Tony’s head was down, his back to his mother, his little pink legs growing pinker. He did not answer this time. He simply didn’t move. He was holding on to the edge of the drawer to help him stand up: he’d been walking for only a couple of weeks, and could not stand for long periods.
S
WAT
! Anthony slapped again.
Dolores’s throat was full. “Anthony, I want you to stop that! Stop it!”
Anthony looked up at her kindly. “Honey, just let me handle this, okay? The kid needs a father.”
Dolores turned and swiftly left the room. She ran to her study and slammed the door, fell into a chair and cried.
Yes, I was young then, and tears came easily. Besides, I didn’t know what was right. Was I right, or was he? Maybe I was too indulgent. Maybe children did need that kind of discipline. But what for?
Sounds of Tony crying came to her through the door, over the TV. She wanted to get up and go to him, but she gritted her teeth and sat. Anthony made him cry, let Anthony calm him down. But of course Anthony would do no such thing.
“You go to your room, young man, and you stay there!” he shouted.
Hah. Tony had not closed the drawer. He had defeated his father in the contest his father had created in order that one of them should be defeated. Perhaps he didn’t care which one.
Anthony came looking for her, he peered around the study door as he opened it, smiling.
“That kid,” he announced, smiling broadly, “is a real hoosher! Stubborn?” He began to laugh, then saw her face. “Honey, what’s the matter?”
She sat up in the chair, not bothering to wipe her tearstained face. “You do that again,” she said through her teeth, “you beat that child again, either of them, Anthony, and I will take them so far away that you will never see them again! Never! And I mean it!”
He just looked at her, he said nothing.
He never did beat them again—not when she could see, at least. Tony told her his father often kicked him in the rear—but never when Dolores was around. But he told her that only last year. No, Anthony never beat them again. He used his voice instead.
“Wipe your feet on that mat when you come in, do you hear me? Now you go back there and wipe them, young man! And no cookies for two days!”
“Did you do this? Look at me, I’m talking to you! You see this towel? Look at that! How many times have I told you to make sure your hands are clean before you wipe them on the towel? Your mother works hard [oh, please don’t use me as your excuse] to keep this place clean, and what do you do? I’ve told you a hundred times! Now you go back and wash those hands! And no ice cream for three days!”
“You’ve already ordered no ice cream for the next four, Anthony, shall I mark seven on the calendar?” Sarcastic, but he didn’t hear.
Mealtimes; Not that fork! Elbows off the table! Raise the fork to your mouth, not your mouth to the fork! Wipe your mouth with the napkin before you drink!
YOU’RE SPILLING YOUR MILK
! D
OWN
! D
OWN
! L
EAVE THE TABLE
!
Never did a Christmas or Thanksgiving or any holiday dinner pass without the children being sent from the table in disgrace. Never. Anthony sat like death at the head of the table, forbidding joy.
Eat those artichokes! You’ll eat them or you’ll have them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you won’t have anything else until you’ve eaten them, you hear? And no dessert! You’ll sit there until you eat them.
Anthony, I am clearing the table. Will you please let him get down?
He’ll sit there until he eats them.
Anthony, I have work to do.
Well, go ahead, I’ll sit here with him.
And did, until she insisted it was the child’s bedtime. And got up early and served his son artichokes for breakfast.
Don’t put the bread in the palm of your hand when you butter it! And break off a small piece first! Don’t butter the whole thing! You hear? No cake, no candy, no ice cream, no cookies for a hundred and thirty-five days, you hear!
Dolores stood up and walked across the room to her briefcase. She pulled her notes out and laid them across the bed, which was the only place to work. Her throat was full, and her eyes were blurry, and she wanted to wipe that away. But the mattress was soft, and when she sat on the bed, all the papers slid towards her. She couldn’t see the words written on them, anyway.
And how could the children tell, as the years went on and she got angrier and shouted at Anthony, that her anger was with him and not with them? They were ultimately responsible, anyway, they must have felt. While she knew better. But you can’t haul ghosts up before the bar and accuse them. Besides, it wasn’t their fault.
Oh.
