Joseph McElroy - Women and Men

Lost without other people, through whom he falls bending toward them, just missing them, sometimes lighting them before he gets to them.

Misses his family, that’s no news. Kind of loves this woman — young, smart, nice, fine, yes. Love waves deflect his bullet into orbit, how about that! whose was said bullet? bitable, choorable, he will wait and it will come to him, for while he lives, haply he is lived. By relations processing him into perspective, maybe he’s theirs.

Or by other people who know themselves so well they don’t feel clear, whereas he has dinner with them, plays squash, phones, hears their unre-portable doings in the same room and bent through others, which is a relief from his own light, which also weighs. Lived by others? Sentimental inkling, no more. Though it goes on at length somewhere, it’s just hearing yourself in others.

Forget it was even thought. Never stand up in court.

That sound, she said — and he felt her attention touch him — doesn’t it bother you?

She lay in a corner of the long leather couch. She looked beautifully composed, relaxed. Her toes were lighted by the TV screen, the light crossed a knee, a shoulder, her nose. She was new to him and in a way he was thinking about her. He was on his knees across the room, and when he sat back on his cold heels his knees cracked like a painful joke. She didn’t seem to notice.

That sound, she said — she smiled and shook her head quickly — it’s so strong.

Well, let’s have it without sound, he said, and started crawling toward the TV. I often have the sound off.

You can’t, she said, unless you turn off the TV.

What do you mean I can’t? he said, and stopped where he was.

It’s always on when the set’s on, she said.

What is?

That sound.

I hear the guy talking, and I hear the crowd, right?

That’s not the sound I mean.

She smiled and he felt the warmth of the smile through the low light, but the smile had a clarity he did not grasp. He didn’t know her yet. He crawled back to where he’d been.

Hear it? she said.

What did she mean? Sound was something he knew about.

Look, I’m not deaf, he said. He wanted to go over to her. He looked at her eyes, one at a time, both at once. Above the nipple of one breast was a brief, tender shade he knew to be bluish. On the screen the young pitcher in a gray cap with black letters with orange hair bulging out beneath was staring in at the camera, close-up. She didn’t follow baseball, she’d said, didn’t really know baseball; but she’d played — softball, that is. The pitcher was at the top of the screen now and smaller, and three figures were grouped at the bottom of the screen watching him. These were the batter, facing sideways, waving the end of his bat above his shoulder in a brighter, a white, uniform; a player squatting behind him in a gray uniform, his cap on backwards; and behind him an older, burly man in normal clothes leaning over the shoulder of the squatting one, who now tipped onto one knee.

The thought of what she might be seeing made the picture suddenly so familiar he didn’t see quite as he was used to seeing. But what could she hear that he didn’t? It was one of the older color TVs. He concentrated and he felt the four figures — umpire, catcher, batter, pitcher — blur back into the extreme and ticklish rear of his eyes to be surfaces or components. He heard the announcer, and then the thuck of a pitch hitting the catcher’s mitt, and the shout of the umpire, who did not raise his arm.

Wait, she said. She pulled her feet up under her, she leaned forward and crawled off the couch so smoothly that the couch’s level and the floor’s were not separate.

On her hands and knees she reached the TV, her bare back arched, her head childlike up close to the screen, finding a new thing. When she turned the right-hand knob her hair, as if in the sudden absence of sound, was surrounded by light.

Now hear it?

What’s it like — is it a hum, a whistle?

It’s hard to describe.

You’re right on top of it, you sure you’re not hearing the announcer very faintly?

No, she said, it’s what’s left.

On her hands and knees she swung her head around, and she observed him, her chin against her shoulder.

You’re being mysterious, he said. He wanted to touch the blond down on the small of her back.

She fell over and, opening her legs, sat with her legs crossed. Her force was clear, but it confused their ages a bit. Turn around, she said, and don’t look.

Her pale stomach was straight up. He followed the line of each leg out along the calf to the angle of the knee then in along the thigh. He turned his back to her.

He sat the way she was sitting. He straightened his back and then realized what he was expecting. Her touch. So far he recalled each time with her; and he wondered how long it would go on — it.

Try again, she said.

He heard the set turned off as the light in the room slid away toward the one other source, the white globe on the window sill.

Ready, he said.

Maybe you should close your eyes, she said. But he didn’t; he remembered the Lord’s Prayer in church when he was a child.

Tock goes the switch again, and the sound brought up the armchair and rug and, in the window, an image of glowing bookshelves.

Do you hear a very high sound?

He didn’t. He said maybe he was inured, maybe he was flooded. He wondered how often she watched television.

Maybe once a month, if that — she didn’t have a TV.

They tried again.

The light from the screen dropped away. Then it came up again so that he saw the top of the armchair reflected in the window where the lamp was.

It’s so strong, she said, and he felt she was smiling.

Too strong for me, he said.

Come on, she said, don’t say that. It’s high, like a whistle. Very high.

A dull crank of gears echoed down in the street. He wanted to see her.

He turned himself around and she didn’t object. She was unusual in that she didn’t try to get him to talk about his work, except once she’d asked if he had to do much actual swimming. She pushed the knob, the screen became a gray mirror. She kept her hand on the knob and looked at him with something in store for him. He kept an eye on her hand.

She pulled the knob and there was a between-innings commercial.

He felt a vibration, he thought. Or a pressure.

You really can’t hear it?

A whistle, he thought, a whistle without the whistle. It’s like speed, he said.

Speed? she said.

No, I mean like the speed of light — but without the light.

But then he didn’t know, and she agreed, and said she didn’t want to push him into saying what he didn’t mean.

He didn’t know if she would spend the night this time or go home.

She smiled when he told her about her neck, her collarbone, her hands, the tender bluish shade he had touched with his eyelash, even with his eye. She’d liked his hands, it was one of the first things she looked at in a man. He’d let her get away with that.

Let’s listen to the sound, she said, and he thought she was saying also, Concentrate, here’s something I can bring you on your home ground.

In the same serious way she had asked if he had some light penetrating oil; the record turntable sometimes failed to stop and the arm sometimes didn’t come back. She wanted to tilt the housing up, she knew where to look. He’d said he would buy some oil.

Now she switched the TV set off and told him to shut his eyes and put his hands over his eyes.

He asked if she’d heard this sound before.

Only the few times she’d watched TV.