“You’re not really worrying about it?”
“How can I?”
“No. You shouldn’t. It would probably just be confusing to think about. You know?” John looked into his eyes. “I really think it’s good.”
“Yeah?”
John sipped his wine and returned it to the table. “Yeah.” Richard knew this was high praise and he was pleased.
Naomi came in with Nana in her arms. Richard’s niece looked at him with puffed, drugged eyes and gladly gave herself up to John’s embrace. Naomi held herself stiffly and stared at Richard. “Do you know what I meant?” she asked, as if there had been no interval.
The men laughed. “When is it, uh, going to get to the boot- throwing exhibition?” John asked.
“Come on, John,” Naomi said, sounding dangerous.
“It wasn’t a boot,” Richard said. “It was an ashtray that she threw at me.”
“I was down in the cellar and it sounded as if it was more than one thing.”
“Yeah, I threw
Cousine Bette
at her. A literary argument.”
“You don’t understand the relationship Richard and I have, John.” Naomi had relaxed but she was still serious. “We were always the fighters in the family. Right?”
“Yeah,” Richard agreed. “You think that’s good?”
“Oh yeah! Sure. It’s just because we’re being honest with each other.”
“Okay. So then what was your question?”
John got up, stroking Nana’s arm. He said, “I’d better get out of the way of the honesty.” He walked out slowly while Richard giggled.
“I don’t want to fight,” Naomi said.
“Neither do I.”
She looked at him earnestly. “I just meant—you know—I wanted you not to get into thinking you can’t survive unless you go to school.”
“I want to drop out. How can you say that to me?”
“Wait!
Or
—I don’t know. I mean you can work, you know? You don’t have to be pampered.”
“I agree with you.”
“Are you sure? What if Mom and Dad—well, what if your novel doesn’t get published? You know you can’t expect it to. You plan to get some shitty, shitty job like you’ll have to get?”
“Yeah. I’ll have to.”
“You think you could do that?”
“Why couldn’t I?”
“I think you can. But you’ve never done it before.”
“I’ve never written a novel before.”
“Come on! There’s a difference.”
“Yeah, there’s a difference in how much I enjoy it. But writing isn’t easier than doing work. I think one can assume if I’m capable of writing, then I’m capable of working.”
“That’s a myth!” Naomi was on her feet suddenly, enraged. “It’s bullshit that writing is more difficult than work.”
“I didn’t say that! I didn’t say it was more difficult. I was saying they were equal.”
She looked at him, puzzled for a moment. “Okay,” she said, her anger gone. “But that’s the myth everyone believes. That some bullshit intellectual is doing something more important or difficult than a carpenter. Aaron”—her voice rose, Richard knowing what was to follow on hearing his father’s name—“will talk about an intellectual he doesn’t even admire as if he’s doing something more important than working people. Unless they have what he calls ideas, they’re not a human being. That’s so sickening.”
“I agree with you.” His tone begged her to stop. He had heard this before and took it seriously. Richard had also suffered indignation at his father’s statements: though Aaron attacked intellectuals for ignoring oppressed people, he held them up as models for Richard’s career. It had been good to hear Naomi reject it. But with repetition he felt it was wrong. “I agree with you,” he repeated quietly, reining her in. “But you confuse everything with the generalizations you make. You’re not talking about intellectuals, you’re talking about academicians. Real intellectuals you admire. Beckett is an intellectual.”
“Oh, that’s wrong!”
“That’s not wrong. Intellectual means someone who concerns himself with ideas, and Beckett does that. Dad isn’t an intellectual. What has he ever said that could be classified as a philosophy? What has he ever said—in ideas—about man’s condition on earth? Zero. Dad’s a playwright. Playwrights aren’t intellectuals. They can be, but not necessarily so. Just because society has called anyone not doing shit work an intellectual doesn’t mean you should confuse those terms also.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Richard.”
“Why not?”
“That’s bullshit. I don’t care if you call them different things. I don’t care who is or isn’t an intellectual. Beckett may be concerned with ideas, but that’s not what I like him for.”
“What do you like about him then?”