She wiped her eyes, which were burning, then lifted her head up as if she were trying to breathe in deeply some purer air to be found higher, higher. But her throat felt as if she had swollen glands. She rose and opened Victor’s suitcase, fished around for the booze and found it, and poured herself a Scotch, adding tap water. She went back to the chair by the window, facing the rain, the warehouse.
Letter from Tony this morning. He’d left Berkeley, had followed some girl to Omaha. Did they toss nickels and dimes in your guitar case in Omaha too when you stood in gateways and played? It might be cold in Omaha, his poor bare feet might need shoes. Did he have shoes? Twenty-two and still drifting barefoot through life. Sweet and gentle, self-deprecating always, he smiled his inadequacies at you. He was nothing
but
inadequacies. Even playing the guitar, at which he was very very good, he would be brilliant only in his bedroom: in public, he’d shy off, stop short of brilliant, and apologize. Always sure he would fail: and therefore, always did.
TAKE YOUR HAND OFF THAT WALL
! H
AVEN’T I TOLD YOU A MILLION TIMES
!
Yes, you have. A million times at least. Certainly enough times that Tony got the message: You are worthless. Tony never admitted to his father having received the message; he was, as Anthony perceived, stubborn. But he never rebelled, either, never fought back. The message was received. But Big Chief never believed it, and never stopped sending it until Elspeth grew up and he could send it to her instead. Yes.
The whole house poisoned, the very walls reeked. Hated going back there at night after work, much as I looked forward to seeing the kids. Stomach would begin to churn about the time he was supposed to come home. Eventually, I got that ulcer. Not Anthony, though, he never got an ulcer. Friday-night blues: a whole weekend with him in the house in the house in the house. Never went out alone.
And I didn’t go. I didn’t go. I stayed and tried to reclaim the story-child, why? To make my fantasy come true? Why? Can you call that love? As well call it hate. We were emotional savages, Anthony and I. Between us, we plumbed every depth, he of rage and I of grief. Together we chewed our own hearts.
And destroyed the children.
No, now, don’t give up on them, they have a shine on them still, Sydney, Tony. Yes.
And Elspeth?
Other people do it differently. Use a wastebin of emotions. Tina and Ralph, married thirty years and long since prosperous, go round and round still squabbling about nickels and dimes. Take a cruise around the world, come back and have a month-long bang-up fight because she wants a new washer. When she earns $30,000 a year on her own and doesn’t need his permission to buy it. But wants it. Asks for it. Why was that? Or he yells about
her
garbage, as if she manufactured it. And she yells about
his
garage. But it’s a happy marriage, they say.
America and Russia, guns aimed at each other for thirty years, bayonets fixed, ready to strike, tanks ready to roll, missiles poised. While in a gilded room, under chandeliers, our diplomats meet, drink champagne, sign documents.
Peace, it is called. Or domestic tranquillity.
Victor says power is the key to everything.
She stood up and crossed the room and poured more Scotch into her glass. It was going to be a very long day for her if Victor didn’t come back for dinner. A very long day if she couldn’t work. Horrible thought, life without work. Empty days, stretching. What could you do to fill them? Anthony in that wheelchair.
Anthony lying on the couch watching TV, scratching his groin. Me in the study, working. Kids getting ready for bed, squabbling. Always squabbling. Natural, of course, but was it worse in our house? Good reason for it, if it was. But Anthony didn’t permit squabbling. He was the only one allowed to get angry in that house. He leaped up and marched down the hall, yelling the whole way. Then he cried out.
Dolores leaped up and ran to him. He was lying on the floor.
Another
phony heart attack? But he had those only when
we
were quarreling, he’d never pulled those on the kids. Yet.
“Anthony.” Stern.
“I’ve broken my leg, you bitch!”
Said he’d slipped on the waxed floor and broken it. Tried to make it my fault, impossible, the kind of housekeeper I was. Floor hadn’t been waxed in months. Never knew till last year: he was trying to kick Tony in the rear. And lied about it. Lied.
Tony, of course (what else?) felt guilty. He’d learned agility in avoiding his father’s kicks, had ducked out of the way, heard the bone split, had started to giggle.
I looked at him lying there on the floor, cursing me for the break, insisting he’d get up and drive himself to the hospital, cursing me as I called for an ambulance, cursing me for months after that, whenever his leg hurt, whenever he needed it moved and I was the one to do it. I was gentler with it than I had been with my newborns, but he always shrieked.
