The MacGuffin (42 page)

Yeah, Mikey, Druff thought, go ahead. Read
that!

Which, of course, Mikey didn’t, couldn’t. They had different agendas. Mikey and Dad were on two separate, totally different, entirely arrested beams. Mikey into his preoccupations with Health and a sort of immutability on command of anything that might once have pleased him. (He would have gone back to Lebanon with her, even if it meant they might have taken him hostage! The trouble with his son, Druff thought, was that he didn’t think things all the way through. He was going to go back to Lebanon with the woman he loved, willing to accept the risks, to take his chances on becoming a hostage. All right. So far so good. But had it once crossed his mind that they might not carry Blues hockey in the Middle East?) And Druff, Druff thought, never one to let himself off lightly if he could shoot himself in the foot with both barrels—with his own opposing preoccupations, with finding the action and recklessly throwing himself into harm’s way, not only forbidding the immutable but absolutely encouraging it, not only inviting a MacGuffin into his life but positively becoming one!

Well.

Druff’s eyes open again, he saw his son shake his head, mournful, woeful.

“Hey,” he said apologetically, “I’m sorry, Mike. I really am.”

“Did they give you a reason?”

“A reason?”

“For not letting us have the marathon?”

It was Druff’s last straw. He practically exploded. He could have awakened Rose Helen, upstairs sleeping, but he was past caring. “God damn it, Mikey, do you even know what I do for a living?” he demanded. “Do you? Well,
do
you?”

“You’re City Commissioner of Streets.”

“That’s right,” Druff said. “Now what do you suppose that entails?”

“You’re in charge of the streets.”

“Good,” Druff said. “Now where are the marathons run? Look at me. Don’t shut your eyes.
Look
at me! Where are they run?”

“In the streets.”

“Excellent. They’re run in the streets. Excellent. They’re run in the streets and I’m their commissioner. Why would I need a Scouffas, why would I need a McIlvoy? I’m City Commissioner of Streets, the streets are my jurisdiction. I could cross without looking both ways if I wanted. So if I wanted to put on a marathon why would I need the permission of people who don’t even live or pay taxes here?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t. Wonderful!”

“Then you’ll do it?”

Druff stared at him.

“You’ll do it? You’ll put one on?”

And stared at him.

“You promise?”

“Sure,” said Druff, “honor bright. Cross my heart. Hope to kiss a pig.”

Then Mikey said something in a manner so completely neutral and uninflected that, at first, Druff, though he’d heard the words, had no notion, none at all, what they meant. “Oh Dad” was what he said. But for the separation of the two discrete syllables, it could almost have been some sound of the body—some incoherent, vaguely natural (though not nature proper: not the wind, not the water; not fire, not earth) noise of the emotions, of displacement, like the tuneless, interstitial creak of bones. He said it again. “Oh Dad.” Was it nerves? It was grief.

Then—to give himself time, Druff would have said “gradually,” but there was nothing gradual about it, nothing calibrated, nothing stepping-stoned, nothing scalar, nothing runged; there were no easy stages—he recalled its terms, and understood that whatever their agendas, they were on the same beam, all right. Even before Mikey asked him if he remembered Diosodidio Macospodagal. Why, the kid
was
a hostage. He was Druff’s hostage.

“The doctor?”

“Yes,” Michael said.

“You were a kid,” Druff said. “How do you remember his name?”

“I remember,” Michael said.

“Well,” Druff said, “it’s a funny name. The kind of name you never forget. Hey,” Druff said, “what’s this? What’s the matter with you? Do you want to wake your mother? Hey, Michael, come on. Stop it, Mikey. You’re a grown man. Stop it now.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”

“Of course you can help it. Take a deep breath. Go on, take a deep breath.”

“Fuck a deep breath.”

“Do you know how silly you sound?”

“Fuck a deep breath.
Fuck
a deep breath.”

“All right now. Cut it out. Will you cut it out, please?”

“Fuck cut it out. Piss on cut it out up the ass.”

