The Collected Stories (10 page)

“You were a nice kid in those days,” said John, referring to certain Saturday nights. “A wild, nice kid.”

“Aaah,” I said, disgusted. Whatever I was then was on the way to where I am now. “I was fresh. If I had a kid like me, I'd slap her cross-eyed.”

The very next Thursday John gave me a beautiful radio with a record player. “Enjoy yourself,” he said. That really made Welfare speechless. We didn't own any records, but the investigator saw my burden was lightened and he scribbled a dozen pages about it in his notebook.

On the third Thursday he brought a walking doll (twenty-four inches) for Linda and Barbie with a card inscribed, “A baby doll for a couple of dolls.” He had also had a couple of drinks at his mother's, and this made him want to dance. “La-la-la,” he sang, a ramrod swaying in my kitchen chair. “La-la-la, let yourself go …”

“You gotta give a little,” he sang, “live a little …” He said, “Virginia, may I have this dance?”

“Sssh, we finally got them asleep. Please, turn the radio down. Quiet. Deathly silence, John Raftery.”

“Let me do your dishes, Virginia.”

“Don't be silly, you're a guest in my house,” I said. “I still regard you as a guest.”

“I want to do something for you, Virginia.”

“Tell me I'm the most gorgeous thing.” I said, dipping my arm to the funny bone in dish soup.

He didn't answer. “I'm having a lot of trouble at work” was all he said. Then I heard him push the chair back. He came up behind me, put his arms around my waistline, and kissed my cheek. He whirled me around and took my hands. He said, “An old friend is better than rubies.” He looked me in the eye. He held my attention by trying to be honest. And he kissed me a short sweet kiss on my mouth.

“Please sit down, Virginia,” he said. He kneeled before me and put his head in my lap. I was stirred by so much activity. Then he looked up at me and, as though proposing marriage for life, he offered—because he was drunk—to place his immortal soul in peril to comfort me.

First I said, “Thank you.” Then I said, “No.”

I was sorry for him, but he's devout, a leader of the Fathers' Club at his church, active in all the lay groups for charities, orphans, etc. I knew that if he stayed late to love with me, he would not do it lightly but would in the end pay terrible penance and ruin his long life. The responsibility would be on me.

So I said no.

And Barbie is such a light sleeper. All she has to do, I thought, is wake up and wander in and see her mother and her new friend John with his pants around his knees, wrestling on the kitchen table. A vision like that could affect a kid for life.

I said no.

Everyone in this building is so goddamn nosy. That evening I had to say no.

But John came to visit, anyway, on the fourth Thursday. This time he brought the discarded dresses of Margaret's daughters, organdy party dresses and glazed cotton for every day. He gently admired Barbara and Linda, his blue eyes rolling to back up a couple of dozen oohs and ahs.

Even Philip, who thinks God gave him just a certain number of hellos and he better save them for the final judgment, Philip leaned on John and said, “Why don't you bring your boy to play with me? I don't have nobody who to play with.” (Philip's a liar. There must be at least seventy-one children in this house, pale pink to medium brown, English-talking and gibbering in Spanish, rough-and-tough boys, the Lone Ranger's bloody pals, or the exact picture of Supermouse. If a boy wanted a friend, he could pick the very one out of his neighbors.)

Also, Girard is a cold fish. He was in a lonesome despair. Sometimes he looked in the mirror and said, “How come I have such an ugly face? My nose is funny. Mostly people don't like me.” He was a liar too. Girard has a face like his father's. His eyes are the color of those little blue plums in August. He looks like an advertisement in a magazine. He could be a child model and make a lot of money. He is my first child, and if he thinks he is ugly, I think I am ugly.

John said, “I can't stand to see a boy mope like that … What do the Sisters say in school?”

“He doesn't pay attention is all they say. You can't get much out of them.”

“My middle boy was like that,” said John. “Couldn't take an interest. Aaah, I wish I didn't have all that headache on the job. I'd grab Girard by the collar and make him take notice of the world. I wish I could ask him out to Jersey to play in all that space.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Why, Virginia, I'm surprised you don't know why not. You know I can't take your children out to meet my children.”

