The Feast of Love (35 page)

Bradley’s new girlfriend, Margaret Ntegyereize, has promised, if she’s available, to deliver the baby. As Jimmy Durante used to say, Everybody wants to get into the act.

Bradley Smith and Margaret Ntegyereize — how will it end? This coupling is no more preposterous than the others, and perhaps less than most of them. It is possible that Bradley will fall in love with a new woman every two years and marry her, like, what’s-his-name, Tommy Manville. I see them together, Bradley and Margaret, walking hand in hand, trailed by the dog. The days of my pestering Bradley with conversation appear to be over. If I am going to be lucid, I must talk to myself.

But the father-in-law, Metzger, what of him? Do I remember my German? A
Metzger
equals a butcher. This Metzger, of dubious humanity, he is a more difficult case. Chloé calls him the Bat, but I prefer his name without metaphoric trappings. We have not, I think, seen the last of Metzger. As long as there is Cupid, as long as there is Venus and for that matter Adonis, there is Metzger, the broken wheel, the nail rusty with infection.

Feeling that she should not do it herself, I returned alone to Chloé’s apartment, intending to pick up the remaining furniture. There was not much to take, very little substance. The hideabed I left there. She didn’t want it.

Oscar and me fucked our brains out on it,
she said crudely but straightforwardly. I don’t wanna see it again. Its career is over.

But I recovered a lamp, a chair or two, a table. I brought back her books — Edgar Cayce and the prophecies of Nostradamus — and one or two small items she’d missed, including, to my surprise, a tea strainer and an egg coddler. I resisted the pathos of this small collection of kitchen fixtures. Girls leave home every day, set up house, and buy dish drainers, colanders, and garlic presses, thus bringing a version of themselves into existence. It is their rendition of a late afternoon in Lisbon reading the paper near the quay, except for the reality of it.

On one of my trips out to the car I encountered a man I took to be Metzger, there on the sidewalk. He had an inescapably trashy look. Pallor was mixed with incipient disease on his remarkably ignoble features. He was both pre- and post-venereal. Apparently the knife wound had not slowed him down. He nodded at me and grabbed at my elbow. I believe in the great courage and perseverance of the working classes, but this Metzger was an exception, a step down from the lumpen proletariat into the ash can.

That chair yours? he asked me.

I put it down on the sidewalk. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting, I said.

I don’t believe we have, he said.

Harry Ginsberg, I said, holding out my hand.

Howdy do, he said, shaking it.

And you are . . . ?

Friend of the family, he offered. That chair yours?

Yes, I said.

Lookit, he said. I think it got stole from me. I got my truck over there for it. You’ll wanna take it for me?

Sorry, no, I told him.

Perhaps I have not mentioned: I grew up on the streets of Chicago, and despite my abstracted and somewhat airy ways, am not a physical coward, quite the contrary, in fact. In my youth I fought the boys and men who wished to fight me, some of Chicago’s best, mostly Irish bullies affronted by Jews. Many of these Americans went home Ginsberg-bruised and bloodied. It had been years since I had found myself in a brawl, but the prospect of one with this man of doubtful probity filled me with cheer beyond measure. I had not practiced my pugilism for years, but I was ready. I felt happy and truculent.

I had taken hold of two of the chair’s legs, for carrying. The little greasy-haired man now grasped the other two legs. We began a grotesque dance on the front sidewalk, a shoving match. He muttered, while I kept silent. My blood, somewhat dormant at the Amalgamated, began to boil.

Greedy fucking kike, said the smelly diminutive shegetz. I put the chair down and popped him one. He stood for a moment, as if surveying the sky for blimps. Then his knees gave way under him and he appeared to sit down, dazed, on the sidewalk. How easy it had been! And how pleasurable! I had expected to expend more effort in subduing him. He stood up. Again I slugged him, an easy uppercut this time. Fistfighting is like riding a bicycle: you don’t forget how. Down he went again. But there he sat, fingering what would soon be his shiner. I carried the chair to my car, returned to the building, messaging my knuckles, locked up Chloé’s mostly empty — except for the hideabed — apartment, and returned to the front sidewalk.

He was standing up by now, but not steadily.

You’ll hear from me, he said.

By phone or telegram? I asked. I reached the car, lowered myself inside, and drove away.

ONE DAY, I THINK,
Metzger will find us. Chloé’s enemy is now mine, however, and my feeling is: Let the lamebrain Metzger do as he pleases. I am ready for him. I am pleased to have an enemy who is not symbolic.

We must collect our thoughts, for the unexpected is always upon us.
Who said that? Beckett? Kierkegaard? I am no longer sure of my quotations.

