Rick Moody - The Diviners

“We must put him upstairs,” his mother says.

“This is your fault,” his father says. They are not even thinking about the pale lady now, who has risen from the table and is walking toward the closet where the coats are hanging.

“What do you mean? Is it my fault that we do not have the income that we had because you have this mistaken belief that you are now an artist? That is not my fault. And I did not bring home a strange woman for dinner. I went to the store as I always do, and I brought home my son, as I always do.”

“You know nothing.”

The goldfish is wriggling on the floor like a comma trying to slip between two clauses. His father makes an angry gesture in the direction of his mother and then he goes to pick up the goldfish bowl. Jaspreet takes the goldfish into his hand and it is undulating, before he in turn is bundled up by his father. He goes under one arm of his father’s, and his father says, “Give me the fish.”

Jaspreet shakes his head.

“Give me the fish.”

Jaspreet shakes his head.

“The fish will die. Do you understand? Give me the fish or the fish will die. Do you want the fish to die?” Jaspreet is kicking, he is swinging wildly, but he will not open his fist with the fish in it. The women, his mother and the pale lady, are swarming around his father and they are telling him that he mustn’t hurt Jaspreet, and then his mother has caught him by the hand and she is prying open his hand with a fork because she can’t get his hand open, and the goldfish tumbles out of his hand and onto the floor, and he screams at letting go of the goldfish, and his mother shouts, “He killed the fish, you see? He killed the fish because of you. You made him kill the fish, and now we will have to buy another fish.”

“The fish cost ninety-nine cents! That’s how much you know about it!”

She takes Jaspreet’s legs, which are still kicking, and they carry him upstairs by his arms and legs, and his father says that they are going to have to put him in the room, as if Jaspreet doesn’t know which room that is, the room that they are talking about, but he does know, so he kicks and screams harder, because it is the room that doesn’t have anything in it, not a thing, it is just a room with nothing in it. The room scares him horribly, not because it has no lights. Well, it does have a light, which he cannot reach, but it has no television, and it has no fish, and it has no parents in it, it is just scary and quiet, and there is nothing to do, and he doesn’t like to be in there. Sometimes he is in there for a long time because he will not be quiet, and that is where they are taking him, of course. His father is complaining about how they are having to do this more often now that Jaspreet is getting older, and why is it that he is doing it more, is it because he is in America? Would he keep doing this if they were in India? Jaspreet’s mother will not answer him, and soon they have put Jaspreet in the room, which is just a closet, really. Jaspreet’s father is saying, “Jaspreet, you cannot ruin dinner. It is not fair to your mother, who worked very hard preparing the dinner, and it is not fair to me, because I brought home a guest, and you ruined dinner for the guest, and she came a long way from the city to meet you, and you made her never want to come to dinner at our house again. And every time that you do these things, you make us worry. We do not want to have to worry about you. You have to try to help us, rather than hinder us. Do you understand what we are saying?”

He is in the corner, and he is feeling bad at the way his father is talking, and he does not want to reply, nor does he want to say anything.

“Are you doing these things because your mother and I are arguing? Because we do not mean to upset you by arguing. We argue sometimes because we have known each other for many years, and that is what people do when they have known each other for many years. It’s nothing personal and I love your mother, and she is my most perfect friend and my ally. Do you understand?”

Here the parents of Jaspreet try to hug each other in a way that will prove what they are saying. But he is looking at the floorboards in the room that has nothing in it, which is really just a closet, and he is tracing the shape of his hand, palm down, on the floorboards in the room that has nothing in it.

“Many good things are about to happen. I believe this. And we will purchase a new fish. This is my solemn vow. Many good things will happen, and we will purchase a new fish, and when the weather is warmer we will go to the tops of tall buildings and look at the view from these buildings, and we will ride roller coasters, and we will watch the horses run at the racetrack, and I will take you to the Gurdwara, and you will learn to be a devoted son and a devoted Sikh. And we are going to shut this door now, but we are not going to lock this door. Do you understand? We are shutting the door and we are not locking it, and then on the other side of this door, I am going to be making up with your mother. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”

And then the door is closed, and the silence is big and scary. Jaspreet tries to keep the silence on the far side of the room, but it’s like a slow leak. The silence leaks into the room, coming in under the door first, pooling on the floor just inside the doorway, creeping across the floor to the corner where he sits, where he has rolled up his trousers so that the leak of silence will not get on the hems of his trousers. It is like the leak in the basement when the rain is heavy, and soon it will be all the way across the floor. And it will begin to get deeper. He likes the basement, and this is something he can tell himself in the silence, that he likes the basement, he likes the basement, he likes the basement, there are many things in the basement that are his friends. He likes the sound of the thing in the basement, which is a boiler. He likes that sound that the boiler makes, and he likes it when there are clothes strung up on a line in the basement. And he likes the bin full of old sheets and he likes the stacks of old magazines where he can look at pictures. He feels sure that these clothes strung up are like the other place that his parents talk about, their home, which he believes is a place with many colors strung up on lines, and in that place the houses are all full of cereal. That is what he thinks, because he is trying to think. He tries saying things, even though he does not like saying things, because it is too quiet in the room, and so he says glue stick a few times. He is just trying it out, he is trying out saying glue stick over and over, as if it is a question. Somebody must be listening at the door. Otherwise there would just be too much silence. He puts his ear to the floor because he wants to hear what is being said downstairs, but he is not sure that anything is being said. He will say things, he will try to say things, he will not be silent, and he will not make more silence in the world. He will say things. No one likes silence. He will do better, because his father loves him and his mother loves him and he will do better.

Finally, he pushes open the door, which is guarded by no one. And it is night! Night is beautiful! And everything in his house is where it is supposed to be! There is his parents’ room, and he walks on the carpet because he likes the feeling of the carpet in his parents’ room on the bottom of his feet. And then he goes across the hall and he goes into his room, in which there is a bed and a few banners of baseball teams because his friends at school have banners of baseball teams. He wants to be like his friends, doing the things that they do. He can hear a clock somewhere. He can hear the faucet downstairs. He can hear the distant sound of the television, which is the sound of his family, the sound of a television drifting is the sound of his household, and when there isn’t the sound of the television, then something is wrong. His mother is somewhere cleaning something. He goes to look out the window because what he sees when he looks out the window is other people looking out of their windows, and then he is part of the group of people who are looking. That is good, because the street is beautiful, and the sky at night is dark pink, until the sun comes up, and people are all looking at other people who are looking, except that he can see out the window that there is his father, and his father is walking up the street with the pale lady, and they are near the stairwell that leads to the elevated trains. On the first step of the stairs, his father leans down and he embraces the pale lady and then he puts his lips on her lips, and there is the sound of the television overheard from downstairs, and then there is his father, up the block, kissing a pale lady.