Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

“You still have time to make your bridge game.” He slid out from under the sink and began gathering up the wire cutters, voltage tester, and other tools.

“I just don’t know how to thank you, Arthur. Would you like a glass of water? ”

“No, thanks, Thelma. It’s almost two, and Millie will wonder what’s become of me.”

“Well, I do appreciate it. You really are the cleverest man. Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Not once I set my mind to it, Thelma” he said proudly.

Arthur felt real pride later that evening, when he saw the sudden eerie glow in the kitchen next door, and then total darkness. He’d never wired a garbage disposal before.

Continuous feed disposal units were dangerous, he had always said, what with water running and women pushing things through the metal sink ring with wet hands. If ever the fuse on the unit didn’t cut off right, if something happened to short the motor and send an electric current up to that metal ring...

Of course, it was probably a one-in-five-hundred-million chance — unless a handy man knew how to fix it just right.

One minute the sun was out, and the next it got all gray and dark. I saw lightning ’way far off in the direction we were going, but I couldn’t hear any thunder yet. A wind came up from nowhere and all the leaves on the bushes and trees did a belly-flop.

I looked at Mom, but she was driving perfectly calmly as if nothing was happening. She looked too young to be my mother, and for a second I felt sorry for her, but then I hated her again.

She was taking me to this summer vacation camp, and I didn’t want to go. Gripes, how I didn’t want to go! She’d showed me this brochure and it had a picture of the Director and all the campers posed outside of bunks with their Counsellors. The Director was a bald, beefy guy with a silver tooth, smiling something awful. The Counsellors were great big jerks in white ducks and open shirts. They all looked too damn proud of themselves.

But the kids! I tell you it was the kids who tipped me off. There they were, standing in front of their bunks, their shorts hanging down, their shirts out, their hair practically growing over their eyes. And I’m telling you there was a look of such dumb misery on their faces, it’d give anyone the shakes. One kid in particular — Bunk 9, I think he was — was practically screaming a warning at me out of that picture. “Stay away from here, kid,” he was saying, “this is Hell.”

But my Mom was determined that I got to go to camp. And when Mom makes up her mind!

I begged Dad. I said, “Just look at those faces in the brochure. You can tell it’s a crumby place.”

My Dad has a fierce temper, but still he’s an easier mark than Mom. But this time all he said was, “Your Mother and I have talked about this and you must trust us to do what we think is right for you.”

He couldn’t see those faces like I could, and I was ashamed to tell him the truth. I was scared. Gripes, I was scared!

I tried everything. First I tried persuasion. I argued with them all the time. I told them it was no good sending me there because I wouldn’t stay. I told them they couldn’t make me go if I didn’t want to. Finally I got sent from the table so many times, I decided to go on a hunger strike. I had nothing to lose, I wasn’t getting much to eat anyway. But that didn’t last long.

Next I ran away. I didn’t get far — my bike blew a tire. Then I tried to be as good as I knew how to be, so they’d want me around all summer. I must admit that worked the best. I helped Mom with everything, and when Dad came home I helped him wash the car and mow the lawn. I never even mentioned camp, but I could tell as the time grew closer that they were beginning to look at each other and then at me. They thought I wasn’t looking, but I sure was.

Then the whole idea blew. We had a bang-up fight about my fingernails of all things! I don’t know what happened to me. I guess all that helping was getting on my nerves. Anyway, I started yelling and fighting, and boy, two days later I was packed into the car with Mom and was headed for camp.

We’d just reached this rickety sign, “Happy Days Camp,” when I heard the first thunder rumbling in the distance. The storm was coming fast. A few drops hit the windshield as we bumped down this long dirt road, and I thought, “My God! She’s really going to do it. She’s going to leave me here” — and suddenly I knew as sure as shooting I was gonna die here. I was screaming inside, but my Mom was still perfectly calm, concentrating on this lousy dirt road.

The Director was there waiting for us with one of the Counsellors. He grinned at me just like in the photograph, and I swear behind his fat face and sweaty glasses, I could see a death’s-head. He took my hand to lead me over to the Counsellor, but I grabbed it away. His hand was like ice even though the rest of him was all sweaty. I looked up at this big Counsellor and I almost dropped right there.

“This is Archie,” the Director said, “Counsellor of Bunk Nine. Your bunk.”

I sidled up to that big jerk and I whispered, I think I whispered, “I’m gonna kick you in the head.”

Cripes! He only smiled down at me, a smile that said, “Anything you can do I can do better, and harder, and MORE. ”

Then there was this huge clap of thunder, and rain began to fall in buckets as we stood there on this weedy parking lot.

I began to shake all over. I couldn’t stop shaking. I was gonna die if I stayed here — I knew it. But nobody would believe me, most of all the people I loved best and the ones who were supposed to love me best.

I was shaking all over and had my eyes screwed shut... Then there was this sound like a bell screaming in my ears. I awoke shaking with cold. It was dark with just a thin edge of light coming over a distant freezing horizon, but the alarm clock was jangling insistently.

“Turn that damn thing off,” my wife’s voice said thickly. She was lying in the other bed in a stupor, her eyes closed, her mouth hanging open like a dead fish, and her hair in those great big curlers.

I looked at her in sudden revulsion and my trembling stopped. By God! She looked like my Mother in the dream. I pulled myself around and got out of bed. I picked up my pillow and stood over my snoring wife.

When I was finished she still looked like a dead fish, only this time she really was. Dead, that is. Then I smashed the goddam alarm clock and climbed back to bed. This was one morning I wasn’t going to appear at her beefy father’s plant or take any more goddam orders from her lousy brother, Archie.

It was a recipe for heartbreak: her love was forever, his only for a while.

She knew this, of course. She was not a fool. But forewarned is forearmed, she told herself.

Brave words, false words. His goodbye, as lightly given as his love, left her stunned and desolate.

Outwardly all went on as before. Her husband, who never suspected, continued to invite business associates to dinner to show off her charming skills; she was an excellent cook and an impeccable hostess. And she did not once fail him, though it seemed to her now a daily act of courage just to stay alive.

Why did she bother? What was she waiting for?

“By the way, my dear,” her husband said one evening, “there’ll be two guests for dinner on Saturday. Remember that pleasant young man who came here so often last year? Couldn’t seem to get enough of your cooking. Well, he’s just back from his honeymoon, so I’ve invited the newly weds over for dinner. I didn’t think you’d mind. You do that sort of thing well.”