Thomas Mcguane: Something to Be Desired

Lucien suspected that his mother was as much on his father’s mind as she was on his own. It was his father’s quietness as he made his way across the river bridge, then the railroad tracks. Maybe Lucien’s mother should have thrown his father out; but when she did, she threw everything out and maybe she shouldn’t have done that. Who would ever know? Nobody. It infected everything from daybreak to baseball. It infected all things. It was a pestilence.

They drove into Deadrock. They were traveling light. The town crouched in front of the terrific mountains to the south, great wildly irregular peaks that seemed to say to the little town, Don’t try anything. No one strolled the streets as Lucien and his father sat in the parked rental car. There were plenty of people visible but they just emerged from one store or bar and darted into another, short sudden arcs, escaping the same general gaze. This irresolute air suited Lucien and his father perfectly. The day felt too early and too late. Before the divorce, this had been his father’s hometown too.

“We better get a room,” his father said.

He restarted the car and began to hunt for a place. There were a couple of satisfactory hotels which they cruised past at very low speed. His father looked at them critically, then leaned out into the warm air to crane up at their higher stories either to evaluate their height and substance or to hope for an anomalous penthouse, more satisfactory than the lower rooms, rooms to which Lucien was sure his father referred when he uttered the single word “dandruff.”

Then impatiently he gunned out onto Parkway and found Deadrock’s only motel, a new place. In 1958 a motel was a pretty exciting thing, comfort and life alongside your car. Now Lucien saw that his father was okay once again, that there was volition and not a mind wandering through things spoilt. And the reproachful presence of your own child. Yes, Lucien felt that now.

Lucien’s father went inside to get them a room. He came out with a ballpoint, wrote down the license number and went back inside. Then he came back and jumped in the car heartily. “Fifteen B, I love it! ‘B’! They only have one floor! You ought to see the owner. Get the feeling you don’t take a room and the bank pounces on him.” His father smiled wide with charity. Lucien glanced over and saw the motel lady, drawing back the venetian blinds, caught. He waved a little.

The room was another world: up-to-date, lightless. There were little things on the bedspread you could pick at. Lucien’s father made his way sideways to each reproduction on the wall, thrummed his fingers on top of the TV, counted out ten dollars and weighted them with an ashtray. “I’m going out for a belt. I’m late and you get hungry, here’s ten bucks.” He was gone in a shudder of daylight.

Lucien read the welcome to Big Sky and thumbed the motel Bible. Kukla, Fran and Ollie wouldn’t be on television for a while. He pulled the curtain and saw their car was gone: he’d never heard it start up. He wondered if anyone would get some use out of their tent; maybe the owner of that horse — it would make a good combination for a man wanting to travel out in all those hills and mountains. He lay down for a moment trying to get control of himself. Very soon he wasn’t moving.

He woke up in the middle of the night. His father was standing bolt upright in his shorts, arm outstretched, finger pointing, a dynamo of rejection, a god casting someone out. “Go!” he roared.

Indeed, someone was being cast out; but she felt very strongly that she had not been given time to dress. She complained with acid bitterness as she crawled through her own clothing, holding individual articles up toward the bathroom light for rough identification.

“ Go !” roared his father.

“I’m gone ,” she whined. “But not like this.”

She struggled a bit more, stood and slanted through the small opening Lucien’s father made for her into the night.

Lucien listened to his father walking around, stopping only for long sighs. Finally:

“Lucien?”

“I’m awake.”

“I’m sorry …?”

“I’m awake, sir.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“Not long,” Lucien said.

“Lucien, when you were a small boy, I let you have lots of pets, hamsters, rabbits and so on. Do you remember I allowed that?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“That was so you could learn about animals, about how we are all animals.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And now I want to call Momma.”

He got the night operator or the morning operator, whichever, and revealed to Lucien’s mother that they were no longer out in the mountains. “Momma,” he said. “I’m with Lucien. We want to come home to you, Momma.” Lucien could not devise an attitude toward this. His father suddenly fell to listening. He repeated “uh huh” a number of times in a deeper and flatter voice. He waved Lucien into the bathroom, then waved the door shut behind him. Lucien leaned on the faucet, turning it microscopically until a drop of water came out, shut it off, and did it again. Then he heard his father call for him.

When he went into the bedroom the reading lamp was on and his father sat right next to it, weeping, silently with heaving shoulders.

“What’s the matter, Pop, can’t we go home?” Lucien was scared.

“It’s not that—” He sobbed for a few more minutes and composed himself carefully. “Art Clancy was shot and killed by his girlfriend,” he sobbed. “In Arequipa, Peru.”

Lucien’s father had coached him carefully as they walked across town from the motel. They stood in front of their house while his father ran a finger around the inside of his collar, then gave Lucien a quick, conspiratorial nod. He knocked. In a moment the door opened and there was his mother, all dressed up.

“When’s lunch!” Lucien and his father cried together.

She looked from one to the other. “That hungry gang of mine,” she said with a warm smile and turned into the house for her men to follow.

Chili was gone. He knew very well that his mother might have disposed of the small, blue, merry bird; or at least given the bird away, purely on the basic of its Hispanic name. Lucien was sure she pictured Clancy of Peru in his shantung suits, his Corvette and his bad Spanish in a way that made a parakeet named Chili look bad. He already suspected that her greeting was camouflage, so the crack of his mother’s hand against his father’s face came as not much of a surprise. His father just took it. There was little else he could do. Raising his hands in self-defense would have made him a pantywaist in the eyes of his own son.

“I’ll go,” said Lucien’s father.

“Where? Peru?” Her long patrician face always looked surprised when she was angry. What many took for astonishment was in fact a prelude to hysterical fury. “You and your Peru!”

Then Lucien’s father did something very strange and yet wholly characteristic of him: he waved to an imaginary person in the window behind her; when she turned to look, he flattened her with a tremendous blow.

His father left the room, straight through the French doors into the side yard, where the dog hid in its Tudor house, the chain making an abrupt circuit back into the little doorway as it always did in a family dispute. He sauntered over the high ground beside the lilacs and took a final glance into the living room before retiring to the guest room over the garage.

Lucien’s mother still lay on the floor, lightly fingering the discoloration around her left eye. “I’m a chump if I don’t call a cop,” she said, using a diction she seldom used unless she was trying to reveal the actual sordid texture she saw in her life. If this had all happened to an acquaintance, she would have said, “She’s deluded if she doesn’t call a policeman.” She slung herself upright, got to her feet and headed for the stairs. “You had better find something to eat, Lucien. I’m in no shape to help you men. Not today. Perhaps not ever.” Lucien felt the excitement return at these last words. He still felt the raw electricity in the air. He made a sandwich.