Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

Saturday morning his parents closed their eyes or turned away each time Max went to the bathroom or sneaked into the kitchen for a snack or cup of coffee. On Sunday Max dry-shaved himself in bed, leaving the start of his first mustache. Later that day, while lying in bed, cigarette smoke rising from the ashtray balanced on his chest, he concluded that he was no longer staying in bed for any just-plain-old-Max reasons, as he’d believed, but as a one-man protest against the lousy economic conditions in this country. He saw himself staying here for weeks — a sort of fast-unto-death that Gandhi threatened the British with in India — the word getting out to neighbors and friends and through them to the newspapers, who’d write him up as someone protesting against heavy unemployment and the so-called reputable captains of industry who caused it. In time, others would join his protest — thousand upon thousands of blue-and white-collar workers staying in bed, eventually causing many big businesses and corporations and factories to close down. Supermarkets, department stores, movie theaters would suffer. Time and Newsweek would devote cover stories to the news, TV would run half-hour documentaries on it. It would an end up with a meeting of the frightened big guns of the financial and industrial world, who’d end the recession and after that work together with the federal and state governments to building a new and sounder economy. Sometime after, before the eyes and ears of the nation, they’d credit him with having alerted them to how serious the situation was and for having driven some sense into their heads. Because of the notoriety he’d get, he’d soon have a top executive job, with a huge private office and plenty of pretty secretaries within reach, and become a known force in the business world. All these things were up for grabs for guys like himself: The Takeover Generation” that Look devoted an entire issue to; the young entrepreneurs who were on the way up by the use of their wits and initiative and because of their courageous, dynamic actions.

He awoke an hour later. At his feet were the Times and Tribune with the Help-Wanted sections on top, which his mother must have put there during his last nap. He kicked them to the floor. “Who needs you?” he said, and shut his eyes and tried to get back to sleep.

Monday, Mr. Silverman left for work, calling Max, through his bedroom door, a hopeless mental case and wishing on him a multitude of the worst Yiddish curses. Mrs. Silverman, too distraught to say anything, went about her morning household chores. But around noon, with all the rooms dusted, carpets swept, scrubbed and mopped with pine disinfectant, she could no longer restrain herself. She barged into his room with a shriek, waking him.

“Get up, you bum, before I call the police.”

He pulled the covers over his head. His mouth felt parched and sour. He’d brush his teeth soon as she gave up and left the room.

“I said to get up, you dirty loafer, or I swear I’ll throw you out of the house myself. Don’t think I can’t, because I can. Max, do you hear me? Get up this instant.”

He turned over on his back, sneezed, said “Excuse me,” and reached to the night table for a cigarette and matchbook. He lit up, shut his eyes, and exhaled.

“All right,” she said, dusting the top of his dresser with her hand, “you’re not going to listen to ne, so I’ll try this. How long you going to make us suffer this way?”

“Until the recession ends.”

“What do you mean ‘the recession ends’? Talk sense.”

“Okay; I just don’t know.”

“You just don’t know what? I’m listening. I’m your mother and it’s natural I’m interested in what you have to say.”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know. But something wonderful will come from all this, something that’ll benefit all of us. You might not realize it yet, but you’ve got a great social reformer on your hands.”

“Does that mean you’re not leaving today?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Like I say: I’m not quite sure.”

“You mean never, then, don’t you?”

“I don’t know; it’s difficult to judge.”

“Well, just tell me so I’ll know better than to have my friends and family come over and see our disgrace. Next week? A month? A year? Just so I know, Max.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe what? Listen, you’re thirty, so act like thirty. For fifteen years you felt like working. I did too before I had you, and your father for his whole life. So why all of a sudden you feel you can’t get up and get work? Believe me, if that’s what you really think, then all I can say is you’re a freeloader and a bum.”

“I’m sorry, honestly I am.” He took another drag and stared at the ceiling fixture.

That smoke,” she said, waving her hands in front of her. “You’re blowing it in my face, you know?

“I wasn’t trying to. I was blowing it towards the door, but maybe a breeze caught it.”

“Breeze, nothing. Stop smoking so early and get up. Enough’s enough.”

He watched her stack his coins into neat columns on the dresser, then pick up the newspapers off the floor and fold them.

“Your father wanted to know where the papers were this morning. He hadn’t finished them. He paid for them, you know.”

“You probably put them there yourself when I was asleep.”

There?” she said, pointing down. “On the floor like a slob?”

“Anyway, tell him there’s nothing in them, so he didn’t miss anything.”

That’s for him to decide. For you, sure you say there’s nothing, but there’s plenty in them, plenty of good jobs.”

She put the newspapers on a chair and began carpet-sweeping the small round rug in the middle of the floor.

He felt hungry, but couldn’t leave his bed while his mother was still in the room. She’d yell that if he could get up for his stomach then he could just as easily get up to make money for his food. He decided to light another cigarette. There was almost no pleasure in the world like smoking, he thought. It always took his mind off anything unpleasant. He might even be able to drive her out of the room if he blew more smoke in her direction. He reached over to the night table and fingered blindly through the cigarette pack. It was empty. He propped himself up and opened the night table drawers, but there were no cigarettes there, either.

“You take my butts, Ma?”

“Why, did you ever see me smoke?” she said, continuing to sweep the rug. “You do, like there’s no tomorrow.”

“But I’m sure I had them there; a couple of packs.”

“News to me.”

It was useless trying to talk to her. Always the same line; never a decent, understanding word. He got out of bed and rummaged through the top dresser drawer, but all he found there were three mangled packs, an empty carton, and some matchbooks. Next he searched all the kitchen shelves, where his mother usually hid the cigarettes she’d stolen from him when she thought he was smoking too much. She never dumped them, though, since she hated throwing out anything that at one time cost money and could still be used.

He sat down at the kitchen table with a coffee and prune Danish in front of him. He figured he’d looked at every possible hiding place, even picking through the garbage can under the sink on the theory that she’d really lost control of herself today and thrown away the cigarettes she’d taken from him. But wasn’t he acting like a perfect idiot? Because how long had it been since his last smoke? Twenty minutes? So what the hell was he getting so worked up about? All he had to do was think the situation out, just as he had when something unusual came up at the store that Mr. Winston wasn’t around to handle, and the crisis would be over.