I felt a lot of strong arthritis in my ribs.

“My mother's the funny one, Virginia.” He felt he had to continue with the subject matter. “I don't know. I guess she likes the idea of bugging Margaret. She says, ‘You goin' up, John?' ‘Yes, Mother,' I say. ‘Behave yourself, John,' she says. ‘That husband might come home and hacksaw you into hell. You're a Catholic man, John,' she says. But I figured it out. She likes to know I'm in the building. I swear, Virginia, she wishes me the best of luck.”

“I do too, John,” I said. We drank a last glass of beer to make sure of a peaceful sleep. “Good night, Virginia,” he said, looping his muffler neatly under his chin. “Don't worry. I'll be thinking of what to do about Girard.”

I got into the big bed that I share with the girls in the little room. For once I had no trouble falling asleep. I only had to worry about Linda and Barbara and Philip. It was a great relief to me that John had taken over the thinking about Girard.

John was sincere. That's true. He paid a lot of attention to Girard, smoking out all his sneaky sorrows. He registered him into a wild pack of Cub Scouts that went up to the Bronx once a week to let off steam. He gave him a Junior Erector Set. And sometimes when his family wasn't listening he prayed at great length for him.

One Sunday, Sister Veronica said in her sweet voice from another life, “He's not worse. He might even be a little better. How are
you
, Virginia?” putting her hand on mine. Everybody around here acts like they know everything.

“Just fine,” I said.

“We ought to start on Philip,” John said, “if it's true Girard's improving.”

“You should've been a social worker, John.”

“A lot of people have noticed that about me,” said John.

“Your mother was always acting so crazy about you, how come she didn't knock herself out a little to see you in college? Like we did for Thomas?”

“Now, Virginia, be fair. She's a poor old woman. My father was a weak earner. She had to have my wages, and I'll tell you, Virginia, I'm not sorry. Look at Thomas. He's still in school. Drop him in this jungle and he'd be devoured. He hasn't had a touch of real life. And here I am with a good chunk of a family, a home of my own, a name in the building trades. One thing I have to tell you, the poor old woman is sorry. I said one day (oh, in passing—years ago) that I might marry you. She stuck a knife in herself. It's a fact. Not more than an eighth of an inch. You never saw such a gory Sunday. One thing—you would have been a better daughter-in-law to her than Margaret.”

“Marry me?” I said.

“Well, yes … Aaah—I always liked you, then … Why do you think I'd sit in the shade of this kitchen every Thursday night? For godsakes, the only warm thing around here is this teacup. Yes sir, I did want to marry you, Virginia.”

“No kidding, John? Really?” It was nice to know. Better late than never, to learn you were desired in youth.

I didn't tell John, but the truth is. I would never have married him. Once I met my husband with his winking looks, he was my only interest. Wild as I had been with John and others, I turned all my wildness over to him and then there was no question in my mind.

Still, face facts, if my husband didn't budge on in life, it was my fault. On me, as they say, be it. I greeted the morn with a song. I had a hello for everyone but the landlord. Ask the people on the block, come or go—even the Spanish ones, with their sad dark faces—they have to smile when they see me.

But for his own comfort, he should have done better lifewise and moneywise. I was happy, but I am now in possession of knowledge that this is wrong. Happiness isn't so bad for a woman. She gets fatter, she gets older, she could lie down, nuzzling a regiment of men and little kids, she could just die of the pleasure. But men are different, they have to own money, or they have to be famous, or everybody on the block has to look up to them from the cellar stairs.

A woman counts her children and acts snotty, like she invented life, but men
must
do well in the world. I know that men are not fooled by being happy.

“A funny guy,” said John, guessing where my thoughts had gone. “What stopped him up? He was nobody's fool. He had a funny thing about him, Virginia, if you don't mind my saying so. He wasn't much distance up, but he was all set and ready to be looking down on us all.”