“You’re making a scene.”

“Suck my scene’s dick.”

“I’m tired, Mikey. Why are you carrying on like this?”

“And I suppose you didn’t? You made a scene! You made a son of a whore’s bitch of a scene. God damn it to pus shit.
You
made a scene!”

“Come on, now. Jesus. Get hold of yourself please. Here, take my handkerchief. Your nose is running.”

“Stick my nose. Stick your handkerchief.”

“Right.”

“You
made a scene. I’ll say you did. I’ll say so. ‘Your pop’s dying, Mikey. I’ll miss you, Mikey. You’re the one. I love you, kid.
You’re
the one I love. I’m sorry I crapped out on you, son. You’re man of the house now; take care of your mother, Mikey. Study hard. Behave yourself. Don’t get into trouble. Promise, promise me now. Your dad’s dying, kiddo. He’s had a massive cardiac infarction and he’s slipping fast. Put your hand over my heart like you’d pledge allegiance to the flag.’ Jesus, Daddy, I wasn’t even ten years old.”

“He was crazy,” Druff said. “He had the bedside manner of an elephant. No idea how to talk to people.”

“And you did.”

“Did I say those things? I must have scared hell out of you. I’m sorry. I said all those things?”

“Oh Dad. Every word.”

“Well, how do you think
I
felt, he told me the shape I was in, that the first ten or so hours were critical and I might not last the night? How do you think
I
felt, he said it might do me good I set my house in order and told my loved ones good-bye?”

“And I did it.
I pledged allegiance to your heart!”

“He was irresponsible. No, really. That was irresponsible. A bull-in- a-china-shop doctor. I was so
scared,
Mikey. More frightened than when I found out I had to go in for the open-heart surgery. Jeez, I can’t get over that guy. How can people talk that way? Doctors hold people’s lives in their hands. Don’t they realize the part the mind plays in healing the body? The brute force of attitude? He should have been brought up on charges, a guy like that.”

“And what about you? What about the way
you
talk to people?”

“I
did
love you, Mikey. I swear it. I meant every word.”

“Sure you did. I was cute. I was this cute fat kid.”

“I was barely thirty. He told me to set my house in order. I wasn’t that much older than you are now. I was too young to die.”

“You were saying these things and crying.
Your
nose was running. Under the oxygen mask. I didn’t know what to do. Why wouldn’t you let me ring for the nurse?”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I was setting my house in order!”

“Tit piss fart wind on your house!”

“What is that? What’s going on down there?” Rose Helen called. “Do you know what time it is? You woke me up.”

Druff and Mikey looked guiltily at each other.

“I bought new batteries for her today,” his son said.

“Yes,” Druff said, “I know. So did I.”

“She sleeps with them in?”

“She’s afraid the smoke alarms will go off and she won’t hear them if she doesn’t wear them.”

“Are you two fighting?”

“We were having a little argument. Sorry we woke you. It’s all over.”

“It isn’t,” Mikey said softly.

“It is for now,” Druff said as quietly. “I’m exhausted.”

“You
look
worn out,” his son said.

“I am. I’m beat,” said the City Commissioner of Streets. “I might be coming down with something. I didn’t eat. All the running around I’ve been doing.”

“What running around?”

“Well, Scouffas. McIlvoy. A lot of little shit.”

“Are you having any chest pains?”

“No no.”

“Because even if you’re not having any right now but only just feel they might be coming on, you should take your pills. There’s no need for you to wait. That’s what the doctor said.”

“No,” Druff said. “It’s not chest pain.”

“You were taking these short, shallow breaths.”

“Fuck my short, shallow breaths.”

Mikey smiled. “I was worried,” he said.

“You worry about the wrong things.”

“What is it?” Rose Helen said. “Aren’t you ever coming up?” She’d put on her robe and slippers and come downstairs.

“Dad’s exhausted. It’s an effort for him to move. He practically can’t put one foot in front of the other.”