Every night I take up my watch by the front window. I have my lamp and my book. I listen to Schubert on the phonograph. Next to my family, Schubert is the love of my life; if he were to return to Earth, he could come to my house and take any of the objects here he wanted. Nearby, Esther reads or knits. Certain nights of the week, we play honeymoon bridge or canasta or Scrabble. On other nights, when Esther is Lamazing with Chloe, I am alone here, guarding the house. Aaron continues not to call. Our son has vanished into the maw of this vast continent. But I continue to think that one night, for it will surely be an evening (all reunions occur in the evening), probably one in the spring or summer when the cool breezes are blowing through the maple and linden trees in our front yard and the birds are uttering their consolations, a car door will close softly, and within moments the tread of a man will become audible as he makes his way toward the front door. The air will be clear and crisp. He will step tentatively up to the front entryway. He will make his hand into a fist, to knock. Or perhaps he will extend his index finger to ring the doorbell. Dad? he will say. Daddy? It’s me. It’s Aaron.

But perhaps the person at the door will be Metzger, the butcher, having found us out, having discovered our place in the world, our location and locale, our modest lives. From the street he will hear Schubert. The music will enter his ear and have no effect. It will fall like a seed upon stone. He knows as much about music as a pig about oranges. Perhaps he will bring along his thuggish and nitwit friends. Perhaps they will bring firearms. Fine. Let them come. I will be here. I will be ready.

I think of a poem I had to memorize in college: “Love makes those young whom age doth chill,/And whom he finds young, keeps young still.” Something like that.

The unexpected is always upon us.
Of all the gifts arrayed before me, this one thought, at this moment of my life, is the most precious.

LOOKS LIKE I GET
the curtain speech.

