What Is All This? (40 page)

“He said he was going to phone me?”

“Also tell him not to constantly kick me in the face as to what the call's costing him when I'm trying to talk over some very important personal things.”

“He said that? That's not like him.”

That's just like him. Your son's the big sport when he wants to make an impression. Just come over here and I'll show you all the nice things he's told everyone we know he's bought me.”

“I can't come over today, but thank you.”

“I was only kidding—never mind. You'll probably be speaking to him soon—I mean, grant to me that I know by now how he operates—so tell him where I stand, all right? Also tell him—let's see; what should you say? That this time it's different. That I often think it's not worth the trouble being married to him anymore. And for sure he can't come back to the apartment till he takes responsibility for these fights and separations and that he's going to do something to prevent them in the future.”

“So he's responsible, so you're responsible—what makes the difference in the end? After all, you're husband and wife, married almost ten years and with a lovely home and a son to consider, so you'd think one of you would be big enough to accept the blame and then forget it. Because listen, Barbara—”

“Ruth—please? No more,” and she said goodbye and hung up. She figured Ken would call within the hour. He'd walked out on her three times the past two years, after calling her the worst names possible, and always Ruth later called her begging for a “beneficial to both” reconciliation brought about by Barbara's willingness to accept the blame. And always she said she couldn't but would ultimately, just to end the matter and for the sake of their son, say something like “Okay, maybe it's a little bit more my fault than yours; so it's over; come home.”

She had a good idea what would happen next. He'd call his mother, who'd tell him only a little of what Barbara had said and certainly none of the tough talk and give him advice how to handle this tricky situation. Then, nervously picturing the call he still had to make, he'd light a cigarette and smoke it down slowly. Finally—feeling emboldened by the cigarette and the shots of scotch from the bottle he always carried in his suitcase—he'd tell the hotel operator he wanted to place another call to New York. His approach would be like the ones he used in the past. He'd say he knew he wasn't totally innocent for this most recent rupture, but could she tell him with a straight face that her hot temper and insults and inflexibility weren't mostly to blame? It was always so easy for him, she had always made it so easy for him, that she could just puke when she thought of all she'd given up in herself since she married him. She lay on the bed, thought of taking the phone off the hook so she could avoid the inevitable ugly scene, decided against it, as he was going to call sooner or later so be done with the damn thing no matter how bad it might turn out, and tried dozing off for a few minutes and only reopened her eyes when Warren tiptoed into the room.

“You sleeping?”

She shook her head.

“What are you doing lying down then?”

“Resting, can't you see?”

“I'm sorry.”

“No—I'm sorry. I'm actually just lying down here waiting for your father's call.”

“He say he'll call again?”

“No. But I have an intuition about such things—a feeling.”

“What things?”

Things like that. About what people will do who are very close to me like your father and you. That he'll call.”

“How long you think he will?”

“I can't predict it with any great exactness, not being the expert in these feelings that some people claim to be, but I'd say soon.”

“Will you let me speak to him?”

“You know it.” She inspected her nails. Most were jagged, uneven, the nails on the right hand bitten down so far the last few days and the cuticles looking such a mess, that she had to turn the hand over. She got out her manicure set from the night table.

“Why'd you send me out when Granny called? She say I did something she didn't like last time she took care of me?”

“Why, did you?”

“What did
she
say?”

“Now you're doing a bit of conniving like your father sometimes does, you know? Even at your age, which I'm not sure is so cute. I had personal things to discuss with her—nothing about you.”

“What personal things?”

The phone rang. Warren lunged for the receiver, said “Daddy, that you?”

“Yeah, how'd you know?”

“He says, how'd I know?”

“Tell him I had an intuition,” she said.

“A what again?”

“Here, give me it. Ken?”

“What's going on there?”

“I was only telling Warren to tell you I was feeling slightly intuitive tonight.”

“About what?”

“Ask your son.”

Warren stuck out his hand for the receiver.

“What in the world's that supposed to mean?” Ken said.

The phone, Mom, the phone.”

She mussed up his hair—he grabbed the receiver while she still held it to her ear—and said “Wait till I'm finished and I'll call you to it,” and pointed to the door. He shook his head, slapped his hands against his sides when she continued to point and smile, and slammed the door behind him.

“Now you made me get him mad,” she said.

“Get who mad—Warren? What the hell were you two doing there, talking riddles?”

“All I said before is that you should ask your son because he knows. In fact, he knows too much already for an eight-year-old.”

“You know, I don't want to appear dense—it's a very unattractive pose for a man my age—but you're really making a lot of sense to me, you really are.”

