There's Something I Want You to Do (11 page)

The audience gasped, laughed, and applauded. Benny felt himself going very still.

“Yup,” she said, “I’m knocked up. Anybody here ever been knocked up? Guys?” A few hip men applauded. “Ladies?” More applause. “Well, it happens. The injection of man-goop causes it. That’s what they tell me. That reminds me of a story. Two pregnant women, one smart and the other stupid, are sitting on a park bench. The first one, the smart one, turns to the second and says, ‘Well, here we are, both pregnant.’ The second one nods. The smart one leans back. ‘How’d it happen? I certainly ask myself that question. With me,’ she says, ‘and my husband, Sam—well, he can’t keep his hands off me. He wants to make love morning, noon, and night. He’s wearing me out. I’m sore all the time. I hardly have energy to work on my postdoc. Maybe when I’m in my third trimester, he’ll stop.’ The second woman, the stupid one, nods. ‘You think
you
got it bad?’ she says. ‘My guy, Freddy, he can’t never get it up. Also he don’t like to touch me, neither.’ The first woman looks over. ‘So how’d you get yourself in the family way?’ she asks. Second woman pats her stomach and says, ‘Oh, this one here’s on account of the milkman.’ The first woman says, ‘The milkman?’ The second woman says, ‘Yeah. He comes by to make his delivery every Tuesday. He’s got this nice red convertible sports car, and he’s wearing Old Spice, and he always gives me a pound of butter after he’s fucked me.’ First woman says, ‘He doesn’t sound like an actual milkman. With a convertible? I never heard of that.’ Second woman says, ‘Oh, he’s a milkman all right. And he dresses like they all do—ten-gallon hat, bolo tie, and alligator shoes. And also, ask yourself,
“If he ain’t a real milkman, where’d he get the butter?”
 ’ ”

She continued her set for another five minutes. When she finished, the applause and cheering were loud. People stood up: she’d been a great success. There was general acclaim. Benny turned around while everyone clapped. He saw Elijah sitting in the back of the club, gazing back at him accusingly, as one would gaze at a collaborator.

After making his way out of a side exit, Benny walked toward his car. Inside, behind the wheel, he leaned back and closed his eyes. He groaned. In the inner circle of Hell, he thought, Satan is telling jokes. He’s sitting on his throne cracking up. They’re all guffawing down there in the fiery pit.

—

Finally she entered the car. “You didn’t come backstage,” she said. “How come? Goddamn! They
loved
me. You didn’t congratulate me.” She looked over at his ravaged face. “What happened to you?” She reached over to him without touching him. “Have you been crying?”

“Sarah,” he said. “Are you really pregnant?”

“Yup! I wanted to surprise you. Isn’t it great? Aren’t you happy? Surprised?”

“Well, yes. Surprised. That’s one word. But we used condoms!”

“Oh, forget that. With immaculate conceptions, it’s like sunlight through stained glass.”

“All right. But, hey,
what is wrong with you
? Talking about me as part of your act? And what do we do now? Are we having this baby? What happens now?”

“What do you mean?”

“What d’you mean, what do I mean? What sort of person announces to her boyfriend that she’s pregnant as part of a stand-up monologue in a comedy club?”

She tilted her head, smiled her Kewpie doll–like smile, and pointed her index fingers at her face. “This sort of person. That’s who.”

“In that case, we’re going somewhere.”

“Where?”

He simply shook his head as he started the car and drove north toward the center of the city, past windblown gesticulating trees and nighttime blue-tinted rain. “Aren’t you going to tell me how great I was onstage?” she asked finally, staring out at the blurred houses passing on her side of the car. Inside those houses, ordinary lovers were curled up, sleeping together. Now he was speeding in a nocturnal and correct manner, or so he felt; you can always speed with impunity if no one else is up and around, if no one else is awake, if you are sober and number yourself among the last ones.

“You were great onstage,” he replied, his voice drained of color.

She closed her eyes, appearing to doze, having shaken off her excitement and entered the exhaustion that follows, and when she opened them again, he had parked the car near a university structure on the west bank of the river, and he was helping her out of the passenger side, and with his right arm around her and his right hand grasping her elbow, he escorted her down toward the Washington Avenue Bridge over the Mississippi. She seemed to be half-conscious, her gait like that of a sleepwalker. She probably thought she was dreaming this night, this walk.

“What’s that song lyric? ‘It’s infinitely late at night’?”

“Oh, no,” Benny said. “It’s much later than that. Here we are.”

She opened her eyes suddenly, and when she did, she seemed to come totally into consciousness and to realize their location. “Jesus, this? Here? What’s this about?”

“Yes, here.” This was where they had first met. “Look down.” She followed his instruction. Below them, water flowed in the indifferent darkness, sovereign in its shadowy blankness. “Pretty funny, right? Your phone is down there in the water. Well, here we are, sweetheart. Here’s where I found you. And here’s where I can drop you off again if you want.”

“No.”

“No? I got it wrong? How do I get you right, Sarah? Anyway, here’s your big chance. Isn’t this what you asked for? Go ahead, honey. You want to jump? I just want what you want. Go ahead.” His face was a solid mask, though he wept.

“It’s a long way down,” she whispered.

“The longest.”

They both stood looking at the river beneath them. No walkers or strollers or joggers passed behind them, and Benny couldn’t hear sounds of traffic. The entire city had seemingly emptied out, and stillness possessed it, as it would a necropolis. He thought he heard his own watch ticking for two minutes before she said, “No. I can’t. I’d like to, but I can’t.”