Some nights I walk around town, protected by my malachite machine-made bracelet that Esther gave me and by Oscar’s track team relay baton, which I could use as a weapon. The obstetrician said I should exercise for the baby’s sake, and when I do that, I sort of accidentally see into people’s living room windows even though I don’t always want to. But because it’s spring, the windows’re open and the curtains are pulled aside, flufftering in the breezes, and it’s that movie,
Rear Window,
by Hitchcock, except in my case everything’s out front,
Front Window,
by Chloé. Generally people are just practicing their slumping vegetable life by watching TV, or they’re mowing down the lawn or grubbing in the grub garden, but what’s amazing is how often you see people sitting on the front stoop staring off into space. I guess you’re not supposed to do that, stare into space, because it’s not-for-profit, but believe me, that’s what people do with their unapplied leisure time. They look like human-sized possums. And when they see a pregnant woman walking by unaccompanied, pregnantly huge like me, carrying a track team relay baton, they usually give me a smile or a wan wave, like I’m contributing to the Gross National Census or the enlarging welfare of humanity. People go by, things go by, such as me. When people are staring off into their neighborhood infinity, before they see me, what are they thinking about? That’s what I’m trying to grasp. I think they’re stupefied, thinking about love, mostly, how they once had it, how they got it, how they lost it, and all the people they loved or didn’t love, how they ended up royally hating somebody, like, the weirdness and wetness of it. Bradley says they’re thinking about money, but I know they’re not. Love comes first. They’re humming their love songs, for example as sung by Frank Sinatra or the Beatles or Madonna — did she ever sing one? a love song, I mean, and not just sex and money? I guess so — and they imagine about how they’d like to be with somebody else, or truly the person they’re actually with, sitting there on the stoop, accompanying them on life’s journey by talking, talking about nothing special, just talking. Or sitting in the kitchen, making turkey club sandwiches for each other. Or watching TV together. Or dancing. Or in the bedroom, having sex merrily or maybe not so merrily as the case may be. One thing I never mentioned so far was that once Oscar and I made love so hard that I got out of bed with a sunburn. It’s true! If he hadn’t died, he could vouch for me. We had tried something we hadn’t done before, I won’t go into harmful detail, and when he was doing me he asked if I was happy and I said I was. We did it for as long as we wanted to and then when we were finished I went to the bathroom and I had acquired a sunburn. And I thought,
this is totally inexplicable.
But I had it. Making love with Oscar gave it to me. I wish I still had it. Now I’m as pale as a sheet. Maybe I’ll get it again when my baby is born. I’ll give birth to the baby and get a sunburn in the delivery room in the process. Positive ions will darken my skin and I’ll look like a native. So, as I said, I walk past these houses and I see all these domestic arrangements, I guess you’d call them. Women living with women. Women living with men. Men living with men. Women living alone. Men living alone. Sane people and crazy people, people who have lost what once remained of their minds. The crazy ones are mostly crazy because love made them that way. I believe that. Dan Cupid’s arrow can make you one bubble off-level, is what I’m saying. Love has some ingredient for flat-out lunacy in it. Everybody knows that. Look at the Bat if you need proof. I mean, you can say that love is obsolete and retro, okay, but everybody comes home at night wanting somebody there, even villains come in the door and say hopefully, “Honey, I’m home?” and either somebody is there to kiss you, or somebody isn’t. And if somebody isn’t, if there are no kisses, you’ve got to deal with it. Maybe you get a dog so that the
dog
kisses you, like Bradley did once. Maybe the cat dances around your feet, meowing with happiness. That happens. It’s no disgrace to kiss a dog in the evening. Dogs don’t mind. I’m not saying you can’t manage one way or another, I’m just saying you have to cope, such as the dog solution. So anyway, I come home to my basement that I rent from the Ginsbergs and of course Oscar isn’t there. Oscar isn’t there because he’s dead. I mean, I know that he’s dead because I saw his dead body, close up, but even though I know he’s dead, I don’t
believe
it. I don’t
believe
he’s dead. He’s around here somewhere. I just know that, don’t ask me to explain. I sleep with his Bert or Ernie doll, and I can smell him on it. And so that’s part of the reason I’m out there walking. I’m gonna find Oscar. It’s partly because of what I did to him, how I changed him. That boy befriended me. I suppose that I made a man out of him, but I don’t think that’s really much of an accomplishment. Oscar could’ve made it to manhood on his own, without my help. I keep talking about all the sex we had, but what I forget to mention is what
else
we did together. We danced and listened to music and played cards (I taught him gin rummy) and went to movies and we talked
all the time,
complete with our opinions about things. Oscar had a lot of opinions. Some of his opinions were unique and experimental. He said that the universe was expanding, it
had
to expand, to make room for all the souls, human and animal, that had died in it. Each soul took up considerable space. The universe had to accommodate that. He thought that the rich had invented poverty in order to get poor people to do terrible and stupid jobs no one would consider doing unless they needed the money. Money, he said, was God’s worst invention, the only way he could think of to get people to work. Get out! I said, but no, he meant it. He thought that when the world came to an end, everybody would sort of forget about Australia, and it’d survive the end of the world through sheer negligence. He didn’t believe in cars, Oscar didn’t; he thought cars would contribute to the end of the world as we know it. He thought that there were time zones on the moon, but only two. If it was midnight on the dark side of the moon it’d always been noon on the other side. Two time zones on the moon, two times of day or night. You wouldn’t need daylight savings time on the moon because you couldn’t save the lunar daylight just by adjusting your watch. He wasn’t zany. He used common sense. He could be old-fashioned despite his tongue stud and his outward appearances. Like, he once brought me flowers in a vase. He once brought home a lobster for us to eat, but we couldn’t put it in the boiling water to cook it — we didn’t have the heart — and so we put it in the bathtub with some water for the night and returned it, alive, to the grocery store the next day for a refund. As for sex, except for when he got excitable, Oscar believed in extensive foreplay, he was a real traditionalist in that respect; the drugs had helped him to see there was no point in ever rushing anything. He didn’t ever beat me up. I can’t remember him ever hitting me once. Oscar the Gent. When I think about him now — and I think about him way more than I ever think about myself — I think of him like he’s standing on a hill somewhere, this cow pasture, looking into the future, and telling me what he sees. I have my hand on his dick and I can feel his heart murmur through it, his blood bounding joyfully. I’m sorry he didn’t make it to the year 2000 because he thought for sure there would be major changes in the cosmos, everything, down to physics, would be revamped. All the same, despite his radical-traditional belief system, I think
I’m
more of a visionary than he was. After all, I once saw Jesus at a party. There was another thing I saw there, which I’ll tell you about eventually, once I get up my nerve to describe it. This thing I saw, it was probably the whole point of the party and of Jesus being in attendance and alerting me to it. But back to my walking around town. My point is, Oscar is here somewhere and that’s why I’m strolling hereabouts looking for him. You can’t have a body and a soul like that and just die and disappear. It’s much too wasteful, psychically. God won’t permit that. God’s no hambone: God believes in soul ecology. Something has to happen to you after you die, something mysterious and so far unexplained to us humans, and I’m determined to find out what it might be. I’m the woman to do it, I’m the woman for the job. I think maybe Oscar has taken up residence in some other guy, or he’s going to, and I have to find him there, though the search will be hard, because the guy will deny that he’s Oscar, of course. He’ll claim to be himself. I won’t know if it’s Oscar at first, because it’ll look like someone else, but it
will
be Oscar, the guy will have Oscar-essence. That can happen. I’ll strip him of whatever girlfriends he has and get him into my arms, as long as he isn’t dismayed by my having a baby. He won’t know what hit him once I go to work on him. I have enough goddess stuff in me to manage. Because he’ll be Oscar without knowing it. That’s why I go in search of him. Sometimes, when I don’t want to walk, I get into the Matador on evenings when the car agrees to start, and first I head down toward Ypsilanti. I drive past where Mrs. Maggaroulian once worked. She isn’t there anymore. She isn’t anywhere. Mrs. Maggaroulian has disappeared from our planet. She can’t tell me where Oscar is. I have to do the search by myself. Wait a minute. I have to take a breath. Just a minute. I need to breathe in.