“What I'm saying is that if you don't want Warren to know too much about our difficulties, well, then I don't have the solution. Maybe we should get a housekeeper or maid—somebody, at least, who will occupy him during his more restless moments and occasionally answer the phone. It's just every time I'm left alone with him or the phone rings when I'm in the shower, let's say, he uses answering it as a pretext for barging into our room and asking me a lot of embarrassing questions.”

“So slap him down then, that's all.”

“Brilliant. No, I think the nanny idea is the best one.”

“What nanny idea? You might not believe this—you probably never thought you had such a schnook for a husband—but I think I lost a little of what you're saying.”

“It's all quite simple. What I want is for us to have someone look after Warren weekday afternoons and to answer the phone when I can't, or maybe the alternative is to get a phone extension in the kitchen.”

“Why an extension?”

“So Warren can answer it there and then tell me I'm wanted on the phone, without him having to come into the room to answer it. We can call it Warren's personal phone—something he'll like.”

“His personal phone—right, I see.”

“But it's important, Ken.”

“I know it's important, but enough's enough, agreed?”

“But it sounds as if you don't think it's important. You're not worried about the extra charges for the extension, are you?”

“Now don't start up on me again, Bobbie, and I'm not kidding anymore. And let's stop all this silly jibberish, as I'm just not up to it now.”

Then I don't know, Ken. If we're ever going to get any privacy around here with that boy…I mean, the only way I can see his personal questions and overcuriosity letting up on us is if we—”

“Okay. For the seventeenth time—I heard, I agree. You say you want a nanny for the kid, fine, you'll get one. We'll bring her all the way from Ireland if we can't find a good one here, and not steerage, but good accommodations on a plane or ship. And what else was that—an extension? You want a phone extension? Fine again, great, even two or three or as many as you think we need, and all push-button Princesses if you like, and any color you want, even pink. But now, you going to listen a moment as to why I called?”

“I'm listening, dear, I'm listening.”

It was a beautiful day, clear and dry, the orchards soaked by the early-morning downpour and smelling of fallen fruit and fresh buds. Life fantastic, I thought, when something hard was shoved into my back and a voice said don't turn around.

“Don't turn what?” I said, turning around and seeing a man holding a handgun.

“Didn't I say not to?” and he split my head open with the gun butt, and while I lay on the ground howling for help but not sure if my words were coming out, and trying to divert the stream of blood running into my nose and mouth, he shot me twice in the stomach and once in the head.

I woke up. Usually when I have dreams like this I'm somehow able to startle myself out of sleep before the bullets come, though not before I'm clubbed. But this morning I was awakened by the sounds of a sanitation truck being fed garbage. My wife stirred on her side of the bed and asked what time it was, though she knew as well as I that the city sanitation truck made a punctual seven o'clock visit to our apartment building every weekday.

“Seven,” I said, and she said “Oh,” and shut her eyes for another ten minutes. Then we got up, washed and dressed and started preparing breakfast.

“I had an incredibly creepy dream this morning,” I said at the table as she set before me my Wednesday breakfast of poached eggs on buttered toast and half a tomato. “A man hit me so hard that it feels as if my head still aches.”

“Sounds like the dream you had two nights ago, or was it three?”

Three. But this time I was shot. Twice in the stomach and once in the head.”

“Ug,” she said, “I'm glad I sleep peacefully,” and wrapped my lunch sandwich in aluminum foil and stuck it in a paper bag with an apple and lots of vegetables. “You'll be late.”

I kissed her on the lips goodbye. “Be careful,” she said. “And please don't run for the local again. I don't want you getting another heart seizure, as this place gets very lonely without you.”

I was sort of hustling like a marathon walker to the subway entrance when a man said “Like to win a free ticket abroad just by answering a few questions, sir?” I stopped and this well-dressed young man approached me carrying a briefcase. “I'm with the Transiberian Travel Service,” he said, “and we're conducting a very essential poll.” I told him I was in a hurry to get to work, but remembering my wife's advice on the subject and curious about the free trip abroad, I told him I could spare only a minute. “Wonderful,” he said, and reached into his briefcase for what he said was his short question and answer sheet concerning potential intercontinental travelers and transoceanic flights and pulled out a very rusty Luger.

“In broad daylight?” I said, and he said nobody was around but if someone did come by before I stopped stalling and handed over my wallet, he'd be forced to shoot me. “You can't do that; this is supposed to be a civilized society. Hasn't there been enough violence in the world already?” Just then a woman turned the corner and headed our way. I quickly reached for my billfold to give the man, but he said “Too late.” He pulled the trigger; the bullet grazed my arm. I begged him not to shoot again, but a bullet tore through my throat. The man ran off. I was on the ground, dying, no doubt. A few people kneeled and stood above me, first asking me and then one another what they could do to help. Then two hands stroked my head and the voice belonging to them said that someone had gone to call for an ambulance. “Don't worry,” she said, “you'll come out of this alive. I've witnessed three street shootings this year and the victim has always lived,” and I passed out.

