William Gaddis - J R

— Yes Marian… Paused stooped there in the doorway he drank deliberately. — He was going to get laid.

— That’s pretty.

— You asked me. She moved in with him down the hall there at Ninety-sixth Street a couple of months ago, one of these kids with bare feet and dirty hair but she can do more for him in bed than Gibbs and I can over a bottle. That’s why he didn’t want me to go with him, best sublimation there is for blowing out his brains.

— Pretty.

— How the hell would you know… he stood looking into his glass for a moment before he emptied it and reached for the bottle.

— Papa?

With the tug at his jacket he appeared to shrug. — I’m coming David.

— Papa has Mister Schramm only got one eye left now?

— We hope the doctors can make Mister Schramm’s eye better David but if…

— But he could still live if he only has one can’t he, because is that why you have two when you start and then if…

— That’s enough David, get your book and maybe Papa will read to you before bed.

— But you said he’d play a game when Mister Schramm went.

— I played four games with you this afternoon David and…

— But when you play I always win, I want Papa to play.

— I’ll play with you David. Go get it ready.

— I did.

— Did you pick up all those shoes in the hall?

— No.

— Go put them away and I’ll be in in a minute. Marian?

— When do you want dinner, she said turned again to the window, the breadth of her shoulders gone in the rise of her weight to her arms spread embracing the sink from end to end.

— I’m not hungry. He raised his glass, and from a plate there lined with a ketchup spatter of beans selected as from an hors d’oeuvres tray hot dog in wrinkled remnant. — David finished his supper? He paused, found another. — That God damned Davidoff handed me an Oriental for lunch whose doctor has him on rare beef, tells me to take him out and tie one on, Christ. I thought I could pick up something on the expense sheet until I saw our bill at The Palm.

— If you want bread with dinner get some when you go down.

— Cigarettes, milk, bread. Butter?

— I don’t know, you’ll have to look.

— Marian I, why don’t you ever make lists? And when you go shopping, milk, you know we’ll need milk… He had the refrigerator open pushing things aside, looking, — and why are you keeping this gravy left from the veal, we…

— Well just look at it! She’d turned behind him for the ketchup spattered plate. — How much food can I stock in that refrigerator? How can I make lists and shop a week ahead with a refrigerator that size?

— All right, with the one in the new house you can shop for a month, he went on stooped, pushing things aside, looking, — don’t see any butter.

— Get some when you go down then, she said scraping clots of bean over the scotch bottle upended in the trash.

— I didn’t know there was more asparagus at dinner last night, I would have… what’s this, lamb chops?

— I got them for dinner.

— Three ninety-six for three lamb chops?

— I can only eat one, I thought…

— But three ninety-six, what would…

— I thought they looked good, I was hungry when I went shopping and…

— If you go shopping when you’re hungry you always spend…

— Well what should I do! Come up for rare beef at The Palm? instead of sharing David’s chicken noodle soup and finishing his peanut butter sandwich?

— All right! Would you like to have been there today like I was? Making stupid conversation with a grinning Chinese who’s chewing up slices of his nine dollar steak and blowing them out on his plate? tells me his doctor says he can’t digest the meat but he needs its juices so he patiently chews the whole God damned thing bite by bite and blows every one of them out, now what the hell kind of a lunch do you think that was, the whole place staring at us and the waiter coming over to ask if anything is unsatisfactory. Do you think I wouldn’t rather be right here? in my workroom with noodle soup and a peanut butter sandwich trying to clear up the second act of that play?

— David’s waiting for you, she said streaming away the ketchup smears under hot water gazing down through the window. — How early will you leave in the morning.

— On a trip I may never take? if you don’t go CIPAP you might as well stay home, paying a grown man a good salary to watch a Chinaman blow food across the room and fly three thousand miles to spoon feed a speech to another grown man so he won’t say Plato rhymes with tomato?

She put down the plate, motionless. — If you do go will you leave me some cash?

He put down his glass. — Forty? he dug deep in a pocket and opened a roll of bills behind her, twenty upon twenty, tens, tens, — I’ll only be gone a few days.

— Those suits you have at the cleaners will be more than ten, I don’t have…

— Well just ask, he said, pulling another ten. — Here.

— Just put it down, she said without turning. — I always have to ask.

And he had the ice tray again, scooping cubes into his glass and staring at them there, swirling them around and simply staring at them. — Davidoff had a woman in this morning, a gal he calls her, bringing her in to help jazz up our PR operation as project director with her topflight track record in curriculum management, as he calls it. Then he got me aside and… He gazed at the swirling cubes a moment longer and then reached for the bottle, — he asked me how I’d like working for a woman. And I told him.

She turned with her own emptied glass for the ice tray, and took the bottle where he put it down. — Why don’t you just quit then, instead of, instead of all this, your book’s being published again and when you get this award…

— And how long could we live on that? Just David’s nursery school, and the moving, the house up there, splitting a five percent royalty with those stupid God damned, that won’t even pay for David’s nursery school and that award, it wouldn’t even be just giving up the salary, these companies are so damned paternalistic with their deferred stock options retirement plans insurance medical benefits they finally have you tied hand and foot, just stop and remember when David was born and we could hardly…

— You know what I stop and remember Tom? She’d turned abruptly, resting elbows back on the sink’s edge, facing him. — I remember Doctor Brill telling us David needed his operation for double hernia when you first went to work there and you put it off, and put it off. There was that baby and we didn’t know what was going to happen but you kept putting it off till your company medical benefits took effect, so you wouldn’t have to…

— Marian you… you have a real instinct don’t you Marian, a real God damn instinct…

— And you didn’t want him. Did you, you didn’t want him in the first place.

— What, Marian what the hell do you think you’re saying?

— David. You didn’t want him in the first place.

— Marian you, you’ve said some rotten things but you, that’s the rottenest thing you could say isn’t it, so completely… dishonest and rotten.

— Well it’s…

— I wanted to wait to have children, didn’t I, I wanted to wait till we got ori our feet, that wasn’t David I didn’t want, there was no David and if you ever dare to, you know God damn well that when he was born when he was David you know God damn well he’s everything I… he stopped and got breath. — You’ve got a real instinct for the jugular haven’t you Marian.

— Well it’s true she said, elbows back on the sink’s edge, facing him.

— You’re like a, sometimes you’re like an illness Marian, you’re like a God damned long illness I picked up somewhere…