Even my arm was aghast at that. It sank. At
thigh-level her voice continued, tiny. I hung up. She rang back.
“We were cut off,” she said. She went back slandering her
brother-in-law. “So that’s why I’m in a hotel,” she concluded. I
glanced at the script: II A, the three alternatives: a, b, c. I
chose c, again something quiet.
“A wise move. But why pick a hotel in LA?
Don’t you find commuting five hundred miles every day to the
hospital in Phoenix a little wearing?”
I departed from quiet irony, yelling:
“Your goddam values. How can you lie like that? I can’t stand crazy
women who lie, who betray trust, who practice deliberate sabotage
on loved ones. Where’s sincerity in that? Where the hell is
compassion? Never mind
me
. Forget
about
me
. How about
your sister, though? She rang up and told me she was in perfect
health this year. What a thing to wish on your own flesh and blood.
Your murderous fantasies. And poor Larry. Those sex fantasies of
yours. All in the head. And me, for Christ’s sake, how about me?
Look, stop this bullshit. I saw the leaflet in that phony 18th
century jewel box of yours where you put the Valium. So I know
there’s a monster one-week meeting of the Golden Galaxy lunatics
tomorrow in LA and I can guess you hope your ex-husband’ll be there
and there’ll be a big reconciliation and you’ll drop me and he’ll
drop the twenty-year-old girl for you. For God’s sake you’re forty,
going on fifty. Sixty isn’t that far off, believe me. He’ll never
come back, get out of the past.”
Of course tears and sobs at that. I pictured
her mouth square with grief.
“Come back,” I commanded. “I want you here by
tomorrow evening.”
“I … I can’t do that. Not yet. This is the
last time, Jerry, I swear it is. I’ll be back as soon as I’m able
to. I won’t go to Martha’s this year, she’s fine, thank God. You’re
right, you’re so right about that, Jerry. How could I have said
such awful things about my own sister? Like wishing it on her. I
love Martha so much. Larry almost tried to kiss me once, that’s
true, but he never … I was possessed that day. It happened all of a
sudden when I saw that leaflet, like that time in the subway. I
never told you this, but I spent that whole day taking line after
line, IRT BMT Bronx and Manhattan and Queens looking in the cars,
getting off and on, on and off, looking for him until way into the
night and dangerous. And knowing it was crazy all the time I was
doing it but going on doing it anyhow. And it happened lots of
times, once in the middle of a Wall Street crowd, two months ago.
But this is the last time, Jerry, I swear it is. This time I’ll get
it out of my system.”
“When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. As soon as I’m able to.”
“You don’t know when you’ll be back. But I
know when I’ll be gone. Don’t be alarmed. Stop crying. I won’t
betray the trust you placed in me. I’ll go on watering your
hydrangeas twice a day and feeding your goldfish till June sixth.
That’s in a week. You’d better be back by June sixth if you care
more for your plants and your fish than you do for your sister and
me. I’m not staying in Forest Hill any more. How did I ever get
involved with you grotesques anyhow? I have a better place to go
to. I saw us both there but I can do it on my own, don’t think I
can’t.”
A lie. A
lie.
Suddenly I broke off in total departure from
script and joined her. Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, from both ends of the wire
3000 miles apart. Oh Beth. I can’t do it without you. I don’t want
to be alone again, Beth. O Jerry, Jerry, my darling, forgive
me.
It went on for some time. Finally she
promised she’d be back in a week, never, never again, out of her
system this time, and we’d leave for the seaside together as
planned. It was badly damaged but I’d salvaged something of the
dream.
After I hung up I realized she’d still been
thinking of Maine. She’d been dozing when I’d talked about the
permanent house for the two of us. I almost rang back but knew I
wouldn’t be able to summon the lyrical impulse for the sales pitch.
It was better this way. The surprise would be total for her when we
got into the car and started heading south instead of north.
Who wants to remember what followed? What
lesson can be drawn from that? For what future?
I fell asleep in the armchair. Sunshine
pouring through the window woke me up. I spent the rest of the
morning and part of the afternoon clearing up the enraged mess I’d
made the day before. I examined all the rooms critically. The house
was exactly as she’d entrusted it to me two days before.