“He was very smart, John. You don't realize that. His hobby was crossword puzzles, and I said to him real often, as did others around here, that he ought to go out on the ‘$64 Question.' Why not? But he laughed. You know what he said? He said. ‘That proves how dumb you are if you think I'm smart.' “

“A funny guy,” said John. “Get it all off your chest,” he said. “Talk it out, Virginia; it's the only way to kill the pain.”

By and large, I was happy to oblige. Still I could not carry through about certain cruel remarks. It was like trying to move back into the dry mouth of a nightmare to remember that the last day I was happy was the middle of a week in March, when I told my husband I was going to have Linda. Barbara was five months old to the hour. The boys were three and four. I had to tell him. It was the last day with anything happy about it.

Later on he said, “Oh, you make me so sick, you're so goddamn big and fat, you look like a goddamn brownstone, the way you're squared off in front.”

“Well, where are you going tonight?” I asked.

“How should I know?” he said. “Your big ass takes up the whole goddamn bed,” he said. “There's no room for me.” He bought a sleeping bag and slept on the floor.

I couldn't believe it. I would start every morning fresh. I couldn't believe that he would turn against me so, while I was still young and even his friends still liked me.

But he did, he turned absolutely against me and became no friend of mine. “All you ever think about is making babies. This place stinks like the men's room in the BMT. It's a fucking
pissoir
.” He was strong on truth all through the year. “That kid eats more than the five of us put together,” he said. “Stop stuffing your face, you fat dumbbell,” he said to Philip.

Then he worked on the neighbors. “Get that nosy old bag out of here,” he said. “If she comes on once more with ‘my son in the building trades' I'll squash her for the cat.”

Then he turned on Spielvogel, the checker, his oldest friend, who only visited on holidays and never spoke to me (shy, the way some bachelors are). “That sonofabitch, don't hand me that friendship crap, all he's after is your ass. That's what I need—a little shitmaker of his using up the air in this flat.”

And then there was no one else to dispose of. We were left alone fair and square, facing each other.

“Now, Virginia,” he said, “I come to the end of my rope. I see a black wall ahead of me. What the hell am I supposed to do? I only got one life. Should I lie down and die? I don't know what to do anymore. I'll give it to you straight, Virginia, if I stick around, you can't help it, you'll hate me …”

“I hate you right now,” I said. “So do whatever you like.”

“This place drives me nuts,” he mumbled. “I don't know what to do around here. I want to get you a present. Something.”

“I told you, do whatever you like. Buy me a rat trap for rats.”

That's when he went down to the House Appliance Store, and he brought back a new broom and a classy dustpan.

“A new broom sweeps clean,” he said. “I got to get out of here,” he said. “I'm going nuts.” Then he began to stuff the duffel bags, and I went to the grocery store but was stopped by Mrs. Raftery, who had to tell me what she considered so beautiful—death—then he kissed and went to join some army somewhere.

I didn't tell John any of this, because I think it makes a woman look too bad to tell on how another man has treated her. He begins to see her through the other man's eyes, a sitting duck, a skinful of flaws. After all, I had come to depend on John. All my husband's friends were strangers now, though I had always said to them, “Feel welcome.”

And the family men in the building looked too cunning, as though they had all personally deserted me. If they met me on the stairs, they carried the heaviest groceries up and helped bring Linda's stroller down, but they never asked me a question worth answering at all.

Besides that, Girard and Philip taught the girls the days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Johnday, Friday. They waited for him once a week, under the hallway lamp, half asleep like bugs in the sun, sitting in their little chairs with their names on in gold, a birth present from my mother-in-law. At fifteen after eight he punctually came, to read a story, pass out some kisses, and tuck them into bed.

But one night, after a long Johnday of them squealing my eardrum split, after a rainy afternoon with brother constantly raising up his hand against brother, with the girls near ready to go to court over the proper ownership of Melinda Lee, the twenty-four-inch walking doll, the doorbell rang three times. Not any of those times did John's face greet me.

I was too ashamed to call down to Mrs. Raftery, and she was too mean to knock on my door and explain.