William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

— Well for God's sake don't tell that to Oscar or he'll, Harry please. I mean do you have to stare? abruptly drawing her knee up hugged against her breast, biting her lip with concentration on a cuticle — like that story I never understood about John Ruskin taking years to tell that poor girl why he'd never laid a hand on her because he was so disgusted by what he saw the first night they were married? bent closer without a look up, and an emphatic snap of the scissors — going for ten year old girls who were more like those pristine Greek statues he was besotted with, I mean my God didn't he have pubic hair too?

— Read Freud.

— I've read Freud Harry. I don't want to read Freud.

— His little essay about Medusa's head sprouting snakes instead of hairs?

— That's why I don't want to read Freud.

— Talking about your friend Ruskin, Christina. He was horrified when he saw her naked because she didn't have a penis.

— Well that's the most absurd, I mean you've got it backwards anyhow. It's the girl who collapses with penis envy when she sees that he has one.

— That's what his daughter Anna came up with because she didn't have one. What panicked Ruskin was castration anxiety, so his fertile imagination transformed her pubic hairs into a den of what he didn't see there in Freud's version of the terrifying aspects of female sex, left poor Ruskin getting old obsessed with visions of snakes right to the end.

— It sounds more like the DTs but I mean Oscar's terrified of them too, he saw one sunning itself on a flat rock out there by the shed when he was a little boy and he's still petrified every time he passes it.

— Why doesn't he just get rid of the rock.

— Well obviously he's terrified of what might be under it, I mean he says what frightened him was how fast the thing moved. He'd heard about them crawling around without legs and thought they'd go about as fast as an earthworm, it's that without legs that frightens him.

— Like a penis, better still the ornaments in those brothels in Pompeii where they had wings but I wouldn't worry about Oscar, I'm sure Lily's got a really flourishing…

— I'm sure she has Harry, and I'm sure you'd like, my God, you know I made the most awful gaffe out there talking about Japan? as she came down on the bed beside him — when we were in Hokkaido? her voice falling with the reminiscent search of her hand through the hair thick on his chest, — those two days we barely left our hotel room to eat and I told him you spent them in those endless conferences while I wandered around that museum with the…

— Where's the gaffe, he knew we had a trial run on that Japan trip before we…

— Not Oscar no! No I'm talking about Mister Basic, telling him about that museum and I suddenly found myself talking about the hairy Ainu and the more I tried to get away from it the worse it got. Stocky, dark, thick and hairy I mean can you imagine? as her hand descended, exploring deeper till it came to rest as on a failed promise — God knows what he was thinking, he said he'd heard about that conference in Japan but he didn't remember you ever talking about your hairy Ainu I don't know what I said, I'm sure I was blushing I almost burst out laughing but he was cool and so serious I couldn't even, I mean can you imagine? And where her voice broke off abruptly muffled against him her hand took up down there moving in silent reciprocation, gone unrewarded for its defeat to rise and surface again in her voice. — Did you sleep at all last night? coming up on an elbow and examining him that close, — your eyes are bloodshot and these terrible circles, the hours you put in they're just wringing you dry. Your tooth aches it's probably an abscess and you just put it off with these painkillers they're destroying you, can't you see? These absurd Coke II and Vatican II Pepsi Generation Episcopals this idiotic case is destroying you?

— It's almost over Christina, I'm…

— It's not almost over. Somebody will win, somebody will lose, somebody will appeal and it starts all over again doesn't it? isn't that what happens?

— And if it didn't? reared up on his own elbow sweeping the space around them with an arm, space magnified, reflected in the mirrored walls, expanded without bounds through sheets of glass to the floor all light and space where no shadow found refuge, all crystal geometry, — if it didn't, Christina? Could we live like this?

— Like this? when you don't sleep, you don't eat, you left the key in the front door when you came in last night you've never done that, all your obsessions with order and security you've never done that, and the night you forgot our address here? You actually forgot our address? Do they know what they're doing to you? even care? I mean I just hope they'll pay your bills at Payne Whitney when the time comes.

— Look, nobody's going to Payne Whitney. I went to the doctor didn't I? Heart fine, EKG fine, liver, cholesterol everything fine? Just tired, just a little overtired that's all, he…

— Well then find another doctor! Do you think the doctor they send you to is going to tell you they're destroying you? My God, will you look at you? her own eyes spilling down the length of him, resuming the gentle motion of her hand — I don't know what I'd do if you, if anything happened? her frown suddenly melting — to the hairy Ainu? throttling the surge that was filling her hand there, — wait. I'll be back. The mirrored door swung open on the bathroom, and from there — Don't you dare answer it!

Her voice echoed in grating counterfeit and then, in brisk rejoinder, — Christina? I called you some time ago and I would appreciate it if you could take a moment from your thrilling domestic pursuits to do me the courtesy of calling me back. It might be important. I might be having a seizure. The house might be burning down. I'd like to speak to Harry too. Please call me back.

— Oscar?

— What is it. Will you hang this up?

Had he got that card she'd sent him, she wanted to know, abruptly straining upright to dislodge his hand, — with a picture of Mickey Mouse in a cowboy suit? But he wasn't talking about Mickey Mouse, he loathed him in fact, said he was everything that was wrong with this country, a cheap smug little racist no, no he was talking about the last time he'd seen her, he'd asked her then hadn't he? whether she'd ever slept with this, this lawyer of hers, and she'd told him she hadn't? — It was true, she sulked. Was, was true, what about now? She'd said she'd never been to bed with him hadn't she? — It was true, Oscar.

— I don't believe it.

— I don't care if you believe it! You haven't even said you're glad to see me. It's too late to say so now anyway so don't bother. Are you? But he just wanted, demanded to know what happened down there, she'd said she had to fly down for that funeral and instead she'd driven down there to Disney World with him and — I just told you didn't I? You don't believe me anyway you just said so, that I even went to the funeral? where this Reverend Bobby Joe gets his hand on my knee because the dressmaker didn't have time to let down that hem right up under my skirt while Daddy and Mama are sitting right there listening to him tell how my brother's sitting up there on the right hand of Jesus where he's already set this dinner table with these presents from his enemies while we can all see Bobbie laying right there in the casket ten feet away? It was spooky.

— I believe it, that you went to the funeral I believe it, that's why I gave you money for the plane ticket when you…

— I knew you'd say that, about the money. That you'd remind me about the money because it humiliates me, that's why you do it isn't it. Isn't it? That's even why you think I came over to see you now isn't it, the first thing when I'm back, you haven't even asked how I am. I'm exhausted, can't you see that? how my hand quivers, look. Why do you keep it so cold in here, what do you care about the money anyway, with this seventy five million dollars you're getting at least couldn't you turn up the heat? But this was getting ridiculous he broke in again, what seventy five million dollars, that was just a number, it could have been a million, a hundred million and what made her think he was getting it anyhow? — It said it right in the newspaper didn't it? in that story he showed me about that war movie we saw and your father down there with that dog he's got trapped in that junkpile that bit somebody didn't you see it? with that same picture of him you've got in there in the room with all the books?