William Gaddis - J R

— Who in heaven’s name…

— Well I never! The oddest voice, it sounded like someone talking under a pillow. I thought he said he was a business friend of James, the most awful shrill sounds on the telephone line and then it sounded like a loud bell ringing and he simply hung up. I thought we asked Edward to have them take it out.

— No the stock Anne, the stock, we asked him to sell our telephone stock. Once that’s done I may take it out myself.

— I hope he can find someone who wants to buy it though I must say, I’d feel a little bit guilty. It’s like selling some poor soul shares in a plague, my ear is still ringing. Who was it that called here this morning.

— Some wretched woman who had a wrong number. She asked me to name the second president of the United States, when I told her Abraham Lincoln she congratulated me.

— Oh I think Lincoln came later, didn’t he? When Uncle Dick came back from Andersonville prison…

— I’m certainly quite aware of that, I simply said Lincoln for a little joke but it didn’t disturb her in the least. She told me I’d won a free dance lesson.

— It sounds like that woman who’s called for Edward with an accent like the grocery boy’s. Tell him Ann called about the strike, that’s all she says and Ann, if you please. Tell him to look in this week’s paper…

— It’s probably someone from the union, they called last week sounding quite put out.

— Well I’m not surprised, they’ve been put out at James since the Chicago theater strike after the war.

— I certainly never blamed James for that, and after he had that tooth replaced he never did play quite the same.

— Now that was just something Thomas said, Julia, getting back at James for his remark about all those years Thomas practiced clarinet, that the reed had loosened something in his head. James’ teeth never were right once Doctor Teakell weakened them.

— But Father thought he was an excellent dentist, what…

— I know he weakened my teeth Julia, it’s almost a wonder I still have them he was doing it all in exchange, you know, for the lessons Father gave his son. He was Father’s only student who appeared every week without two quarters, of course learning to play violin he couldn’t very well…

— He could never have learned to play the kazoo, I remember Father saying that boy couldn’t carry a tune in a bushel basket.

— Yes and Doctor Teakell put the blame all on Father, I have a lower here in back that’s bothered me on and off for years. Whenever I feel it everything stops, I can hear that scraping on the violin and I wonder what’s, what’s become of them all sometimes I hear so many things, I hear Father’s step out on the veranda when it gets dark and, like it is now and then I recall this house doesn’t even have a veranda… and from far the wail of a siren rose as though brought into being by that concentration, rose and was lost until, unsought and unheard, it passed again close toward the break of another day.

— Julia! Come quickly!

— I wouldn’t peer through the curtain that way, Anne. It puts me in mind of that awful woman who spread that gossip about Nellie and James, how the curtain would move when you passed her house and you knew she…

— But look! our hedge is gone!

— Why, it can’t be! It can’t be gone. I remember when Charlotte had it planted.

— See for yourself, it’s just not there you can look right out across the road on that field of dahlias and, that car going by! Just staring in at us as though, it’s like standing out in the yard stark naked we should call the police.

— What would we say. That they came at night and stole three hundred feet of privet hedge? so they’d have a place to park their cars for their bingo parties Wednesday nights?

— I’m afraid to think what James will say.

— James will say what he’s always said, that money buys privacy and that’s all it’s good for.

— I think he just meant the hedge kept noise out, it certainly didn’t stop those two dreadful women from the sisters of heaven knows what they called themselves. Marching right up here to the front door to say they’d heard the place was for sale.

— I don’t think they dreamed of paying a penny, the stout one said she thought it was vacant. She stood there with one foot in the door just gaping right in over my shoulder and said what a nice room this would make for their teenage dances, of all things.

— Yes that’s the way Father always put it, let them get one foot in the door…

— And the rooms upstairs could be used for games. They take such pride in being prolific, I imagine the sort of games they’d be. When I told her we had no notion of selling, she had the gall to go on and ask if we knew of any other old rundown houses they might fix up as a community project. I found it difficult even to be civil, it was all I could do to keep from asking how they’d like a troop of strangers prancing through their houses.

— I’m sure they’d like nothing better, Julia. From the pictures one sees of these pasteboard interiors they try to make every inch they own look as much like a public place as can be.

— Own! they don’t own the shirts to their backs. They make a down payment and stay just long enough to vote in every desecration they can think of before they move on to do the same thing elsewhere, to leave behind the mess they’ve made for the people here who’ve been paying taxes for fifty years. There’s hardly a tree left standing.

— I even miss the smell of cabbages there used to be this time of the year.

— I meant to order one yesterday, I thought we’d have that nice pork butt.

— It’s a shame that we can’t save it for Edward.

— We can’t simply save it forever Anne, I’ll just put it on. He might even appear, I think I heard a train just a minute ago… and clear the mile away the wind might bring its sound from the tracks when the wind lay right, blowing off the day and finally letting the darkness settle, and damp, for day to return like a rumor of day and lurk in the sky unable to break.

— Those acres of flowers, all of them black. Did you see what the frost did last night Julia?

— Well I wouldn’t peer out through the curtain that way, we’re naked enough as it is with the hedge gone.

— I still think it wouldn’t hurt to call the police.

— After the mess they left things in right back here in James’ studio? that night Stella’s what’s his name, Stella’s husband went in and turned everything upside down for a scrap of paper he never found? Edward said things were flung every which way.

— Yes I meant to tell you, he called again.

— Edward?

— No that, Stella’s husband, he sounded more confused than ever and finally put his little friend Mister Cohen on to say he’d heard nothing yet from Mister Lemp.

— I scarcely know what he expects to hear, he’s the one who’s making the difficulties with his prying questions about our shares, and all that talk about going public. Is that what they tried to start again?

— Selling some of Thomas’ shares yes, just selling them to total strangers. I’m sure Thomas is turning in his grave right now.

— Well I shouldn’t blame him a bit if he were, when that’s all they’d been waiting for. Simply sitting there waiting for him to die so they could sell it right out from under us, to people we wouldn’t even know in the street.

— I’m sure they’d know one another Julia. You never saw them in the trenches Father used to say, just let them have one foot in the door and…

— That name was changed from Engels somewhere along the way.

— Julia you don’t think, those stock powers we signed and mailed back to these Crawley and Bro people Edward found? that they might use them to sell our shares and James’? They were blank after all, and there were so many…