Rafael Yglesias - Hide Fox, and All After

“Nothing will happen to the car.”

“Don’t be silly, Richard. The repairs are up to what already?” She turned to face Alec and Raul. She smiled. Alec still looked out the window. Raul studied Mother Bloom’s sunken cheeks — the high, exposed cheekbones.

“That had nothing to do with my driving, Mother.”

“Still,” she said in a singing voice, “an accident won’t do us any good.”

Alec turned his face toward Mother Bloom’s, now staring ahead. To Raul, for a moment, it looked contorted. “What were you cooking, Mother Bloom?”

The veins of Mother Bloom’s neck stood out like drawstrings pulled tight. “Alec, I think calling me Mother Bloom is a little worn.”

Raul smiled wanly. “I rather like it.”

Mother Bloom opened the glove compartment and put on sunglasses. Alec tapped Raul twice on the knee and smiled at him. Raul nodded.

Mother Bloom cleared her bird’s throat. “Richard, how much did those repairs cost?”

Long pause. Richard mumbled something. Mother Bloom laughed, high and contemptuous. “Wichie, how much? Huh, Wichie? How much?” She turned smiling to Alec, who couldn’t avoid laughing, and looked at Raul, who was puzzled. “Steyphie, Wichie’s giwl fwiend, tawks like dis.”

Raul could feel an imp rise in him at the glee on Mother Bloom’s face. “She really talks like that?”

The red of Mother Bloom’s lipstick, which brought the lines on her lips into relief, went up in a smile.

“Ma, it isn’t…”

The green that covered Mother Bloom’s hollow eyes, eyebrows, and contoured her cheekbones swung about. “You don’t have to defend your maid, Richard. I was just having fun. You see they enjoyed it.”

“Great, Alec. Thank you.”

The glove compartment fell open loudly. Another Nicoban slid gracefully onto Mother Bloom’s tongue.

“Come on, Richard, it was funny. I was just…” Alec stopped, annoyed. He tossed his cigarette out the window.

Mother Bloom sucked loudly. “Now, Richard, don’t alienate your friends. One suffers for one’s beloved.” She turned loudly in her seat to smile at Raul and Alec. “Hmmm? Tell me, Richard, how much did the repairs come to?”

“Ma, I told you that inside already.”

Mother Bloom blinked her blue eyes. “How long have you been driving the car? Let’s see. Daddy left last Wednesday, rather the week before last Wednesday. That makes it a week and two days. How much were the repairs?”

“Ma, you’re crazy, you’re out of your mind.”

Mother Bloom’s small chin arched in laughter. “Now, Richard, how much did those repairs cost?”

“Just shut up, Mom, just shut up.”

Raul and Alec glanced at each other. Mother Bloom had won. “That’s enough, Richard, that’s enough. Your friends have seen enough of your bad manners. You were given a responsibility when Daddy said you could use his car while he was gone, and you’ve shown that you can’t handle it. So slow down, Richard. Right now, before this becomes ugly.” He slowed down. “I’ve just about had enough of your bad manners, young man.”

An uneasy silence. Richard gloomily and doggedly followed the road. “You and your sister have just about driven me mad. I think this is the last time I’m going to let your father go on these trips.” Mother Bloom sighed. One hand carelessly turned the collar of her coat up, while she let the other stray into her pocket. Alec stared out the window, a tooth streaking the little blood in his lips white, a hand monotonously bringing a cigarette up, dragging, and letting it drop limply.

Mother Bloom lit a cigarette. “It’s pointless to try and stay calm with the two of you,” she said piteously, “just pointless.”

Raul watched Mother Bloom’s coat swing gently toward a white cottage. Alec had moved to the front seat, and they left.

Richard overflowed with the desire to say something. But whom should he accuse? Alec and Raul, he thought, were not in sympathy. How could he complain freely with traitors in the camp? It was stupid to fight with a friend over a fight with his mother. Alec hadn’t ever liked Stephie so…Richard would have enjoyed the freedom to cry.

Raul reclined in the back, alienated from self-imagery. He cast, shaped, assimilated all he could to prepare his ideas more clearly. His ambiguities had stopped him from being clear about political and social art to Alec. The question annoyed him. Why are you defining art before you’ve created, fool?

Raul sat up. He watched the silence growing between Richard and Alec. They sat stationary, furious. Raul put a hand on Richard’s shoulder. “Your mother was a bitch, Richard, a true bitch. But you shouldn’t be angry at Alec for laughing. He nearly gagged trying to stop himself.” Alec, almost unwillingly, smiled. “Now it’s true,” Raul went on. “You nearly choked. And I couldn’t imagine anything that would please your mother more, Richard, than you being angry at Alec. So will the two of you quit fuckin’ around. I mean, today’s a cutting day for me and I’d like to have a little joy and gaiety perhaps. Alec, do you have a light?”

The occupation made Alec more informal — the air relaxed.

“I could have killed her,” Richard said, “I could have…”

Raul let a hand slide into his jacket, businesslike. “All right,” he said, “let us drop the soap-operaish quality of the past fifteen, twenty minutes, and assume that easygoing air our generation’s so famous for.”

Alec’s thin smile bloomed into laughter. Richard smiled in a self-deprecating manner.

“There is nothing,” Raul said, sitting back, “like the sanity of irony. So where do we go now?”

Richard took out a cigarette, pushing the car lighter in. Alec turned the radio on. “We’re going to pick up Stephie and her friend Amy,” Richard said. “Taking ’em to the dentist.”

Alec smiled. “Amy. Oh man. You’ve gotta meet Amy, Raul, you gotta.”

“Why?”

“She’s a typical, but really typical, fake hippie. You know what I mean?”

Raul frowned. “I’ll hate her, I know it. This is bad, Alec, you’ll have to restrain me.”

“Why,” Richard asked, “what are you going to do?”

Raul straightened in his seat, posing in Napoleonic stance. “I will indulge in the treachery of honesty. Particularly in this case. What could be more obscene than being pretentious about a group that is unpretentious? The pains I have from such people are akin to the churnings of my stomach when Rosko proudly announces that WNEW is in the groove.”

“NEW, man, in the groove.”

“The groove of moneyed records.”

“The unusual green of American agriculture.”

Raul’s lanky body twisted. “Oh, very good, Alec, very good. Deserves a Kewpie doll.”

Richard gave Raul a look. Raul fell back into his seat. “A good day. I am suddenly very pleased by everything.”

“Oh, really?” Alec said, looking at him.

“Alec, you’re becoming awfully impatient. Have I not so far exhibited infinite kindness toward you?”

Richard leaned forward, turning the radio up. “Quiet, the news.”

Raul smiled. Alec looked at Richard, disgusted. “What the fuck you want to listen to the news for?”

“I want to hear the war news.”

“As if you expect to hear the truth,” Alec said. “Come on, there’s no point to listening to the news.”

“It isn’t good to isolate yourself. People who do…”

“Isolate yourself!” Raul cried. “Oh, God!”

“Richard, what bullshit is this?” Alec said. “What cunt gave you that idea?”

“Stephie doesn’t believe that at all. She doesn’t care just like you two.”

“You see that, Raul. He’s classing us with his cunt. Listen, Richard, it was an expression, I didn’t mean it literally. I could just as easily have said — what penis gave you that idea?”