Stanley Elkin - Searches & Seizures

Yes. He could follow. The words made sense. Then how was he mad?

One of the biggest blow-ups of all was after he bought a new car one time, a car that was far too big for us, incidentally, and which as a matter of fact I had counseled him against purchasing. I took it out one day, and while I was shopping someone skinned our rear fender and put a nasty dent and scratch in it, about a half inch deep and as long as your arm. A brand new expensive car. Can you imagine how this would make you feel?

Yes, he could. Then how was he mad?

When I discovered this after I came back out to the parking lot I naturally hoped that the driver might have left a card with his or her name and telephone number on it. If it had been me — after all, one is insured for this sort of thing — I would certainly have done so. I looked everywhere, but there was nothing. You can’t imagine how sorry I was that there were retractable windshield wipers on this particular model, for otherwise the culprit might have left a message under the wiper blades. Of course I had shut the windows and locked the doors when I went in to do my shopping, so he couldn’t have left it on the seat even if he had wanted to. To make a long story short, I looked everywhere, in the grillwork, even in the gas cap, the crease where the trunk joins the body — everywhere one could conceivably leave a notice. I know what you’re thinking, that I was naive to expect someone to offer information against himself, but that’s the way I am, willing to think the best of others till I’m proved wrong. Well, I was certainly proved wrong that time.

At any rate, when I told Jerry what had happened he didn’t blow up at me. He was very understanding about the accident and said that such a thing could have happened to anyone. Where the fight started was when I suggested we put in an insurance claim anyway. We had fifty dollar deductible and a scratch like that would cost a lot more to repair. They probably would have had to put on a whole new fender. It wasn’t even the fifty dollars we’d have had to lay out that bothered Jerry. We have a vandalism clause in our policy, and I think the insurance adjuster would have gone along with the idea the gash may have been inflicted by vandals, but Jerry was afraid that after paying the claim they would drop us. He said it was just this sort of nickel and diming that upset insurance people the most. And he stood pat. I couldn’t budge him. I thought it was ridiculous to drive around in a beautiful new car with an imperfection like that, and I told him so, but all he was worried about was that the insurance company would abandon us and that he’d have to pay a higher premium to get reinsured with a high risk company. We had words — hard, bitter words — but Jerry was stubborn. After that, cuts and dents grew on the car like a disease — and I wasn’t the one who put them there — but Jerry would never put in a single claim. I saw that it was a neurotic behavior pattern and — what can I tell you? — the marriage went to pieces. Ultimately he left me. That’s when I became friendly with your father.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to burden you with all this detail. The point is that I don’t want you to spend your money on telegrams. We’re neighbors. As you say in your telegram, we live a few doors down the hall from each other. Actually, it made me very upset to see that wire. My hands shook so when it was delivered that I couldn’t even open it. I thought something had happened to Jerry. We’re estranged, but the man is still my husband. When you’ve lived with someone for almost twenty years you don’t forget him just like that. Also — I’ll be very candid — there was something too importunate about sending me that wire. What would have been perfectly acceptable in a letter seemed, frankly, “overzealous”—this is the best word I can think of — set down in a telegram. (Perhaps this is what McLuhan means when he says that “the medium is the message.”) Maybe I share some of the responsibility for this. I think I’ve left you with certain faulty impressions, and I really believe I ought to undo these if we are to become friends. We simply have to set out on a footing of mutual understanding and respect. It’s no accident that my first reaction, my instinctive reaction, to your wire (after I saw that it was not bad news about Jerry), had to do with the importunity I have already spoken of.

If you will forgive my opening up a subject which I know must be a very sore one with you — if you will permit me, this is, to probe areas which your normal filial affections and recent harrowing loss must certainly have left tender — I will be even franker. Perhaps you are wondering why I say my “instinctive” reaction…

Yes. He was wondering that. That’s what he was wondering. Then it was normal to so wonder. Then how was he mad? He wiped the tears from his eyes. When would they stop? He has lost a pound of tears so far. When would he begin to weep blood, when vision itself, weeping light till none was left to weep, then weeping dimness, then darkness? Then what? Calcium, marrow, all the chemicals of his body, all the juices of his glands. Then how was one mad who could parse sequence like a scholar at the blackboard? Weeping hair, skin, bone, gut, shit, nails and all, weeping his life and, when there was no more left, weeping death and even time.

…and here I will have to make certain “confessions” which I have not offered earlier — out of fear and jealousy and my own sense, however misguided, of protecting you, I suppose.

Yes. Protect me, he thought, weeping.

I never lost your father’s key, and it is not altogether true that I never used it. I did use it— once —the night of Dad’s death. Phil had begun to call me on the telephone at all hours. Sometimes my daughter would answer. She knew his voice, though he was so nervous about what he considered our “relationship” that if I wasn’t home he would try to disguise it or pretend that he’d gotten a wrong number, representing himself to her as a merchant or salesman or some such nonsense. But Sheila is no dummy. She knew his voice and began to suspect things between us that simply weren’t true, a relationship as fictitious as Phil’s voices. He made her very uncomfortable, and I warned him that if this continued I would have to seek other outlets. It wasn’t the neighbors I cared about — I had weathered their gossip and scorn when Jerry left me — but my daughter’s opinions did matter. That was all. The mother of a child from a broken home taking up with a man almost old enough to be her grandfather! That wasn’t the case, it was never the case, but from the peculiar ways Phil behaved she had, I suppose, every reason to suspect it was. I told him in letters that his behavior must change. (Letters I did not read to you that day.) But despite my entreaties it didn’t. He tried openly to hold my hand at the swimming pool. If I went into the water Phil went in too, cavorting, swimming between my legs, coming up behind me and diving down and raising me to his shoulders, touching me beneath the water where he thought it would not be noticed, challenging me to races and giving me headstarts so that he could catch up to me and make rough body contact, dunking me, pulling off my bathing cap and teasing — all masquerading as play but clearly the sublimated physical activity of a youth a third his age. It got so bad that I couldn’t go into the water, or I’d use my red guest band to swim at other pools. I couldn’t elude him. He followed me.

I liked Phil. All this was only toward the end. Even then, when he was calm we got along beautifully. He was a fabulous conversationalist. But he became less and less calm. I decided that I had to return his key. (Which, thank God, Sheila never knew I had.) To return it in a letter, however, seemed too cold and cruel. After all, we would still be neighbors and have to live on the same floor. To pass it to him at the pool was out of the question. I thought someone would see me, or that he might make a scene. I knew that the only way was to bring it to him, and that’s what I did that night — the night he died.