Gould (17 page)

First night he's to stay there his shoulder's in a sling. They have dinner, some wine, she puts her son to bed, he says “He's a cute kid, I like him, very sharp, you can tell,” and she says “He's the love of my life. I'd die if anything disastrous happened to him and would become violently insane if he was seriously mistreated, know what I mean?” and he says “Hey, don't look at me, absolutely the wrong pervert,” and she says “Just saying, which I'd do to my father if he ever slept over or baby-sat, and as far as I'm able to remember he never did a filthy or untoward thing to me, but I was a girl,” and he says “Personally, I'd think you'd be overstepping your anxieties there or honesty or outspokenness or something, if your father had never shown any inclination or sign, etcetera, or done anything along those lines to any sex or age. But do what your want, that's your business,” and she says “No, I like that, you're right out there and put it well in a fumbling way,” and they sit on the floor playing a board game she suggested while listening to records of her favorite music, free jazz, which he's never heard and now doesn't much like but she keeps closing her eyes and smiling and bobbing her head to, and she looks at him—she's killing him in the game, mostly because he's still learning how to play, or maybe she'd always win that well anyway: it was the only time they played—and it's the look of someone wanting to be kissed and she's pretty but small, very small, her body, he wonders, if it ever got that far, if she'd even be able to take a guy his size, he never made love with someone so short and slight and thin and he thinks Give it a go, why not for two weeks? though maybe he's wrong about the look and says “What?” and she says “Did I say something?” and he says “Your look  .     okay,” and thinks Just forget it, don't want to press and based on a misperception get berated for it, and she leans forward with that look and he thinks It must be, and moves to it and it's just a peck but once she pulls her face away she brings it back to within an inch of his and puts her arms around him and he says “Oy, watch the shoulder, it's separated bad, they think it could even be a break,” and she says “I don't want to make asinine double-trouble remarks and say ‘I'll be gentle.' I'll just play it safe and keep my hands off,” and he says “Sorry,” puts his left arm around her and rubs her back but recoils his hand when he feels the bony knobs, but maybe it's the way she's bent forward that they're sticking out like that and rests his hand there and she grabs his penis through the pants and says something and he didn't hear what and wishes he did but won't ask her to repeat it, that'd be stupid, and puts his left hand on her shorts and then inside them and so on and she says “We can rip at it anytime, you know; you don't have to worry. But won't this make your shoulder worse?” and he says “We'll stay off it.”—shoulder hurting like hell now but he doesn't want to say, she might think it's too dangerous for him and stop—and she says “What position would be the best for it?” and he says “Let's wait till we get to the bed before we decide, unless you want to do it here,” and she says “On the floor? Or the couch? No support underneath for the former and the latter with no room? What could be less appealing,” and he says “All this talk,” and she says “You're right,” and when they get to the bedroom he takes his shirt and socks off and lies on the bed with her and says “We don't have to do it immediately, but probably—wait, the door's okay?” and she says “He sleeps for the first few hours like a stone, then has to pee or has peed in his bed and I have to get him up either way,” and he says “Then probably if you got on top for me, though only when you're ready and if it's okay,” and she says “No good for me; the way I'm built. Would side-by-side be all right?” and he says “Fine,” and she says “It shouldn't hurt you—we'll make sure your right shoulder's not involved—and if it does, we won't continue it. Later, if we like each other and want to do it again—not tonight, so much, but another time—we can do it once the way you like; but for now my way till I get the hang of you, is that all right?” and he says “Again, what's good for you, though you'll have to show me what you mean, I haven't a precise picture of it  .     may I?” and slips off her shorts and underpants and starts taking off her shirt and she says “I have petite breasts—I hope you don't mind too much; some men do; or my being concerned about it. You might not even think I have breasts when I get my bra off. I don't want to scare you, there's nothing freakish there or any scars, and I promise I'm not a boy,” and he says “What are breasts anyway? I mean, I like them—” and she says “All right, okay, thank you,” and he says “I was about to say I like them but I don't think they're essential to my liking a woman,” and she says “Good, for the truth is mine are practically nonexistent. They're there, of course, two dots and circles, but they just don't bulge. Everything else is in place and relatively normal, although I love sex inordinately, do you?” and he says “Inordinately? I don't know. But I like it, sure, what else am I to say at this moment?” and she says “I love it, love it, with the right person and setting, though it's always good. And you look like—you even felt like, little I was allowed to feel, as if you have a nice body for it,” and he says “What are you saying? That I've something against you touching me?” and she says “No, even if we didn't play around too long. But by nice body I mean that you're not too soft or fat or small or crooked,” and he says “Crooked? And small I'm not, which you saw when I was standing up. I'm average, maybe a little above, and she says “I meant in the joint department,” and he says “‘Joint.' You said that word before and I guess it means—” and she says “Yeah.”

