Self-Defense (32 page)

Remembering the white convertible out
front, I said, “I drive American.”

“How patriotic. Did you get it from
Daddy?”

I didn’t answer, thinking suddenly of my
father, never able to afford a new car....

“Daddy’s
dead,
isn’t he? Was he a
would-be doctor, too?”

“A machinist,” I said.

“Tool and die—he tooled, then he died.
Tut-tut. So you’re a blue-collar hero. Shaky-kneed arriviste by way of the
public school system. First in the family to go to college and all that, a
Kiwanis club scholarship, no doubt. Mommy’s
so
proud in her Formica
prison—is she dead, too?”

I stood up and began walking to the door.

“Oh!”
he bellowed after me. “Oh, I’ve
offended
him;
five minutes and he’s running off to puke in the bushes, the fortitude of a
mayfly
!”

I half turned my head and smiled at him.
“Not at all, it’s just boring. The shape you’re in, you should know life’s too
short for small talk.”

His face incandesced with rage. He waited
until I’d opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.

“Fuck
you
and fuck your charwoman
mother
on a Formica
counter
! Walk out, now, and you’ll eat my shit in a soufflé
before I give you my insights.”

“Do you really have any?” I said, with my
back to him.

“I know why the girl tried to
kill
herself.”

I heard squeaks, turned, and saw him
wheeling himself forward very slowly. He stopped and spun the chair, finally
managing to turn his back on me. His hair hung in greasy strands. Either Nova
wasn’t much of a caretaker or he didn’t allow her to groom him.

“Fix me a drink, Cubby, and maybe I’ll
share my wisdom with you. None of that single-malt swill you yuppie pricks go
for—give me blended. Everything in life is blended; nothing stands on its own.”
Spinning again, he faced me. I thought he looked relieved that I was still
there.

“What’s yellow and red, yellow and red,
yellow and red?” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Jap in a blender,
hawf, hawf—
and don’t give me that look of outrage, you
buttoned-down poot. I fought in the only war that counted and saw what those
scrawny-dicked monkey-men are capable of. Did you know they used to
peel
the faces off the Allied prisoners? Marinate human hearts and kidneys in
teriyaki sauce and
barbecue
them? There’s your sushi bar for you. Truman
dry-
roasted the buck-toothed capuchins, only good thing
that
exophthalmic rag-pimp ever did. Stop standing there, gawking like a virgin
sailor at wet pussy, and fix me a fine blended drink before I tire of you
beyond the point of forgiveness!”

I went to the wet bar and found a bottle
of Chivas, almost empty. As I poured, he said, “Know how to read?”

I had no intention of answering. But he
didn’t wait for a reply.

“Ever read anything I wrote?”

I named a few titles.

“Did you have to write term
papers
on them?”

“A few.”

“What grades did you get?”

“I passed.”

“Then fuck you, you didn’t understand a
thing.”

I brought him his drink. He drained it and
held out his glass. I refilled it. He took longer with the second drink,
staring at the whisky, sipping, lifting a leg, and passing gas with
satisfaction. I thought of all he’d written about heroism and finally
understood the word
fiction.

He tossed the glass away. His throw was
weak, and the tumbler landed near the wheel of his chair and rolled on the rug.

He said, “The girl tried to end it all
because she’s empty. No passion, no pain, no reason to keep going. So anything
you do with her will be worthless. You might as well be psychoanalyzing a
tadpole
in order to prevent its froggy fate.
I,
on the other hand, have a surplus of passion.
Spilling over, as it were.” He made slurping sounds. “The
only
thing
that can save her is getting to know me.”

I tried not to laugh or scream. “Getting
to know you will be her therapy.”

“Not therapy, you limited
gowk.
Therapy is for moral anencephalics and hamstrung aerobi-geeks. I’m
talking about
salvation.
”

Leaning forward. “
Tell
her.”

“I’ll let her know,” I said.

He laughed and raised the pitch of his
voice. “Does she
hate
me?”

“I’m not free to talk about her feelings.”

“La
da
la
da
la
da
la
da.
You claim you read
Dark Horses.
What was the point there?”

“The racetrack as a mini-world. The
charac—”

“The
point
was that we all eat
horseshit. Some dress it up with béarnaise sauce, some nibble, some hold their
noses, some stick their faces right in it and wolf, but
no
one plays
hooky. Best novel of the millennium.
Flew
out of me; my cock tingled
every day I sat down at the typewriter.”

He looked at the glass on the floor.
“More.”

I obliged him.

“Pulitzer capons thinking they were
giving
me something.” He finished the whisky. “She hates me. I don’t give a
shit about her feelings. Hatred’s a great motivator. I’ve always hated
writing.”

I looked over his shoulder at the animal
heads, the leering warthog.

He said, “No attention span, Veal-chop?
They came with the place. I considered adding to the collection—critics with
glass eyes. Know why I didn’t?”

I shook my head.

“No taxidermist would take on the job. Too
hard to clean.”

He laughed and demanded another drink. The
Chivas was gone, and I poured him cheap scotch. With his body weight, his blood
had to be pickled, but he showed no effects of the alcohol.

“Have you ever looked into the toilet
after you’ve shat?” he said. “The bits of crud that are left sticking to the
porcelain? Next time, scrape some of that off and place it in a dish of
agar-agar. Feed it more shit and anything foul you can find, and in no time at
all you’ll have cultured yourself a critic.”

