The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (87 page)

“It’s all right, sweetie,” Laurie said. “It all happened a long time ago.”

“But why are we celebrating that we killed them?” Portia asked, and started crying afresh.

“We’re not celebrating because we killed the Indians, darling,” Laurie said. “We’re celebrating because we ate dinner with them.”

“Portia still believes in Indians!” one of the little boys exclaimed.

“So do we all, Josh,” Wesley said. “They live at the North Pole and make toys for good little—”

“Wesley, please!” Corinne said.

“Listener poll,” Portia said to her fist. “Did we eat dinner with the Indians, or did we kill them?” She strode over to Otto and held out her fist.

“We ate dinner with them and
then
we killed them,” Otto realized, out loud to his surprise.

“Who are you to slag off Thanksgiving, old boy?” Wesley said. “You’re wearing a fucking bow tie.”

“So are you, for that matter,” Otto said, awkwardly embracing Portia, who was crying again.

“And
I
stand behind my tie,” Wesley said, rippling upward from his chair.

“It was Portia’s birthday last week!” Laurie interrupted loudly, and Wesley sank back down. “Wasn’t it!”

Portia nodded, gulping, and wiped at her tears.

“How old are you now, Portia?” William asked.

“Nine,” Portia said.

“That’s great,” William said. “Get any good stuff?”

Portia nodded again.

“And Portia’s mommy sent a terrific present, didn’t she,” Laurie said.

“Oh, what was it, sweetie?” Corinne said.

Laurie turned pink and her head seemed to flare out slightly in various directions.

“You don’t have to say, darling, if you don’t like.”

Portia held on to the arm of Otto’s chair and swung her leg aimlessly back and forth. “My mother gave me two tickets to go to Glyndebourne on my eighteenth birthday,” she said in a tiny voice.

Wesley snorted. “Got your frock all picked out, Portia?”

“I won’t be going to Glyndebourne, Uncle Wesley,” Portia said with dignity.

There was a sudden silence in the room.

“Why not, dear?” Otto asked. He was trembling, he noticed.

Portia looked out at all of them. Tears still clung to her face. “Because.” She raised her fist to her mouth again. “Factoid: According to the Mayan calendar, the world is going to end in the year 2012, the year before this reporter’s eighteenth birthday.”

“All right,” Corinne whispered to Otto. “Now do you see?”

“You’re right, as always,” Otto said, in the taxi later, “they’re no worse than anyone else’s. They’re all awful. I really don’t see the point in it. Just think! Garden garden garden garden garden, two happy people, and it could have gone on forever! They knew, they’d been told, but they ate it anyway, and from there on out,
family
! Shame, fear, jobs, mortality, envy, murder…”

“Well,” William said brightly, “and sex.”

“There’s that,” Otto conceded.

“In fact, you could look at both family and mortality simply as by-products of sexual reproduction.”

“I don’t really see the point of sexual reproduction, either,” Otto said. “
I
wouldn’t stoop to it.”

“Actually, that’s very interesting, you know; they think that the purpose of sexual reproduction is to purge the genome of harmful mutations. Of course, they also seem to think it isn’t working.”

“Then why not scrap it?” Otto said. “Why not let us divide again, like our dignified and immortal forebear, the amoeba.”

William frowned. “I’m not really sure that—”

“Joke,” Otto said.

“Oh, yes. Well, but I suppose sexual reproduction is fairly entrenched by now—people aren’t going to give it up without a struggle. And besides, family confers certain advantages as a social unit, doesn’t it.”

“No. What advantages?”

“Oh, rudimentary education. Protection.”

“‘Education’! Ha! ‘Protection’! Ha!”

“Besides,” William said. “It’s broadening. You meet people in your family you’d never happen to run into otherwise. And anyhow, obviously the desire for children is hardwired.”

“‘Hardwired.’ You know, that’s a term I’ve really come to loathe! It explains nothing, it justifies anything; you might as well say, ‘Humans have children because the Great Moth in the Sky wants them to.’ Or, ‘Humans have children because humans have children.’ ‘Hardwired,’ please! It’s lazy, it’s specious, it’s perfunctory, and it’s utterly without depth.”

“Why does it have to have depth?” William said. “It
refers
to depth. It’s good, clean science.”

“It’s not science at all, it’s a cliché. It’s a redundancy.”

“Otto, why do you always scoff at me when I raise a scientific point?”

“I don’t! I don’t scoff at you. I certainly don’t mean to. It’s just that this particular phrase, used in this particular way, isn’t very interesting. I mean, you’re telling me that something is biologically
inherent
in human experience, but you’re not telling me anything
about
human experience.”

“I wasn’t intending to,” William said. “I wasn’t trying to. If you want to talk about human experience, then let’s talk about it.”

“All right,” Otto said. It was painful, of course, to see William irritated, but almost a relief to know that it could actually happen. “Let’s, then. By all means.”

“So?”

“Well?”

“Any particular issues?” William said. “Any questions?”

Any!
Billions
. But that was always just the problem: how to disentangle one; how to pluck it up and clothe it in presentable words? Otto stared, concentrating. Questions were roiling in the pit of his mind like serpents, now a head rising up from the seething mass, now a rattling tail…He closed his eyes. If only he could get his brain to relax…Relax, relax…Relax, relax, relax…“Oh, you know, William—is there anything at home to eat? Believe it or not, I’m starving again.”

There was absolutely no reason to fear that Portia would have anything other than an adequately happy, adequately fruitful life. No reason at all. Oh, how prudent of Sharon not to have come yesterday. Though in any case, she had been as present to the rest of them as if she had been sitting on the sofa. And the rest of them had probably been as present to her as she had been to them.

