The Cry of the Sloth (2 page)

Your old pal,

Andrew Whittaker

p.s. I regret that neither the mag nor I will likely be able to pay you for your time or even reimburse travel expenses. I feel bad about that. You will, however, find commodious lodging at my house, and when the crowds have dwindled, some good company for late night talk. I know I’ll not scare you away when I say that I look forward to “taking the gloves off” in regard to some of your recent work.

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Disgusting, disgusting. Lying, sycophantic, stupid. The ingratiating phrases. How can I be so loathsome? What I need is a door I can walk through and get out of the world for a while. When I was a child I liked to hide in the big closet in my parents’ bedroom, curl up in the dark with the smell of mothballs and the feeling of sitting on the lumps that were Mama’s shoes.

¶

Dear Mrs. Brud,

Seven months, and I have had no rent payment from you. Twice I have sent courteous reminders. Those did not scold, neither did they speak of breach of contract or invoke harsh specters of legal action and ignominious eviction. In view of that you can picture my surprise when I opened your reply this morning and out fell no check or postal money order. What fluttered to the floor instead was your astonishing letter. Madame: permit me to recall the circumstance of our discussion when you came to my house five months ago, you being at the time two months in arrears. You were distressed, distraught even, and as I am not a Scrooge or heartless rack-renter, I did not leave you standing on the doorstep in the rain; I invited you in, offered you a seat. All chairs being occupied by my books and papers, we were forced to share the small portion of the sofa that was still free. You were wet and trembling with cold; I brought you a martini and some peanuts. I listened patiently to the story of your husband’s accident with the electric blender and the medical expenses arising from that, and your son’s wrongful arrest and the legal expenses arising from that. I was moved to utter the platitudes of sympathy usual in such cases. However, when I told you not to worry, it did not cross the purlieus of my mind that you would construe this as carte blanche to live rent-free forever. As to your current letter, I do not understand what you intend when you assert that if I insist on the back rent you will be “forced to tell my husband.” Tell him
what
? That the legal owner of the house in which you reside would like some meager imbursement? And what do you mean by the phrase “if you want to see me again.” What
are
you suggesting? You wept. You were sitting on
my
sofa. It was
perfectly normal
that I should find that distressing in the extreme. I held you in my arms as I would hold a weeping child. I muttered “there, there.” If I let myself stroke your head and sweep with ink-stained finger a sodden strand of graying hair from your lips—after you had, as it were, fallen over on me—it was without any (dare I say it?)
sexual
interest. I merely hoped those gestures would lend some credence to my words of sympathy, which will, should such an event recur in the future, I assure you, be entirely pro forma. Please remit 7 × 130 = $910.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Whittaker

The Whittaker Company

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Dear Contributor,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work. After careful consideration, we have reluctantly concluded that it does not meet our needs at this time.

The Editors at
Soap

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Dear Jolie,

Why did I never wonder about what was happening to Papa? There he was, blood pressure so high it made him bug-eyed, a malady of the skin on his back and buttocks so itchy he would stand in the kitchen and furiously scratch with a metal spatula until his shirt was streaked with blood, and a tendency to drink himself stuporous at supper. Mama would try to snatch the plate away the instant she saw him nodding, but sometimes he’d go face down in the meatloaf and potatoes or whatever she had fixed that night, applesauce and pork chops, before she could reach it, though more often he went off the chair sideways. It never even occurred to me that this sad comedy bore any relation to what he did all day, what he was
forced
to do all day. I just took it as the natural course of the man’s life. And now it’s happening to me. I mean
that life
is happening to me. One day I’m out dunning tenants for back rent, hearing their sob stories, listening glassy-eyed to the whine of complaints about stopped drains and unkillable mice and furnaces that won’t heat and ceilings that have fallen down. I’ll never understand these people. Do they strip to their underwear just for the purpose of answering the doorbell? Or is it so they can more ostentatiously scratch while I am speaking? Next day I am on the phone trying to wheedle some tradesman into working for credit. And then when I do find somebody, he screws the work up so badly I have to go back and do it over myself, even though I don’t know how, but at least I work cheap. How about that for my epitaph:
He worked cheap.
And then when the damn thing breaks again they call me up and
threaten
. I’ll end up carrying a pistol around with me like Papa. Then there are the big boys—the banks, the water works, the electric company, the phone company, especially the phone company. I have dreams in which I am pursued by men in armor. Sometimes I frighten myself with the thought that any minute I am going to descend howling into the street. Or maybe take Papa’s pistol, push calmly through the glass doors of some downtown office, and
Bang! Bangety bang bang!
Things go on like this for weeks at a time, until I’m utterly exhausted. No psoriasis yet, my head still floats bravely above my plate of fried Spam, but I’m depleted, drained, spent. When I finally get home, I have to lie down on the sofa, chest heaving as after some huge physical exertion. You might give me a call sometime.

