Something Happened (19 page)

“She says,” my wife says, “that you kicked her out of your study just now. She says she came in here to talk to you and you wouldn’t listen to her, She says you never want to listen to her. You made her get out before she could even say anything.”

I hold my breath for a second or two and pretend to meditate.

“Did she?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Didn’t you?”

“He did.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did he?”

“Why would I say so?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well?”

“Well?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“You just heard her, didn’t you? You kicked her out.”

“Is that right?” I ask my daughter tonelessly, staring at her with a look of frigid scorn.

“Didn’t you?”

“And did she chance to tell you,” I say to my wife, “what it was she wanted to talk to me about?”

“That isn’t fair!” my daughter blurts out in alarm. Her startled gaze shoots to the doorway as though she wishes she could run out.

“No.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“I kind of thought she might have been careless
enough to leave that out. That she wouldn’t mind very much, for example, if you got sick and died. She didn’t tell you that?”

“That’s not true!” my daughter cries.

“Or that she really doesn’t think she would care very much if you or I got killed in an automobile or plane crash, like Alice whatever-the-hell-her-last-name-is Harmon’s mother, or passed away from a stroke or a brain tumor.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“You could.”

“I didn’t.”

“You have.”

“That isn’t what I wanted to talk about!”

“I know. What she does want to talk to me about is that she doesn’t think you and I have anything in common and wonders why I continue to stick it out with you instead of getting a divorce. Is that it?”

“I only began that way.”

“No? Then let’s continue. What was it, then, that you did want to talk to me about?”

“Oh, never mind,” my daughter mumbles in moping embarrassment and lowers her eyes.

“No, please,” I persist. “I want to. I want to give you that chance to talk to me you always say I never do.”

“Why can’t you leave her alone now?” my wife demands.

“She’s trying to tear us apart, my dear. Don’t you see?”

“Why can’t we all be nice to each other?” my wife wonders aloud imploringly out of the innate goodness of her heart.

“Must I listen to a sentence like that?”

“What’s wrong with it?” my wife retorts sharply.

“What’s wrong with wishing we would all try to get along once in a while instead of picking on each other all the time?”

“We don’t ‘pick’ on each other all the time,” my daughter interjects condescendingly in a tone of sulky contempt (trying to insinuate herself back onto my side in opposition to my wife). I am familiar with
this tactic of hers. She flicks her gaze to my face tentatively to see if I am going to let her succeed.

I ignore the overture.

(That’s what my wife’s innate goodness of heart gets her.)

“I’m tired,” I remark deliberately with an exaggerated sigh.

“That’s because you drink too much before—”

“I’m tired,” I interrupt resolutely, letting my voice get louder in order to drown out my wife’s, “of listening to you tell me I drink too much before I come home, and listening to her tell me over and over again how bad you and I are and how much she hates me. I’ve got better ways to spend my time. Let her hate me. Hate me if you want to, and if you think it solves your problems for you. You’ve got my permission. I don’t care if she hates me. But I do mind, God dammit, if she comes in here to tell me about it every God-damned time I sit down in here and try to do some work.”

“He was reading a magazine.”

“That’s my work.”

“She doesn’t hate you!” my wife declares.

“What do I care?” I answer. “It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me whether she hates me or not.”

“And you’re supposed to be so intelligent!” my wife exclaims.

“What does
that
mean?”

“She wants you to pay some attention to her once in a while. Can’t you see that? And you’re supposed to be so intelligent.”

“Will you stop that?”

“You think you’re always so smart, don’t you?”

“Stop.”

“All right. But if you’d only take the trouble to look at her once in a while, and listen to her, you’d see she doesn’t hate you. She loves you. You never even show you know.”

“Okay.”

“You make her feel like a nuisance.”

“Okay, I said.”

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“
Okay!
”

“Okay.”

