The Nirvana Blues (58 page)

Joe opened his English–foreign language phrase dictionary, selecting a time-honored standby: “None of this makes any sense. It's crazy.”

She opened her Hipster's Cosmic Dictionary of Astrologically Inspired Catchwords: “That's where you're wrong. It makes perfect sense. All my life I've known something like this was going to happen with somebody like you. The minute we met in the bus station my body began feeling as if it needed to be pregnant. Even Sasha's tragedy is relevant, because Michael's act, terrible as it is, hasn't changed my feelings for you one iota.”

Joe flipped rapidly through the pages of
his
dictionary, searching for that other old standby to be used with aggravating repetition in case of emergency: “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm talking about
us.
” She pronounced “us” the way Sir Edmund Hillary might have pronounced “Mt. Everest.”

Joe fumfered. “Listen, Nancy, back off a little. I don't want what you want.”

“You say that now, Joe. But when you're inside me you're not saying that at all.”

“Then I don't ever want to be inside of you again.”

She took his news with infuriatingly placid lack of concern. “It's all right. You've already trusted me with the most profound gift anyone can give anybody, ever.”

“But I don't
want
to give you that gift! And besides—”

From the emergency room came a piercing howl. No doubt Phil Horney was perpetrating an unnecessarily brutal obscenity upon Michael's traumatized beak. Bradley showed few signs of slackening his outrage, although his howls now lacked a certain vitality. They had become dreary and monotonous, assembly-line exclamations, the pathetic bleats of a child advancing beyond exhaustion, his howls triggered by the memory of how to execrate. Heather's eyes remained stoically fixed on the opposite wall. No doubt her incompetent little mind was trying to deal with the psychological impact of having disfigured (perhaps brain-damaged) her older brother for life.

Said Nancy: “I hear what you're saying, but words are often the least reliable indicators of what a person really means. Right now, you think your left brain is in control of how you actually relate to me, but the actual message I'm getting from you is very different. I'd say that your right brain truly dominates your feelings toward me, and they're coming through loud and clear.”

Whereupon Bradley fell asleep right in the middle of an elongated yelp, and Heather spoke for the first time: “Thank God he shut up—the creep.”

Joe said, “I don't like it when you say I'm saying something I'm not saying.”

“I would expect you to say that, but I'm reading your aura and, believe me, it's wonderful.”

“My aura?”

“It's so warm, so outgoing, so loving. If only you could realize it.”

“What do you mean, ‘my aura'?”

“The glow around you. The emanation from your color chakras.”

“You're saying you can actually
see
some kind of light around me?”

“Very clearly. Your vibrations are incredibly powerful. Of course, your etheric has a tendency to come and go with your moods. But why delve into it here? I doubt you're ready for any of that yet.”

“What does it look like, my aura?”

Her loving, adulatory gaze also seemed almost mocking. Smoke fluffed from her gently grinning mouth as she said, “Well, I'll tell you one thing—the red is fantastic.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you're very sexy.…”

Heather had been eyeing a distant vending machine. Thinking to catch her old man in a weakened condition, she said, “Daddy, I need a quarter to get something from that machine.”

She had miscalculated. Eternally vigilant, ever alert, Joe lit into her wearing his full battle regalia:

“Can you have a
quarter?
For
that
shit? For packages of phenol benzoate lacquered in propyl glucose, garnished with rithium nitrite to preserve the freshness and flavor of a quarter of a teaspoon of peanut butter?—Hah! I'm upset, Heather, I'll admit, but I'm not
that
gaga.”

“All it costs is a lousy quarter,” she nagged grumpily.

“The price ain't the problem, sweetie. That shit is so full of chemicals it causes cancer in twenty-four original ways six hours after you eat it.”

“When you were a kid you ate all that junk. You even said so a million times.”

“In those days nobody understood nitrosamines and sodium nitrite. But I absolutely refuse to let you fill your lovely little tummy full of that venal crap.”

“What's ‘venal'?”

“Bad, rotten, nasty.”

“Oh.” In the next breath she asked: “Is this her?”

“Is who what?”

“Is that lady ‘her'?”

He should have caught on, but recent events had him a bit addled. “Who?”

“The one that calls up on the telephone all the time, that you're fucking?”

“Hey, man, cool it! What business is it of yours anyway?”

“It's account of her, isn't it, that I'm almost a orphan?”

“‘An' orphan,” Joe corrected. “Heather, let's drop the subject, okay?”

“Her name is Mrs. Ryan, isn't it?”

“Why don't you ask her yourself? I'm sure that the sound waves caused by your voice will reverberate in coherent patterns across her eardrums.”

“Huh?”

“Just ask her
yourself,
dummy. Stop playing the fool.”

Defiantly, Heather folded her arms. “I don't want to ask her myself. I won't ever talk to her again in my life.”

“Hey! Cut the stupidity!”

“How can I? I don't have a knife.”

“Humor,” Joe explained to Nancy. “I'd like you to meet Jack Benny in drag.”

“Well I think only a rotten creep would wear a bathrobe in public.” Tears welled in Heather's eyes. “I don't think it's fair for her to be fucking you instead of letting you be our father.”

“I'm still your father, Heather. And stop using ‘fuck.'”

“Not anymore, you aren't. You're just running around shacking up with every Jane and Barbara that twitches their butt at you, trying to win the Fornication Sweepstakes.”

Joe's eyes became suspicious slits. “That's not your own expression, Heather. You didn't make that up. Who said it?”

“I did so make it up. Just now.”

“The hell you say. Is that the way Heidi talks to you kids about me? ‘The Fornication Sweepstakes?' Wow—I don't believe it!”

