Irwin Shaw - Nightwork

“Over dinner,” I said. By now it was obvious that Henry had to get some food in him – fast.

In the dining room, Henry ordered a big meal. “How about a bottle of wine?” he said, smiling widely, as though he had just thought of a brilliant and original idea.

“If you want,” I said. I knew that Henry would be much the worse for the wine, but I had been in the habit all my boyhood and youth of taking orders from him, not the other way round, and the habit, I saw, persisted.

Henry neglected his food, but paid a great deal of attention to the wine during dinner. He had flashes of sobriety, when he would sit very erect and peer fiercely across the table at me and speak almost sternly, as though suddenly remembering his position as the head of the family. “Now let’s have it, son,” he said, during one of these periods. “Where’ve you been, what have you done, what brings you here? You need help, I imagine. I don’t have much, but I guess I could manage to scrape up a couple of …”

“Nothing like that, Hank,” I said hastily, “Really. Money isn’t the problem.”

“That’s what you think, brother.” Henry laughed bitterly. “That’s what you think.”

“Listen carefully. Hank,” I said, leaning forward, speaking in a low voice, trying to freeze his attention, “I’m going away.”

“Going away? Where?” Henry asked. “You’ve been going away all your life.”

“This is different. Maybe for a long time. To Europe first”

“Do you have a job in Europe?”

“Not exactly.”

“You don’t have a job?”

“Don’t ask any questions, please. Hank,” I said. “I’m going away. Period. I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to see you again. Maybe never. I wanted to touch some of the bases before I took off. And I want to thank you for what you’ve always done for me. I want to tell you that I realize it and that I’m grateful for it. I was a snotty little kid and I guess I used to think gratitude was effeminate or degrading or un-British or something equally idiotic.”

“Oh, shit, Doug,” Henry said. “Forget it, will you?”

“I won’t forget it. Another thing. Pa died when I was thirteen years old…”

“He left a nice little piece of insurance.” Henry nodded approvingly. “Yessiree, a very nice little piece of insurance. You’d never have expected it – a man who worked as a foreman in a machine shop. A man who worked with his hands. His thought was only for his family. Where, would we all be today if it wasn’t for that nice little piece of insurance…?”

“I’m not talking about that part of it.”

“Talk about that part of it. Listen to an accountant when it comes to death and insurance.”

“What do you remember about him? That’s what I want to talk about. I was just a kid; it seems to me I hardly ever saw him; he was just somebody who came in for meals mostly. I still have dreams about him, but I never get the face right. But you were twenty…”

“His face,” Henry said. “His face was the face of an honest rough man who never had any doubt about himself. It was a face out of another century. Duty and honor were written plain on those simple features.” Henry was mocking himself, mocking our father’s memory now. “And he gave me bad advice,” Henry said, almost sober for the moment. “Also out of another century. He said, «Marry early, boy.» You know how he was always reading the Bible, and making us all go to church. It’s better to marry than to bum, he said. I married early. I have a bone to pick with good old dad; insurance or no insurance, burning is better.”

“Will you for Christ’s sake stop talking about insurance?”

“Whatever you say, boy. It’s your dinner. I take it. It is your dinner?”

“Of course.”

“Forget Pa. He’s dead. Forget Mom. She’s dead. They worked their fingers to the bone and worried night and day and got the old royal American screwing and raised a family, one who’s a fag radio announcer in San Diego, the other who’s a drunken accountant in Scranton working his fingers to the bone to raise a family, who in turn will work their fingers to the bone to raise their families. I’ll say this for our dad, he had his religion. Clara has her yacht. Bert has his beach boys. I have my bottle.” He smiled owlishly. “What have you got, brother?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said.

“You don’t know yet?” Henry cocked his collapsed, pale head to one side and grimaced. “You’re what – thirty-two, thirty-three? And don’t know yet? You’re a lucky man. The future is all ahead of you. I got something beside the bottle. I got a pair of eyes that are no good for anything and steadily getting worse.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Did you ever hear of a blind accountant? In five years I’ll be out in the street on my naked ass.”

“Jesus,” I said, shaken by the coincidence. “That’s why I was grounded. My eyes started to go bad.”

“Aha,” Henry said. “I thought you’d run a plane into a hill or screwed the boss’s wife.”

“No. Just a little failure of the retina. Nothing much,” I said bitterly. “Just enough.”

“We none of us ever did see clearly, I guess.” Henry laughed foolishly. “The fatal flaw of the Grimeses.” He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes, which were watering. The marks of the frames on his nose were like small deep wounds. His eyes without the glasses looked almost blank. “But you said you were traveling, you were going to Europe. What’ve you got – a rich woman to support you?”

“No.”

“Take my advice. Find one.” Henry put his glasses on. They fitted automatically into the slots on each side of his nose. “Romance yourself no romance. That’s another thing I have.” He was off ranting again. “I have a wife who despises me.”

“Oh, come on now. Hank.” In the photograph Madge hadn’t looked like a woman who despised anyone, and the few times I had met her she had seemed like a good-natured, even-tempered woman, solicitous at all times of her husband’s welfare.

“Don’t say come on now, brother,” Henry said. “You don’t know. I know. She despises me. You know why she despises me? Because by her high American standards I am a failure. She does not get new dresses when her friends get new dresses. I can’t afford to pay for a psychiatrist for the older kid and send her off to a private school and she’s afraid the Blacks at the high school will rape her between lunch and gym class. The house hasn’t been painted for ten years. We’re behind on our payments for the television set. Our car is six years old. I am not a partner in my firm. I keep track of other people’s money. You know what the worst thing in the world is? Other people’s money. I…”

“That’s enough. Hank, please.” I couldn’t stand the wave of self-hatred at the dinner table, even though there was nobody near enough but myself to hear any of it.

“Permit me to continue, brother,” Henry said. “My teeth are bad and they smell, she says, because I can’t afford to go to the dentist. I can’t afford to go to the dentist because all three goddamn kids go to the dentist every week to have their braces worked on so that they’ll all look like movie stars when they grow up. And she despises me because I haven’t been able to fuck her for five years.”

“Why not?”

“I’m impotent,” Henry said with a crazy smile. “I have every reason to be impotent and I’m impotent. Do you remember when you came home that Saturday afternoon and you found me in bed with that girl? What was her name?”

“Cynthia.”

“That’s it – Cynthia. Cynthia of the big tits. She let out a shriek when she saw you that I can hear to this day. And she slapped me because I laughed. What did you think of your big brother then?”