William Saroyan - The Laughing Matter

“How? Make arrangements for the funeral, that’s how.”

“God damn you, Dade!”

“You asked me,” Dade said, “and I’m telling you. Make plans for Red and Eva—for this afternoon , I mean. Make plans for your face. It’s been struck with a fist and with metal, and with loss—failure, anger, and madness. Make plans for the work you are going to do. The life you’re going to live. If you want to love entire, love entire, make plans to love entire. Love Swan entire.”

“She’s dead,” Evan said.

“Love her entire,” Dade said. “Red and Eva are Swan. Love them. Love them entire. You have already wept for Swan. I have still to do so. Remember that. You have already accused yourself of killing her. I have still to do that. You’ve got to help me . Make arrangements for the funeral. I’ll be there with you.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence. The wound was still bleeding. Dade had never had much to say, but the wound had put him to trying to say something. He’d had little enough to say since he’d hustled around the streets of Paterson, and a good deal less since he had lost his wife and his children, all of them alive and well but not his own, not his family, which in the nature of things were the only people he could love entire.

The place was called Gladding and Starch, and the man was one of the younger Gladdings. He had things to say about everything the firm dealt in, including costume and make-up.

“Listen,” Dade said at last. “This casket.”

“That’s one of our less popular models,” the man said. “It’s the plainest we have.”

“This casket,” Dade said wearily. “The nightgown she’s wearing. No make-up. Don’t touch her at all. Thursday afternoon at two.” He brought some money out of his pocket and handed it to the man. “Pick out a place near a tree.”

“What kind of services?”

“No kind. We’ll be here at two Thursday. From here we’ll go to the cemetery.”

“Do you wish to see the deceased now?”

“Yes,” Evan said. “Alone.”

Evan was taken to a small room in which a blue neon light was burning. There were sinks, faucets, hoses, bottles, and instruments of all kinds in the room. Swan was lying on a white cot on wheels. He took her head in his hands and tried to look into her eyes. He smoothed the red hair of her head, the hair Red wore. He lighted a cigarette and smoked it, standing over her, then went out and said to the man, “Get her out of that room. Put her in a room of her own.”

When she was in the new room Evan said, “Don’t take her into that room again.”

He found Dade in the car, bent forward.

“You’d better get me home,” Dade said.

“Do you want me to phone Doctor Altoun to be there when we arrive?”

“He was here not more than half an hour ago with the death certificate,” Dade said. “He’s not in his office. We’ll phone from home.”

“Hadn’t somebody here in town better do something first?”

“No.”

Evan drove swiftly.

“I’m sorry, Dade.”

“What do you want with a car, anyway?”

“What, Dade?”

“Wasn’t it to earn money for a car that you went off and left her for two months?”

“Yes,” Evan said. “She hadn’t been feeling well for months. I thought the separation would do us both good. She did, too.”

“Sure she did,” Dade said. “Sure you did. I’ve told you again and again, anything I’ve got is yours. You could have asked me for a car. I’d get you a car. I’d send you the money. People think they live their lives. They don’t live them. Their lives are lived for them. A man can’t leave a woman—any woman—the mother of any kids—and expect the living that is going to happen to her to be the same as if he had been there. It can’t be the same. He’s got to be there. If he’s there, the living that happens to each of them can be poor enough, it can be tough enough, but whatever it is, it’s got to happen to both of them, it’s got to happen to them together, it’s got to happen to the family, and there is nothing else. The family is all there is. Fool with the family and you’ve finished everything. You shouldn’t have left her. That invites fooling with the family. Just a little fooling can finish the family.”

“A man isn’t to trust his wife?” Evan said. “A wife isn’t to trust her husband?”

“No,” Dade said. “That’s this sick new thinking. That’s crap. A man isn’t to trust himself . He isn’t to trust God. He is to love his family and he’s to arrange for family things to happen to it. If you had to have a car, you could have told me, couldn’t you?”

“I didn’t want to bother you about a car,” the younger brother said.

“If I had to have something that you could give me,” Dade said, “I’d ask you , wouldn’t I? You can’t be a member of a family and behave like a stranger. If you do, you finish the family, and you are a stranger. You can’t invite Swan to be a stranger to you, to be curious about strangers. You can’t invite yourself to become a stranger to her. If you do, the living that happens to you has got to be either without pride—small pride or large pride—or without meaning. So you went off for a car.”

He stopped suddenly, lighted a cigarette, inhaled deeply.

“I’ve got a fever,” he said. “I loved Swan. She was in our family, a radiant girl with red hair from some haunted life someplace, a girl of laughter and fun. The kids she gave you were ours. They were hers, too, but they were ours, too, and I’m sick in my heart that the poor living that happened to her has ended her. You could have taken her with you. You could have asked me to come up to Palo Alto and stay with the kids, or bring them here to Clovis.”

He stopped again.

“I’m delirious,” he said. “There was nothing you could do. Everything you did was right. It’s happened, that’s all. I just don’t like it. I didn’t expect the doctor to leave without talking to me, though. I can’t understand that.”

“I gave him a hard time, Dade.”

“What did you do?”

“He came out and said Swan was dead. I told him he was a liar and took him back into the room. I told him to give her a shot of something to wake her up or I’d kill him. I kept him in the room half an hour. Why should she be dead? Other girls, other wives, other mothers go through a lot more and don’t die. Why should Swan? I wouldn’t let him leave the room.”

“What did he do?”

“He spoke to me in our language.”

“He’s one of us,” Dade said. “You shouldn’t have fooled with that gun. You haven’t had enough experience with guns. If Red had been around, you might have shot him.”

“I planned to,” Evan said. “You might as well know.”

“I know,” Dade said. “I know, because I made the same plans myself once.”

“I planned to finish all of us, one after another,” Evan said. “Red, Eva, and myself.”

“I know,” Dade said. “You asked me the other night what you should do, and I said you should do anything, because anything would be right. What you’ve done is right. You think if you’d loved her enough, it would have been different. A son that’s hers and isn’t yours, and then more of your own together. But it’s not as simple as that, as we’ve seen. Sometimes it’s simpler, though. It wasn’t this time, that’s all. If the doctor hadn’t been one of us, if he’d been one of the others, one I almost called instead, you might be dead now, and then there would be neither mother nor father for Red and Eva. I want you to go to the man, whoever he is, wherever he is, and talk to him. Talk to him about his damned childhood. He’s no different from anybody else. Get that straight. I have a woman, Mary Koury, one of our own, her kids are grown up, keeps my house. She’ll take care of the kids until I’m O.K. After you talk to the man, you’d better go to Paterson. Wander around the streets. Stay away a month. Come back and we’ll talk. Are you listening to me?”