My Life as a Man (46 page)

“Shit, so do we all! And what cuff links? What the hell are you talking about now?”

But she was off and running again, and the story of “the Carder cuff links” she would carry with her to her grave. “Oh just your speed, she is! Poor little rich girls, or little teenage students all gaga over their artistical teacher, like our friend with the braids in Wisconsin. Or that Jewish princess girl from Long Island. And how about the big blonde German nurse you were fucking in the army? A nurse—just perfect for you! Just perfect for our big mamma’s boy with the tearful brown eyes! A
real
woman, and you’re in tears, Peter. A real woman and
—“

“Look, who set you up in business as a
real
woman? Who appointed you the representative of womankind? Stop trying to shove your bloody Kotex down my throat, Maureen—you’re not a real
anything, that’s
your goddam trouble! Now get out. How
dare
you have me followed!”

She didn’t budge.

“I’m telling you to
go.”

“When I’m finished saying what I came here to say I will leave—and then without your assistance. Right now I’m going to read this story, because I want you to understand in no uncertain terms that two can play this writing game, two can play at this kind of slander, if it’s slandering me you have in your vindictive mind. Quid pro quo, pal.”

“Get—out.”

“It’s a short story about a writer named Paul Natapov, who unknown to the readership that takes him so
seriously,
and the highbrow judges who give him
awards,
likes to relax around the house in his wife’s underwear.”

“You fucking lunatic!” I cried, and pulled her up from the chair by one arm. “Now out, out, out you psychopath!
There—
there’s the only thing that’s
real
about you, Maureen,
your psy
chopathology!
It isn’t the woman that drives me to tears, it’s the nut! Now
out
!
”

“No! No! You’re only after my story,” she screamed
—“
but tear it to shreds—I still have a carbon in Dan Egan’s safe!”

Here she flung herself to the floor, where she took hold of the legs of the chair and began kicking up at me, bicycle fashion, with her high-heeled shoes.

“Get up! Cut it out! Go! Go, Maureen—or I’m going to beat your crazy head in!”

“Just you try it, mister!”

With the first crack of my hand I bloodied her delicate nose.

“Oh, my God
…
” she moaned as the blood spurted from her nostrils and down onto the jacket of her handsome suit, blood a deeper red than the nubby wool.

“And that is only the beginning! That is only the start. I’m going to beat you to an unrecognizable
p
ulp
!
”

“Go ahead! What do I care. The story’s still in Dan’s safe! Go ahead! Kill me, why don’t you!”

“Okay, I
will,”
and cuffed her head, first one side, then the other. “If
that
’s what you want, I will!”

“Do it!”

“Now
—“
I said, striking at the back of her skull with the flat of my palm, “now
—“
I hit her again, same spot,
“now
when you go to court, you won’t have to make it all up: now you’ll have something
real
to cry about to the good Judge Rosenzweig! A real beating, Maureen! The real thing, at last!” I was on the floor, astraddle her, cuffing her head with my open hand. Her blood was smeared everywhere: over her face, my hands, the rush matting, all over the front of her suit, down her silk blouse, on her bare throat. And the pages of the story were strewn around us, most of them bloodied too. The real thing—and it was marvelous. I was loving it.

I, of course, had no intention of killing her right then and there, not so long as those jails
that
Spielvogel had warned me about still existed. I was not even really in a rage any longer. Just enjoying myself
th
oroughly. All that gave me pause—oddly— was that I was ruining the suit in which she’d looked so attractive. But overlook the suit, I managed to tell myself. “I’m going to kill you, my beloved wife, I’m going to end life for you here today at the age of thirty-six, but in my own sweet time. Oh, you should have agreed to
the
Algonquin, Maureen.”

“Go ahead
—“
drooling now down her chin, “my life, my life is such shit, let me
the
already
…
”

“Soon, soon now, very soon now you’re going to be nice and dead.” I hadn’t to wonder for very long where to assault her next. I rolled her onto her face and began to pound with a stiff palm at her behind. The skirt of the red suit and her half-slip were hiked up in the back, and there was her little alley cat’s behind, encased in tight white underpants, perhaps the very pair about which her class at the New School had heard so much of late. I beat her ass. Ten, fifteen, twenty strokes—I counted them out for her, aloud—and
then
while she lay there sobbing, I stood up and went to the fireplace and picked up the black wrought-iron poker that Susan had bought for me in the Village. “And now,” I announced, “I am going to kill you, as promised.”

No word from the floor, just a whimper.

“I’m afraid they are going to have to publish your fiction posthumously, because I am about to beat your crazy, lying head in with this poker. I want to see your brains, Maureen. I want to see
those
brains of yours with my own eyes. I want to step in them with my shoes—and then I’ll pass them along to Science. God only knows what they’ll find. Get ready, Maureen, you’re about to
the
horribly.”

I could make out now the barely audible words she was whimpering: “Kill me,” she was saying, “kill me kill me
—“
as oblivious as I was in the first few moments to the fact that she had begun to shit into her underwear. The smell had spread around us before I saw the turds swelling the seat of her panties. “
Th
e me,” she babbled deliriously
—“
th
e me good,
the
me long
—“

“Oh, Christ.”

