Long Made Short (10 page)

“Something the matter?” his wife says, and he says “Oh, you know, just that heady
all-consuming philosophical thinking pushing in again,” and she says “So tell me,
I can stop to listen, seeing how you’ve stopped,” and he says “‘To listen’—that’s
right, that’s what it is and why I stopped—no, I don’t know what I’m talking about,
and all that baloney before about my having deep and demanding philosophical thoughts
and also thoughts of big decisions and worries and remorse over how I’m treating the
kids and the growing possibilities of disabling and painful illnesses—my teeth, I
remember—well, they were all just that, baloney, is what I’m saying,” and she says
“Why? How?” and rests her head on his thigh, and he says “What I mean is, it’s just
not like me or in me to think philosophically—I mostly just go on and on and don’t
stop to think, so I was evading your questions from not now but before, and of course
also now, meaning just before,” and she says “Wait, I’m losing you,” and he says “I’m
saying that if I do get a philosophical thought it’s usually by accident—I’m thinking
of something practical, let’s say, and the philosophical thought just pops up, but
it mostly usually comes from something like, if I get a pain in my stomach that wakes
me up two consecutive nights and keeps me up, I think maybe I have pancreatic cancer—the
one they can’t detect till it’s in an untreatable stage because it was hidden behind
some other organs, and that might make me think of my mortality, of how I’d hate to
go so fast and leave you and the kids while they’re so young and also the physical
pain I’d have before they doped me up with morphine and the emotional pain it would
bring the kids of their daddy dying and probably to you too,” and she says “Of course
me, what do you think?” and he says “I know, but you could recover after a while—a
year, half a year—and marry again, while with them they’ve lost their father permanently,
there’s really no one to replace him if he goes when they’re so young—but what was
I saying? And truth is, even that wasn’t a good example of a philosophical thought—it
wasn’t even one. So maybe I never get philosophical thoughts, or I get them only rarely
but never deep ones. But I was saying or was going to say that I didn’t have any philosophical
thoughts before when I was sitting downstairs and told you I did, or thoughts of worry
and remorse and so on, but only a rush of thoughts with pictures and scenes and the
rest of it of kids I knew when I was between maybe five and fifteen. I don’t even
know why the thoughts came, or why those particular kids, some of whom I haven’t thought
of in maybe thirty years, though maybe the more erotic scenes—one was of seeing a
girl’s vagina for the first time when I was four or five, or first time where I remembered
it—came in simply because I was feeling amorous and wanted to make love, even if it
took me a while to get up here, and so those excited me to it. Anyway, they won’t
stop me anymore—I think enough time’s elapsed where I’m done with them for now—and
we better get going again since we don’t have much more time,” and runs his hand over
her shoulder and across her mouth, and she moves her face next to his and they resume
making love.

He’s behind her, place he likes best, her buttocks up and his hands holding her hips,
pretty close to the finish he guesses since it hardly ever takes him long when they’re
like this, much as he’d like to keep going for her sake, though she was the one who
said “Come behind me”—probably because they were so short of time and she was nowhere
near done—something he often hopes she’ll suggest and he rarely initiates since she’s
said it’s never the best position for her and she does it mostly because she knows
how much he loves it. “Not that I’m saying it’s horrible,” she once said, “it’s just
that I can’t see you and it’s rough on my elbows and knees and the pleasure isn’t
the greatest so it’s simply not one of my favorites,” when he thinks of Bea Fields.
Standing in front of an audience, hands cupped to her chest, eyes closed, face transported,
moving her mouth as if singing. He liked to sing also and could tell her voice was
beautiful with clean tones and a tremendous range though it seemed for her age a little
artificial and too trained. Mr. Sisk, the music teacher, said a few times he’d like
them to do a duet in front of the assembly, since they had the best voices in school,
and he was glad it never got past an idea. She usually snubbed him, seemed to look
down on all the boys, maybe because she knew how they felt about her and also because
she thought they had no culture and she didn’t think much of their brains. She was
homely, big thick glasses, large nose, piano legs they said, messy frizzy hair, big
fat breasts before it seemed any of the other girls started to get theirs or only
had buds, waist and hips like those women who wore bustles in old-fashioned westerns
though she was only twelve or thirteen, ugly dresses and shoes, big lips, little teeth,
whiny speaking voice, it was said she never studied for tests but she always ended
up with top marks, he and a few others also tried out for Performing Arts but she
was the only one to get in. At their graduation ceremony she sang a Negro spiritual,
something from a popular operetta and
La Bohème
, and then, other than for once or twice in the neighborhood, he never saw her again.