Andy

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Dear Mama,

I hope this letter finds you recovered. It’s true, colds can be very unpleasant, and it was not kind of Elaine to make fun of you or take away your Kleenex, if that is really what happened. And despite what you imply, I do know that hedges can be boring when they are all one has to look at. But I am convinced that if you look at them closely and try to see each leaf separately and not just as one among many, you will find them more varied than you thought and interesting enough to make your afternoons pass pleasantly by. I have always believed the reason people are bored is that they don’t pay attention to details. I had hoped to race up this month, but I am afraid the Chevy is once again on the fritz. There seems to be something wrong with the radiator, or the transmission, and with the terribly hot weather we’re having here it wants to “boil over” even on short trips to the Safeway. I asked Clara about your hair dryer; she says she doesn’t remember it. When I’m able to make it, I’ll take you out driving. We can scoot over to Woodhaven and visit Winston’s tomb; I know you enjoy that, and of course so do I. And by the way, it was unjust of you to say that I “never gave a tin shit” about Winston. In fact, I spoke to Reverend Studfish just last week. He promised he would look into the question, though he did warn me right off the bat that church law seems fairly canonical on the issue. However, I don’t think you should let that discourage you, as he never cared for Winston after what he did at Peg’s wedding, what he, Winston, did. If it is any comfort to you, I am personally convinced that Winston is happy where he is, wherever that might be.

Much love,

Andy

¶

My very first memory is of Mama brushing her hair. It was a dry evening and in the arid gloaming I could see little sparks leaping between brush and hair like fleas. Bright fleas. It was my first inkling of the role electricity plays in our lives. My earliest memory is of Mama’s hand. It was alabaster. It was pale and blue-veined. It was a delicate blue-veined hand bespeaking aristocracy. I lay in my lace-draped bassinet on the porch. She was talking on the phone—to whom I wonder?—and she was saying (I remember the words clearly, though of course it was many months before I developed a vocabulary large enough to understand their meaning, and until that time I could only con them mutely to myself in meaningless incantation): “Send up a chuck roast and some potatoes, two pounds of asparagus, a quart of milk, and a box of Tide.” I think back on this memory often, and I marvel how people were once able to order groceries by phone Shit shit shit

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Dear Mr. Poltavski,

In response to your request for submission guidelines, I enclose our standard statement. I wish more people would ask for our guidelines before submitting inappropriate material that wastes my time as well as theirs. And thank you for including a stamped return envelope, which not enough of you do either.

A. Whittaker, Editor

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GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION

Soap
is a national journal devoted to all forms of literary art, including short fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews. We publish six regular issues a year, plus two annual anthologies. Our contributors include established writers of international reputation as well as talented newcomers. Though we are always happy to see artists breaking new ground, whether in content or in form, we do not have any criteria for publication other than literary excellence. In the current acerbic climate of American letters, with unrestrained emotional outbursts on the one side (the remains of the so-called Beat movement) and amorphous piles of pseudomodernist gibberish on the other,
Soap
steers a middle course. We do not publish devotional materials, greeting card verses, or anything embroidered on cloth. While satire is welcome, the rule for personal invective is KEEP IT CLEAN. Obscenity is tolerated but must not be hurled in the direction of anyone still alive. Originality is a requirement. Characters must not be named K or X. Manifestos must advocate positions no one has ever heard of. We do not publish works in any language but English. While foreign phrases may be sprinkled here and there, a whole lot of that will result in your work being rejected as pretentious trash. All submissions must be typed and double-spaced. Multipage works must be numbered. Contributors are rewarded with two free copies and a twenty percent discount on any additional copies. Submitters should heed the two cardinal rules of carefree publishing. Cardinal Rule #1: DO NOT SEND YOUR ONLY COPY. Cardinal Rule #2: INCLUDE A STAMPED SELF-ADDRESSED RETURN ENVELOPE. A simultaneous violation of both rules will be punished by the utter obliteration of your work.

