A Bad Man (19 page)

He married Lilly.

And one monstrousness was that she wouldn’t go along with a gag. Nor would she pluck laughter from despair. Despair depressed her; it gave her heartburn, like steak in a restaurant.

At this time—it was before he invented the basement—Feldman was a game player, a heavy gambler. He bet the horses, the ballgames, the fights, the elections, the first early launches of rockets. And though he mostly broke even, or better—he was lucky with money—he found that to be a bettor, to deal with bookies, accepting another’s odds as fixed and beyond his control as the value of a share on the market, was to make of himself a consumer like anyone else. He would have quit long before he ultimately did but for Lilly’s nervousness in the matter of his gambling. It worried her and she urged him to give it up. Her anxiety kept him going, but Lilly’s anxieties—her fear of bookies, the association of them in her mind with a gangster style that had ended with the end of Prohibition—were part of her character. She worried for the safety of relatives in airplanes flying to Miami, for the careers of nephews, the betrothals of nieces and cousins. She was not anxious only about her own life, assuming safety and happiness and good luck like guaranteed rights. Feldman saw that he was not getting his money’s worth from the gambling and abandoned it. On the other hand, he thought, if he could get
her
involved, concerned for her own losses, that would be something.

He made up games. Lilly played reluctantly. Sometimes they played gin rummy for wishes. The stakes weren’t high, a twentieth of a wish a point. Lilly was a good cardplayer, and Feldman did not always win. He sweated the games out. Even at those small stakes, ten to fifteen wishes could change hands in a single game. When he lost, however, Lilly’s wishes were always insignificant, unimaginative. She might ask him to bring her a glass of water, or to sing a song, or to clap his hands five times. Feldman insisted that she try harder, that she think of more damaging things for him to do.

“You’re wasting your wishes, Lilly. Do you think wishes grow on trees? Why do you want to win them if all you do after you get them is throw them away?”

“I
like
to hear you sing, Leo. You have a nice voice.”

“You try harder. It’s no fun for me otherwise.”

They had set a time limit, twenty-four hours, in which the winner had to make his wishes. By constantly harassing her and forcing her to think of more and more complex wishes, Feldman knew that he would be able to finesse at least half the wishes he owed her. She simply couldn’t think of things for him to do. (And the truth was he
hated
to sing songs for her,
hated
to bring her a glass of water, to clap his hands for her.)

Chiefly, however, he won. Then he let her have it. (Another rule he had invented was that you could never wish the other fellow to do something that the other fellow had wished you to do. It was a way of protecting himself, of course. Ah, he thought, this
was
better than playing with the bookies. It was a marvelous thing to make house odds. House odds, domestic bliss.)

“Lilly, I wish you to take a bath.” It was two in the morning. And when she had come from the tub, “Run around the block, Lilly, please.”

“Leo, my pores are open.”

“We are not fourflushers, Lilly. We are not welshers and Indian givers.”

He watched her from their picture window. She came back puffing. He opened the glass doors and stood in the doorway. “Lilly, pretend you’re drunk. Stagger around in the street and make noises.”

“Leo, it’s after two. People are sleeping. I won’t do it. I balk.” It was the formula for refusal. But they had another rule. If a player balked, he had to grant three wishes for the one he had balked at.

“Come inside,” Feldman said sullenly. “Bake a cake,” he wished half-heartedly. (She was on a diet.) “Have three big pieces and a glass of milk and go to sleep on the sofa.”

Then he lost a close game.

“Leo, I wish that you wouldn’t shout at Billy today.”

“I balk.”

“I wish you’d be nicer to me.”

“I balk.”

She sighed and had him count from a hundred backwards, say a tongue twister, read her the funnies, wind the clock, open the window, shut it.

Eventually, of course, she refused to play with him. It was the result of a fight. They had finished dinner, and Lilly was in the kitchen, fixing blueberries and sour cream. She still owed him a wish. Feldman saw a man on the sidewalk. “Lilly,” he called, “there’s a stranger outside. I wish you to go out and ask that stranger what he’s doing in this neighborhood.”

She didn’t answer and Feldman walked into the kitchen. Lilly was spooning blueberries into a bowl from a basket.

“Didn’t you hear me? I made my wish.”

“No, Leo.”

“He’s right outside. You can see him through the window.”

“No, Leo.”

