The Corrections (34 page)

“I’m sorry I’m a little short on bacon,” Enid said. “I thought I had more.”

In the bathroom Chipper was reluctant to wet his hands because he was afraid he would never get them dry again. He let the water run audibly while he rubbed his hands with a towel. His failure to glimpse Cindy through the window had wrecked his composure.

“We had high fevers,” Gary reported. “Chipper had an earache, too.”

Brown grease-soaked flakes of flour were impastoed on the ferrous lobes of liver like corrosion. The bacon also, what little there was of it, had the color of rust.

Chipper trembled in the bathroom doorway. You encountered a misery near the end of the day and it took a while to gauge its full extent. Some miseries had sharp curvature and could be negotiated readily. Others had almost no curvature and you knew you’d be spending hours turning the corner. Great whopping-big planet-sized miseries. The Dinner of Revenge was one of these.

“How was your trip,” Enid asked Alfred because she had to sometime.

“Tiring.”

“Chipper, sweetie, we’re all sitting down.”

“I’m counting to five,” Alfred said.

“There’s bacon, you like bacon,” Enid sang. This was a cynical, expedient fraud, one of her hundred daily conscious failures as a mother.

“Two, three, four,” Alfred said.

Chipper ran to take his place at the table. No point in getting spanked.

“Blessalor this foodier use nusta thy service make asair mindful neesa others Jesus name amen,” Gary said.

A dollop of mashed rutabaga at rest on a plate expressed a clear yellowish liquid similar to plasma or the matter in a blister. Boiled beet greens leaked something cupric, greenish. Capillary action and the thirsty crust of flour drew both
liquids under the liver. When the liver was lifted, a faint suction could be heard. The sodden lower crust was unspeakable.

Chipper considered the life of a girl. To go through life softly, to be a Meisner, to play in that house and be loved like a girl.

“You want to see my jail I made with Popsicle sticks?” Gary said.

“A jail, well well,” Alfred said.

The provident young person neither ate his bacon immediately nor let it be soaked by the vegetable juices. The provident young person evacuated his bacon to the higher ground at the plate’s edge and stored it there as an incentive. The provident young person ate his bite of fried onions, which weren’t good but also weren’t bad, if he needed a preliminary treat.

“We had a den meeting yesterday,” Enid said. “Gary, honey, we can look at your jail after dinner.”

“He made an electric chair,” Chipper said. “To go in his jail. I helped.”

“Ah? Well well.”

“Mom got these huge boxes of Popsicle sticks,” Gary said.

“It’s the Pack,” Enid said. “The Pack gets a discount.”

Alfred didn’t think much of the Pack. A bunch of fathers taking it easy ran the Pack. Pack-sponsored activities were lightweight: contests involving airplanes of balsa, or cars of pinewood, or trains of paper whose boxcars were books read.

(Schopenhauer:
If you want a safe compass to guide you through
life … you cannot do better than accustom yourself to regard this
world as a penitentiary, a sort of penal colony
.)

“Gary, say again what you are,” said Chipper, for whom Gary was the glass of fashion. “Are you a Wolf?”

“One more Achievement and I’m a Bear.”

“What are you now, though, a Wolf?”

“I’m a Wolf but basically I’m a Bear. All’s I have to do now is Conversation.”

“Conservation,” Enid corrected. “All I have to do now is Conservation.”

“It’s not Conversation?”

“Steve Driblett made a gillateen but it didn’t work,” Chipper said.

“Driblett’s a Wolf.”

“Brent Person made a plane but it busted in half.”

“Person is a Bear.”

“Say broke, sweetie, not busted.”

“Gary, what’s the biggest firecracker?” Chipper said.

“M-80. Then cherry bombs.”

“Wouldn’t it be neat to get an M-80 and put it in your jail and blow it up?”

“Lad,” Alfred said, “I don’t see you eating your dinner.”

Chipper was growing emceeishly expansive; for the moment, the Dinner had no reality. “Or
seven
M-80s,” he said, “and you blew ‘em all at once, or one after another, wouldn’t it be neat?”

“I’d put a charge in every corner and then put extra fuse,” Gary said. “I’d wind the fuses together and detonate them all at once. That’s the best way to do it, isn’t it, Dad. Separate the charges and put an extra fuse, isn’t it. Dad?”