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Dear Mrs. Lessep,

Thanks for letting us read, once again, “The Mistletoe’s Little Shoes.” After careful consideration, we have concluded that this work still does not meet our needs. I am sorry you were misled by the phrase “does not meet our needs at this time” into thinking you should submit it again. In the publishing world “at this time” really means “forever.”

A. Whittaker,

Editor at
Soap

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Dear Mr. Carmichael,

Old people can be difficult, as you must know, and yet they have to be treated kindly, as they are still people. And of course you and I would like to be treated kindly when we become old, as we surely must, even if we end up belonging to that class of unpleasant old persons who are constantly complaining. We are led by natural human impulse to always blame the complainers, just because they are so annoying, without looking deeper into the matter. I say this in order to explain to myself why, since my mother has apparently spoken to you personally about her problems with the attendant Elaine Robinson more than once, no remedy has been forthcoming. This is not right. But rather than joining the list of annoying complainers myself, I thought I would lay out the facts and let you be the judge.

Elaine came to work at Old Ivy Glen shortly after Christmas last year, replacing Dotty. My mother welcomed the change at first, since Dotty had passed most of her shifts droning on about things that not even a lonely bedridden old lady could possibly find interesting. As a consequence, my mother spent much of her first year at Old Ivy Glen pretending to be asleep. Enter Elaine Robinson: big-bosomed and cheerful, with the happy-go-lucky outlook on life that we all find so refreshing in her people. My mother comes from a prominent old Southern family, and she has always felt very close to Negroes of all kinds, and at first she and Elaine seemed to “hit it off.” I vividly remember walking down the hall toward Mother’s room during one of my monthly visits and overhearing the two of them in warm conversation, Elaine’s earthy laughter churning beneath the trills and runs of Mama’s little cackles, a slow river, as it were, burbling beneath a mountain brook. My heart leaped, and I exhaled a silent “thank you” to Old Ivy Glen.

Alas, like so many good things, this joy was premature. Those early sprouts of friendship, if that is what they were, were destined to wither in April, when Mama’s mind began to wander. She migrated, figuratively speaking, into the storied past, imagining that she was a child in Georgia in slave times, that Old Ivy Glen was her dear old Oakwood restored to its former glory, that Winston, her old Labrador, was a puppy again, and that Elaine was her beloved Feena, the devoted female servant who had helped raise her in later, sadder times, when the family could scarcely pay the light bill, much less Feena, who was content with a small room and cornbread.

One might expect that a nursing professional like Elaine would redouble her sympathy at such moments, that she might indeed take pleasure in joining an old lady on her harmless time-travels, get a kick out of playing a role in these really rather charming fantasies about “the days that are no more.” But no! I vividly recall the moment when I realized that the tide of friendship at which I had earlier rejoiced had sunk to a dangerously low ebb. I was sitting with Mama in her room, not talking, but sharing a few minutes of quiet communion, when Elaine and another dark girl came bustling in to change the bedding, laughing and chatting in loud voices about God knows what. This sudden interruption of our communion provoked Mama to open her eyes wide and, seeing the two women standing at the foot of her bed, no doubt dimly, since she was not wearing her glasses, to observe that “there sure are a lot of Feenas around here.” I thought this was very funny. Yet I saw right away that Mrs. Robinson was going to let hypersensitiveness spoil the joke for her. I fear I inadvertently made matters worse by continuing to laugh despite her scowling expression.