William Saroyan - The Laughing Matter

“You’re not hiding,” Red said.

“Yes, I am,” Flora said.

“Well, you went too far from the tree in the first place. In the second, when I find you, you’re supposed to race me back to the tree.”

“I know.”

“Don’t you want to play?”

“Yes, but not every minute. I didn’t hide here first. I went to a lot of other places. I got tired of hiding, so when I found this nice place, I sat down to rest and cool my feet.”

“Oh,” Red said. He couldn’t think of something else to say because what she’d said had been so reasonable.

“Don’t we have to go back now?” he said at last. “Don’t we have to go on with the game?”

“Well,” Flora said. “We do have to go back, but I wish we didn’t, because I like it here so much better.”

“Do you like to sit alone like this?”

“Yes, don’t you?”

“Sometimes.”

“I don’t like to be alone all the time,” Flora said, “but sometimes I’ve just got to.”

“When?”

“Oh, I don’t know. When do you like to be alone?”

“When I’m mad.”

“Are you mad at somebody?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Who?”

“My father.”

“Your father? What are you mad at him for?”

“He hit my mother.”

“Hit her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“My father gets angry,” Red said. He thought a moment. “He gets very angry.”

“Does she make him angry?” Flora said.

“I don’t know,” Red said, “but when he, gets angry, he tries not to hit her. I know when he’s trying. Sometimes he tries a long time, then all of a sudden he hits her. She cries, and he hits her some more. Then, I hit him for hitting her . That’s when I want to be alone. When do you?”

“Well,” Flora said. “My father never hits my mother, but sometimes my mother slaps him.”

“Your mother slaps your father?”

“Yes. She slapped him this afternoon.”

“What did he do?”

“He walked out of the house. He went to the olive tree in the yard and did some work there. He’s trimming it. Taking off the dead branches. Then he walked in the vineyard. He didn’t talk to her for a long time.”

“Why did she slap him? Why do they do things like that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it, but I just don’t know. Do you know?”

“Well,” Red said, “I know my father gets angry. I guess my mother makes him angry. Sometimes she makes me angry, too. Sometimes she makes me very angry.”

“Do you hit her, too?”

“Oh, no,” Red said. He stopped to think again, then said, “But I wish I could believe the things she tells me. I never know what to believe.”

The girl listened and thought a moment, then turned to look at him. He saw that she liked him, which he hadn’t been thinking about at all. But he felt glad about it, and knew he liked her, and that she was his favorite.

“We’d better go back,” he said suddenly.

“All right,” Flora said. She took her feet out of the water, put on her socks, then her shoes. She reached out to Red and said, “Will you help me up, please?”

Red took her hand and helped her up, feeling more elated than he’d ever before felt. Her hand was so good to hold. She got to her feet, saying almost in a whisper, “I almost hate to go back.”

They began to walk through the vineyard.

“Why?” Red said.

“Oh,” Flora said. “If you only knew how awful I feel when I see my mother and father unhappy with each other.”

“Are they unhappy with each other?”

“Very . Aren’t yours?”

“I don’t know,” Red said. “I guess so. But they’re happy, too. Most of the time they’re happy. Aren’t yours?”

“Never,” Flora said. “They only pretend. I think they hate each other. They think we don’t know. They think we don’t understand, but every one of us understands, especially Fanny. She understands the most. Fay understands, too, but she hates to understand. Fanny tells me everything she understands. ‘They hate each other,’ Fanny says. ‘They just loathe each other. I don’t think they even know it, they’re so used to each other.’ Fanny knows the most. They do hate each other!”

“No, they don’t,” Red said.

“Oh, yes, they do,” Flora said. “And we always pretend we don’t know, especially Fanny. She’s the one who takes Mama’s side. We take Papa’s, Fay and me, but Fanny takes Mama’s. Whose side do you take?”

“I don’t take anybody’s side,” Red said. “They don’t hate each other, do they?”

He had never talked this way with anyone before in his life. He felt a profound anguish that this beautiful girl’s mother and father didn’t love one another, that perhaps, as she said, they even hated one another.

“Fanny just told you that as a joke, didn’t she?” he said.

“No, it’s not a joke,” Flora said. “It’s the truth. Well, we’re almost there. I think we’d better start racing for the tree.”

“All right,” Red said.

He let her run ahead a little, then turned himself loose and soon passed her. He saw the others in the yard, standing by the pump, talking, and ran to the tree. After he got there he didn’t stop and go to the others, though, or wait for the arrival of Flora. He went right on running. He heard Fanny shout after him, “Hey, Red, where you going?” He ran through the vineyard until he was too tired to run any more, then began to walk. When he was far away, when he’d reached the row of pomegranate and olive trees, he stopped, to be alone.

He tore a small red pomegranate from a branch and threw it with all his might against the trunk of the tree, where it smashed.

“God damn you, Papa!” he said. “God damn you, Mama! God damn both of you!”

They were four together, two men and two women, sitting and standing on the front porch, getting straight what each of them would have to drink, getting used to the nearness of one another, to the strangeness of their being together to talk and drink and pass the time, but after five or ten minutes the men were standing together on the lawn and the women were sitting together on the porch. They were still in sight of one another but they could no longer hear one another. At the very beginning, while the children had still been around, there had been smiles, glances of understanding and kindness, and a moment later laughter, even.

The first to laugh was Evan Nazarenus.

The middle Walz girl had said quite loudly to the fathers and mothers, “You children play in the front yard, us children will play in the back.”

Evan had laughed and, speaking to May Walz, had said, “Which one’s she?”

May Walz had waved affectionately at the thought of the one Fanny was and she’d said with warmth—not for Fanny, but for Evan and Swan, “God knows, though her name’s Fanny.” These words, meaning so little in themselves, were enormously meaningful to Swan, who, only a moment before, had felt that she would not be able to look at Warren and May, not be able to talk, not be able to move, even.

“She’s a lovely child,” Swan had said. She’d turned to Warren Walz, not actually looking at him, though. “You must be very proud of your daughters.”

Warren Walz, not looking at his wife, had said, almost laughing, “They are daughters , though. Still, I suppose we’ll have a son someday.”

“Martini, Scotch, bourbon?” Evan had said. “I’m having Scotch.”