He comes, keeps moving as long as he can, then she lies on her stomach and he collapses
on top of her. They stay that way, side of face against side of face, her eye closed,
probably the other one too, and she’s murmuring while he thinks of Gwynn. The best
athlete for a girl he ever played with, and then she lost a leg below the knee because
of some rare bone disease her first year in high school. Then she was in a wheelchair
without the other leg and last time he saw her was when he was going to a movie alone,
it was his first or second year in college, and she was in her chair in front of her
apartment building a block from the theater, she must have been left there since it
was a walk-up and she couldn’t have got downstairs herself, and he said “Gwynn?” though
he knew it was her, and she said “Gordon Tannenbaum, or Mandelbaum?” and he said “Mandelbaum,
though no difference,” and asked how she was and she said fine, doing okay, considering,
she finally graduated high school with an equivalency diploma by having a slew of
special-education teachers come to her home and that she was even planning to go to
college, which she bet he was in now and he said he was, but also working, but that
was good, her going to college, getting out and around and really exercising the brain,
and he thought maybe she’d like to go to the movie with him, he could handle it, wheeling
her there and back or she could do her own wheeling if that was the kind of wheelchair
it was and she had the strength for it and preferred doing it, and then he’d just
ring up her apartment and someone would come down for her and get her up however they
do it and he’d even pay her way, treat her at the candy counter and everything, but
said “Well, I’ll see ya,” and she said “It’s been nice talking, stop by again,” and
he felt bad after he left, and looked back from the corner and saw her talking with
an older woman but looking at him. She waved, he waved, he continued going but told
himself he would stop by, maybe even phone for her to meet him downstairs or he’d
come upstairs to help her down, and later heard, maybe a year after, she’d been sent
to a hospital in the Midwest that specialized in her disease and that was the last
he heard anything about her. He wonders if these people, the ones who didn’t die,
ever think of him. His wife says from under him “You better fetch the kids,” and he
says “Right, I forgot,” looks at the clock, gets up and wipes himself and dresses
and quickly leaves.

He bangs his head against something when he’s exercising. He sees light, feels blood,
goes into the bathroom—all this was done in the dark, just a little moonlight—turns
on the light there and sees the cut. “How could I have been so stupid?” he thinks.
“Unfamiliar house; we were here last summer for a month but our first night in it
this one; why didn’t I turn on the lights?” He was exercising in the dining room,
which has the stairway in it, and his daughter was sleeping or falling asleep upstairs
with her door open because she was afraid to sleep with it closed and he didn’t want
the light to wake her. He already has a paper towel to the cut, looks at it and at
the cut in the mirror, still bleeding, presses harder, thinks he should get an ice
pack on it to keep down the swelling, goes into the dining room to get to the kitchen
but stops to see what he banged his head on. Stands on the spot where he thinks he
was exercising. Must have been one of those two spindles or stems or whatever they
are—just the top poles of the back of the dinner table chair on his left, that he
hit his head on. The exercise was where he puts his hands on his hips—no, clasps them
behind his neck and touches his left knee with his left elbow and then his right knee
with his right elbow and does that ten times. It’s the first of a series of exercises
he devised for himself years ago and has been doing every morning or late evening
or sometimes at his office in the afternoon, if he has about ten minutes and the door’s
closed and he hasn’t done it that morning and prefers getting it over with rather
than doing it that night. He was only doing the first movement of the exercise when
he banged his head. The cut seems dry, and he takes off the towel. Still bleeding,
and now hurts, and he folds the towel over, presses a clean part to his head and goes
to the bathroom for last year’s aspirins. This year’s he hasn’t unpacked yet.

Next morning his daughter says “Where’d you get that?” and he says “If I told you
I got it exercising last night, you’d say I must have been drunk.” “Huh?” and he says
“What I’m saying is I did get it exercising—doing this, which I won’t be able to do
for a while with this head,” and shows her. “Oh Jesus, that hurt, and it’s still bleeding,
I see, and I wasn’t drunk when I got it, sweetie. I was just unfamiliar with the terrain—this
room, so what I thought was air was a chair, no po-tree intended.” She says “Well
it looks ugly and you should put a Band-Aid on it,” and he thinks “She’ll be ashamed
of it if I take her to camp as is, and she’ll be right.”

At camp the counselor he leaves her with says “What happened there?” pointing to the
Band-Aid and Mercurochrome stain around it, and he says “If I told you I banged up
my head exercising, you’d say,” but because his daughter’s there he should change
the line, “that I’m either drunk saying that or was drunk when I got it. But I’m not,
wasn’t not—either, neither. I got it in the most paradoxical way possible—like jogging,
I mean dying of a heart attack jogging, you know what I mean?” and she nods, and he
thinks she doesn’t know or has stopped listening. He should know whom he’s talking
to, not go over or under or try to ram through their heads. And maybe his head’s been
affected by the blow worse than he knows.