“It’s
not
an effort for me to move. I can move. I can put one foot in front of the other.” He tried to push himself upright. He struggled to stand.

Rose Helen and Mikey stood at faltered Druff’s side.

It
was
an effort for him to move, but suddenly all three of them were in motion in the living room at the same time, in each other’s way. Rose Helen pushed in front of the City Commissioner of Streets while Mikey still stood at the coffee table in front of the couch where he’d offered Druff a hand up, and which Druff had refused. He was waiting until his father passed but Druff hesitated, uncertain of his son. It was one of those fits-and-starts things, some stalled comedy of errors in a doorway, on a sidewalk, in a street. Druff, wiped out, finally making the move, almost ran into his son.

He was so tired.

“I don’t know about you two,” Rose Helen said, “but I’m going to bed.”

Pulling on the staircase’s wooden handrail and leaning against the wall, he dragged himself up the steps, following her, leading Michael in the slow procession and watching for any depressions in the carpet as though they were tiny potholes that could trip him up. “Go ahead,” he told his son, waving him on, “pass me.”

He went into their bedroom where Rose Helen was already under the covers. Exhausted, wasted, he shuffled out of his clothes, let them fall to the floor. Awful, he thought, dreadful, awful what they had done out of boredom. Then he remembered. It was Druff, not Dan, who’d said there ought to be something malevolent, something personal. So he posed a question. If MacGuffin was the principle of structure to Druff, of pattern and shading, and all the latent architecture of the old man’s life, what was Druff to MacGuffin? Why, raw material. Like pitch, like tar, like clay or sand or silica, like gravel and the trace elements of all the asphalts.

Then, hoping not to sleep, not daring to dream, he got into their bed.

A Biography of Stanley Elkin

Stanley Elkin (1930–1995) was an award-winning and critically acclaimed novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He was celebrated for his wit, elegant prose, and poignant fiction that often satirized American culture.

Born in the Bronx, New York, Elkin moved to Chicago at the age of three. Throughout his childhood, he spent his summers with his family in a bungalow community on New Jersey’s Ramapo River. The community provided many families an escape from the city heat, and some of Elkin’s later writing, including
The Rabbi of Lud
(1987), was influenced by the time he spent there.

Elkin attended undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received his bachelor’s degree in English in 1952 and his PhD in 1961. His dissertation centered around William Faulkner, whose writing style Elkin admitted echoing unintentionally until the 1961 completion of his short story “On a Field, Rampant,” which was included in the book
Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers
(1966). Elkin would later say that story marked the creation of his personal writing style. While in school, Elkin participated in radio dramas on the campus radio station, a hobby that would later inform his novel
The Dick Gibson Show
(1971), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1972.

In 1953, he married Joan Jacobson, with whom he would have three children. Elkin’s postgraduate studies were interrupted in 1955 when he was drafted to the U.S. Army. He served at Fort Lee in Virginia until 1957 and then returned to Illinois to resume his education. In 1960, Elkin began teaching in the English department at Washington University in St. Louis, where he would remain for the rest of his career.

Elkin’s novels were universally hailed by critics. His second novel,
A Bad Man
(1967), established Elkin as “one of the flashiest and most exciting comic talents in view,” according to the
New York Times Book Review
. Despite his diagnosis with multiple sclerosis in 1972, Elkin continued to write regularly, even incorporating the disease into his novel
The Franchiser
(1976), which was released to great acclaim. Elkin won his first National Book Critics Circle Award with
George Mills
(1982), an achievement he repeated with
Mrs. Ted Bliss
(1995). His string of critical successes continued throughout his career. He was a National Book Award finalist two more times with
Searches and Seizures
(1974) and
The MacGuffin
(1991), and a PEN Faulkner finalist with
Van Gogh’s Room at Arles
(1994). Elkin was also the recipient of the Longview Foundation Award, the Paris
Review
Humor Prize, Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, as well as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Even though he was confined to a wheelchair toward the end of his life, Elkin continued teaching classes at Washington University until his passing in 1995 from congestive heart failure.