Evan Hunter - Sons

“Then why hasn’t he been around to inquire about the state of my health? You still haven’t answered that one, Rosie.”

“He’s been busy.”

“Ahhhh. Poor fellow. I’ve been busy, too.”

“He got a promotion. He’s been trying to learn...”

“Marvelous!” I said. “What was it? A reward for turning in the anarchist?”

“That isn’t fair, Bert!”

“No? What’s fair? I’ll be begging in the streets if I don’t find a job soon. What’s fair, Rosie, you tell me!”

“Oh, give me another drink,” she said.

“The scotch’s gone.”

“Then give me some of that crappy Rock and Rye. You really get my goat, Bert, I’ve got to tell you.”

I walked back to the cabinet, found the bottle of homemade stuff, and carried it to the table. Rosie handed me her glass. I rinsed it out at the sink and then went back to where I’d left the bottle. The only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the big clock on the shelf over the drainboard. The rock crystals banged against the side of the bottle as I poured.

“Thank you,” Rosie said. She raised her glass. “When shall I bring Allen?”

“Never,” I said.

“Bert...”

“Your husband is a liar and a rat. I don’t care if I never see him again as long as I live.”

“You stink,” she said, and drank. “Flffff,” she said, pulling a face. “This stinks, too.”

“Rosie,” I said, “why don’t you just go home?”

“I think I will,” she answered. She carried the glass to the sink and poured the Rock and Rye down the drain. Then she rinsed out the glass again, and put it on the drainboard. She checked her rouge in the mirror over the sink, touching one corner of her mouth with an extended forefinger, then turned and walked swiftly to the door. At the door, she said, “This isn’t the end, Bert,” and walked out.

Since I was not starring in a motion picture about virtue or courage rewarded, and since the age of miracles was otherwise dead, I did not hear from Mr. McInerny by the end of the week, nor did I get the job at Dill-Holderness. Instead, I drew twenty-six dollars from the bank to pay the landlord when he came around for the rent, and then I wired my brother-in-law Oscar in Arizona, asking him for a loan of a hundred dollars to tide me over until I could find a job. He sent the money by return wire. The telegraph operator asked me, “Are you Bertram A. Tyler?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“Sender requires that you answer a question.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wants you to answer this question before I turn the money over to you.”

“Oh. Sure. What’s the question?”

“Name his tribe.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Name the sender’s tribe.”

“Oh... uh... Apache. No, wait, it’s... that’s right, Apache.”

“That’s right, Apache,” the operator said.

Darling Wat,

I sometimes get the feeling it’s all an enormous put-on.

Do you remember my once telling you that there were really no such places as Cairo, London, Rome, etc.? When you go up in an airplane, the stage crew on the ground merely changes all the scenery, moving around the sets and the props, and however long it takes to transform New York into some other place is exactly how long they figure the “flying” time will be. Actually, you’re just circling Kennedy for seven hours, and when you come down, voilà — Paris! An extension of the One World theory, my love, and worthy of a doctorate. Is there really such a place as Cu Chi, and is Wat Tyler really there? Oh darling, if I could just go up in a jet and have them change the scenery below to Vietnam, so that when I landed you’d be there waiting for me. I miss you so much.

I don’t know if you get news about what’s happening in the rest of Vietnam, but I guess you know about the various immolations there this past week, starting with the Buddhist nun who burned herself to death outside the Dieu De Pagoda in the old capital of Hué, wherever that is. Dieu De being French for God of, Pagoda and Buddhist being of course Oriental, gasoline being five gallons of American-made, origin of match unknown. Have them change the scenery, Wat, please have them change the scenery to a peaceful island in a sunlit sea where we will lay (sic!) on the beach and count floating coconut shells. Nine suicides in a week, all in protest of Premier Ky’s treatment of the Buddhists in Danang, and all our beloved leader could say on Memorial Day was, “This quite unnecessary loss of life only obscures the progress that is being made toward a constitutional government.” Just before the big weekend, Wat, they were warning motorists about holiday accident tolls, and forecasting the number of deaths to be expected this year if we didn’t drive carefully enough, while at the same time the New York Times runs weekly figures on the boys being killed in action over there. It is all so ludicrous and so senseless. Come back to me safely, Wat, I love you so terribly much.

I was home over the holiday weekend to visit my parents (reading days happily coinciding), and I called your mother in Talmadge to say hello. Your father, I guess you know, has been in Los Angeles talking to Ronald Reagan about doing a picture book on his career, it being at least a fifty-fifty chance he’ll be elected governor of that progressive state come November, in which case your father will have stolen a march on the competition. But your mother didn’t know quite what to do about renting the Rosen house on Fire Island again because if your father does get a go-ahead on the book, he’ll naturally be spending a lot of time in Los Angeles with the old Gipper. Apparently a man named Matthew Bridges in Talmadge (your mother said you would know his daughter) wants to rent them his summer cottage at Lake Abundance, but your mother feels this wouldn’t be much of a change, i suggested that perhaps she might be able to talk your father out of the project entirely by reminding him that Reagan is an avowed Goldwater Republican who flatly refused to repudiate the John Birch Society. But she seemed to think the prospects of that were pretty slim indeed. Anyway, we had a very nice conversation. She told me you’ve been writing regularly, which is only what I expected of you.

Hey!

I saw a great piece of graffiti in the 86th Street stop of the Lexington Avenue subway:

And just below that, Wat, written in another hand in a different colored ink was: Fuck you, Lawrence.

Critics everywhere.

Write soon. I adore you.

June 5, 1966

My darling Wat,

Question of the week: What is a boonie?

Runner-up question of the week: What is a hootch?

Here I am about to take my last final, and all you can do is prattle on about your boonies and your hootches and your deuces-and-a-half — which reminds me, what’s a deuce-and-a-half?

Has anyone ever told you that a person could fall asleep reading your mailing address? The Army should simplify it. I have an excellent idea on how they can do that. They can discharge you tomorrow. Then your mailing address would become Talmadge, Connecticut, and I’d wrap myself naked in Saran Wrap and send myself to your house. I may send myself naked to Cu Chi, anyway, as a surprise for your E-8. Which reminds me, what’s an E-8?

Carol is afraid she’s going to flunk Descriptive Astronomy. I don’t know what gives her that idea, Wat, since she hasn’t yet bought the text for the course, and has attended only four classes since February. Just paranoid, I guess, completely out of her boonies, if you take my meaning. One of these days, I’ll give her a kick right in the hootch which is even better than frontal lobotomy for certain types of mental disorders. Have I told you that I love you insanely? Here I am — just a minute, let me count — (is runner-up one word or two?) 231 or 232 words into my letter, and I haven’t yet told you? Just for that, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.