I turn to stare at my daughter searchingly, my face still hard and scornful and belligerent (my defenses are up until I can make certain hers are down). She is standing perfectly still, as though meekly awaiting a verdict. I am awaiting some sign from her. She looks humble and penitent. She is alone. Her downcast eyes are grave and moist, and her ashen lips are pinched together sadly and are twitching, as though, despite all the forces of will she has amassed to hold her poor self together, she is going to collapse into shambles before us and begin crying helplessly, without pride. She is tense. My feelings soften with a sensation of irremediable loss (of something precious gone forever, of someone dear destroyed) as I study her pale, drooping, vulnerable face. I am tense too. I am unable to speak (maybe I do love her), and for a second I am struck with the notion that my wife is right, that perhaps my daughter doesn’t hate me and does love me, and perhaps does need to have me know it (and needs to know also, perhaps, that maybe I think well of her). And I begin to feel that maybe
I do care very much whether she hates me or not!
(I don’t want her to!) She
must
matter to me, I think, for I am nearly overcome with grief and pity by her look of tearful misery (and I want to cry myself), and I want to put my arms out to her shoulders to hold her gently and console her and confess and apologize (even though I have a vivid premonition suddenly that this is all a typical trick, and she will pull away from me in a taunting, jubilant affront as soon as I do reach out to comfort her, leaving me standing there ridiculously with my empty hands outstretched in the air, abashed and infuriated). I decide to risk it anyway—she is so pathetic and forlorn: I know I can survive the rebuff if it comes. Smiling tenderly, stepping toward her repentently, I reach my hands out to take her in my arms, apologize, and hug her gently.

She pulls away from me with a vicious sneer.

And I find myself standing there stupidly with my empty hands in the air, feeling hurt and foolish.

And my wife picks exactly that moment to cry:

“I’m the one she hates! Not you! I’m the one she can’t stand!”

And I turn around to gape at her incredulously. (I had forgotten she was even there.)

“Don’t you ever hear her?” my wife continues stridently, and runs toward my daughter as though she intends to smack her. My daughter flinches, but holds her ground steadily, glaring insultingly up into my wife’s eyes with stubborn defiance, daring her, with a small, cold smile, to do more. “What have I ever done to you?” my wife shouts at her. “What have I ever done to her that she should hate me so much? Look at her! Don’t you see the way she’s looking at me right now?”

“Christ, yes!” I shout back at my wife. “What the hell do you think I was talking about? Why the hell do you think I kick her out?”

“And you—you’re no better!” my wife accuses me.

“You don’t care either, do you?”

“Oh, Jesus!” I wail.

“Nobody in this house gives a damn about me,” my wife laments. “Nobody ever loved me. Not in my whole life. Not even my own mother. Am I so horrible? What did I ever do to you or anyone else that you should all hate me so much? What makes me so horrible that you should all feel you can treat me this way? Tell me.”

“Oh, shit!” I groan disgustedly.

“Don’t talk to me that way.”

“Must I really spend the rest of my life in rotten conversation like this?”

“What’s so rotten about me?”

“Nothing.”

“What do I do that’s so horrible?”

And I find myself wondering once again just what in the mystifying hell an able, well-read, fairly intelligent, sensitive, personable, successful minor organization executive like myself, sound in health (if not in tooth), provocative in wit, still virile and still attractive to many susceptible ladies my own age and much younger, is doing engaged seriously in such a low, directionless argument with two such people
(children) as
them
, my shallow, melancholy, slightly inebriated, self-pitying wife (I often try to figure out what it was I ever saw in her so long ago that made me think I loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, except her good and willing ass, which is still not so bad and now even more willing. All in all, in fact, in the long run, I think I enjoy fucking my wife more than I do any of the others, although most of the ones I have gone with a second time or more have been pretty good, too, and full of very surprising surprises, for a while. Jane in the Art Department will be a headache—I sense that already; she is gullible and unsophisticated and she likes to talk; her skin will be so clear and smooth it will almost hum to my touch, but she is still too young and pleasant, or simple-minded, to make much sense to me now. Some girls laugh a bit too loudly at just about everything amusing I say and drive me batty, between erections, once I recognize they laugh so readily and talk too much. That will be young, sweet, pleasant Jane. I know her already. But I also know I will grab for it lecherously at the next company party or sooner; and that I don’t think I will want her to keep on working there with me after I do: she is a present I intend to give myself for Christmas this year, or earlier, and I am already in the process of wrapping her up) and my depressing, self-centered, self-pitying daughter, when I would much rather be concentrating on something else, on those two speeches I want to begin outlining (I like to get started on important things well in advance, on a long convention speech in case I am moved up into Kagle’s job by then and am nominally in charge of the whole affair, and on my customary, unexciting, three-minute speech about the plans and activities of my department in case I am not moved up into Kagle’s job and am still working for Green, who probably won’t let me give it this time, either. I hate Green and will never forgive him or forget him for what he did to me at the convention by not letting me speak. I really don’t want Andy Kagle’s job—I never did want to do that kind of work or have power over so many people—but I will be heartbroken
now if they don’t give it to me: I will feel betrayed and disgraced, and I will want to slink away alone into someplace dark and weep and never come out. I am too weak to refuse it, and too vain to be indifferent to the honor. I don’t even really need the extra money) and on the list of changes I will want to recommend when I am promoted into Kagle’s job. (I will want to show Arthur Baron and Horace White that I am ready. There are people in nearly all our offices I will want to be rid of. I wish I could be rid of Green now, although I don’t know who could replace him.)

