David Wallace - Broom of the System

“Sort of need to talk to you, for a bit, if we could break away, here, maybe Chutes and Ladders later…”

“Family theater in ten minutes, is the thing.”

“Maybe after, then, we could just sort of…”

On the big-screen television, shots of people running in slow motion ended. Stoney threw a Buddha-baby at Spatula. It missed, rang out against a bronze flowerpot. An announcer’s head filled the television.

“We’ll be back with a look at… gymnastics, and a live conversation with a… certain someone,” the announcer grinned mysteriously.

“Kopek Spasova,” said Lenore.

Alvin looked up. “You sure?”

“I feel in my marrow they’re going to have Kopek Spasova,” Lenore said.

“Holy shit,” said Alvin, “I’ve got to get a notebook.”

“Alvin, family theater in eight minutes.”

“I have to take notes. This is supposed to be Gerber’s nuclear weapon.”

“It is pineal-extract, you might say,” said Lenore.

“Jesus,” said Alvin, rummaging through his briefcase. Stoney and Spatula had been sucked into the television’s intake; they sat, Indian-style, staring at the screen. Lenore nonchalantly nudged the Chutes and Ladders game under the sofa with her foot.

“I’m going to go get the props, so we can start just the minute she’s done,” said Clarice. Lenore drank some seltzer and ate a bit of lime pulp floating on top.

Ed McMahon came on the television, doing a commercial for a line of tiny vaccum cleaners that were alleged to suck even the stubbornest lint out of your navel. “Sell it, Ed!” yelled Alvin Spaniard, grinning admiringly at the television.

“Is that regular, or cable?” Lenore asked.

“I think it’s network. I think that’s Curt Gowdy, doing the recap. OK, all set.” Alvin sat with his glasses and a yellow legal pad and a pen.

“You’ve sure got a lot of equipment on that television,” said Lenore.

“We’re a family that takes its home entertainment very seriously,” Alvin said. Stoney looked up at Lenore and nodded, and Alvin ruffled his hair.

“We’re back live,” said the announcer on television.

“Hurry Mommy, we’re back live!” shouted Stoney.

“Sshh,” Alvin said.

“I’m standing here with the brilliant Soviet — former Soviet gymnastics coach Ruble Spasov,” said the announcer, “and with the equally brilliant former Soviet gymnast and certainly not former Olympic and World Championship gold medalist Kopek Spasova, Mr. Spasov’s daughter.” The camera panned down from the adults’ heads to their stomachs to get Kopek Spasova in the shot. She was a thin, blond-haired, hollow-cheeked girl with enormous black circles under her eyes.

Clarice came in with a load of masks and cardboard cut-outs and some personal items in a box.

“Well, at least she’s not pretty,” said Alvin.

“Sshh,” said Spatula.

“Ruble, Kopek, how did it feel to win all the big ones?” asked the announcer.

“Who is this person?” asked Ruble Spasov, looking to someone behind and off to the side of the camera.

“It felt good to win,” said Kopek Spasova.

/b/

3 September

Monroe Fieldbinder, a successful six-foot estate attorney with a fine lawn and a two-hundred-pound body as fit and taut as it was exceptionally attractive, returned one Wednesday night from the home of his gorgeous Wednesday mistress to find his house in flames and his house surrounded by the pulsing lights of fire and police engines of fire engines and police cars and saw that his house was in flames on fire and that his bird, Richard the Lionhearted, who lived inside, was probably dead, in his iron cage.

As Monroe Fieldbinder watched his house burn, he felt all the order and unity of his life melt away into chaos and disorder. He grinned wryly.

How explicit need we make this burning? Need we a reference, or just a picture? “Grinned wryly” seems most potent when used in reference to a picture. Pictures do things. Show, don’t tell.