Such betrayal! To nobody had Joe ever said an uncomplimentary word about his wife. He took great pride, even while intimately joined with Nancy and Diana, of never having trashed Heidi. But while he had been keeping their relationship clean and private, she had been badmouthing him to the kids, trying to capture their little hearts and minds (and loyalty) for the no doubt messy divorce proceedings in store.

“It's not Mommy,” Heather insisted. “I told you, I made it up.”

“Yeah, and the pope wears fruitboots. The way you said it was like a parrot imitating somebody else. ‘The Fornication Sweepstakes'—shee-it! That bitch has gall!”

Marvelous, self-righteous rage took command of his sanity. When Heidi walked out of the emergency room, he would demand an explanation. He might even threaten to have her declared legally insane in order to snag the kids in a custody battle:
FIRST TIME EVER, HUBBY WINS BRATS + ALIMONY
! No need to ditch Nancy after all. And she focused—did Mrs. Ryan—her fanny raised at him invitingly … what a gluteal target! A lust spasm twitched in his nether regions. He wished to unleash cries of frustration, joy, and eternal ambiguity while asking the old Jobian interrogatives: Why so much suffering, God? Why me? Basta ya! Stop hacking off my arms and my legs! Lighten up, Lord, a little peace and comfort in my old age, if you will!

*   *   *

T
HE EMERGENCY-ROOM
door opened, and Michael and Heidi emerged. Michael's face was scrubbed and cleaner, his eyes were blacker, he wore a fresh goalie's mask. Heidi looked ashen and chastened. The nurse said, “You sure have a brave boy there, Mr. Miniver.” Phil Horney added: “Yeah, that oughtta hold him for a while. I wouldn't let him wrestle for a few weeks, however. Heidi says that's how he reinjured it—apparently you were wrestling with the kids only a few hours after he broke it?”

“It wasn't my idea. She forced me into it.”

“
I
forced you into it?” Heidi's jaw fell on the floor and bounced. “I said you could, but don't start blaming me. You didn't have to follow my advice.”

“Wait a sec. When it happened you fell all over yourself apologizing.”

“I was distraught.” Her frost fogged his cheeks. Taking Heather's hand, she led her two children toward the exit.

To the doctor, Joe said, “Did you hear that?
I
didn't want to wrestle with the kids. But she made me feel so guilty that I finally gave in. And look what happened. Exactly what I
said
would happen!”

Heidi whirled like an expert gunslinger, firing a broadside before Joe had even started to slap leather. “That's right, go ahead, tell everybody! Air all of our dirty linen in public! That's become your style, these days, hasn't it?”

“Well, you don't have to blame me for something that
you
set up!”

“I'll see you around the campus, Joey. Have a ball with your concubine there.”

“Heidi—!”

Swish, bam, slam!
—they were gone.

Joe said, “What's the matter with everybody? Have they gone crazy?”

Phil was embarrassed. “Well, uh, you know. With accidents like this people tend to become flustered.”

“But that boy of yours sure is a regular little trooper,” the nurse piped cheerfully. “Now what have we got here?” she asked Nancy, referring to Bradley, who was slumped in his plastic chair, noisily cutting Zs.

Joe banged out the swinging glass Exit door and sprinted for the bus. Heidi gave a muffled shout; a blurred scrambling took place inside the vehicle. When Joe reached the car, all the windows were rolled up, all the doors locked. Joe whacked the passengerside window: Heather stuck out her tongue. Michael lay on the rear seat.

“Let me in, dammit! You can't leave without me!”

Heather displayed her most pugnacious, malevolent grin, and nodded her head up and down, indicating that they sure as hell
could
leave without him—For Reals. Heidi switched on the ignition key, but all she got was a
clunk!

“Hah, see? You don't even know how to start it. Now, open up.
Come on!
”

“I'm not going anywhere with you, Joey. Not tonight. Not ever again. I don't believe the way you're acting. It's despicable.”

From the back seat came Michael's pathetic cry: “I wadda go hobe.”

“We're going home, sweetie. Just as soon as Daddy backs off and allows us to split.”

“Daddy's going with you.” Joe pressed his nose against the sliding door's window. “I happen to be just as much your parent as Heidi is.”

“It's nice of you to be so concerned,” Heidi said. “Maybe you'll even find an extra five minutes between your erotic appointments around town every week to drop by and say hello to your children.”

“I think you're having a nervous breakdown, dear. You've flipped. Now come on, dammit. Open up!”

“You are
not
traveling home with us, Joey. I mean that absolutely and irrevocably. I refuse to negotiate.”

“How you gonna start the car, then? Beg for a miracle?”

“I am going to hand you the pliers out the vent window in hopes that you still have enough common decency left in your body to go under the car and jump the solenoid so that I can take my sick and suffering child home.”

“You'll run over me while I'm under there.”

“Joey,
please.
Your imagination is too vivid.”

On his way around to her side, Joe paused, licked his finger, and wrote
across the spiderwebbed windshield.

“Very clever,” Heidi sarcasmed. “Now please, we're in a hurry.”

“What about me? I got no wheels. What am I supposed to do?”

“I'm sure that Miss Cosmic Bathrobe in there will take very good care of you.”

“You're ugly. You know that? You're really developing into a very ugly human being.”

“It takes one to know one.” Heidi poked pliers out the open vent window.

“Why do we have to see who can most insult the other all of the time?” Joe was thoroughly demoralized by the whole situation. “It's stupid.”

“I didn't start it, Joey. I didn't blow off our marriage at the bus station last Saturday night.”