Screams, thrashes, pulls his hair, feet bang against the bed, does all that, digs her nails into his back till he says “Hey, lay off, your fingers, it's excessive, and it's not just my shoulder.” A little later he says “Listen, I'm tired, my shoulder really aches—I have to get some aspirins or, if you have, something stronger. Besides, I don't have to prove anything to myself or you that I can do it three times in an hour. I can't; too bushed and maybe I put almost everything into the first and what's left into the second and a third's virtually impossible for me so soon. Anyway, twice is fine, even for the first time, and should be more than enough,” and she says “There's always the chance you'll change your mind after you snooze awhile; men have,” and he says “It isn't a question of my mind. And snooze a lot. Really, I'm out till daylight unless we're much further north than I was in my room last night and daylight comes an hour earlier here,” and she says “You're getting too abstruse for me which I don‘t like because it sounds so phony. But I do tend to ask for too much in almost everything and I'm sorry,” and kisses him and holds him as she dozes off. He listens to her as she sleeps; she breathes so quietly through that small nose. He'd like to take her arms from around him so he can put his sling back on and get the aspirins and go to sleep, but doesn't want to disturb her yet. Is this what he wants? Her body; so scrawny. And nice and smart as she is most times so far, he bets she can be a bitch and anti-intellectual, snapping at him in the bitch mood, if he comes and she doesn't, and demanding he go on till she does. Well, just for two weeks, and for that time, even if it turns out he doesn't like it here much, he's sort of stuck.

A year later they all went to New York. Acting was what she'd decided to do. She'd study it, he'd work as a per-diem sub in junior high schools, Brons would go to a cheap preschool, they'd live simply and frugally. She sublet her house for two hundred a month more than it cost to keep up, so barring any sudden expenses for it, that would be her contribution to their living in New York. It had come to her in a dream. She was acting on stage, a period piece she said—she was in a long dress and twirling a parasol—the performance ended a minute into the dream and there were lots of whistles and applause, people in the audience tossed flowers at her and shouted her name and yelled
Brava, Bravísima
—“I know this is mostly what's done at the end of every act of an opera, no matter how corny the opera is and dumbly performed and poorly sung, but this was my dream”—and when she awoke she said “I've never wanted to be anything in my life—not even a nurse or schoolteacher when I was very young—no professional till now. I want to be a stage actress; not movies or TV, just stage. I love great plays—Shakespeare, Lillian Hellman, the one that
Carousel
was based on—and have a clear strong voice for speaking and singing, a decent-enough face—a couple of photographer acquaintances have even called it an exceptionally photogenic one—and lots of ambition and spunk. I want to give myself two to three years to make good, but only one in New York studying it. If I flop, back to the same old shit till the next inspiration; I won't continue something that's obviously coming to nothing and paying off with zero funds. But this is how things get done: you get a wild idea, make a quick decision and do it; all that holding-your-head deliberative stuff and plugging away for decades to get a toehold in your field is for losers. Will you come with us?” and he said yes because he wanted to return to New York, spend time with his parents and friends there, and the West Coast, or areas he's lived in or seen, was too relaxed and unexciting for him. He wanted to walk along jammed city streets—he got some of his best ideas when he did—and to be stimulated the way only a place like New York or Paris can—let's face it, he was a city kid—and for the first time to live in one with a woman, and he loved her son and wanted to show his friends what a good surrogate father he was, and living there would make her grateful for what he'd call his urban expertise in that city and also more dependent on him. Now whether she could be an actress? He didn't think she had the looks, voice, projection, personality and literary intellect for the roles she wanted to play and he never thought she was that good at mimicry or in even recounting incidents that happened to her or someone else or telling jokes. But you never know.

