Robert Coover - Public Burning

And so it had been there in Times Square: the lights had been snuffed all right, the marquees and billboards now as dead as the old city trolleys, but though it had been like peering through pea soup, I could nevertheless make out what was happening, even if nobody else could. It was awesome to look at, of course — flesh, as far as you could see, engaged in every grab-assing obscenity imaginable, a frantic all-community grope that my own privates did not entirely escape — but the dimensions had taken the excitement out of it. In fact, if anything, it had been spooky, unnerving: all that desperate weakness, that frenzied vulnerability, everybody screaming and reaching out and plunging haplessly away in one another — it was like something out of Fantasia or The Book of Revelation . I’d bobbed along on the flood, longing for the old bell tower back home, some place of refuge where I could lock myself away, think things over, work out the parameters of this new situation, get my pants back up. Maybe, I’d thought, this is what hell will be like for me: endless self-exposure. This was a Self that was not in my mother’s lexicon. It was the toughest part about being a politician, the one thing I personally hated the most. I’m no shrinking violet, I’m not unduly shy or modest, but I’m a private man and always have been. Formal. When I have sex I like to do it between the sheets in a dark room. When I take a shit I lock the door. My chest is hairy but I don’t show it off. I don’t even like to eat in public and just talking about one’s personal life embarrasses me. And now all this today — Christ, I believed in touching the pulse of the nation, but this was going too fucking far! It was probably a good thing I was all washed up.

I’d beached finally in the mouth of a whale, one of Disney’s exhibits evidently. A dismal cavernous maw, dark and foreboding, but under the circumstances I’d found it inviting. I’d dragged myself inside, down the throat, away from the murky insanity of the mainstream out in the Square, clutching my poor bruised nuts and glad of any sanctuary. This has been worse than Bougainville, I’d thought. I’d wished Pat were with me and I’d wondered if I should go looking for her once I’d got my pants on — but then I’d realized I’d already seen her out there, part of her anyway (or was that a dream I’d had? it was all getting mixed up in my mind), it was really my mother I’d wished were with me. Jesus, I’d sighed, crawling along, drawn toward the belly by a distant flickering light, this has been the longest day of my life!

What had I expected to find inside the Whale? I’d seen the film with my daughters, and so had anticipated the craggy cathedral-like walls, the tremulous shadows cast by a lonely lantern, eerie digestive noises. Past that? A little benevolent magic maybe? a touch of the Mission Inn, Gepetto with a stiff drink and fried fish? Probably just a little peace and quiet where, covered in darkness, I could draw myself together, stop gesturing, jerking about, come to rest. What I certainly had not expected was to find my grandmother Almira Burdg Milhous sitting there in her rocking chair, gazing sternly down upon me over her rimless spectacles.

“Pull yourself together, Richard,” she’d said gravely. “Seek the soul’s communion with the Eternal Mind!”

“Grandmother!” I’d gasped, unable to believe my eyes. “My God, what are you doing here?”

“No swearing, Richard. And put your trousers on.”

She’d sat there in her creaky old chair, gently rocking, her hair rolled up in a tight little bun on her head, her delicate white throat ringed round by a small lace collar, watching me with her sad deepset eyes, a melancholic smile on her lips, as I struggled with my pants, tearing them off, unknotting them, tugging them back on again. “I–I’m sorry, Grandmother!” For everything that had been happening out there, I’d meant, my own indecency included — just seeing her there, quietly juxtaposed against all that madness, had thrown it all into a new perspective: what must she think of us? I’d lost buttons and belt and the zipper didn’t work: I’d had to hold my pants up with my hands.

“Where are your shoes, Richard?”

“I…uh, must have lost them! I—” But I’d reached the point where I had exhausted all my emotional reserve. Tears had rushed into my eyes, and I’d pitched forward into her lap. I’d wanted to hide myself there forever. “Good old Grandmother!” I’d wept.

“Stand up, Richard,” she’d commanded. “Remember the Four Selfs!”

“But why has this happened to me, Grandmother?” I’d wailed. “I’ve always been a good man!”

“Not always,” she’d replied matter-of-factly. “What about that time your father caught you swimming in the ditch?”

“The…the others dared me!”

“And you used to smoke cornsilks, steal grapes and watermelons, don’t tell me you didn’t, and you were mean to your brother Donny!”

“He was a smart aleck, he asked for it!” Why was she challenging me like this?

“You were jealous of poor Harold and didn’t really care when he died.”

“I did!” I’d protested, drawing back, and had shed some more tears just to prove it. “And I was really sorry when Arthur died!”

The tears were real now, but she’d pressed on mercilessly: “Why didn’t you ever have any friends? Why did you go off by yourself at our picnics and not join in the fun? What’s the matter with you, Richard? Why have you always been so moody and proud and selfish and standoffish?”

“I had friends! They voted for me! But in politics—”

“Politics! Yes, I heard about that, too, Richard. All those naughty tricks you played on poor Jerry Voorhis and Mrs. Douglas and that nice Mr. Warren—”

“Nice, my foot! The world is rough, Grandmother, and when they hit you, you have to hit them back, and the best way to do that is to hit them before they hit you! I don’t apologize for that — I’m a political animal, Grandmother, and—”

“Yes, and you smell like one, too,” she’d sniffed. “You’ve lost your Quaker spirit, Richard.”

“Only on domestic issues, Grandmother! I’m still a Quaker on foreign issues!”

“Drinking, smoking, swearing, cheating, telling untruths and tricking people — tsk tsk! You never talk about God or Jesus any more, Richard — and you play cards and take money from people—”

“Not for myself!” I’d insisted. “I don’t take anything for myself!”

“And all those paragraphs about you in the college yearbooks — you wrote them yourself!”

“Not — not my senior year, I didn’t, Grandmother!”

“‘Great things are expected…’ My my! You should be ashamed, Richard!”

“Well, you…you have to be conceited in this business…”

“And what did you do up in that bell tower all by yourself? You know, Richard, your mother and father used to wonder if perhaps you weren’t a bit disturbed. You were a very strange boy. I used to defend you, just as I defended all the boys, but…”

“I… I like to go my own way, Grandmother, keep my own counsel. That’s the way I am, and one thing I always have to be—”

“You used to peck up the hired girls’ skirts. You even tried to peek up my skirts!”

“I…did—?!”

“And you harbored wicked thoughts about little Ola and Marjorie and those burlesque dancers you used to go see with your cousin—”

“That was a long time ago, Grandmother, before I was married. I—”

“Oh yes? What about that secretary at the OPA, that nurse out in the Pacific Ocean—”

“I… I was lonely—”

“And this afternoon? Were you lonely this afternoon?”