When one contemplated Portia, when one contemplated Sharon, when one contemplated one’s own apparently pointless, utterly trivial being, the questions hung all around one, as urgent as knives at the throat. But the instant one tried to grasp one of them and turn it to one’s own purpose and pierce through the murk, it became as blunt and useless as a piece of cardboard.

All one could dredge up were platitudes: one comes into the world alone, snore snore; one, snore snore, departs the world alone…

What would William have to say? Well, it was a wonderful thing to live with an inquiring and mentally active person; no one could quarrel with that. William was immaculate in his intentions, unflagging in his efforts. But what drove one simply insane was the vagueness. Or, really, the banality. Not that it was William’s job to explicate the foggy assumptions of one’s culture, but one’s own ineptitude was galling enough; one hardly needed to consult a vacuity expert!

And how could one think at all, or even just casually ruminate, with William practicing, as he had been doing since they’d awakened. Otto had forgotten what a strain it all was—even without any exasperating social nonsense—those few days preceding the concert; you couldn’t think, you couldn’t concentrate on the newspaper. You couldn’t even really hear the phone, which seemed to be ringing now—

Nor could you make any sense of what the person on the other end of it might be saying. “What?” Otto shouted into it. “You what?”

Could he
—the phone cackled into the lush sheaves of William’s arpeggios—
bribery, sordid out
—

“William!” Otto yelled. “Excuse me? Could I what?”

The phone cackled some more. “Excuse me,” Otto said.
“William!”

The violin went quiet. “Excuse me?” Otto said again into the phone, which was continuing to emit jibberish. “Sort
what
out? Took her
where
from the library?”

“I’m trying to explain, sir,” the phone said. “I’m calling from the hospital.”

“She was
taken
from the library
by force
?”

“Unfortunately, sir, as I’ve tried to explain, she was understood to be homeless.”

“And so she was taken away? By force? That could be construed as kidnapping, you know.”

“I’m only reporting what the records indicate, sir. The records do not indicate that your sister was kidnapped.”

“I don’t understand. Is it a crime to be homeless?”

“Apparently your sister did not claim to be homeless. Apparently your sister claimed to rent an apartment. Is this not the case? Is your sister in fact homeless?”

“My sister is not homeless! My sister rents an apartment! Is that a crime? What does this have to do with why my sister was taken away, by force, from the library?”

“Sir, I’m calling from the hospital.”

“I’m a taxpayer!” Otto shouted. William was standing in the doorway, violin in one hand, bow in the other, watching gravely. “I’m a lawyer! Why is information being withheld from me?”

“Information is not being withheld from you, sir, please! I understand that you are experiencing concern, and I’m trying to explain this situation in a way that you will understand what has occurred. It is a policy that homeless people tend to congregate in the library, using the restrooms, and some of these people may be removed, if, for example, these people exhibit behaviors that are perceived to present a potential danger.”

“Are you
reading
this from something? Is it a crime to use a
public bathroom
?”

“When people who do not appear to have homes to go to, appear to be confused and disoriented—”

“Is it a
crime
to be
confused
?”

“Please calm
down
, sir. The evaluation was not ours. What I’m trying to tell you is that according to the report, your sister became obstreperous when she was brought to the homeless shelter. She appeared to be disoriented. She did not appear to understand why she was being taken to the homeless shelter.”

“Shall I go with you?” William said, when Otto put down the phone.

“No,” Otto said. “Stay, please. Practice.”

So, once again. Waiting in the dingy whiteness, the fearsome whiteness no doubt of heaven, heaven’s sensible shoes, overtaxed heaven’s obtuse smiles and ruthless tranquillity, heaven’s asphyxiating clouds dropped over the screams bleeding faintly from behind closed doors. He waited in a room with others too dazed even to note the television that hissed and bristled in front of them or to turn the pages of the sticky, dog-eared magazines they held, from which they could have learned how to be happy, wealthy, and sexually appealing; they waited, like Otto, to learn instead what it was that destiny had already handed down: bad, not that bad, very, very bad.

The doctor, to whom Otto was eventually conducted through the elderly bowels of the hospital, looked like an epic hero—shining, arrogant, supple. “She’ll be fine, now,” he said. “You’ll be fine now, won’t you?”

Sharon’s smile, the sudden birth of a little sun, and the doctor’s own brilliant smile met, and ignited for an instant. Otto felt as though a missile had exploded in his chest.

“Don’t try biting any of those guys from the city again,” the doctor said, giving Sharon’s childishly rounded, childishly humble, shoulder a companionable pat. “They’re poisonous.”

“Bite them!” Otto exclaimed, admiration leaping up in him like a dog at a chain link fence, on the other side of which a team of uniformed men rushed at his defenseless sister with clubs.

“I did?” Sharon cast a repentant, sidelong glance at the doctor.

The doctor shrugged and flipped back his blue-black hair, dislodging sparkles of handsomeness. “The file certainly painted an unflattering portrait of your behavior. ‘Menaced dentally,’ it says, or something of the sort. Now, listen. Take care of yourself. Follow Dr. Shiga’s instructions. Because I don’t want to be seeing you around here, okay?”

He and Sharon looked at each other for a moment, then traded a little, level, intimate smile. “It’s okay with me,” she said.

Otto took Sharon to a coffee shop near her apartment and bought her two portions of macaroni and cheese.

“How was it?” she said. “How was everyone?”

“Thanksgiving? Oh. You didn’t miss much.”

She put down her fork. “Aren’t you going to have anything, Otto?”

“I’ll have something later with William,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. She sat very still. “Of course.”

He was a monster. Well, no one was perfect. But in any case, her attention returned to her macaroni. Not surprising that she was ravenous. How long had her adventures lasted? Her clothing was rumpled and filthy.

“I didn’t know you liked the library,” he said. “Don’t think I’m not grateful for the computer,” she said. “It was down.”

He nodded, and didn’t press her.