Several months later she said she wanted to move back to California. “New Yorkers are miserable and cruel. Your folks dislike me. Your friends all think they're superior and so smart and because I'm from the West I'm a hick and dummy. The air stinks. I want to smell clean air, see a blue sky with nice white clouds and later some stars. I don't want to go to the park just to see rotting trees and dirty grass or brown or ripped-up patches of ground. I want my old house back, my own backyard. I hate the walls of apartments and our so-called neighbors are the biggest creeps that ever lived. This one overdrinks, this one plays her loud music all night, this one looks as if he'd steal my kid, this one has caged birds that squawk all day, this one has an apartment that stinks as if it hasn't been cleaned of its cat shit for seven years. The view through our dingy windows is putrid. People on the street try to run you over even on their bikes. Nobody here has any respect for old people—few of the old people even do—or warmth for kids. I'm tired of car alarms at two in the morning, garbage trucks at three, hotheads bashing out their windows at four in the morning, someone being robbed on the street at five and the cops not showing up till six or seven. Branson's made no friends. The kids in his school are too competitive, aggressive, argumentative, Jewish,” and he said “First of all, if you didn't know it, I'm Jewish, goddamn you,” and she said “They're not Jews like you. These kids are like their parents, I'm sure: pushy, angry, obsessed with money and just very Jewish, even the Christian ones,” and he said “Will you stop using the word
Jewish
like that? You're not seeing and you've no sense of history, recent or otherwise,” and she said “Listen to me, I'm not made for this craphole—you are; you go and buy milk that's twenty cents a gallon higher than in California and which turns sour in two days, not me. Get cheated and insulted by store workers all day if you like. But Brons and I were made for the more peaceful and reasonable and civil West Coast where there aren't depressingly deteriorated faces mooching money and digging through trash containers at every subway entrance and bus stop,” and he said “This city isn't entirely what you sum it up as by any stretch. And have you figured how much it cost us to settle here? There's the month's security on the apartment which we won't get back and if the landlord doesn't find a replacement tenant we'll be legally responsible for the rent till the lease expires in a year. I happen to, in spite of all its, okay, annoyances and difficulties, like this city and to dislike most of California for the very tranquility and civility you talk about. Okay, not the civility. But your area's too suburban, dull and uniform for me. There's no real change of seasons except maybe a few falling leaves and some sweater weather for two months, and the rest of that, mostly about art and culture—that California's twice as far from Europe as New York is—which are sort of my argument clichés to match yours,” and she said “People clean up after their dogs in my town, that's why you don't like it. You like dog shit on my kid when he rolls around in the park, or on your shoes and when you come into the apartment, to stink up the floor with it. You like lunatics tossing bricks down at you from building roofs,” and he said “When was that?” and she said “In the newspaper, not five blocks from here. You like bus drivers intentionally riding over mud puddles to splash you or parking twenty feet away from the curb so you have to jump over those puddles, and subways screeching till you can't hear.” “Most of that's unusual,” and she said “The mud-splattering isn't typical, I'll admit, though it happens too frequently, and same with buses stopping that far away to pick passengers up. But the subway screeching and express trains roaring through our local station happens every time, always, and will turn this into a neighborhood of deaf-mutes.” “If it's too loud, you put your hands over your ears, that's all, but it never bothered me.” “That's because you're already deaf by it.” “That's a dumb old joke.” They argued more, voices got stronger, she slapped him, he grabbed her chin. This was before Spain. In Spain when he did it she said “What is it with you and my chin?” Here she knocked his hand away and said “Forget it, I'm done with you, your rough stuff, your quirks, now your insanities; I'm moving back home,” and he said “Just because you found you weren't much of an actress—oh yeah. You really gave it a lot of time,” and she said “If you want to know, I found I hated acting. It's a completely fake profession. It's for phonies who are even more vain than I am    .  much more. I look in the mirror a great deal, but these people live in it and can't talk of anything but themselves or the famous or influential people they know or hope to know or know people who know,” and he said “That's a cliché on a very familiar type; if you're going to present an argument about such a subject, go jugular,” and she said “It isn't a cliché; you don't go to my school. If it sounds surface it's because they are surface. You met a few of them for an hour and they're so simple and sweet and interested, but playing that role. They don't know who you are yet; you could be a producer. But that's what they know how to do and are always practicing for in all their social contacts outside the theater: roles. Actors have no interest in being real people in real situations, and not even in real acting quality. They're unrelievedly jealous, in fact, of true talent and wouldn't give a snitch of credit to anyone who showed it, unless the person was dying or dead, the few times they're actually able to recognize that talent. They only want parts. I thought that at least—the very least—that having a small lean body would mean nothing on the stage. Look at the two Hepburns and a couple of others before they went movie-land for good. But they're the exceptions, for some reason, because every theater man I met, and men control it, let me tell you, is obsessed with wraparound breasts, legs and behinds, if he isn't sticking his hands on men's flies. I know I'll never even get a walk-on role in twenty years because of mine, nicely formed as my behind and legs are, or maybe a walk-on if I screw one like mad for several nights. It was a stupid move on our part—
mine
—and from a dream, goddamnit, and you let me go ahead with it, but all right. But at least I know when I've made a mistake, you don't,” and he said “What mistake did I make, moving here? I like this city, I've told you. If there was any mistake, not that I'm blaming you, it was first moving in with you, but my dick has always ruled me,” and she said “You're sick and sordid, do you know that? Sometimes I only think you moved in with us—” and he said “Oh, we're on that again? Why, because I feel for the boy more than I ever felt for you and even love him more now than I used to, which is natural, for that's what time does to it if the kid stays as great as he always was,” and she said “Then as I also said, you maybe love him too well. But don't get any ideas you'll be number one with Brons for too long. His real father isn't so much waiting in the wings now but he's there, smoking a cigarette or joint and looking at the beautiful actresses and their undulant hips and behinds, but he'll soon come on and do his part,” and he said “Oh boy, are you ever into the metaphor or analogy or whatever the freaking figure of speech for it is. But you missed ‘miracle play,' ‘domestic tragedy,' ‘comedy of errors,' ‘theater of cruelty' and ‘of the absurd,' and ‘farce,' ‘burlesque,' ‘slapstick' and ‘swan song' and so on.”