Stanley Elkin - Searches & Seizures

“Who you kidding? If it ain’t one thing it’s another.”

The speaker sighed. “They’re we’re agreed,” he said.

“Did I tell you,” someone said, “they want me to go into the hospital for tests?”

There was no talk of their children or grandchildren. As if they did not exist. Where were the photographs that should have been passed around? The color snaps, indistinguishable one from another, of four- and five-year-olds, scowling on lounges in pine-paneled dens, their pale skins bluely cosmetized by inexpert photography? Why did no one speak of these children? Why didn’t they speak of their sons and daughters, those scattered accountants and lawyers and professors and journalists? Why did they deny them? (He’d met Audrey of Audrey-Art Underwear, a woman now, old as himself. They existed.) Where was their famous doting, that far-fetched fanclub love? And who talked of recipes, who spoke up for food? Who limned soup and catalogued vegetables? Who advised on meats, the secret special places of the beasts where the sweetness lingered and the juices splashed? Where was one who would describe dessert, who would convey custard and teach sponge cake and the special creams, who dealt in celery as if it were currency? (And where, for that matter, did Wall Street figure, over-the-counter, the American Exchange?) How was business? But most of all, what about the children? Who’d blacklisted them? Why? We exist.

“ Whose rule, ” Preminger spoke up, “ whose rule was it that there are no guests? Who made that up? ” He spoke louder than he’d intended, for he heard his question make a hole in their conversation, his voice overriding theirs like a bulletin. “ Who made that rule? Who agreed to such an arrangement? I demand an answer! ” he shouted. “ Who decided that Sunday rules shall apply all week long? Who banned the children? Who decreed that flesh and blood shall be snubbed? Who’s responsible? ”

“That’s just management policy, son,” a man said quietly. “It makes good sense when you consider that this one pool has to service all three buildings.”

“ Crap, ” Preminger yelled back. “ Until the last day or so it’s been practically empty. Why would you agree to such a disgraceful idea? Unless you really wanted it that way. Am I right? ”

“Easy, there, fella.”

“ My father would never have agreed to the setup. And he’d have had pictures of us. He’d have passed ’em around. He’d tell you about my days on the circuit. ”

“That’s right,” Ed Eisner said, “he was very proud of you.”

“ Shit, ” Preminger shouted, “ he never said a word. Like the rest of you. You should see the place. A swinger. He had hair like a pop star. ”

“Come on,” someone said, “Why don’t you take it easy? Are you feeling okay? You want a glass of water?”

“I feel terrible,” Preminger said quietly. He was very calm now. His outburst had shocked him, and he was deeply embarrassed. “Look,” he said gently, “I am deeply embarrassed.” He stood up. “I wish you’d try, if not to forget, then at least to forgive my outburst. If you no longer wish me to serve as your lifeguard I understand and will, of course, step down. Indeed, in the light of my exhibition just now I seriously question my capacity to supervise this pool. Indeed, rather than charge you for imposing Sunday rules I suppose I ought to thank you. It was probably one of the more fortunate aspects of my position that the rule was imposed. I am, as some of you may know, a terribly unhappy man. I’m thirty-seven, ripe for conventional, even classical, introspection, a cliché of a man. What I would have you understand, however, is that if my case seems overwhelmingly typical, it is nevertheless unrelentingly true. Like all clichés. Perhaps a lot of what’s troubling me has something to do with my virginity. It may seem odd that someone my age should be a virgin. I didn’t want to be one, don’t want to be one. I assure you I have all the normal drives. Yet somehow it never really fell my way, just never came up. I don’t even think about it now.

“By moving here, I had thought to change my life, to alter its conditions by manipulating its geography, but I see now that this has little to do with it. As I overheard many of you saying yourselves. One’s mental health is like one’s height. Trauma isn’t in it. You’re happy or you’re not. And of course the details of my existence have done little to promote even the aura of tranquility. Though I’ve had my opportunities. I was, for example, a minor figure on the lecture circuit at one time, but my career was manufactured, almost an accident. I was trading on an extremely limited inventory. The fault was largely mine, though not exclusively. Economic factors and the general climate of taste probably contributed at least a little to my undoing, as well as the political circumstances of our serious times. I have no clear ability to judge. Nevertheless I once had a small reputation. Now of course my name is faded. I’m very lonely, and not in the best of health. A few years ago I suffered a heart attack. The doctors all assured me that an attack that comes so prematurely can be a kind of blessing in disguise, for it warns its victims that something is radically wrong with his life. Shit, I knew that.

“Now I’m having a nervous breakdown. It’s as real as sore throat. A nervous breakdown. Though you know, it’s very odd, I can truthfully say that I feel no different than I did before. I’m as unhappy as I was before, but no unhappier. Nor have I misrepresented myself in any way. Except, of course, for that wild talk about my father a few moments ago. These are all things I would tell you privately did we but know each other better. If it weren’t for my nervous breakdown I wouldn’t be talking to you like this. So I guess the essence of a nervous breakdown is that it makes you go public, like floating an issue of stock.

“Now you must excuse me. Stay well. If you haven’t got your health, what have you got?…Your good name?”

He went upstairs, politely smiling his refusal to those who tried to help him.

Evelyn Riker’s second letter was waiting for him, slipped under the door. He opened it calmly, astonished that madness was so rational. He could read. He remembered everything. He could turn the key in the lock, change his things, hang them up. He could empty his bladder. Remember to lift the seat, flush the toilet. How was he mad, then? In what did it subsist? Unhappiness. Unhappiness was his only trauma, his single symptom. Misery as fixed and settled as his overbite, as incapable of being altered as of making parallel lines meet in a painting by staring at them. He was weeping. Even as he read Evelyn’s letter — the hope it gave him suffusing him like an injection — he could not stop crying.

Dear Marshall,

It was sweet of you to answer, but my goodness, a wire! It must have cost you a fortune. Or are you one of those big spenders for whom money is just a convenience, there to enjoy when you have it but not much missed when it’s gone? I rather wish my husband had been more like that. To tell you the truth, money was one of the biggest bones of contention that arose between us. I don’t mean that Jerry was stingy or I profligate. Indeed, if anything he was more than generous. It’s just that having made a big cash outlay — the condominium, for example — he could never stop worrying about where he would get the wherewithal to justify his expenditures. He was the only man I’ve ever known who worried about what inflation would do to his pension when he had to retire in twenty years! Naturally enough, this quality in him led to bickering between us. I know he didn’t mean them, but sometimes the man would say awful things to me, dangerous things for a man to say to a woman, or for a man to say to anyone, for that matter.