All at once she screamed,
“Make me dead
!
”

“Maureen. Get up, Maureen. Maureen, come on now.”

She opened her eyes. I wondered if she had passed over at last into total madness. To be institutionalized forever—at my expense. Ten thousand bucks more a year! I was finished!

“Maureen!
Maureen
!
”

She managed a bizarre smile.

“Look.” I pointed between her legs. “Don’t you see? Don’t you know? Look, please. You’ve shit all over yourself. Do you hear me, do you understand me?
Answer me
!
”

She answered. “You couldn’t do it.”

“What?”

“You couldn’t do it. You coward.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Big brave man.”

“Well, at least you’re yourself, Maureen. Now get
wp.
Use the bathroom!”

“A yellow coward.”

“Wash yourself
!
”

She pushed up on her elbows an
d tried to bring herself to her
feet, but with an agonized groan, slumped backward. “I—I have to use your phone.”

“After,” I said, reaching down with a hand to help lift her.

“I have to phone
now.”

I gagged and averted my head. “Later—!”

“You beat me”—as though the news had just that moment reached her. “Look at this blood! My blood! You beat me like some Harlem whore!”

I had now to step away from the odor she gave off. Oh, this was just too much madness, too much all around. The tears started rolling out of me.

‘Where is your phone!”

“Look, who are you calling?”

“Whoever I want! You
beat
me! You filthy pig,
you beat me
!
”
She had made it now up onto her knees. One blow with the poker—still in my right hand, by the way—and she would phone no one.

I watched her stumbling over her own feet to the bedroom. One shoe on and one shoe off. “No, the
bathroom!
”

“1
have to phone
…
”

“You’re leaking your shit all over!”

“You beat me, you monster! Is that all you can think of? The shit on your
House and Garden
rug? Oh, you middle-class bastard, I don’t believe it!”

“WASH YOURSELF!”

“NO!”

From the bedroom came the sound of the casters rolling into the worn grooves in the wooden floor. She had collapsed onto the bed, as though dropping from the George Washington Bridge.

She was dialing—and sobbing.

“Hello? Mary? It’s Maureen. He beat up on me, Mary—he-hello? No?
Hello?”
With an animalish whine of frustration, she hung up. Then she was dialing again, so slowly and fitfully she might have been falling off to sleep between every other digit.

“Hello? Hello, is this the Egans? Is this 201-236-2890? Isn’t this Egans? Hello?” She let out another whine and threw the receiver at the hook. “I want to talk to the Egans! I want the Egans!” she cried, banging the receiver up and down now in its cradle.

I stood in the doorway to the bedroom with my poker.

“What the hell are
you
crying about?” she said, looking up at me. “You wanted to beat me, and you beat me,
so stop crying.
Why can’t you be a man for a change and
do
somedung, instead of being such a crybaby!”

“Do what? Do
what?”

“You can dial the Egans! You broke my fingers! I
have no feeling in my fingers!”

“1
didn’t touch your fingers!”

“Then why can’t I dial! DIAL FOR ME! STOP CRYING FOR FIVE SECONDS AND DIAL THE RIGHT NUMBER!”

So I did it. She told me to do it, and I did it. 201-236-2890. Ding-a-ling. Ding-a-ling.

“Hello?” a woman said.

“Hello,” said I, “is this Mary Egan?”

“Yes. Who is this, please?”

“Just a moment, Maureen Tarnopol wants to talk to you.” I handed my wife
the
phone, gagging as her aroma reached me again.

“Mary?” Maureen said. “Oh Mary,” and wretchedly, she was sobbing once again. “Is, is Dan home? I have to talk to Dan, oh Mary, he, he beat me, Peter, that was him, he beat up on me, bad-”

And I, fully armed, stood by and listened. Who was I to phone for her next, the police to come and arrest me, or Valducci to write it up in the
Daily News?

I left her to herself in the bedroom, and with a sponge and a pan of water from the kitchen began to clean the blood and feces from the rush matting on the living room floor. I kept the poker by my side—now, ridiculously, for protection.

I was on my knees, the fifteenth or twentieth wad of paper toweling in my hand, when Maureen came out of the bedroom.

“Oh, what a good little boy,” she said.

“Somebody has to clean up your shit.”

“Well, you’re in trouble now, Peter.”

I imagined that she was right—my stomach felt all at once as though I were the one who had just evacuated in his pants— but I pretended otherwise. “Oh, am I?”

‘When Dan Egan gets home, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“You better run, my dear. Fast and far.”

“You
better wash yourself—and then go!”

“I want a drink.”

“Oh, Maureen, please. You stink!”

“I NEED A DRINK! YOU TRIED TO MURDER ME!”

“YOU’RE TRACKING SHIT EVERYWHERE!”

“Oh, that’s
typical
of you!”

“DO AS I SAY! WASH YOURSELF!”

“NO!”