“Seven thousand hundred million M-80s,” Chipper cried. He made explosive noises to suggest the megatonnage he had in mind.

“Chipper,” Enid said with smooth deflection, “tell Dad where we’re all going next week.”

“The den’s going to the Museum of Transport and I get to come, too,” Chipper recited.

“Oh Enid.” Alfred made a sour face. “What are you taking them there for?”

“Bea says it’s very interesting and fun for kids.”

Alfred shook his head, disgusted. “What does Bea Meisner know about transportation?”

“It’s perfect for a den meeting,” Enid said. “There’s a real steam engine the boys can sit in.”

“What they have,” Alfred said, “is a thirty-year-old Mohawk from the New York Central. It’s not an antique. It’s not rare. It’s a piece of junk. If the boys want to see what a
real
railroad is—”

“Put a battery and two electrodes on the electric chair,” Gary said.

“Put an M-80!”

“Chipper, no, you run a current and the
current
kills the prisoner.”

“What’s a current?”

A current flowed when you stuck electrodes of zinc and copper in a lemon and connected them.

What a sour world Alfred lived in. When he caught himself in mirrors it shocked him how young he still looked. The set of mouth of hemorrhoidal schoolteachers, the bitter permanent lip-pursing of arthritic men, he could taste these expressions in his own mouth sometimes, though he was physically in his prime, the souring of life.

He did therefore enjoy a rich dessert. Pecan pie. Apple brown Betty. A little sweetness in the world.

“They have two locomotives and a real caboose!” Enid said.

Alfred believed that the real and the true were a minority that the world was bent on exterminating. It galled him that romantics like Enid could not distinguish the false from the authentic: a poor-quality, flimsily stocked, profit-making “museum” from a real, honest railroad—

“You have to at least be a Fish.”

“The boys are all excited.”

“I could be a Fish.”

The Mohawk that was the new museum’s pride was
evidently a romantic symbol. People nowadays seemed to resent the railroads for abandoning romantic steam power in favor of diesel. People didn’t understand the first goddamned thing about running a railroad. A diesel locomotive was versatile, efficient, and low-maintenance. People thought the railroad owed them romantic favors, and then they bellyached if a train was slow. That was the way most people were—stupid.

(Schopenhauer:
Amongst the evils of a penal colony is the
company of those imprisoned in it
.)

At the same time, Alfred himself hated to see the old steam engine pass into oblivion. It was a beautiful iron horse, and by putting the Mohawk on display the museum allowed the easygoing leisure-seekers of suburban St. Jude to dance on its grave. City people had no right to patronize the iron horse. They didn’t know it intimately, as Alfred did. They hadn’t fallen in love with it out in the northwest corner of Kansas where it was the only link to the greater world, as Alfred had. He despised the museum and its goers for everything they didn’t know.

“They have a model railroad that takes up a whole room!” Enid said relentlessly.

And the goddamned model railroaders, yes, the goddamned hobbyists. Enid knew perfectly well how he felt about these dilettantes and their pointless and implausible model layouts.

“A whole room?” Gary said with skepticism. “How big?”

“Wouldn’t it be neat to put some M-80s on, um, on, um, on a model railroad bridge? Ker-PERSSSCHT! P’kow, p’kow!”

“Chipper, eat your dinner
now
,” Alfred said.

“Big big big,” Enid said. “The model is much much much much much bigger than the one your father bought you.”

“
Now
,” Alfred said. “Are you listening to me? Now.”

Two sides of the square table were happy and two were
not. Gary told a pointless, genial story about this kid in his class who had three rabbits while Chipper and Alfred, twin studies in bleakness, lowered their eyes to their plates. Enid visited the kitchen for more rutabaga.

“I know who not to ask if they want seconds,” she said when she returned.

Alfred shot her a warning look. They had agreed for the sake of the boys’ welfare never to allude to his own dislike of vegetables and certain meats.

“I’ll take some,” Gary said.

Chipper had a lump in his throat, a desolation so obstructive that he couldn’t have swallowed much in any case. But when he saw his brother happily devouring seconds of Revenge, he became angry and for a moment understood how his entire dinner might be scarfable in no time, his duties discharged and his freedom regained, and he actually picked up his fork and made a pass at the craggy wad of rutabaga, tangling a morsel of it in his tines and bringing it near his mouth. But the rutabaga smelled carious and was already cold—it had the texture and temperature of wet dog crap on a cool morning—and his guts convulsed in a spine-bending gag reflex.

