."

She showed him the bankbook then, and again the next day, and again a few days after that, trying to provoke a response.

But it didn't work. "You think I don't know?" said Ralph. "I know."

his back in the study. He gathered his fingers into paws, drew up his arms and legs. Grover eyed him quizzically.

The phone rang.

Ralph answered it, then lay back down.

"Old Chao, asking me to come work" he volunteered when Helen poked her head in the door. He scratched his nose with one of his paws. "Inviting me."

"So what did you say*"

"I said no."

Sometimes it seemed to Helen that the real Grover lay between her and Ralph, in the aisle between their beds. It was as if one of the magazines she used to keep under her mattress had escaped, except that this was no magazine; this was a man on the floor, reminding her that she could leave. Since when did she talk so much, Ralph had asked recently; she had shaken her head in answer, wondering at herself, thinking that ever since the addition got going, she'd had to. Or had breaking one enormous rule enabled her to break others? She could leave — she knew that now. Of course she never would. And yet how much more daring she'd become with that idea under her arm!

Daring enough to tell Ralph about Grover?

She debated whether she should, always ending with the same conclusion. Yes. She concluded that she had to. Her secret would come out sooner or later; paper could not wrap up a fire. It was only a matter of finding the right time and place. Ralph seemed to know already anyway.

And yet night after night, she did not tell him. It was a question of the light. She simply could not imagine herself switching off the light and announcing into the dark that she'd had an affair. At the same time, she could not imagine making her announcement with the light on. She lay awake reaching her conclusions, mentally switching the light on and off, until she began to see other things. Once she saw Ralph with the dog. Grover's leash was red — she thought, the red string, then she saw herself, being

*59

taught to play dead. To heel. Of course. The wife should obey the husband; this, according to the Three Bonds of Confucianism. Still she shuddered.

Another time she saw Ralph swinging something on a rope, around and around his head, like a lasso. She didn't know what it was at first; then she realized it was Grover, strangely shrunken. Stop! she tried to tell him. You could wrap that around someone's neck.

Ralph turned to her. Yes, 1 could strangle someone, he said simply, continuing to swing. He approached her. I am that cold.

How should I tell you anything* How*

I am a man become fury.

I'm going to turn the light on.

I am a man become steel.

I'm going to turn the light off.

He moved closer, unhearing.

She floated far above the forms as she filled them out, recalling (as she crammed her life into the small blanks and narrow lines) how she'd once hoped to go into real estate, like Janis. "It's a cinch," Janis had said. And what had she answered? Bu hui, bu hui — I'm not capable enough. Not wanting to offend her friend.

Sheer politeness. Who would have thought anyone would really believe that about her? But now it appeared that many people did. By the end of the afternoon, she hoped at best to be a shopgirl in one of the department stores. Which wouldn't be so bad, as she told herself; at least she'd get a discount on everything.

But though, what with the new war, the unemployment rate was supposed to be dropping, there were still enough women around for the stores to be picky. They could afford to have white women, who spoke English without accents. "You know, I shop this store quite often," Helen told a personnel clerk. Casually — not wanting to seem to be making a point. "I bought a lot of stuff here."

z6o

"Fabulous," said the clerk. "Would you like to apply for a charge?"

She tried smaller shops — bookshops, stationery stores, gift boutiques. "Are you a gook?" someone asked her. "Gook?" she answered. She tried the five-and-ten.

And she got Theresa to ask Old Chao to call Ralph again.

"Little Chang! Old friend!" Old Chao said he had a favor to ask. He did not say anything about Ralph's having hung up on him before.

Ralph listened apprehensively.

Two courses for the summer, and what about his slot for the fall? Was he coming back? It was his slot, Old Chao emphasized. "We need you, we really hope you'll come back."

"So Janis told you, huh," said Ralph.

"What?" said Old Chao. "Janis?"

"He lied to me," Ralph told Helen.

"I've applied everywhere. You don't know how hard it is to find work."

"He lied to me."