Steven Millhauser - Edwin Mullhouse - The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954

IN THE SUMMER OF 1953 I rode Edwin to Soundview Beach. It was a brilliant day. The fields of tall grass stretching into the distance seemed done in green watercolor that melted into a watercolor sky. Two bags of lunch bounced on top of a maroon blanket in the wire basket in front, while Edwin bounced on top of two white towels on the red metal seat in back. From time to time he produced an allergic snuffle. “Let’s turn around,” he said, and nearly threw me off balance with a sneeze. He was still in a difficult mood. Nearly a month had passed since our visit to the White Beach amusement park, and I still had not revealed to him my important secret. Despite my relentless questioning I had been able to elicit from him nothing about his book except that he had reached some mysterious “point.” I had vowed silently, not for the first time, to reveal my plan to him as soon as he should show me his masterpiece. Meanwhile it was all I could do not to jot down my observations in full view of their unknowing subject.

I parked at a gray wooden stand for bicycles and walked with Edwin across the street onto the bright crest of sand. His feet were protected by a pair of high black-and-white sneakers that came almost to the tops of his red-and-blue-striped socks. Over his old bathing suit he wore dark blue dungarees with light blue rolled-up cuffs, and over his shirt he wore a dark brown summer jacket, zipped up to his chin. On his nose sat a pair of dusty eyeglasses with colorless frames. In one hand he held a sopping handkerchief. “Sun,” he muttered, squinting and scowling and sweating and suffering but stubbornly, stubbornly refusing to wear clip-on sunglasses, which he said made his eyeglasses press into his nose, or to remove his hot jacket, which he insisted was necessary for the prevention of colds, since one could never distinguish allergic sneezes from cold-sneezes. “Oh, think of the water,” I suggested, sweeping out an arm as the first wave rose to greet us. Edwin blew his nose. The sloping beach was aglow with gay blankets, bright sand, and polished people. Here and there a tilted beach umbrella cast a gibbous shadow, while the aluminum legs of partly shaded lawn-chairs flashed in the sun; and quite by chance, at the crowded heart of the beach, a number of blankets formed three neat rows, reminding me of Edwin’s old paintbox with its rectangles of color set among white tin. At Edwin’s insistence we walked to a high spot far from the crowded section, away from the water. He held his handkerchief firmly in one hand and one corner of the blanket weakly in the other while I did most of the work. After placing the lunchbags and towels on the corners of the blanket I kicked off my sneakers, pulled off my shirt and shorts, and stood in my bathing suit waiting for Edwin, who was still taking off his socks. “You go,” he said. “I’ll wait here.” He placed his socks neatly beside a towel. Barefooted, but still wearing his dark brown jacket and his dungarees, he lay down on his stomach in the blazing sun, and reaching into one of the lunchbags, extracting a book in a violet-red binding, and opening up to a flat Hershey bar wrapper that served as a bookmark, stubbornly, stubbornly, stubbornly he began to read, while lines of sweat formed at the edges of his hair and allergic tears welled in his itching eyes.

TOWARD THE END OF SEPTEMBER, in the second grade, a strange change came over Edwin. Day after day from the cruel distance of Table 1 (Antonio, Bopko, Cartwright, Cassidy, DeAngelo, Dorn) I watched Edwin idling at the remote island of Table 5 (Litwinski, Mullhouse, Pluvcik, Riccio, Robbins, Robins). Day after day I watched his gaze rise from the placid pages of Bobby and Betsy to the clock or the flag or the picture of George Washington or the dark green plants in their red plastic flowerpots on the row of windowsills over the radiators; and leaning his chin on his palm he would stare unseeing, minutes at a time. He stumbled over sentences in the advanced reading group; his lists of spelling-words on blue-lined yellow paper floated dreamily above the lines; and twice during snack period he wound his wet straw absently round and round his finger and had to drink the rest of the milk out of the wax carton, making a white spot on his nose from the milky flap. Once when he was playing shortstop during a game of kickball, bases loaded and two out, a tall easy fly came to him; he moved under it, looking up in the blue sky at the big black spinning rubber ball with its red rubber patch; the outfield was already trotting in, the kicker was rounding first half-heartedly, a few members of the other side had already stepped out of line and begun to head for the outfield; but as the ball plunged toward Edwin it was suddenly clear that something had gone wrong, he was standing there with his hands at his sides, gazing up at the sky and ball as if he wondered what they were doing up there, until suddenly the ball smacked at his toes, startling him into pained alertness, bouncing high; and filled with shame and anguish he had to stand with his arms held out to catch it on the bounce as the second girl touched home and a loud cheer went up from the other side.

Even his manner of walking home betrayed the great change working in him. No longer did he leap up to snatch leaves from low-hanging branches or walk carefully to avoid the cracks in the sidewalk. Instead he walked along listlessly, holding loosely in one hand his spelling book stuffed with pieces of blue-lined yellow paper and drawing the fingers of the other hand bumpily along the pickets of a fence. “Anything wrong?” I would say, as casually as possible. “What?” he would answer. “Oh no, nothing”; and sometimes he would sigh. I tried to fascinate his attention with roadside treasures (the tiny white plastic wheels and axle of a miniature car or truck, a praying mantis sitting on the curb, an old soggy firecracker whose faded colored stripes were run together, half a pingpong ball containing rainwater) but he took no notice of anything, and even more lofty sights, like a red kite tangled in telephone wires with its white tail flapping, or a man standing at the top of a telephone pole, left him unmoved.

Home from school, I would change into my playclothes and hurry over to Edwin’s as usual, but when I entered his room I would find him still unchanged, lying on his stomach on the bed beside the double window with his chin on the spread and one hand dangling over the side, or lying on his side with his back to the windows, his head supported on one hand and his other hand tucked between his knees. “Edwin,” I would say, “aren’t you feeling well?”—and forcing his eyes to focus on me he would say sadly: “I’m okay.” Then his eyes would go out of focus and he stared through me as if I were a piece of cellophane. He refused to go outside and play, as if the effort of lugging the burden of his body downstairs were more than his frail spirit could bear, though when I say “refused” I mean only that his lids closed slowly and with terrible finality at my suggestion. He seemed vaguely willing, however, to play inside. With melancholy immobility he listened unhearing as I slid out the green folding table from behind the chest of drawers. With infinite sadness he watched unseeing as I stood on the table’s stomach and proceeded to pull up its four white legs. With rigorous remoteness he brooded unthinking as I set up the marbles in two opposite triangles of the Chinese-checkers board and pushed the table against his bed. With weary resignation, with bleary inattention, with a kind of passion of lassitude and a fierce energy of indifference he proceeded to beat me soundly, zigzagging slowly and ever more slowly in one grand weary melancholy move all the way across the board to the very bottom of my triangle with one pale marble.