Impeccable. I fed Oscar, watered the plants. Then I went over to
Harvey’s.
But who wants to remember that? Who wants to
remember what followed?
O Lord for Thee I yearn.
Through the jungle tangle of wires I reach
out for Thee.
The spirit hath fled the temple, an empty
shell labeled $8.99.
But the hosts of Lord are numberless. Let me
reach for reinforcements beneath the console to combat the pain of
lucidity. Ah, thy pale blood fills my mouth, thrice, activates
ulcers or worse.
More. More.
Perhaps now, at the price of this terrible
bowel pain, better though than the other, I’ll be armed to review
what followed.
Behold him tiny down there, jigging about.
Some of it must be good for laughs.
***
Twenty
He prays the neighbors can’t see Hanna
squatting in the high grass playing out the cables a foot or so
through the four holes clipped out at the base of the hurricane
fence. In the wind the grass billows over her. Gigantic filthy
mermaid.
If interested, the neighbors can see him an
hour later in the twilight sauntering toward the neat Beth side of
that fence, bending down as for sea-shells on a green-sanded beach,
gathering the four balls of stout twine attached to the ends of the
cables. Then (but this they can’t possibly see) letting the twine
out as he saunters past the open window and casually tossing the
four balls inside.
Elaborate precautions. He wants no
witnesses.
Now inside, nearly invisible, crouched
beneath the sill, her exotic plants out of harm’s way, he pulls the
cables in hand over hand. Suppressing concern about auricular
flutter, he can imagine he’s hauling in early morning nightlines
heavy with eels. They slither across the lawn in convergence toward
the living room window. Inevitably they run through the strip of
tulips and do a certain amount of collateral damage. But most of
the flowers are shattered by now anyhow.
Soon the cables are lying lifeless beneath
the window.
The tricky part now. The green paint-job on
the cables is fine camouflage for the lawn but not for the white
wall. Takes another drink for encouragement. Then picks up the four
strands of twine and puts back and heels into it, tottering back
with gasps toward the opposite wall. Not good for his heart. All
four of the cables pour into the house.
He goes on retreating, trips over the
Christmas-wrapped monitor and gets a vicious jab in the small of
the spine from one of the Christmas-wrapped sensors. (Christmas is
way in the past or way in the future depending which way you look
but they had to be disguised and it was the only wrapping-paper he
found, in one of Harvey’s closets, decades old. Yellowed Santas
waved over and over from their sleighs. What did the neighbors
think of Christmas in late May if they witnessed those four
heart-straining trips from one house to the other?)
With that blow to his spinal column the
palpitations start up again. He has to return to the sofa. He
should never have agreed to help Hanna with those big
first-generation sensors three hours ago. A heart attack on the
threshold of entry into real life would be too cruel.
Four times he’d transported them,
knee-flexed, tottering behind Hanna like a winded sweat-blinded
pallbearer. With the fourth sensor set up in its corner, completing
the now operational quartet, his heart had started acting up in
irregular bursts. He’d had to lie down on the sofa for a half-hour.
He’d been deeply alarmed even after it subsided.
At the second alert following the blow in the
spine three hours later, he longs to stay on the sofa indefinitely.
But there are those four cables green against the white wall. He
forces himself to get up. He goes over to the window. He flings the
blanket over the cables. A blanket hanging out of a living room
window is a little strange but less strange than what it’s hiding.
As he slowly pulls the cables further into Beth’s living room he
wipes each one perfectly clean and dry even though her carpet is
protected by thicknesses of newspaper. “Wipe your feet,” he says to
them comically, trying to forget his heart. Soon each one lies
coiled at the foot of its sensor. He returns to the sofa.
The phone starts ringing again for the fifth
time that evening. With such persistence it can only be Beth. He’d
let it ring on and on the first four times. Just wasn’t up to
standing there in the middle of her radically altered interior
decoration scheme and talking about other things.
But now with the heart alert he badly wants
to hear her concerned loving voice, wants her assurance that it’s
probably nothing at all serious. Maybe it’s also a strategy to
alarm her into early return. So he gets up like fine glassware and
answers the phone in the prudent way she insisted on.