“I
love
rutabaga,” said Gary inconceivably.

“I could live on nothing but vegetables,” Enid averred.

“More milk,” Chipper said, breathing hard.

“Chipper, just hold your nose if you don’t like it,” Gary said.

Alfred put bite after bite of vile Revenge in his mouth, chewing quickly and swallowing mechanically, telling himself he had endured worse than this.

“Chip,” he said, “take one bite of each thing. You’re not leaving this table till you do.”

“More milk.”

“You will eat some dinner first. Do you understand?”

“Milk.”

“Does it count if he holds his nose?” Gary said.

“More milk, please.”

“That is
just
about enough,” Alfred said.

Chipper fell silent. His eyes went around and around his plate, but he had not been provident and there was nothing on the plate but woe. He raised his glass and silently urged a very small drop of warm milk down the slope to his mouth. He stretched his tongue out to welcome it.

“Chip, put the glass down.”

“Maybe he could hold his nose but then he has to eat two bites of things.”

“There’s the phone. Gary, you may answer it.”

“What’s for dessert?” Chipper said.

“I have some nice fresh
pineapple
.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Enid—”

“What?” She blinked innocently or faux-innocently.

“You can at least give him a cookie, or an Eskimo Pie, if he eats his dinner—”

“It’s such sweet pineapple. It melts in your mouth.”

“Dad, it’s Mr. Meisner.”

Alfred leaned over Chipper’s plate and in a single action of fork removed all but one bite of the rutabaga. He loved this boy, and he put the cold, poisonous mash into his own mouth and jerked it down his throat with a shudder. “Eat that last bite,” he said, “take one bite of the other, and you can have dessert.” He stood up. “I will
buy
the dessert if necessary.”

As he passed Enid on his way to the kitchen, she flinched and leaned away.

“Yes,” he said into the phone.

Through the receiver came the humidity and household clutter, the warmth and fuzziness, of Meisnerdom.

“Al,” Chuck said, “just looking in the paper here, you know, Erie Belt stock, uh. Five and five-eighths seems awfully low. You sure about this Midpac thing?”

“Mr. Replogle rode the motor car with me out of Cleveland. He indicated that the Board of Managers is simply waiting for a final report on track and structures. I’m going to give them that report on Monday.”

“Midpac’s kept this very quiet.”

“Chuck, I can’t recommend any particular course of action, and you’re right, there are some unanswered questions here—”

“Al, Al,” Chuck said. “You have a mighty conscience, and we all appreciate that. I’ll let you get back to your dinner.”

Alfred hung up hating Chuck as he would have hated a girl he’d been undisciplined enough to have relations with. Chuck was a banker and a thriver. You wanted to spend your innocence on someone worthy of it, and who better than a good neighbor, but no one could be worthy of it. There was excrement all over his hands.

“Gary: pineapple?” Enid said.

“Yes, please!”

The virtual disappearance of Chipper’s root vegetable had made him a tad manic. Things were i-i-i-looking up! He expertly paved one quadrant of his plate with the remaining bite of rutabaga, grading the yellow asphalt with his fork. Why dwell in the nasty reality of liver and beet greens when there was constructable a future in which your father had gobbled these up, too? Bring on the cookies! sayeth Chipper. Bring on the Eskimo Pie!

Enid carried three empty plates into the kitchen.

Alfred, by the phone, was studying the clock above the sink. The time was that malignant fiveishness to which the flu sufferer awakens after late-afternoon fever dreams. A time shortly after five which was a mockery of five. To the face of clocks the relief of order—two hands pointing squarely at whole numbers—came only once an hour. As every other moment failed to square, so every moment held the potential for fluish misery.

And to suffer like this for no reason. To know there was no moral order in the flu, no justice in the juices of pain his brain produced. The world nothing but a materialization of blind, eternal Will.

(Schopenhauer:
No little part of the torment of existence is that
Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us catch our
breath but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip
.)

“I guess you don’t want pineapple,” Enid said. “I guess you’re buying your own dessert.”