Collected Fictions (47 page)

THIS SIDE OF THE ANIMAL, OR, BRICOLAGE

ALL DAY LONG THE MAN READ
to them from the storybooks they had. They seemed to like to hear him read to them, but it was not possible for the man to tell if this was truly so. Perhaps they merely put up with the man, his thin white hair hanging in meager clots from his thin glittery skull. Perhaps he had beguiled the children into their feeling sorry for him, or feeling sad for him, or feeling afraid to be unquiet in his company.

The man was so tired.

It hurt his legs when there was one of them, or two, who would take to his wasted lap for a while. But didn't all the parts of the man hurt, no matter if his lap were filled or not with any child anymore?

How on earth had he got this weak, this old?

It had never been his plan. His plan had been to be strong, and to come to the last of his life with the power of his youth. Not one jot of himself would time ever wrest from his fisted hands. But time had, hadn't it?

It was a trick.

It had to have happened when his attention had been situated elsewhere. But where? Certainly not on the children who had conducted into his life these numberless offspring of theirs. There were so many of them—grandchildren, everywhere grandchildren—whereas it required no numbering for the man to reckon there was hardly even one of him and that not at all long from now would there be a sign of even that?

He was alone, had always been alone, and would die—perhaps this very night—as solitary as he had forever in his memory been.

The man had no complaints, not a one.

Yet what could have made him so horribly weary just this very instant?

Fatigue must have hurtled down at him from somewhere overhead and now, at the end of the day, it felt to the man as if exhaustion, breathless itself, lay gasping as it hung from his neck, snatching at the frail struts of the crazed skeleton as the man struggled to free himself from this last cruel assailant.

But why bother?

After all, was the man not preparing for sleep?

They had made up some sort of contraption for him in the main room. It had rather surprised him to turn away from the kisses goodnight and discover behind himself the site where he had sat from sun-up wearing himself out enunciating for the children—for the grandchildren—transformed into what would be his bed. When had this happened? How could it have? Hadn't he been occupying the very place, reading and reading to half of creation since the very stroke of day?

Everyone seemed so capable nowadays.

By what means had this occurred? Was there any precedent in their lives for this? Where was the example in managing matters that had guided these children of his in their accomplishment of such infernal displays of competence, competence—skill and grace? It had not been their mother, surely. Long gone in her dishevelment somewhere to the dreadful margins, hadn't the woman made a proper mess of things, starting with—let gentility select our diction—her exercise, first and last, of, shame, shame, bed-making?

Wait a bit.

He had packed his sleeping pills—but exactly where? The little overnight bag he had fitted them into, what had the children—or the grandchildren, damn every squirming living one of them!—done with it?

Ah, there.

Or here.

Yes, yes.

Just where it ought to be—at the foot—or is it the head?—of this exasperating business that must have once been a couch before the new ingenuity on the march in the world decided to interfere with it and make it serve two ends.

Well, it wasn't out in the open enough, was it? How come people don't appreciate the courtesy of leaving things where you cannot miss them! Why does it have to be his fault if everything's not where fair play would indicate it be?

He sucked and sucked and accumulated saliva in his mouth and swallowed it waterless—bitter pill, so terrible for such a tiny palliative indeed.

His fingers—were the bones breaking?

Not just canny and capable, but thoughtful, actually incomparably thoughtful, once you gave it some thought and actually really thought about it, this family of his, even if none of them knew somebody's overnight bag belonged where a person did not have to spend half his life in a wild hunt for it. Such a fund of solicitude, whatever source it had, it could never be alleged any spoor of it could be tied to him. No, it was not that the man did not wish to be generous with himself when called upon to do so. It was rather that the man noticed not all that much of what was available to notice, so that such a call, made however close to the man's ear, might go unattended even when the caller shrieked. But what little the man did attend would grip his attention with a violence that was unrelenting and even eerie. Oh, no, never think the man was not all too excruciatingly aware of what he deigned to be aware of—torn spines of storybooks irksome in their haphazard stacks, toys luridly expressed in polyurethane deep-banked for the night up against the baseboards, frame after frame of family snapshots gaping in disorderly array from every level of tabletop, everywhere the walls flapping with sheets of crayoned and penciled foolscap, none of it had the man elected to ignore—given the chance, he would have discarded the lot, and with gusto!—not least the photograph of the children's mother—was this person a grandmother, in fact?—that now came plunging into view at the far side of the man's pillow and, with it, the career of the marriage, a contending whose vehemence never flagged and whose object was the vector of the slant—upwards versus downwards, downwards versus upwards—of the Venetian blinds distributed throughout the dwelling in receipt of the—up to that point—happy couple.

