Evan Hunter - Sons

I longed for a luxury home on the lake, longed for membership in the Union League Club where, standing outside on the sidewalk, I had seen women in furs and men in tuxedos floating out like visions in the make-believe world I’d created beside the drum barker — what worries did they have about the price of food or clothing? I had tried to explain all this to Nancy, I had tried to tell her that the world was moving very quickly and we were standing still in it, and she had said, (this was before we’d gone to see a doctor) Do you think there’s something wrong with us, Bert, that we can’t have a baby?

Nancy, I had said, don’t you sometimes get the feeling it’s all rushing right by us? They’re putting a dial on the telephone, Nance, you won’t have to jiggle the hook any more and ask for an operator, you’ll get your number just by twisting a dial set right there in the base — Nancy, do you see what I mean? I went down to pick up my Victory medal at the armory last week, and I held it in my hand and looked at it, and it made me feel like a dinosaur. It’s as if the war happened a hundred years ago, Nance, it’s as if everything has already moved way out and beyond the war, we’re already living in a new era, only we haven’t yet caught up with it. Am I making any sense to you, Nance?

Well, she said.

Look, I said, it’s that everything seems to make me dizzy nowadays, I don’t mean physically dizzy. I mean not knowing which way to turn because as soon as I decide I’m in favor of something or against something else, it all changes in the next minute, and I’m not sure any more.

Bert, she said, you did get a raise, they at least know you’re on the payroll, they must have their eye on you.

Nancy, I’m not making myself clear to you, I said. I’m trying to tell you I don’t understand what’s happening in this country, and unless I can draw a sure bead on it, I’ll be standing alongside that damn drum barker, excuse me, for the rest of my damn life, excuse me. Do you know what’s going on? Does anyone? I get the feeling sometimes that everybody’s rushing someplace, only they don’t know where. And the worst part is that I’m standing still, we’re standing still. I used to think I’d own that mill inside of a year. Now I think I’ll be lucky if I get to operate a chipper inside of five years.

Well, Bert, she said, you’ve got to be patient.

I carried the kettle of hot water to the sink, turned on the light bulb over the mirror hanging there, and poured some water into the basin. Then I set the kettle down on the drainboard of the washtub, and stropped my razor, and worked up a lather in my shaving cup, all the while wondering how Oscar had got in my dream, I’d never stolen a piece of property from him in my life. The kitchen was beginning to warm up. There were only three rooms in the flat, the kitchen, the parlor, and the bedroom. The kitchen was in the center of the house, and the big black coal stove threw off a lot of heat, but rarely enough to warm up the bedroom which was on the northeast corner of the building and got some really terrific winds. Nancy had wanted me to buy a kerosene heater for the bedroom, but I’d heard of too many fires starting in those things, and I’d refused to do it. What annoyed me most, though, was that I couldn’t afford to get her one of the new electric heaters.

Well, I thought, at least we don’t have a baby to worry about too, and suddenly opened a big gash on my cheek. I looked up at God (hovering somewhere around the ceiling) and silently assured him I was only joking. I had never been a particularly religious person, but I was beginning to think more and more lately that I was being repaid by a vengeful deity for the sinful ways of my youth. Nor had I really believed what Dr. Brunner had told us; wasn’t it possible that I’d inhaled some of that rotten stale mustard gas lying in holes all over France, stinking of death, and that it had somehow messed up my insides?

Frantically, I wiped at my cheek with one of the good towels Nancy’s mother had given us when we got married. I’ll silently bleed to death here, I thought. When Nancy wakes up she’ll come into the kitchen and look down at me and say, Oh, Bert, you shouldn’t have! Nothing can be that terrible! I smiled at my own slashed face in the mirror. I was mortally wounded, getting blood all over my nightshirt and Nancy’s expensive towel, a near-pauper in a dead-end job in a city I despised, and all I could do was grin idiotically at myself, though I could not for the life of me see anything funny in our situation.

We had gone to visit Dr. Brunner one night at the beginning of January, Nancy clinging to my arm, her head ducked against the fierce wind as I led her up Twenty-sixth Street. He was a tidy little man wearing a long white coat, a stethoscope hanging from his neck, an air of sympathetic efficiency about him. But in spite of the fact that people were mentioning sex much more freely wherever you went these days, thanks to Dr. Freud, whose ideas about sublimation had quickly traveled from Vienna to New York to Chicago, I still found it extremely embarrassing to reveal to Dr. Brunner the things Nancy and I could not even comfortably discuss alone together. I kept turning the brim of my hat over and over in my hands, without looking at either him or Nancy, fumbling for words, certain that Nancy was blushing, and beginning to think we’d made a terrible mistake by coming here, we’d only been married nine months, why hadn’t we given it a little more time before running to a doctor? Dr. Brunner kept nodding all the while I talked, and once he said, “I know this is difficult for you,” and I said, “Yes,” and went right on talking, afraid that if I once lost steam I’d quit altogether. When I finished, the doctor said, “Good, I understand. Let me assure you immediately that there are many healthy young couples who find themselves in your identical situation. We may have nothing to worry about here. But let’s examine you both first, and make whatever tests are necessary, and then we’ll be able to tell better, eh?”

The examinations were a nightmare, I’d never been so embarrassed in my life. Dr. Brunner matter-of-factly told us afterward that he had found nothing wrong with my testicular size, and that his routine (!) internal examination of Nancy had revealed no pelvic defect, but of course he would be able to tell us more after he had taken an ejaculated specimen (which he wanted before I left the office) and also a post-coital specimen (Nancy would have to conic back the day after tomorrow) and had studied my sperm count and Nancy’s ovulatory temperatures (I could not believe I was hearing these things spoken by a man, doctor or not, in the presence of a lady! By turns, I wanted to melt into the carpet, cover Nancy’s good car, or strangle Dr. Brunner). Nancy and I were both silent in the trolley car on the way home. Her face was still flushed, she kept her muffed hands in her lap, she did not even glance at me. I was certain I had exposed her to the most humiliating experience of her life, and I silently vowed never to take her to Dr. Brunner’s office again. We went to bed without discussing any part of the horrifying incident, nor did we mention it at breakfast the next day, or at supper when I got home from work that night.

In bed, in the arctic zone of our northeast comer room, Nancy turned her head toward me and unexpectedly whispered something in my car.

“What?” I said, “I didn’t hear you, Nance.”

“I’m the one supposed to be deaf,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry, I just...”

“Bert,” she whispered, “we have to make love tonight.”

“What?”

“I’m going to see Dr. Brunner tomorrow morning,” she whispered.