“Tell me,” my wife repeats shrilly. “What do I do?”

“You give me,” I answer, “a pain in the ass.
Both
of you!” I add emphatically, with a long, warning look at my daughter to let her know unmistakably that I am including her also this time in my ire, and to deprive her of that pasty, crafty glee she customarily evinces whenever I turn abusive to my wife.

“Don’t yell at me,” my wife snaps.

“I wasn’t yelling,” I explain. “I was speaking emphatically.”

“I can yell too, you know.”

“You are.”

“And don’t say things like that to me, not in front of the children. Ever again. I don’t care how you talk to me when we’re alone.”

“Like what?”

“What you said.”

“Then stop being one.”

“You’re so clever.”

“I know.”

“It’s no wonder they use such filthy language, when they listen to you. It’s no wonder they talk to me the way they do.”

“Oh, stop.”

“I’m not going to let you talk to me with such disrespect,” my wife goes on vehemently. “Not anymore. Not even when we’re alone. I’m not going to put up with it. Do you hear me?”

“Fuck off now,” I tell her quietly. “Both of you.”

My wife is stung. Tears spurt into her eyes. (I
am sorry immediately. I feel small and shameful already for having said that.)

“I could kill you for that,” she tells me softly.

“Then kill me,” I taunt.

“I wish there was someplace I could go.”

“I’ll find one.”

“I wish I had money of my own.”

“I’ll give it to you.”

“That’s some way,” my daughter observes softly in a petulant tone, “for a father to talk to a fifteen-year-old child.”

“Go—” I begin (and pause to conceal a smile, for her reproof is humorous and ingratiating, and I am tempted to laugh and congratulate her) “—away to boarding school.”

“I wish I could.”

“You can.”

“You stop me.”

“Not anymore. And that’s some way,” I exclaim, “for a fifteen-year-old child to talk to her father.”

“I didn’t—”

“Yes, you—”

“I only started—”

“—and you know it. I get—you know something, kid? I bet you’ll never guess in a million years what I get from all these frank and honest discussions of yours that you insist on having with me.”

“Headaches.”

“You guessed!” I declare, hoping that I will be able to make her laugh. “I get piercing headaches,” I continue (pompously, after I fail, for I feel myself inflating grandly, and crossly, with a delicious thrill of outrage. I am nearly ecstatic with grievance, and I forge ahead vigorously in joyous pursuit of revenge). “Yes, I get piercing headaches from all those brain tumors and cerebral hemorrhages you keep giving me. And stabbing chest pains from all the heart attacks you keep telling me you wouldn’t feel so unhappy about if I got.
I
would feel unhappy if I got one! In fact, I’m starting to feel pretty damned miserable from having to listen to both of
you
tell me all the time how miserable
you
feel.” My wife and daughter are silent now and cowering submissively (and a flood
of self-righteous gratification begins to permeate and sweeten my throbbing sense of injury. I feel so sorry for myself it is almost unbearably delicious. I also feel mighty: I feel potent and articulate, and part of me wishes that Green or someone else I yearn to impress, like Jane, or Horace White, or perhaps some terribly rich and famous beauty with marvelous tits and glossy hair, were in a position to witness me so fluent and dominating). “I’m sick,” I remark misleadingly in a falling voice, just to puzzle them further a moment. “Yes, by now I am sick and tired of having both of you people come barging in here, into
my
study, whenever you feel like it, just to tell me what a lousy husband and father you think I am.”