Psychology and Other Stories (22 page)

Syed drank too much. He didn't even like drinking, really. When he drank he was outgoing but stupid. When he was sober he was clever but shy. He was lonely, so he drank. Every few months he was
clapped in here when the little glowing cellophane creatures made their reappearance. He knew, when he was sober, that they were hallucinations brought on by D.T.; but at the moment they appeared, they were more real, more obviously independent of his perception of them, than any other thing he had ever seen. More than their grotesque appearance or the insulting things they said, it was the awful intensity of their existence that terrified him.

Cliff felt an exhausted tightness in his belly one day which he could not explain. It felt as if he had just done two hundred sit-ups, or vomited all night. It felt, he decided, like guilt. He wracked his brain for possible causes, scouring his past for every error, mistake, and sin he had ever committed. Each transgression, in the moment that he considered it, seemed more than adequate. The pain in his guts got worse, and with it the conviction of his loathsomeness. Now all he could do was hold himself and sob broken apologies as he recalled each evil afresh.

Baltazar, who was thirteen, suffered from night terrors, which did not cause him much worry (because he did not remember them) but troubled his parents enough to send him away to be cured. In the asylum, however, his screams troubled his roommates—strange grown men with angry faces who were too embroiled in their own nightmares to feel sympathy. Instead of bringing him glasses of chilled apple juice like his parents did, they shouted at him to shut up, or else. The problem worsened. Baltazar grew to hate himself for what he could not control; and rather than wait for the thrashing he deserved and which was constantly being threatened, he actively pursued his punishment, insulting and irritating the men relentlessly until they struck him.

Digby treated strangers like they were old friends.

Claude had lost his wife in a car accident.

Immanuel felt ashamed. Most of the time he was able to hide his shame from others behind a façade of aloof derision. But recently he
had begun to have a recurring nightmare which kept him from sleep. He lost his welding job, and a finger, before checking himself in to the asylum for the paraldehyde that clouded his waking mind and took some of the bite out of his dreams. Years later, he remembered nothing of the hospital, could recall none of the staff or his fellow patients. For him, those three months were simply the time of the bad dream. In the dream he was very ill, but could not stay home. He had to go out; something had to be done; someone was waiting for him. Then it happened. Always, inevitably, in some crowded public place—in the street, at school, on the train, at his mother's shop—the worst possible thing happened: he was sick; he vomited. A hundred people turned to look with disgust at the mess he had made. He was so horrified, so ashamed, that the only thing he could do, each and every time, was get down on his knees and try desperately to lick it back up, scoop it into his mouth and swallow it again.

But everyone has a story. Life as we know it is less like a cohesive novel than an anthology of unrelated short stories whose protagonists, caught up in the development of their own individual plots, take no notice of one another. Novels, unlike collections of stories, promote the illusion that humans are not completely, or not always, incarcerated in their own concerns—that it is sometimes possible for our storylines to intersect, or even merge. Perhaps that is why people prefer novels to short stories: escapism.

All Singleton knew was that he was in the wrong place. All he saw around him were broken, inferior animals: a man placing chess pieces on the keys of the piano while working the pedals with his feet; a man lying under a table, shaking his legs in the air like they were full of bedbugs; a man sitting in a trash can chatting amiably to God, chuckling appreciatively at His replies, saying “Thank You, thank You, I'm glad You feel that way”; one man howling with frustration when another told him, with obvious malice, that it was Tuesday; one
man stroking another's head till he fell asleep; a man kicking a boy of thirteen, who laughed a brittle, bitter laugh and chased after the man for more; a man wrapping himself from head to toe in countless colorful scarves; a tall, wilted man spinning slowly in a circle; a birdlike, fidgety young man whose wet brown eyes were like two separate living entities in the dead mask of his face; a man whose huge, grinning face looked like something carved out of wood to scare a child; a man bawling like a child, and gasping, again and again, “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to”; another who moved his hands over his body in an elaborate sequence repeated precisely and endlessly, and who could say nothing but “Cars need to eat too,” over and over.

Perhaps most appallingly, there were at least a dozen men who behaved perfectly normally, playing cards, reading, smoking, or writing letters—and implying by their normalcy that there was nothing abnormal, nothing even unusual, about the behavior going on around them.

When the orderly at the end of the hall, whose name was Brian, saw Singleton coming, his heart sank. He did not like getting into tussles with the patients, whom he believed were too mixed-up to know what they were doing. He felt sorry for them—almost as sorry for them living here as he felt sorry for himself working here. Clearly the last thing any of them needed was an ass-whooping; but sometimes they left him no choice. They always picked on him—him, the biggest guy in the place! That's how mixed-up they were.

“You best get your ass back in the dayroom now, Signalton,” Brian suggested.

“Forgot something, can't find my keys,” Singleton said, making impatient shooing gestures, “so if you'll excuse me for a moment while I—well, man, are you deaf or just stupid? Get out of my way.”

“I think probably you best just go on back now, Signalton.”

“My name is Singleton goddamn it, J. Jerome Singleton Singleton
Sing-gull-ton
, and you're costing me ten thousand dollars a day!”

“It says Signalton on your forms,” Brian said (truthfully), hoping to deflect the old man with trivia.

“Don't you think I know my own name! If you don't let me out that door right this very minute, so help me God I will rip your tonsils out and mail them to your widow. I will—I will eat your boss.”