The radio alarm buzzed. It was 7:50—fifteen minutes later than I usually got up. “Jan,” I said, “it's 7:50. You set the alarm for too late again. Get up; I've barely a half hour to get out of the house.”

“I think you were the one who said it,” she said, turning over and shutting her eyes.

I touched her back; she felt so soft and warm. I snuggled into her from behind and fondled her backside.

“You feel so soft and warm,” I said.

“Can I sleep another five minutes?”

“You can if you let me lie close to you like this. In fact, sleep for another hour. I'll make sure Frilly's all right and get out of the house by myself.”

“You're a love,” she said, and made a kissing sound. I lay close to her for a few minutes. Then I got up, checked our baby and saw she was safe and asleep, made two poached eggs on buttered toast, a dish Jan always complained was too much trouble making for breakfast—and after sticking a container of yogurt and dietetic cookies into my attaché case for lunch and again peeking into the baby's room to see that she was all right, I left the house.

I started down our quiet suburban street to Charlie Ravage's house at the corner, as this was his day to drive us to town. “Say, Mr. Greene,” a man said, signaling me from the passenger seat of an expensive new car, “do you remember me? I used to be your next-door neighbor in Lumpertville—old fat man Sachs.” I walked to his car and told him his name was as unfamiliar as his face, but maybe he'd gotten a little thinner since the time I was supposed to have known him.

“I've actually gained twenty pounds.” He opened the door and pointed at me what looked like a sawed-off shotgun and invited me to step inside the car for a business conference, “No fuss,” he said, “and you'll be able to leave with your good health intact.”

“How'd you know my name and where I used to live?” I said, sitting beside him when he moved over.

“Oh, Mr. Greene, I've watched you numerous times coming out of your garish pink house, all fresh with your darling wife's adoring smells still on you and with your low-caloric breakfast in your gut. I know all your history and comfortable habits, especially the precise time you leave for work every day. Eight-fifteen, am I right?” and I nodded and asked what he had in mind doing with me. “You're the vice-president of the town's most prominent bank, aren't you?” and then described the relatively simple bankrobbing plan he'd devised. He would drive me to town, I'd get the bank guard to open the front door, he'd follow me in, disarm the guard, I'd open the bank's safe and in a matter of minutes and before the bank officially opened, he'd be gone with about fifty thousand dollars in untraceable cash. “Not bad for a half morning's work, wouldn't you say?”

We drove to town. I was let in the bank, George the guard was disarmed, bound and gagged. I opened the safe, the man took all the paper cash in it and then bound and gagged me. I could have set off one of the many hidden alarms before I was tied up, but the chance of saving the bank thousands of insured dollars and getting a bonus if not a promotion wasn't worth the risk of being shot. Just as the thief was about to leave through the only side door, George freed himself and ducked behind the tellers' counter. The alarm went off; the entire bank lit up, and customers waiting outside for the bank to open began banging on the windows and door. The man tried the side door, but because of the alarm all the exits were automatically locked from the outside. He shot out a window and was about to leap through the opening when a police car pulled up in front. He reloaded the gun, said This is what you get for hiring loyal but dumb bank guards,” and while I pleaded for him not to shoot by shaking my head from side to side, he pulled the trigger and in an instant it seemed I'd lost my chest. Someone ungagged and untied me, through darkening eyes I watched the man gassed out of the president's office and taken away; then I was lifted onto a gurney and slid into an ambulance. I was given blood, and just before an oxygen mask was put over my face I asked the doctor if she thought I would live.

“No question about it,” she said, but by the tone of her voice and the look of the attendant next to her, I knew I'd never reach the hospital alive.

“Dad,” someone said—my son or daughter. “Dad, get up.” It was Ford, my six-year-old son, who since his mother died four months ago when some madman seated behind her in a movie theater shot her, woke me up every morning. “It's past eight. Dad, and you're going to miss your first class.”

“Eight? Why didn't you wake me sooner?”

“My alarm didn't go off. You set it wrong again last night. But Frilly's already making your breakfast.”

Frilly, my ten-year-old daughter and a lookalike for her beautiful mom, kissed me when I came into the kitchen. My regular workday breakfast was on the table. Two five-minute eggs, just as I liked them, not boiled for five minutes but spooned into the saucepan and covered after the gas under the boiling water had been turned off, and corn muffins that Frilly had made the previous night. “Get your math homework done?” I said, and she said “Math's a snap. I can whip through it in the short ride to school.”

