Dhalgren (24 page)

At the third second of silence, he looked up, and decided he'd said something wrong. He hunted for the proper apology: but, like a tangle of string with a lost end, action seemed all loop and no beginning.

"You
know
Ernest Newboy? Oh, Edna, Kidd's a
real
poet! And he's helping us, Arthur! I mean, move furniture and things." She looked from Mr Richards to Madame Brown, to Kidd. "Tell me—" She spilled more wine— "is Newboy's work just—wonderful? I'm sure it is. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I just got the book yesterday. I sent Bobby down to get it, because of that article in the
Times.
We have this very nice little book-and-gift shop down the street. They have just everything like that—But after the article, I was afraid they were going to be all out. I think it's
very
important to keep up with current books, even if it's just bestsellers. And I'm really interested in poetry. I really am. Arthur doesn't believe me. But I do—I really
do
like it."

"That's just because you went to that coffee shop with Julia in Los Angeles where they were reading that poetry and playing that music."

"And I
told
you, Arthur, the evening we came back, though I don't pretend I understood it all, I liked it
very
much! It was one of the most—"she frowned, hunting for the right description—
"exciting
things I've… well, ever heard."

"I don't know him very well," Kidd said, and ate more mushrooms; that and the eggplant weren't bad. The mashed potatoes (instant) were pretty gluey, though. "I just met him… once."

"I'd love to meet him." Mrs Richards said. "I've never known a real writer."

"Mike Harrington wrote a book," Mr Richards objected. "A very good book, too."

"Oh, Arthur, that was an instruction manual… on stresses and strains and the uses of a new metal!"

"It was a very
good
instruction manual." Mr Richards poured more wine for Madame Brown and himself.

"Can I have some?" Bobby said.

"No," Mr Richards said.

"How long have you been writing poetry?" Madame Brown asked, helpfully.

Kidd looked up to answer—Madame Brown was waiting with a forkful of well-sauced eggplant, June with one of carrots; Mrs Richards had a very small fluff of potato on the tine tips of her fork—when it struck him that he didn't know. Which seemed absurd, so he frowned. "Not very…"
long,
he'd started to say. He had a clear memory of writing the first poem in the notebook, seated against the lamp post on Brisbain Avenue. But had he ever written any poems before? Or was it something he'd wanted to do but never gotten around to? He could see not remembering
doing
something. But how could you not remember not doing something? "…for very long," he finally said. "Just a few days, I guess," and frowned again, because that sounded silly. But he had no more surety of its truth or falsity than he had of his name. "No, not very long at all." He decided that was what he would say from now on to anyone who asked; but the decision simply confirmed how uncertain he was of its truth.

"Well I'm sure—" there was only one more fluff of mashed potatoes on Mrs Richard's plate—"they must be very good." She ate it "Did Mr Newboy like them?"

"I didn't show them to him." Somehow silverware, glasses, sideplates, and candles didn't seem right for talking about scorpions, orchid fights, the invisible Calkins and the belligerent Fenster—

"Oh, you should," Mrs Richards said. "The younger men in Arthur's office are always bringing him their new ideas. And he says they've been coming up with some lulus lately—didn't you, Arthur? Arthur's always happy to talk to the younger men about their new ideas. I'm sure Mr Newboy would be happy to talk to you, don't you think, Arthur?"

"Well," Mr Richards reiterated, "I don't know too much about poetry."

"I'd certainly like to see some of what you'd written," Madame Brown said and moved Mrs Richards' wine glass away from her straying hand. "Maybe some day you'll show us. Tell me, Arthur—" Madame Brown looked over joined fingers—"what
is
going on at Maitland, now? With everything in the state it's in, I'm amazed when I hear of
any
thing getting done."

She's changing the subject! Kidd thought with relief. And decided he liked her.

"Engineering." Mr Richards shook his head, looked at Mrs Richards—"Poetry…" changing it, rather bluntly, back. "They don't have too much to do with one another."

Kidd decided to give it a try himself. "I met an engineer here, Mr Richards. His name was Loufer. He was working on… yeah, converting a plant. It used to make peanut butter. Now it makes vitamins."