“Because—” Naomi paused while her anger settled. “I can’t describe it.”
“Try and tell me anyway.”
“It’s not an idea, some kind of philosophy. It’s what he says about Time—”
“That’s an—”
“I don’t mean as an idea. He does it the way it feels and that’s not some crappy intellectualism. Or the way they speak in
Godot,
that’s exactly the way people talk when they’re really, really stoned. And that doesn’t have to do with any shit about man—”
“Naomi! More than any other playwright, Beckett’s form is suited—is created with the sole idea of allowing philosophical ideas to exist as characters. He’s the most obviously intellectual playwright I’ve ever read. You know that. Just because you use the word and it’s implanted in your mind as meaning nonsense, you won’t admit that someone you like is an intellectual.”
“You’re just throwing words at me. I’m not arguing semantics!”
“Oh, for crying out loud. Because I’m talking about words you think it’s meaningless.”
She looked contemptuously angry. “This is silly.”
“That’s a lot like Dad, you know. To dismiss an argument when losing it.”
Naomi grabbed the chair in front of her and lifted it up. Her head jerked away from him and then back. She slammed the chair down. “This isn’t a game!” she yelled, tears coming without delay. “I’m not playing. People don’t win and lose, Richard.”
She had the capacity, as did all the members of his family, to make him feel he was crude and unsympathetic. He fought the feeling on instinct, but he feared it was true that he preferred to be right rather than to be kind. “Don’t pull that shit on me. I’m not scared by that fucking chair shit.”
“I’M NOT TRYING TO SCARE YOU,” she screamed, and frightened him into silence.
“Hey, hey.” John came running in. “Nana’s asleep. Just be cool in here, huh?”
Naomi stamped her bare foot on the floor, her eyes red with rageful tears. “Damn it,” she said, and walked inside to her room.
Richard felt the pressure and embarrassment of the sudden silence. He trembled trying to light a cigarette: his fury was liquid in his body and it pumped with dangerous force. He was angry about so many things. His lack of control, the refusal of anyone in his family to listen to his opinions, Naomi’s stupidity, his father’s egotism. There was no way to organize the emotional contradictions behind them. How could he be angry over a failure in his family to have a consistent line on intellectuals? It was absurd to care.
But
they browbeat him with their stupid distinctions.
He had heard everything they believed. His father’s love of manners and the proper use of English while he attacked capitalism and doctrinaire Communism; his insistence that American writing was vital and interesting, though he attacked most American writers. His brother, Leo, called American intellectuals pigs and ghouls, though he devoted much of his time to reading them; Leo had an extraordinary background of reading in black history, and he used it to abort any opinions Richard might venture on politics. Richard was shut up because he misused a word, or because he based his judgments on racist history books. Whenever he read a book they recommended and he wished to discuss a judgment of theirs, back came this response: “Oh, wait until you read so and so. Then you’ll see what I mean.”
He loved them and had listened to every idea, great and foolish, they told him. He wanted to be respected in turn. He expected to achieve that with his novel. So he used it as an outlet for the tremendous rage that his argument with Naomi had left with him. He worked until early morning and had forgotten the roots of his inspiration when he fell asleep.
On Monday morning it was snowing. While driving to the airport he hoped the flight would be canceled. Brother and sister, who had casually apologized to each other for their quarrel, were tired and not talkative. John was cheerful. He handled the four-wheel-drive truck easily, Richard fascinated by his competence. The sight was familiar: John’s ski boot pumping the brakes, his hand appearing at the end of his overlarge white knit sweater, reaching into his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes, emerging and tipping the pack so that he could catch one with his lips. There was never any desperation or awkwardness in the movement; sharp curves never disturbed it.
Richard openly admired John’s physical confidence. He had studied him carefully and guessed that they were learned, not intuitive, gestures. Richard had told him his suspicion and John had laughed, delighted. He admitted that as an adolescent he had worked on such things and it had become habitual. “But now you pay no attention to it?” Richard had asked.
But John wasn’t sure. “Well, I don’t have to work at the movements, like when I was a teen-ager. But I’m always aware of what I’m doing.”
“Everybody is aware of their movements, right?”