I looked at him lying there on the floor, having broken the leg he’d put in the fire, listening but not hearing his curses, his orders, I foresaw all of it, knew how it would be, my life turned into a worse hell for months ahead now and the thing delayed, delayed. I knew he wanted to break his leg, wanted to break something, because he knew, how did he know? that the day before I’d gone to a lawyer to see about getting a divorce.
How can you divorce a man in a wheelchair?
Even if he is home all day, starts drinking manhattans at ten in the morning, spends the day listening to the call-in shows on the radio and spying on the neighbors with his telescope. Is furious drunk by the time the kids get home from school, drives them out and away. They spend a lot of time at their friends’ houses. By the time I get home he is hungry, grouses and asks jealous questions for a while, but I ignore them, ignore him. I prepare dinner, holding my mouth in place, thinking I have to get through three more months, two more months, one more month.
The house is empty of children. I miss them but I am grateful. He wants affection, he wheels himself close to me, he puts his arms out to me, calls me “Honey.” I shudder away. Oh god.
Dolores got up for another drink. Her back hurt: her shoulders have been hunched over tightly. She exercises them, but they still ache. She pours an extra-large Scotch.
Sits down. On the bed this time. Stretches out, wrinkles her notes, doesn’t care, sweeps them together carelessly. Head back against the pillow, neck stretched out, waiting for somebody to come and slit her throat. If you had to have all that, and everybody had it, that pain from which nothing is learned, which changes nothing, if you had to have all that energy spent on suffering, at least it ought to mean something. It could run dynamos, that much energy. It could feed the world. If only your pain ran up brownie points in some great ledger somewhere, so that you wouldn’t have to come back and repeat it all in some reincarnation. But you do, you do. Passed on from parent to child, every generation going through exactly the same things, nothing learned, nothing changed. It was intolerable.
Sydney’s new poem, the one she sent last week, was really about hate. Sydney had thought it was about love, the pains of love. Well, maybe it was, but it was also about the pain of hating. Dolores drinks thirstily.
Yes, and when all the tumult dies down, the dust settles, the car motor is turned off and the body removed under a canvas, and the police cars have taken their terrifying red turning lamps back to some dark garage where motors are not allowed to run, and you lay your cold body on a bed and try to sleep, you look out your window and the moon is high, it rides behind some clouds, and a sea gull screams out over the shore. The ocean is pounding, you can hear it from your window. Forgotten. Nothing remains. Cottage swept out to sea.
You needed a cause, some cause: Christ or communism or Israel. Something respectable enough to convince your mind, not just your passions. Something worth suffering for. You could bear anything if you had a cause. It wasn’t the pain that was unendurable: it was the pointlessness.
It is getting dark out. She picks up her head and peers out at the rain. The streetlights are on. It must be late. She looks at her watch. No watch.
He won’t be back for dinner. No.
Again.
She sat bolt upright.
That
was why! Why she hadn’t loved him, as he was leaving.
She put her head back on the pillow, gently, her wits slowly coming together again. She put the glass down on the bed table. Her heart felt cold and hard as a rock, and hot, flaming, at the same time. Yes! He argues, he sulks, he gets angry, he pressures her into coming with him on these trips, and then what does he do? He leaves her alone in a hotel room, all day and all night. Leaves her to eat alone in a large empty cold hotel dining room, to wander alone the streets of some unfamiliar and uninteresting town. This was the third time. He’d done it in Leeds, and once in Birmingham, and now, again.
Of course. He brought her along so he didn’t have to sleep alone, and could see England from a car, but not have to drive alone. Companionship when he wanted it, not when he didn’t. How convenient for him! Brought her along the way he brought his bottle of Scotch, to be there when he wanted it.
And it never occurred to him to think about her. He wasn’t
trying
to be selfish. He didn’t have to try, it came naturally. He was involved with people, with appointments and meetings, trips through the works, meeting a new man, someone important, psyching him out, go for drinks, stay to dinner, fun, full of life for him. Yes. He had it all arranged for his pleasure: work, then Scotch, then her.