If the woman aimed the slats one way, the man would restore their alignment to the prior disposition. Where the woman had visited would have the arrangement of its window treatment, however maddening the task to effect the detail, reversed upon the man's replacing the woman there.

Oh, it was endless, endless.

Until it ended.

And what had it all had to do with—what?

Neither the man nor the woman might ever have said—unless it had been the use to be made of sunlight if sunlight were in the moment given—or, at all events, by those who paid attention to change, been promised.

Well, it seemed to the man it must have had.

One wanted a radiance either to ignite the ceiling or, otherwise, set fire to the floor.

Make much of what was above.

Make no less of that below.

You choose.

They chose.

Or, rather to say, one of them chose and the other, in a word, unchose. Oh, and speaking of which, never a word was spoken on this score. Sentiments inspiring the impasse dividing him from her and her from him never acquired the status of speech.

Mm, the aphonia of matrimony.

Compromise between the combatants was as impossible as was acknowledgment that each was pledged to oppose the other in a style of disputation unique in the common experience. Any reference to their differences not carried out in silence, would it not prove—talk, talk—the reigning feature in the loser's defeat? Well, there was no backing down, and the man never backed down. Not that the woman ever did, either—there looking him now full in the face, her furious countenance singling out the father of her children as with all his might the man pushed the pillow from the bed so that, in the morning, he would not have to come fighting his way up from the waters of the night with what was left of him—his neck, Christ, the neck—more punished than he deserved.

Wait again, wait!

Was there to be this remembrance of the grandmother and none of the grandfather? Among all these damn pictures, was there honor being paid to the woman and none, by thunder, to the man!

He got to his feet.

It made him dizzy for him to do it.

And his knees, Jesus!

The pill—good, good—soon, soon—another minute or so and he will have searched the room and determined the worst and then come back to this device to be just in time for the blessing of good old-fashioned oblivion.

Nothing, he found nothing, not a hint of himself was there anywhere to be found, not even in settings where a family grouping constituted the topic to be developed within the frame.

Where was he?

Was the man nowhere at all?

He staggered from footing to footing, very nearly falling into things a time or two, before finding—the thing exhibited well back on a tabletop so that evidence of the man's existence might have very nearly persisted in keeping itself hidden from all—before coming across the boy sitting astride the door-to-door photographer's droopy-looking, ruined-looking, condemned-looking pony, naked leg, pale anklet, toe of the dark shoe visible from within the enormous-looking stirrup it was, on this side of the animal, possible for the observer to see.

Oh, what a child!

The child smiled genuinely, genuinely, wonderfully, wonderfully, and the man, feeling himself summoned as all the day long he had not once been, smiled with all his heart right back.

Genuinely, genuinely, except, one supposes, not so wonderfully, wonderfully, the man smiling back at himself.

But all right, then!

Then here he was, then, wasn't he!

Wasn't this, then, he, him, the boy who was the man?

The man tried sliding his feet along the floor in order that he might get himself safely home to bed—and there to narratives his nature would hasten to confect for him once the sedative had delivered him all to sleep.

To dreams.

Well, in one there was the woman.

She shrieked at him and shrieked, "Yes, yes, but which way, which? Can't you tell me which?"

In another there was the woman.

But it was not the woman who kept screaming in it at him, "Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo, thief!—the uses you make of everything and of all the different things!"

Then there was the dream without people.

It was made all of words.

The thing to do in it was to contrive irritating alliterations—yet there was no agency in it doing it.

No woman, no man.

Deficit notwithstanding—no, despite the deficit!—the work was done indeed.

THE POSITIONS

FORGET YOUR DRUGGING.

Forget your fucking.

Forget your fancy foods and your ham and eggs and your bacon and eggs and your, you know, your eggs with sausages with on the side your home fries on the side and it's when the eggs are fried and they're fried in the style of frying which is referred to as your eggs fried eggs over easy and they're dished up to you, the eggs are dished up to you with this whole extra treat of extra bacon on the plate and on a plate next to the plate there's these slices of toast buttered with butter on the plate and there's also on the side a milk shake on the side or, okay, let's not say there's a milk shake on the side but just a glass of just milk on the side and the milk's made up of the creamy part of the milk which got itself poured off from the neck of the bottle before anybody could get to the neck of the bottle before it was you who you got to the neck of the bottle and got it all poured off-—the creamy part—all for yourself. So go ahead and forget all that.