“Are you balking?”

“I’m not going to do it.”

“Then say it. Say ‘I balk.’”

“I’m not going to do it.”

Feldman was furious. “You know the formula for refusing,” he shouted. Billy was in the kitchen, wrapping rubber bands on the doorknob. The sight enraged him. Billy was six years old and took sides. He would whisper to his mother that he loved her most and that Daddy was bad, and to his father that Mommy wasn’t very smart. Feldman pulled him away from the doorknob and told him to hide in his room. “A boy loses respect if he sees his father kick his mother’s ass,” Feldman said.

Lilly, saying nothing, continued to spoon the blueberries. She patted them around the sides of the bowl and fluffed them up with the spoon.

“When you finish there you can do the rest of the rubber bands,” Feldman said.

Lilly said nothing.

“What’s wrong with you?” Feldman demanded. It was one of his questions. He asked it when they were doing something together and he was having a better time doing it than his wife. He asked it on complicated occasions like this one, when his head hurt and there was a sourness in the air, unsortable wrong, rife and general as a high pollen count. “You be careful, Lilly. I am as fed up as a revolutionary, as righteous at this moment as a terrorist. You better watch out.”

Lilly was dipping sour cream onto the blueberries.

“
You’re a shitty sport
,” Feldman screamed, and went for her. When he tore the spoon out of her hands some sour cream got on his shirt. He stared at it as if she had drawn blood. “Oh, you
will
, will you?” he roared. In his room Billy was crying. Feldman thought of all the times she had refused him. In the car, nothing on the radio but static, he might suggest that they both make speeches. Inaugural Addresses or nominating speeches at the Republican National Convention. And she would refuse. She didn’t even want to hear
his
speech. Why couldn’t she say “I balk”? What would
that
cost her? More sour cream got on his shirt, and Feldman made a fist and punched her in the behind.

She overturned the blueberries in the sink.

“You son of a bitch,” Feldman screamed. “
Those are out of goddamn season!
”

“We shall never play gin rummy again,” Lilly announced softly. She had tremendous self-possession at this moment, superhuman dignity. She seemed as calm and studied and smug as a circus performer holding acrobats on her shoulder. It was too much for Feldman. The sour cream burned holes in his shirt. He pulled her from the sink and spun her roughly away from him. She went turning and twirling across the kitchen, rapt as a blind woman in a dance, concentrating on her injuries as if they were already memories. She fell back against the refrigerator, and Feldman imagined the black-and-blue marks, proliferating on her back like stains.

“Oof,” she said demurely.

“I can’t stand it,” Feldman roared. He stooped down and opened the cabinet beneath the sink. He pulled out the garbage pail. He reached inside it and scooped up great handfuls of garbage—ovoid clumps of wet coffee grounds, the pulps of oranges, eggshells, pits, bones, fat, the shallow rinds of honeydew melon like the hulls of toy boats. He flung all this onto the kitchen floor. He might have been sowing seeds.

In the distance Billy cried uncontrollably.

Lilly
folded her arms across her breast, a look of mock indifference on her face like that of someone who has just done a turn in a challenge dance. Feldman stopped short and dropped the rest of the garbage. He folded his arms across his breast. “You serve, Lilly, I think,” he said.

“Billy,” Lilly shouted, “come in here.”

Feldman was delighted. “What are you calling him for? This is between us,” he said.

“Billy,” she shouted again, “I’ve told you once. Come in here right now.”

“Leave the kid out of it,” Feldman snarled. He could have hugged her. Something magnificent was going to happen.

Billy appeared at the entrance to the kitchen, his face a smear of snot and tears. He seemed blind, breathless, choked as a child in a polyethylene bag.

“Go back to your room, Billy,” Feldman said.

“If you do I’ll follow and beat you up,” Lilly said.

“If she does I’ll kill her, Billy. Don’t you worry, son.”

Billy wailed.

“Pick up the garbage your father threw down. Every piece,” Lilly commanded.

Billy, crying insanely, moved toward the garbage.

“What is this?” Feldman said. “What is this?”

The little boy bent over a piece of lettuce coated with cocktail sauce and picked it up.