“I sure would if I could,” Brian said softly, “but you've been here long enough now I guess to know it ain't up to me. Only ones that got a grounds pass are allowed out in the afternoon. So come on now, Signalton, why don't you just …”

Singleton heard not a word of this. Because he was a loud man himself, calm or soft speech always struck him like a sanctimonious reprimand. This man was
defying him.
Anger flooded through his body like a toxin; it became an audible buzz in his ears. He squeezed his fists till his arms shook. Then he lowered his head and rammed the man in the belly.

For a moment, as the world tilted, he saw the door at the end of the hall swing open, and he saw himself emerge once again, through the sheer force of his will, triumphant.

The paraldehyde they poured down his throat unmoored him; he drifted through scenes half dream, half memory.

“You want to know my secret?” he asked the fawning elevator operator. “Always double down on aces. Put the money you make back into the business right away—that's the only way it'll grow. It takes backbone, a little fire in the belly, but you can't be afraid to let your balls dangle. Take it from me.” He gave the boy a five-spot.

He looked at it coldly. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Don't ask me—never saw it before in my life. Guess you found it on the sidewalk or in one of your pockets or something.”

The inspections agent continued to stare at the envelope, as if it might move.

“These goddamn peas now,” Singleton sighed. “These goddamn stalks and stems—let me tell you, I fired the sonofabitch let those through. You want to know my opinion, it was Hardy sent that sonofabitch my way. Goddamn agricultural sabotage is what it is—if we're calling a spade a spade. I grow A-grade peas—ask anyone in the county. Come back to the farm, take another look at those peas—that's all I ask. There's a man. Say, you reading this?”

FINGERS FOUND IN PICKLE FACTORY.

The reporter whistled dubiously. “Who saw the finger?”

Singleton slid the piece of paper with the Pole woman's name and address across the table. “You treat her gently now. She don't speak English too good and they threw her out of her job and she doesn't want her name in your goddamn scandal-rag. But she wants to do her duty, wants people to know what's going on in those factories, wants the truth out. And I'm sure she wouldn't say no to a little vig on publication neither.”

“What's the matter, can't find a place for her at your—”

Singleton shook an index finger in the reporter's smug face. “You keep me and my factory well out of it, you understand? I know Dallas Cullins and I know who your father is and I know my way around a goddamn libel suit, let me tell you.”

The retraction was printed a week later and seven pages deeper. Too little, too late: he'd already won the government contract.

“A good story doesn't die,” he told the trashy torch singer. “Once it's told, you can't untell it. Mrs. O'Leary's cow didn't start the Great Chicago Fire!”

“I heard that one before,” she said, drunkenly determined to not be impressed.

“But a thing takes on a life of its own. The truth never stood in the way of a good story. Course, that's the
problem
with the world. You can't
change
nothing, all you can do is print goddamn retractions and corrections and addendums and— You come into the world like an immigrant after an election: the government's already in place, all you can do … all you can do is respond to its stupidities.
They
decide the agenda,
they
the ones choose the game, all you can do is bicker over the rules …”

“Shucks now, angel, what's the matter?”

He slapped her hand away. “Goddamn it, don't
fuss.
One thing I hate is being fussed over by a woman.”

That stupid comment about immigrants! He had to be drunk. When she touched his hair again, he threw his glass at the wall, missing the piano player's head by inches. They threw him out.

He cackled and whooped in the night air. He didn't need them. He didn't need anyone. He was his own man. He'd made himself out of nothing, less than nothing. Goddamn them all. Goddamn
her.
Those twisted teeth, those idiotic peasant's costumes spattered with flour … Always fussing over him in that ignorant immigrant's accent … Too stupid to know the difference between a boy's name and a girl's name … He'd overcome all that. He was as American as goddamn baseball. “I almost owned a Major League Baseball franchise!” he roared. “But they wouldn't take my goddamn bid 'cause I don't belong to a
club
, I never been to a
university
, I don't wear a little
ring. I
made a fortune without any of their advantages! Aw goddamn it, sweetie-pie, you're getting mustard all over my good slacks.”

“Gimme some more napkins, pa, huh?”

Her hands, coated in orange soda, shimmered in the sun like lizard skin. She was the most beautiful perfect little creature that had ever existed. His heart was suffocating him; he jumped to his feet and
opened his mouth like a bird bursting into song: “Goddamn you to hell you lousy sonofabitch Ruth, scratch your ass if you're going to scratch your ass but step up to the plate and
swing
if you're going to
goddamn swing goddamn it
!”

Germaine turned to the man seated opposite. “What business are you in, Mr. Hencks?”

Singleton simpered apologetically:
Women
!

“I am a musician,” the man said stiffly.

Singleton upgraded their tickets. When Germaine quailed at the cost, he bellowed, “The world takes you at your own estimation and I will not fraternize with artsy-fartsy goddamn riff-raff!”

In the dining car they were seated next to the owner of a Milwaukee steel mill. He told the man (because the world takes you at your own estimation) that he was in manufacturing. He patted Germaine's distended belly and said, “My wife too.” He laughed in her scowling face. “As you can see, she manufactures her own unhappiness.”

The steel mill owner chuckled. His wife—or daughter—smiled.

“Not everything,” Singleton told her. “Not quite everything—only
just about.
Sure there are things I can't do. For instance, I ain't cut out for television—there's a fact. A man must accept his limitations or this world of limitations won't accept him. My genius is basically for deal-making. I'm an idea man, a conceptualizer. I invented price ranges, did you know that? Same exact product, different packaging, three prices. Because there's those who always buy the cheapest product—they think they're being thrifty; then there's those who always buy the most expensive product—they think they're getting quality; and then there's everybody else—they don't want to be ripped off, but they don't want to eat shit, either. Tell me, your husband ever talk to you like this?”