"Most people who like poetry and art and stuff," Mr Richards adhered, "aren't very interested in engineering—" Then he frowned. "The vitamin plant? That must be the one down at Helmsford."

Kidd sat back and saw that Madame Brown did too.

Mrs Richards' hands still spasmed on the table.

Mr Richards asked: "What did you say his name was?"

"Loufer."

"Don't think I know him." Mr Richards screwed up his face and dropped his chin over the smooth gold-and-mustard knot of his tie. "Of course I'm in Systems. He's probably in Industrial. Two completely different fields. Two completely different professions, really. It's hard enough to keep up with what's going on in your own field, what your own people are doing. Some of the ideas our men do come up with—they're lulus all right. Like Mary says. Sometimes I don't even understand them—I mean, even when you understand
how
they work, you don't really know
what
they're for. Right now I'm just back and forth between the office and the warehouse—lord only knows what I'm supposed to be doing."

"Just keeping up," Madame Brown said, and leaned one elbow on the table. As she moved, the candle flame drifted back and forth across her left eye. "At the hospital, it was all I could do to read two or three psychology bulletins a week, what with the behaviorists and the gestaltists—"

"Peaches?" said Mrs Richards, leaning forward, knuckles like two tiny mountain ranges on the table edge. "Would anyone like some peaches? For dessert?"

Maybe, Kidd thought, she really
did
want to talk about poetry—which would be fine, he decided, if he could think of anything to say. His own plate was empty of everything except the sauce-and-mashed-potato swamp.

"Sure."

He watched the word hang over the table, silence on both sides.

"I don't want any!" Bobby's chair scraped.

Both candlesticks veered.

"Bobby—!" Mrs Richards exclaimed, while June caught one and Mr Richards caught the other.

Bobby was off into the living room. Muriel barked and ran after him.

"I'll have some, dear." Mr Richards sat back down. "Let him go, Mary. He's all right."

"Muriel? Muriel!" Madame Brown turned back to the table and sighed. "Peaches sound lovely. Yes, I'll have some."

"Yes, please, Mother," June said. Her shoulders were rather hunched and she was still looking at her lap, as though considering something intensely.

Mrs Richards, blinking after her son, rose and went in the kitchen.

"If I went to school," June blurted, looking up suddenly, "I'd go into psychology—like you!"

Madame Brown, slightly flattered, slightly mocking, turned to June with raised brows. Mocking? Or, Kidd wondered, was it simply surprise.

"I'd like to work with… mentally disturbed children—like you!" June's fingertips were over the table edge too, but tightly together, and even, so that you'd have to count to find where right fingertips ended and left began.

"In my job, dear, at the hospital—" Madame Brown lifted her glass to sip; as she bent forward, loops of optic chain swung out like a glittering bib, and back—
"I
have more to do with the disturbed parents."

June, now embarrassed by her outburst, was collecting plates. "I'd like to… to help people; like a nurse or a doctor. Or like you do—" Kidd passed his over; it was the last—"with problems in their mind."

He dragged his hands back across the cloth (spotted with sauce, soup, pieces of carrot, the purple wine blot) and let them fall into his lap.

Mrs Richards' place was nearly as messy as his own.

"I know it's a cliché—" Madame Brown shook her head—"but it really is true. The parents need the help far more than the children. Really: they bring their totally demolished child to us. And you know what they want in the first interview? It's always the same": they want us to say, 'What you should do is beat him.' They come in with some poor nine-year-old they've reduced to a state of numb, inarticulate terror; the child can't dress itself, can't talk above a whisper, and then only in some invented language; it soils its clothing, and the only coherent actions it can make are occasional attempts at murder or, more frequently, suicide. If I said to them, 'Beat her! Hit him!' they would glow—
glow
with delight. When they discover we want to take the children
away
from them, they're indignant! Under all the frustration and apparent concern, what they actually come hoping is that we will say, 'Yes, you're handling it all marvelously well. Just be a little firmer!' The reason I'm successful at my job at all—" Madame Brown touched June's shoulder and leaned confidentially—"as all I
really
do is pry the children loose from their parents—is because what
I'm
saying, underneath all my pleasant talk about how much better it would be for the rest of the family if they let little Jimmy or Alice come to us, is: Wouldn't it be ever so much more fun to work on one of your other children for a while? Wouldn't it be ever so much more interesting to fight someone with a little more strength left than this poor half-corpse you've just brought in. Why not clear the field and start in on little sister Sue or big brother Bill? Or maybe each other. Try to get an only child away from its parents once they've driven it practically autistic!" Madame Brown shook her head. "It's very depressing. I really think, sometimes, I'd like to change my field—do individual therapy. That's what I've always been interested in, anyway. And since there's nobody at the hospital now anyway—"