“You can’t?” he asked. “Why not?”

For answer, she turned to him, and with one hand at his waist, she raised her other hand to Benny’s face in a slow-motion caress, the most personal gesture she had ever made in his direction. “Because of you,” she said. It had killed her to say it, he knew, but she had said it, and now tears were in her eyes as well. Then she whispered, “I’m a kidder. I joke about things. That’s the one thing I’m serious about, my joking. That’s how I meet the payroll.” She was touching him here and there. “What do we do about the hopes? The loans? The, uh, ambitions? Tell me something. Are you in love with me?”

“Yes,” he said miserably and proudly. “I am. I’ve said so. I’ve told you. Often.”

“Okay. We’ll have to work this out, I guess. But you can’t stop me from what I am. I’m a joker, all right? Give me
me
.”

“That was a very impressive speech,” he said with pride and tenderness.

“I thought so,” she said, closing her eyes. “It was me at my best.”

“Could I say something else?” he asked. “Because I’ll say it anyway.”

“Permission to speak.”

“The baby won’t be laughable. Infant care ditto. Okay, so: here’s my thinking. One: I still love you. Two: what are we going to do about this baby, assuming you keep it? And three: I’ve forgotten what three is.”

“Oh, my sister called.”

“What?”

“My sister, the second one, the rich wife who lives in Dutchess County?—she called. On the phone. Carrie. She’s named Carrie. That’s her name. That’s how she was baptized. You remember Carrie? Of course you do. She’s one of my two evil sisters, both of whom live in palazzos. She said she’ll take the baby if we want her to.” Sarah paused. “She’d be happy to acquire him, her, it. She’s used to mergers and acquisitions. She and her husband, Lord Randolph, have these amazing pots of money. Their dragon wings are spread out wide over their vast illegal fortune wrested out of the hands of the poor and harmless. Randolph participates in a cartel of international slime. One more baby will hardly make a dent in their studied concentration on cash.”

“You called her? You
told
her? And she made an offer? No, she won’t do that.”

“You’re right, she won’t,” Sarah said. “And do you know why?”

“Because we’re going to get married?”

“Exactly! Bingo! We’re going to get married. What a nice proposal. Where’s my diamond ring?” Against the odds, she embraced him and held him, and then she turned so that her back was pressed against his chest, and his arms circled her waist.

“Your ring’s around here somewhere. And how will our marriage work out?” he asked.

“Wait and see,” she said. “I repeat: you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

—

Which is how Benny Takemitsu, a third-generation Japanese-American who spoke little or no Japanese, a citizen of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a journeyman architect at the firm of Byrum and Haddam, a man who had such a weakness for women who could make him laugh that he could not help falling in love with such a woman, came to marry someone who had never kissed him but who had, at least, caressed his face. They conceived a child together and still she could not bear to kiss him, not before or after the child was born, a son whom they named Julian.
Stranger things have happened,
Benny would sometimes say to himself, about his wife’s particular form of chastity.

Sarah had laughed and groaned during the pains of labor to the consternation of the attending nurses, who had never witnessed such laughter before, or so much of it.

The baby’s pediatrician was Dr. Elijah Elliott Jones, who praised the boy’s health and equanimity and handsome features as if Julian were his own son.

—

Sometimes during the summer they sat together on a playground near the Mississippi River, the four of them: Benny, Sarah, Julian, and Benny’s mother, Dorothea, who usually watched the baby whenever Sarah fell into one of her periodic brown studies, which, following the birth, had increased in duration and intensity. Often they packed sandwiches for a picnic, Sarah’s favorite being curried chicken salad and deviled eggs. At such times, having finished nursing her son and having tied the loops of his sun hat, Sarah would stare off in the direction of the river’s other shore as if Sirens sang over there, and only nudges and direct address could call her back. “She’s just woolgather
ing,” Benny’s mother would say, quietly and affectiona
tely, with a shrug, about her red-haired daughter-in-law. “In my generation,” Dorothea whispered to her son, “women often looked like that. We were distracted. All of us.”

Once in late summer, however, Sarah startled to life and waved her hand in front of her face to dispel the mosquitoes. She seemed to be coming up from some depth somewhere in another life. Turning one by one to Benny, Julian, and her mother-in-law, she smiled as if she approved of all of them and could bless them. Benny sat on a bench next to her, the baby sleeping in his lap, and Benny’s mother, who had strolled to the edge of the Mississippi, was examining the wildflowers along the bank. Grade-school children yelled from the play structure, and nearby a freight train rattled over the river, heading north. Overhead, an airplane left behind a thin vapor trail, and in the trees the cicadas chirred. “I never played any Bach for you,” she said, her voice a soft murmur. “And I don’t do stand-up anymore.”

“You still can.”

“I’ve never played any Bach for you,” she repeated. “I always meant to. Do you know that story about Bach? The last night of his life?” Benny shook his head. Holding Benny’s hand, Sarah continued with the story. “I read it on the back of a record album. You know Bach went blind? He had cataracts and things, probably. And to make matters worse, he was treated by this guy, this traveling English quack doctor named Taylor. Goodbye, eyesight. So anyway, on the evening before he died, Bach is granted a momentary miraculous return of his vision. His sons take him outside, one on each arm, and, guess what, Bach gazes upward to see the stars. The next day he died.” She looked straight up as if in imitation.

“I like that story.”

“Me too.” She held up her index finger to make a final pronouncement, one that Benny would always remember. “To his servant Bach, God granted a final glimpse of the heavens.”