Do pictures tell? I have a color Polaroid of Vance at seven and Veronica at twenty-nine traversing a rickety dry-gray dock in Nova Scotia to board a fishing boat. The water is a deep iron smeared with plates of foam; the sky is a thin iron smeared with same; the mass of white gulls around Vance’s outstretched bread-filled hand is a cloud of plunging white V’s. Vance Vigorous, as he holds out his white little child’s hand, is surrounded and obscured by a cloud of living, breathing, shrieking, shitting, plunging incarnations of the letter V; and I have it captured forever on quality film, giving me the right and power to cry whenever and wherever I please. What might that say about pictures.

A truly, truly horrible dream, last night. Don’t even want to talk about it. I am fresh out of bed. Urinating. I look down. Just a lazy stream of early-morning maple-syrup urine. Suddenly the single stream is a doubled, forking stream. Then a tripled trident stream. Four, five, ten. Soon I am at the node of a fan of urine that sprays out in all directions, blasting the walls of the bathroom, plaster shooting everywhere, currents swirling at my feet. When I awoke — alone, Lenoreless, hence the dream — I was really afraid I had wet the bed, the windows, the ceiling. I may murder Jay over this one.

/c/

“… have asked Kopek to recreate that stunning uneven-parallel-bar routine that won her the all-around gold, and we’ll remind the audience that her performance is now made possible by the generosity of the folks over at Gerber’s Quality Brands, the infant food that helps your child chew.”

“Yes,” said Ruble Spasov. He and the announcer, trailing a snake of black microphone cord, accompanied Kopek over to the bars as she mounted and began to twirl and spin and let the bars bend her into strange shapes.

“Ruble, I notice you’ve got that cattle-prod, there, in your hand, while your brilliant daughter and pupil does her really superb routines,” said the announcer. “Any story behind that.”

Ruble Spasov pulled his eyebrows up. “Is what you call a blanket of security. Kapelika feels more secure and confident and happy to know that when she performs routines cattle-prod is always nearby her.”

“And what a performer she is,” said the announcer.

“Guy’s nuts,” Alvin Spaniard said. “Guy’s a fascist.”

“She’s just super, though,” said Lenore. “Watch her do the thing with her toes… there. Wow.”

“So she’s got prehensile toes, big deal,” said Alvin. “Take you to a zoo, show you cages full of prehensile toes.”

“I smell sour grapes,” said Clarice.

Lenore sniffed at her armpit.

“Family theater in one and a half minutes,” Clarice said.

“She’s almost done anyway,” said Lenore. “It’s the dismount where she lands on just one finger that’s the killer… right there. Believe that? And she’s coming to Erieview in like a week.”

“Tell me about it,” said Alvin.

“I’m anxious to go,” said Lenore.

“Spatula sweetie, you want to get the audience-disc? Any questions from anybody about any lines? Alvin, think about your job on your own time.” Clarice moved the coffee table out of the center of the living room.

“Ruble and Kopek Spasov and Spasova: quite a team, and just if I may interject a personal note a fine addition to this great country,” said the announcer. “Ruble and Kopek Spasova.”

“Please go away now,” Ruble Spasov said. Ed McMahon reappeared. Stoney got up and switched the television controls to Laserdisc input.

Clarice distributed masks. There was a Clarice-mask for Clarice, an Alvin-mask for Alvin, a Stonecipher-mask for Stonecipher, a Spatula-mask for Spatula. The masks were very good and very lifelike. Clarice made them out of plaster molds and papier-mâché and Reynolds Wrap, in a workshop in the basement. Clarice was in many ways an artist, Lenore thought, CabanaTan notwithstanding. She was particularly good at making things with people’s faces on them. Every year she gave her father, Lenore’s father, cans of tennis balls in which each ball was an eerie likeness of the head of Bob Gerber or Erv Beechnut. Stonecipher Beadsman III loved to play tennis with these balls. Clarice also on the sly made some Stonecipher-Beadsman-III-head balls that she and Alvin batted around from time to time. During a dark period, about a year before, there had appeared a can of Alvin-head balls.