“I don’t think so. Lots of people don’t go through that stuff. They just breeze through life. They do their number and there’s no problem with it.”
It sounded so pleasant just to breeze through life. It was a squalling storm for Richard, every gesture a mortal decision. “You know, John, I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s like everything else. Everybody thinks they’re the only person who masturbates or talks to themselves, et cetera. Right?”
“I don’t think so,” he insisted. “It’s special.”
John’s physical grace was certainly rare, and Richard appreciated its refinements as if it were a grand ballet. So he was well entertained during the drive.
John and Naomi were staying at the house his parents had bought and planned to move into. During the winter John was supposed to make a bedroom out of the unfinished attic, and their only conversation was caused by Richard’s question about it. “Should I tell Mom and Dad what you’ve done so far, or would you rather it be a surprise?”
“Either way.”
“Richard,” Naomi said with alarming seriousness, “what are you going to do if they make you go to school?”
“I’m going to run away.”
John said mildly, “You will do that, huh?”
“Yep.”
Naomi looked incredulously at them. “What’s going on? How come this is so casual? ‘I’m going to run away. Oh, really?’ ” Her imitation was good humored.
“We’ve talked about it,” John said.
“And you weren’t going to mention it to me?” Naomi asked Richard.
“I was afraid you were going to tell me to get a job.”
They laughed. Naomi said, “You can’t run away to us, you know.”
Richard was hurt. “Don’t say that.”
“I’m sorry,” Naomi said quickly. She patted him on the shoulder. “I mean I’d be happy to have you stay with us. I just mean we can’t because of Aaron and Betty.”
“Don’t you think I’d realize that? What kind of fool do you think I am?”
“Okay, listen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” She began to cry, and Richard was suddenly full of feeling for her. “Let’s make up,” she said. He mumbled, sure, and kissed her on a red cheek.
“Your nose is so cold,” he said, and they laughed to be rid of their embarrassment.
“Really a sick relationship,” John said.
“You just don’t understand,” Naomi said.
“I’m kidding.”
“So, Richard,” Naomi asked tentatively, “where would you go?”
“Well, remember when Mac called me? He’s at college in Boston and he invited me to stay with him.”
“For free?”
“No,” Richard said, his tone sarcastic. “I have to get a job.”
“Oh boy,” John said, laughing.
“Okay.” Naomi was still afraid of the conversation. “I don’t mean about getting a job or anything. I just mean about breaking with Mom and Dad. Are you really able to do that?”
He wished she hadn’t forced him to think about it. “I don’t know. Probably not. But I’m not ready to submit either.” He looked at her significantly. “Get it?”
Richard got off his plane, prepared to greet his parents, and was unpleasantly surprised to see his brother, Leo, waving to him from the top of the escalator that came out onto the main lobby of La Guardia Airport. His brother looked down at him casually and, once noticed, turned aside to drag on the butt of his cigarette in the Bogart manner. Richard’s surprise was overcome in watching his brother’s movements, and when he reached the end of the escalator, it had changed to amazed scorn for the naïveté of his parents. Could they really still be unaware of his contempt for Leo?
The baggage was late in coming and concern over it—his novel!—delayed conversation. Richard nearly gave away its existence because of anxiety, and if he was that careless, he wondered if he could conceal his desire to run away. Once in the cab, Leo asked, “So how was the flight?”
“Shabby. Very shabby. The jets go up like helicopters. Straight up. I really thought I was going to vomit.”
“Do you usually get sick on planes?”
“No. For some reason this was incredibly bad. It’s one of those small jets and it kicked around like a motherfucker.”
Leo grunted and looked out his window. Richard followed suit but for him it had real interest. From the grace and bounty of the countryside to the decay of New York. They were nearing home, and seeing the bloodthirsty streets of his neighborhood so frightened him that it seemed impossible he had ever walked them without terror.
“How do you feel about coming back?” Leo asked.
“How do you think I feel?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
Richard laughed. “I feel it is disastrous. I cannot imagine anything more loathsome.”
“You really feel that way?”
“Uh, yeah. You havin’ trouble believing me?”