“Give me that,” Feldman cried. He pulled at it. The lettuce tore, and they each held a piece of it. Feldman turned to Lilly. “Is this how you raise a child?” he said angrily. Lilly’s arms were still folded. Billy, terrified, was on his hands and knees, pushing the scraps together. Feldman pressed the point of his shoe into the rind of an orange that his son was trying to pick up. “I had not realized, Lilly, that the boy is so terrified of you,” Feldman told her.

“Let me pick it up, Daddy,” Billy said. “Let me pick it up.”

“Get up, Billy,” Feldman said with great, deliberate compassion.

“I’ll do it,” Billy said. “Please. I’ll do it.”

“He’s hysterical,” Feldman said. “He won’t listen to me. You win, Lilly. You win. Tell him to get off the floor. I’ll pick it all up.”

“Get up, Billy,” Lilly said, “your father will do it.”

Feldman got down on his hands and knees. He breathed heavily. His palm slipped on something, and he fell forward awkwardly. His cheek lay in the wet coffee grounds. He got clumsily to his knees and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Listen to me, Billy. Make me a promise, son.” He hung his head down a moment, apparently trying to catch his breath. He rubbed his eyes, then put his hand back on Billy’s shoulder. “If she ever touches you, I want you to tell me, darling, and I’ll break her bones, sweetheart. You tell Daddy, honey, if Mommy bothers you, and Daddy makes you this promise, adorable, that he’ll smash her nose and pound her heart and crush her skull, pumpkin. You’re Daddy’s darlin’, chicken, remember that. She’s a great rough pig, angel, but Daddy will protect you. If that bitch ever bothers you—I don’t care where I am or what I’m doing—you get to a telephone, lamb chop, and call me up, and I’ll come home and put her in the hospital. Do you understand that, Billy? Do you understand that, dumpling? You’re getting to be a big boy, watermelon, and you’ve got to understand these things. Give Dad a kiss now and promise that you’ll never be afraid of her any more.” He put his hands behind the boy’s head and brought him up close to kiss him. “Now run and play, son,” Feldman said. “Poppy will pick up the garbage for you.”

Lilly’s arms had come unfolded. They hung down like untied laces.

Feldman looked at her through an eggshell and smiled and splashed in the garbage and thought: Your serve, Lilly, I think, your serve, Lilly, I think. It’s a regular second honeymoon, it’s a second regular goddamned honeymoon.

Although he had not touched himself in two days, the jerking off had taken it out of him and he was exhausted. Now he would be continent. It would be a new phase. He lived by phases, like an artist with a blue period, a green one, a red. Seeking some ultimate violet. Did others do that? Lilly didn’t; no one he knew did. Others had homogenized lives. Not Feldman. Feldman had periods.

How do you do it, Feldman?

This is how I do it, kid. I live by phases. Full Feldman. Quarter Feldman. Half-by-full three-quarter Feldman. Feldman waxing, Feldman waning. The astrological heart. Down through time to high night’s noony now.

The homunculus, little stunted brother of his heart, stirred. The homunculus, stony, bony paradigm, scaled-down schema of waxing Feldman, flexed its visey brothership.

“Ouch,” Feldman said. “You again.”

“Move over, O greater frater. Give a toy twin space.”

“No, pet. What can I do? I’m in solitary confinement. O solo mio.”

“Have a little consideration, please. I feel terrible. For days I’ve been riding your passionate bronco heart. I’m seasick. I must look a fright, Leo.”

“Are you sure you’re my brother? You talk like my sister.”

“Leo, please,” the homunculus said.

“O steak-knife soul in my heart’s bloody meat, leave off.”

“Listen, brother,” the homunculus said, “we have to talk. Watch your step. You forget you’re living for two. Why can’t you remember that? You specially. You’re your brother’s keeper if there ever was one.”

“My little brother,” Feldman said, giggling.

“To think,” the homunculus said, “I might have been alive today but for some freak in the genes. Alas the blood’s rip, alack my spilled amino acids, my done-in DNA. Woe for the watered marrow and the split hairs.”

“Don’t get clinical, you fossil.”

“Oh, Leo, I would have done things differently. I would have taken better care. You have no right—”

“
I
have no right?
I
have no right? Didn’t you ever hear of primogeniture? You’re out of the picture, short division.”

“
Leo
,” his homunculus said sharply, “you stop that. All your cynicism—that’s just our father speaking. You insist on siding with him.”

“I never knew our mother,” Feldman said. “She was your department, death.”