More laughter, but strained. “A
criminal—the vilest child-fucking inchworm of a mother-raper—is entitled to a
trial of his peers. Do you know what kind of justice artists merit? Trial by
cretin.
Dickless, decorticate, petty-ante pissbladders who’d give their
glands to have the gift but don’t, so they take out their frustration on the
blessed. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who lack the tongue
motility to lick the arseholes of
teachers,
write reviews.”

He’d finally produced saliva. A strand
trickled down the side of his mouth.

He stared at me. I readied myself for
another outburst.

But he grew very quiet and his eyelids
started to droop.

Then he fell asleep.

I listened to him snore. Nova came in, as
if summoned by the noise. She’d changed into a filmy, collarless white blouse
that barely reached her waist and black shorts that showed off beautiful legs.
Her breasts were large and soft and unfettered, the nipples darkly evident
through the thin fabric.

She said, “No sense in your staying, he’ll
be that way for a while.”

“Does he do that often? Just nod off?”

“All the time. He’s tired all the time.
It’s the pain.”

“Is he on painkillers?”

“What do you think?”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Everything. His heart and his liver are
bad, he’s had several strokes, and his kidneys are weak. Basically, he’s just
falling apart.”

Her tone was matter-of-fact.

“Are you a nurse?”

She smiled. “No, his assistant. He won’t
accept nursing, would rather drink and do things his way. You’d better be
going.”

I walked to the door.

“Are you bringing the daughter back?” she
said.

“That’ll be up to the daughter.”

“She should meet him.”

“Why’s that?”

“Every daughter should meet her father.”

“A caricature,” said Lucy, trying to
smile. But there was fear in her eyes.

Outside, the sun hid behind a cloud bank
and the ocean was a restless gray curdle. Very low tide. I heard the breakers
die far back, slapping the sand like slow, monstrous applause.

It was eight in the morning; I’d just
finished telling her about my visit. Nicolette Verdugo’s murder was all over
the news. Jobe Shwandt was giving death-row interviews, lecturing on astrology
and utopianism and the proper way to cut up a side of beef. One of the Bogettes
had told the
Times
the day had come for all victims to rise up and
slaughter the oppressors. Lucy had come in holding the morning paper, but she
hadn’t wanted to talk about any of that.

“So what’s his angle?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “In his own
bizarre way, he may be reaching out. Or just trying to regain some control.”

She shook her head and smiled. Then her
mouth turned down. “See any lacy trees?”

“There are trees all over the place. The
house is set into a forest.”

“A log house.”

“Yes,” I said. “Like a giant log cabin.
Ken told me that’s where you and Puck slept. You were being cared for by a
nanny. Any memory of that?”

“I know,” she said. “He told me, too. Some
woman with short hair, and he remembers her as being grumpy. But that didn’t
trigger anything for me.”

“Has he come up with anything else about
that summer?”

She shook her head. “Apparently we had
nothing to do with each other. It’s frustrating. Why would I block out
something like a nanny?”

“Maybe she wasn’t with you very long. Not
every memory registers.”

“Guess not.” The tendons in her neck were
stretched tight. “Maybe I should jog my memory directly—go up there. From what
you’ve told me, I should be able to handle him.”

“Let’s not rush things,” I said.

“I need to know the truth.”

“He’s old and feeble but far from
innocuous, Lucy. Remember how manipulative he was with Puck.”

“I understand that. I’ll go in expecting a
total monster. And no matter what he tries, it’s not going to work. Because I’m
not Puck. He doesn’t have anything I need. I just want to look for those
trees.”

The tide broke thunderously and she
jumped.

I said, “Humor an overcautious therapist,
Lucy. Let’s take our time.”

She was looking at the water. “Does it get
that loud often?”

“Once in a while. Is there anything else
you want to talk about?” I said.

“I want to talk about putting together a
battle plan. Going up there and learning what happened.”

“Going up there doesn’t mean you’ll learn anything.”

“But
not
going up there means I
definitely
won’t.
He’s a crippled old man. What can he do to me?”

“He has a way with words.”

“That’s all a writer ever has.”

“The point is, he may be reaching out to
you because he’s dying.”

Her eyes flickered but she didn’t move.

“I’ve seen it plenty of times, Lucy. The
most abusive, neglectful parents wanting some sort of relationship before they
die. You need to sort out your own feelings about that very carefully. What if
you go up there expecting brutality and he turns tender?”

“I could handle it,” she said. “He can’t
collect debts that aren’t owed to him.”

She fooled with her hair and looked out at
the ocean.

“I just thought of something. It’s
horribly mean, but it’s funny. If he really gets obnoxious, I’ll handle him by
falling asleep. Doze right off. That’ll get the message across.”

More hypnosis.

I took her back to two days before the
Sanctum party, Thursday morning. Despite my attempt to cushion her with the TV
screen technique, she lapsed into a child’s voice and began muttering about
trees and horses and “Brudda.” Questions about a nanny or baby-sitter or anyone
else elicited puzzled looks and an upstretched left index finger.

Further questioning revealed that “Brudda”
was Puck, whom she called Petey.

Petey playing with her.

Petey throwing a ball.

The two of them tearing leaves and looking
at ladybugs.

Petey smiling. She smiled, as she told it.

Then her own smile melted away, and I
sensed that the present was beginning to intrude.