William Vollmann - The Royal Family

Should I put the chocolate sauce in the microwave? said Amanda.

Yes, please, said Mrs. Singer. A minute and forty-five seconds should be about right. Celia, would you tell my husband that he may now open the champagne? And see if John needs anything. I’m very fond of John.

Celia blushed.

How’s John’s mother? I understand she’s very ill now.

Yes, she is. The doctor said to be prepared for the worst.

Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll have to be sure to say something to John.

You know what, Iris? said Celia. I think it might upset John to talk about it. He’s very close to his mother.

Everybody knows that, honey, Mrs. Rapp butted in. I don’t know anything, and even I know that.

Celia went into the dining room, only to find that Mr. Singer had already opened the champagne.

I never break a promise, Brady was saying to John. Why, thirty-one years ago today I was dead drunk and I promised the barkeep I’d go file for a small business license. Well, the next day when I told him I’d done it, he couldn’t believe it. But I always keep a promise, see. And by the same token, if you ever lie to me, even once, then it’s all over except the crying.

(That man is so colorful, Mrs. Rapp said.)

John? said Celia.

Her companion looked up irritably.

Do you want a big piece of cake or a small piece?

Oh, forget it, said John. I’m trying to keep my weight down.

Iris made it, Celia said in a gently monitory tone. You should really have a little bit.

Oh, balls to that, laughed Mr. Singer. If you don’t want it, don’t eat it.

I’ll take a big piece then, said John.

And what about Feminine Circus stock? Mr. Singer was saying like some blank old slot machine player.

Not a high-yield investment, said John. It really doesn’t suit my temperament.

I love you, kid! laughed Brady, descending into John’s face like a dog waddling with its nose down, sniffing for rotten meat. — You’ll stand up to anybody! You’ll even bite the hand that feeds you. I just got a few more small investors who—

The trouble with small investors is that they’re finicky, John said coolly. They’ll just say screw you and pull out in an instant.

Isn’t that a mixed metaphor, John? said Mr. Singer. Do you pull out when you’re making love with Celia over there, or do you finish the job?

You’re talking about an oxymoron, not a mixed metaphor, said John in his glory.

Celia made a face and went back to the kitchen.

Everything’s fine, she reported. The champagne’s already opened.

Oh, who cares about them? said Mrs. Rapp. Those men just sit there and talk. If it wasn’t for us, they’d starve to death.

But what precisely is it all about? said Mrs. Rapp.

Entertainment, ma’am, said Brady.

And do you — I mean, do they…?

It’s the wild west in there, ma’am. It’s every man for himself. And you know what? They seem to like it.

Believing that the conversation was in no danger of becoming genuine, that Mrs. Rapp did not really desire to know, nor Brady to tell, what his establishment actually did, John had convulsed his numb face into an expression of almost malignant boredom, when Mrs. Rapp leaned forward and remarked: They say it’s a wicked thing you’re doing.

Linda! cried her husband in dismay.

The look of amiability upon Brady’s face coarsened, and he said: Ma’am, business is business. I’m not here to justify myself. In fact, ma’am, if I may be so crass, I bought you this fine supper which you and Iris prepared. I’m a client; I’m keeping you in pocket change, and I don’t ask what legal tricks young John here pulled or whether you yank your cleaning lady’s hair whenever she misses a cobweb. Ma’am, I run a whorehouse franchise, which according to others’ views may or may not be wicked, but at least I’m no hypocrite. At least I—

That’s enough, Mr. Rapp interrupted, slamming his fork down on his plate. — Linda, you were indiscreet, and, Jonas, you’re getting rude. Isn’t it too bad that we—

Too bad? laughed Brady. What do I care about too bad now the ink is dry? I’ll tell you something. Out of all you people, you know the only one I respect? The only one of you I care a rat’s ass about is your boy John here. He’s the only one of you who’s got the guts to come out and say that everyone’s shit stinks.

John burst out laughing. And Celia in the kitchen doorway, simultaneously horrified and amused, began to flush almost pleasurably. As much as she loathed Brady, she could not but be proud that he had singled out John above all others.

Were this a Japanese novel, our plot would be enriched by all kinds of family complications: How can lovelorn Younger Sister persuade Eldest Brother-in-Law to endorse her marriage? What to do about Middle Sister, who should have married first? And if this were an eastern European novel from the Cold War era, the searchlight of political tyranny would unfailingly cast each character into superhuman relief, so that Vyshpensky-Buda’s fling with Olga might be elevated into the noblest of struggles. Set in Antarctica, this novel might conceivably scrape by without any human characters whatsoever, and I could pad out chapter after chapter with descriptions of the most delicious icebergs. But here in California we must make do with human beings, who comprise as strange a breed as the mumbling cab drivers of Philadelphia. Moreover, those human beings form, deform and dissolve their attachments more or less unmediated by those family and political difficulties which make any success all the more fulfilling: eating pome-grantes might not be half so pleasant, if it weren’t so much trouble to pick out the seeds. For just this reason, there were times when Celia could not refrain from wishing that some unknown force, not necessarily God, would intervene to join her to John, or to completely sunder them. She was now thirty-two years old; she had been John’s girlfriend, first illicitly, then licitly, ever since she was twenty-nine, and she thought it hardly too much to expect that the uncertainty be concluded by now. Was John simply not serious about her, or did he hold her in active contempt, or did Celia herself fail to muster a certain enthusiasm? She felt as if she were going through mummified forms, helplessly, obtusely. She tried to blame her weariness on the bladder infection which had been annoying her for ten days now. Like a sick, bored child at home with a box of crayons, lying in bed making colorfully wasteful scrawls, Celia composed her latest list:

order coffee set from Damask

birthday present for Donald

create job description notebook

make John commit on birth control

give John ultimatum: weekend getaway or not?

draft memo to Grace

thank you to Iris

process fax from Heidi

change return address for Heidi in database

She had chosen John originally because she believed she could get nobody else. An affair with a married man, resentful and apprehensive though that left her, at least had the virtue of aiming low enough to avoid certain sorts of disappointment. How could a man who was never there, who planned to have children with another woman, and who most likely would get old with that other woman, then die in her arms, shatter Celia’s life? How could she trust him in the first place? He could always break off the affair, to be sure, and indeed there was so high a probability of this happening that Celia refused to let herself stand more than an inch or two in his shadow. He could lie to her, and get or even keep a second mistress. He could be cruel, and had been. Oh, there were so many nasty things that John could do! But he was nothing to her except a generic male medicine for female loneliness. He’d given Irene a diamond, and he gave Celia the glass bauble of temporary companionship. At least she need not feel that she owed him very much.