There’s no immediate reply, just hard
breathing. Finally Ricky’s spaced-out voice:
“I want Beth. Who are you? I want my mother.”
JW gives him the plant-watering routine. He takes a long time
digesting the news that his mother is away for a week. He asks JW
what he’s doing in their house. JW repeats the reason and throws in
the goldfish stint for good measure. Ricky hangs up on him.
He goes outside and inspects the window job.
The blanket does look odd. And you can make out the shape of the
cables underneath. Finally the neighbors don’t matter all that
much, but what about the police? Sometimes you saw them cruising
around at night, their patrol cars hurling glaring full moons on
the houses. That worries JW. But it will be only one night, that
night. He made it clear to Harvey.
Six hours earlier he’d found Harvey on the
cot curled up on Hanna’s lap, clutching his stomach and staring at
the wall. Hanna was rocking him. You seldom saw her down in the
cellar except for emergencies.
She glares at JW and whispers: “Look what you
did to him, you bastard.” JW has the means of relieving his pain if
it’s just that. Solemnly he announces that he’s willing. Deep in
his pain, Harvey doesn’t react. JW touches his arm and bends over
and repeats in his ear, louder, that he’s willing to let the
sensors be installed in the living room of the other house. For a
strictly limited time, on the terms already agreed upon.
Still no reaction. After half a year of
harassment this indifference alarms JW. Hanna comes to his rescue.
She strokes Harvey’s caved-in cheek.
“Harv honey, didn’t you hear? You can have
it. He says it’s okay, we can stick the things in the bitch’s
house.” He goes on staring at his pain. She bends down closer to
his face.
“Honey, you can have it. You can have it, he
says. You talked all the time about it and now you got it you don’t
care. Don’t do this to me, Harv. Does it hurt real bad, sweetie?
Lemme get the pills.”
She removes her bulk from under his head,
gentles it on the pillow. She comes back with a glass of water,
eases him slowly up to a sitting position. The curly golden wig is
shoved forward over his eyes. All you can see of his face is the
gigantic beak and the embittered mouth.
She puts the glass down on the floor,
carefully rearranges the wig, fluffs it. Then says, “Say ahh,”
places the pill on his tongue and lifts the glass to his lips and
swallows herself so he’ll do it in imitation.
He slowly comes back. Stares at JW.
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“How long?”
“Just tonight.”
“A week.”
“No.”
“Five days.”
“Just tonight.”
JW says it in a tone that should tell Harvey
he’s wasting time and breath. He doesn’t have much left. It’s
something deeper than his impaired vocal cords now. He has
difficulty summoning up breath to make them vibrate into
half-intelligible sound. His face is loose and waxen over the
skull.
He tries to plead for time without breath.
Holds up four bony fingers.
JW shakes his head.
“Whole house, then,” Harvey brings out.
“Just the living room.”
“Four days. Everywhere.”
“What I said.”
“Give you more money. For two days. And
everywhere.”
JW feels stirrings of anger at the way
Harvey’s maneuvering him into the role of a sadistic
time-monopolist, as though by a single word (“four” then “three”
and now even “two”) JW could prolong his life indefinitely. JW
doesn’t let pity get the upper hand. He shakes his head. He isn’t
indefinitely purchasable.
“Eighty-four thousand dollars was what you
offered last night. That’s enough for me.”
“
Ei
ghty-f
ou
r
th
ou
sand
d
o
llars?” Hanna
echoes the sum in the same incredulous shocked way she did over the
phone long ago when JW told her the amount of the check Harvey had
enclosed in the letter. After all, that money would have been hers
soon. Most of it anyhow.
Harvey stares down at the floor. “Get. The
checkbook,” he commands Hanna.
Negotiations nearly break down then and
there. JW insists on cash. It’s Friday evening, Harvey reminds him
in writing. He wouldn’t be able to transfer that much cash from the
money market account till Tuesday at the earliest. He wants to
start in that very evening, he doesn’t have time to wait around. He
offers JW an IOU as well, witnessed by Hanna. JW is suspicious.