Says good-by to his daughter, kisses her lips, says he’ll be here 3:30 promptly or
even a quarter hour before, “since all the campers do the last fifteen minutes is
hang around in the sun waiting to be picked up. We’ll stop at the Hillside View Diner
for a snack on the way home. You’ll have fun here, meet lots of girls. Don’t forget
to take sailing, if you want, as your main morning activity for the month. I want
her to,” he says to the counselor, “because I want her to teach me everything she
learns.” “And we’ll try to teach her everything we know.” His daughter never says
a word. Didn’t want to come. Said yesterday during the drive up “I’m not going to
camp, just so you know.” Said it a few days ago, weeks ago, in February when he was
filling out the application: “You say your money’s so hard-earned? Well I don’t care
if you waste it and I won’t be guilty if you don’t get a refund.” She pulls her head
away when he tries kissing the top. He says “Well, good-by, my dearie,” and walks
to the car, turns around when he gets to it. She’s staring sadly at him, shoulders
folded in, face saying “How can you leave me here?” Her glasses make her look even
sadder. He knows the feeling. Painfully shy—they said it about him, he says it about
her, but she’s even more that way than he was. The counselor sees her staring, puts
her arm around her and walks her over to a group of girls, all with eyeglasses, and
introduces her. They each say hello to her and resume their hand-slapping counting
game. The counselor has a volleyball-size ball under her arm, throws it to one of
the girls; the girl catches it, looks around what to do with it and the counselor
says “Toss it to Debbie—the new girl.” “Here, Debbie, catch.” Deborah shakes her head,
steps back, looks at him. “Play, play,” he mouths, and puts his hands up as if catching
the ball, then throwing it forward and then from under his legs. She looks away, at
no one now. Doesn’t like to play ball. Thinks she’s an awful athlete and clumsy runner.
Likes reading books. Has always been tops in school. Likes to paint, draw, sculpt
in clay, write stories and plays, make things. She has one good friend in the city;
they don’t even see each other that much. She’s too shy to ask her over; waits till
the friend asks if she can come over. He loves it when she’s having fun with another
kid, running around with her, laughing, confiding, sitting on the same couch reading,
being wild, playing games, but it’s so rare. What have we done to her? What’s he done,
he means, since he wanted and got custody of her.

Leaves, works at home, couple of times his head aches and he takes aspirins and rests
on the bed, every so often thinks he’s doing the wrong thing by forcing her to go
to camp, “but then I want to work during the day so what am I supposed to do?” Intends
getting back at 3:15 but wants to finish a page he worked on all day, so doesn’t get
there till quarter of, and the roads were clear all the way. “Sorry I’m late; traffic;
one Maine driver after the other in front of me. How was it?” “My lunch was almost
boiling. You left it in the sun.” “Sweetheart, I left your bag in the shade behind
a rock but the sun’s direction must have changed. Put it where you want next time.
And sailing?” “We didn’t go out. Water was too choppy. Instead we played these rough
games. Like red rover, which you can break your arm doing and which I think lots of
them wanted to do, yours and their own. I sat out after a minute. I’m not going to
make any friends or have a good time here. They all know one another from school and
around. I’m the only one from the city.” “There must be more. Have you checked?” “No,
but I’ve heard. I’m not going to camp tomorrow.” “You have to give it a try. I told
you: after a week or so, if you still have some major grievances about it, we’ll have
a serious discussion about your continuing it.” She sulks in the car. A counselor
said good-by. A girl waved to her when they drove off. “Who was that girl who waved
before?” he says. “She seemed to like you, and all the counselors too.” “I don’t know.
She didn’t swim either, so we sat next to each other at the lake.” “Why didn’t you
swim?” “I felt cold. And there are bloodsuckers in the water.” “Don’t worry about
those. Chances are one in a thousand one will get on you, and if it does, little touch
with a cigarette or sprinkle of salt and it falls off dead.” “Last summer a boy got
one on his leg and it bled down to the ground.” “That’s the water mixing with the
blood, making it seem like much more. But that girl before. Just by the way she waved,
I’d say she wanted to be your friend.” “You can’t tell by one look. And she only talked
about stupid TV shows you’d never let me watch and what a
fun time
next week’s Pirate’s Day is going to be. She’s like most of them here and last year.
They’re nice but we don’t like the same things.” “Give them a chance. She might have
brought up those shows just to—” But she’s turned away, doesn’t want to hear anything
he says.