The school bus honked twice, and the kids kissed me goodbye, I walked them to the bus, told them I hoped they'd have a gloriously happy day at school and that tonight we were going to dine out fancy for a change and later catch the concert at Civic Aud.

“Morning, Mr. Greene,” the driver said, and I said “Morning, Will; great day out,” and waved at my children waving at me till the bus was out of sight. I got my briefcase, which Frilly had laid out for me with my lecture notes and a bag lunch inside, and rode to campus on my bike. The air was chillier than I was dressed for and I was sorry I hadn't taken a sweater, which I usually throw over my shoulders and tie the sleeves at my chest.

“Cooler today,” Sam Rainbow said, cycling past me from the opposite direction and wearing a sheepherder's coat.

“Hiya, Professor Greene,” one of my former grad students said, a pretty, intelligent young woman in a short skirt and high boots. She had such gorgeous legs. I stopped, said “How are you, Roz? Magnificent morning, isn't it? Listen, if you're not in a hurry, how about a quick coffee with me in the campus lounge?” and she'd just said she'd love to when I heard a barrage of gunshots and she flopped to the ground.

“Oh, no,” I said, “not again,” as people were dropping all around me, some hit by bullets, others dodging behind bushes, cars and trees. Roz had been shot in the head, part of her brains on my sleeve. There was nothing I could do for her, and I was still out in the open. I ran for a car parked about thirty feet away, but the sniper in one of the top floor windows of the Arts and Sciences building cut me down with a bullet in the foot, and while I was crawling the last few feet to the car, another bullet in my back. I regained consciousness after the shooting had ended. “We got him,” a man told me. “Some overpressured poly sci student who went nuts. Don't know how many got hit, but that dead bastard sure'll serve a good lesson for anyone else thinking of using a repeater against innocent people like that. And don't fret about yourself, Professor. Doctors here say you'll be up and walking again in a matter of weeks,” which, when I began heaving blood and feeling as sick as I ever felt in my life, I knew was a lie. “Have somebody pick my kids up at school,” I said, and he said “Sure, sir, anything you wish.”

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Daddy, happy birthday to you.”

That was what I woke up to this morning after all those disturbing dreams. My wife and two kids singing the happy birthday ditty on my fortieth. Thank you,” I said. Thank you one and all for reminding me what I most didn't want to be reminded of. And now, if you can bear with more of my impoliteness, I have to hurry and get dressed.”

I took off my pajamas and grabbed my underpants. “Aren't you going to shower first?” Ford said, and I said “Why? Do I smell so bad that you don't think I can wait till I get home tonight?”

“It's not that. We're all meeting you at your studio later where Grandpa's coming to treat us to dinner and a show.”

“Has that been agreed to by your mother?”

Jan said “On your birthday, Saul, you know your father always takes charge.”

“Agreed, then,” and I got in the shower. My family undressed and got in with me, and though it was crowded and we each did our share of horsing around under the spray, we did manage to get our bodies soaped, and Frilly even got in a shampoo.

We sat at the kitchen table for breakfast. Frilly lit candles, and when I said “At breakfast?” she said “It's a special occasion, did you forget?” and handed me a box wrapped with the front page of today's newspaper and decorated with quartermoons and tentacled suns and stars. Inside were two nylon brushes, a number 14 and 17, which I needed badly. I hadn't sold a painting in months and I was again starting to put the touch on my closest friends. Ford gave me a pound tube of Mars black and Jan presented me with twenty-five yards of the best unprimed duck canvas. “You're all saints,” I said, “and I worship you as others might worship the great god Moolah, but now I gotta get going and live up to your faith in me.”

They walked me outside. I unchained my motor scooter from the building's fence, hugged my family and headed for my studio, which was in a municipal-run building of artists' lofts in the poorest section of town.

Once there, I promptly began the completion of a huge painting I was calling The Birth of the Earth,” and was working feverishly, laying on heavy long strokes of the Mars black with my new 17 brush, when one of the other artists in the building knocked on my door and said I was wanted on the pay phone downstairs.

It was Jan, saying don't worry, everything will be all right, I should prepare myself for some pretty rough though not totally catastrophic news—while I was practically screaming for her to come out with it already—but a boy had entered my father's junior high school classroom without a late pass and when my father told him to go to the guidance office to get one, the boy shot him in the hip. “But Dad's okay,” she said. “He's going to live; be thankful for that,” but my knees wobbled and I fell back against the wall and slid down to the floor. She said, when I told her where I was sitting, to stop acting like a wimp and meet her at the hospital right away.