So are you listening?

Because I am telling you what the best thing in my life has been to me. You want to know what the best thing in my life has been to me? Because I am telling you, because I am going to tell you what the best thing in my life has been to me.

But before I go ahead and tell you, guess what.

Because no, because what it has not been to me is, no, it has not been fucking to me and it has not been drugs to me and it has not been going to the movies or been eating franks or been eating franks with sauerkraut on them or with the mustard they used to give you for you to put on the plate next to the franks or for you to put between the franks and beans back when I was a kid.

Nor been having kids.

Nor been playing with the kids I had.

Nor with the kids which anybody had.

Plus neither shortstop nor pitcher.

It's not been playing the positions of either of them when I played the positions of either of shortstop or of pitcher and was always eating my eggs and franks as described.

Or when you got good wood on the ball.

It's not been when you got good wood on the ball.

Nor been looking like you were coming close to getting any kind of wood on the ball when it was your mother and your father who were there for them to see you looking like it. No, not been when your mother and father were there when it would have looked to anybody like you were getting all set for you to get some good wood on the ball—or get any kind of quality of anything on anything and then of them seeing you look like you were doing it, or were going to do it, or did it, just did.

Because I said, because I am saying forget all that, forget all of these things like things like that. Such as please go ahead and forget things like me reading things or like me sitting in the chair I used to squunch all around in for me to sit in the chair and read things in it the best way anybody could sit in that chair and read things in it or sit in any other chair for me to sit and read anything in it.

Or things like me fucking in a chair.

Forget things like me fucking in a chair.

Like me sitting fucking Helen in the chair which, you know, which, okay, which Helen had.

Like sitting fucking Helen in the chair with us the both of us sitting facing the mirror facing the chair that Helen, which Helen had.

Or even fucking Helen's sister like this.

With Helen facing Helen's sister and me and with me fucking Helen's sister like this.

Well, with the mirror facing all of us sitting and fucking and looking and facing the mirror like this.

And it was everything to me, everything.

But even if it was everything to me, was it the best thing of all of the everythings in my life to me?

Because it wasn't, it wasn't.

Or weren't you paying attention when I said none of these things were any of them anywhere close to their being the best thing in my life to me?

Because the best thing in my life to me—are you crazy, don't be crazy!—because the best thing in my life to me wasn't any kind of a thing like any of these kinds of a thing to me. Which goes, which also goes for the day which was the first day of all of the brand-new spring days for me.

I mean the one when it was okay for you to first go out with your short pants on.

Not to mention short sleeves.

And in the air there was this smell in the air which you could smell in the air which was like the smell of smelling the sun in the air—or which, when you smelled it, it was like smelling the beginning of everything smellable in the air.

Oh, it was nice, so nice—the beginning of smelling even the beginning of everybody leaving the air all to me.

Am I not saying it was nice?

But the best?

My God, the best in my life to me?

Because the best in my life to me, it wasn't even coming with anyone, was it?

Or getting off with anyone.

Or getting gone for good with any of the women.

Not even with Helen in the mirror with Helen's sister in the mirror and with all of the women watching.

It was lint.

I'm sorry, but it was lint.

I'm telling you the answer is lint, it was lint, lint!

You hear me?

Listen to me if you want to hear me—lint, it was lint—the best thing in my life to me, the most wonderful thing to me in my life to me, it was lint, it was getting the lint, it was getting down on my hands and knees with this hanger I went and got and getting down on my hands and knees with it and getting it opened up so it was all bent open and as unbent as you could get it to come out like it was this one long thing like a long thing and then sticking it down in under the dryer and sticking it all of the way back down in under the dryer and scooting it all of the way around and then scooting it all of the way back out to me again to me with all of these gobs of this thick gobby stuff stuck on it in like these big globs of this built-up lint on it.

So I tell you the thing.

But do you listen to the thing?

Because this was the thing which I am telling you which was the one best thing in my life to me.

Getting lint.

Getting all of that wadded-up lint.

Which came out in such globby gobs of it when I got down on my hands and knees with the idea of now is the time for me to go see what I can get out from down under way back in the back of under where it's underneath the dryer again.

Unless you think, unless everybody thinks hey, buddy, isn't the best is yet what has yet to come for you?

As far as referring, I mean.

I mean as far as me referring to what has been going ahead and wadding itself up right back up again back down in under the back of in the back of there ever since.

As far as the dryer, I mean.

As far as the lint underneath the dryer, I mean.

Or wherever else the wadding never quits.