"But don't you need licenses, or special examinations to do that, Edna?" Mrs Richards asked from the kitchen. "I mean, I know it's your profession, but isn't fiddling with people's minds dangerous? If you don't know what you're doing?" She came in with two long-stemmed dessert dishes, gave one to Madame Brown, and one to Mr Richards. "I read an article—" She paused with her hands on the back of her chair—"about those encounter group things, I think they call them? Julia Harrington was going to one of those, two years ago. And the minute I read that article, I cut it out and sent it to her—it was just terrifying! About all those unskilled people leading them and how they were driving everybody
crazy!
Touching each other all over, and picking each other up in the air, and telling each other about everything! Well, some people just couldn't take it and got very seriously ill!"

"Well I—" Madame Brown began some polite protest.

"I think it's all poppycock," Mr Richards said. "Sure, people have problems. And they should be put away where they can get help. But if you're just indulging yourself, somebody telling you to straighten up and fly right may be what you need. A few hard knocks never hurt anybody, and who's in a better position to give out a few than your own parents, I say—though I've never lifted a hand to my own." Mr Richards lifted his hand, palm out, to his shoulder. "Have I, Mary? At least not since they were big."

"You're a very good father, Arthur." Mrs Richards came back from the kitchen with three more dessert glasses clutched together before her. "No one would ever deny that."

"You kids just be glad your parents are as sane as they are." Mr Richards nodded once toward Bobby's (empty) chair and once toward June's; she was just sitting down in it after taking the plates into the kitchen. She put a cut glass bowl, filled with white, on the white cloth.

"Here you are," Mrs Richards said, passing Kidd his fruit.

In its long-stemmed dessert dish, the yellow hemisphere just cleared the syrup.

Kidd looked at it, his face slack, realized his lips were hanging a little open, so closed them.

Beneath the table, he clutched the table-leg so tight a band of pain finally snapped along his forearm. He let go, let out his breath, and said: "Thank you…"

"It's not terribly exciting," Mrs Richards said. "But fruit has lots of vitamins and things. I made some whipped cream—dessert topping, actually. I
do
like real cream, but this was all we could get. I wanted to flavor it almond. I thought that would be nice. With peaches. But I was out of almond extract. Or vanilla. So I used maple. Arthur, would you like some? Edna?"

"Lord, no!" Madame Brown waved the proffered bowl away. "I'm heavy enough as it is."

"Kidd, will you?"

The bowl came toward him between the candles, facets glittering. He blinked, worked his jaw slowly inside the mask of skin, intent on constructing a smile.

He spooned up a white mound—with the flame behind it, its edges were pale green.

Madame Brown was watching him; he blinked. Her expression shifted. To a smile? He wondered what his own was. It was supposed to be a smile too; it didn't
feel
like one…

He buried his peach.

White spiraled into the syrup.

"You know what I think would be lovely?" Mrs Richards said. "If Kidd read us one of his poems."

He put half his peach in his mouth and said, "No," swallowed it, and added, "thanks. I don't really feel like it." He was tired.

June said, "Kidd, you're eating with the whipped cream spoon."

He said: "Oh…"

Mrs Richards said, "Oh, that's all right. Everybody's had some who wants some."

"I
haven't," Mr Richards said.

Kidd looked at his dish (a half a peach, splayed open in syrup and cream), looked at his spoon (the damasking went up the spoon itself, streaked with cream), at the bowl (above the faceted edges, gouges had been cut into the heaped white).