Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“Not, Victor says, as you’d suspect, to take his mind off things but to get it back on them. To see just what his mother meant when she told him each morning when he went to school that she hoped noon would find her stricken and when school let out dead.

“ ‘I’m destroying it, Danny. I’m ruining your life, sweetheart,’ Victor says she’d tell him, remind him, in her soiled robe, over the greasy dishes and scummed silverware and smeared cups and glasses which by this time served as their everyday, almost unrecognizable now, almost, under the three- or four-day growth of mold, indistinguishable from the good stuff, the sterling and Aynsley china, the dirty novelty mugs and glasses, six-of-one, half-a-dozen-of-the-other, with the cups and crystals of sanity. Because that’s why Victor, who’d prepare the meals but wouldn’t do the dishes, who’d put fresh sheets on Danny’s bed every five days — the girl came every week but couldn’t get out of the damn kitchen — but wouldn’t change the ones he’d been sleeping on with Audrey for almost eleven, allowed the house to get in such a state in the first place.

“Not, Victor says, out of narrow principle say, you-made-your-bed, lie-in-it say, not out of that principle at least. (He’s ridden with guilt, George. He tells me this, not the front desk.) As an object lesson, a lesson in objects.

“ ‘I was trying to show her how easily the world is reclaimed by jungle. How simple it is to go mad. I thought I could shame her back into her senses. See? “See,” I’d have had that house scream, “see?” What makes you so special? I’ve gone bats too, the furniture has, the dishes and linen. Look at Dan, look at Danny. His clothes have gone nuts. It’s 80 degrees, he’s dressed for the winter!’

“She must, Victor says, have thought he was crazy. She didn’t know where she was. There was soup in her bowl. She hadn’t made it. If she’d been paying attention to what he was saying she might have thought he’d lost his mind in some swell restaurant.

“But then Victor came home one day from the office and the house was clean. Spotless. The living room had been cleared, the dining room, everything had been picked up, all the carpets vacuumed. There wasn’t a dish in the sink. This was a Monday. The cleaning lady wasn’t due till Wednesday. Victor says his heart turned over. He raced upstairs. Audrey was in bed, asleep on clean sheets.

“ ‘I didn’t wake her. How could I? She must have been exhausted. Anyone would have been exhausted.

“ ‘So I didn’t wake her. I just sat by the bed and cheered on her sleep. I sat there two hours. When she finally woke up she gave one of those great yawning stretches you imagine Rip Van Winkle must have given, or Sleeping Beauty, or someone recovered from coma. She blinked a few times to get her bearings and looked at me.

“ ‘ “Oh,” she said, “hi. You home from work? God, it’s almost dark out. I’m sorry. I lay down for a nap. I must have fallen asleep.”

“ ‘ “Who wouldn’t?” I said. “You worked like a horse. Are you feeling better?”

“ ‘ “No,” she said.

“ ‘ “You tried to do too much. You should have saved a little for tomorrow. Then Dorothy comes on Wednesday.”

“ ‘ “Oh God,” she said, “what are you talking about now? Leave me alone, will you? Or kill me. I just want to die.” ’

“Because he’d done the dishes. Danny. The boy. He’d cleaned the place up. Victor knew it as soon as he heard him and turned, and saw him standing there, in the doorway, whimpering, sucking his thumb.

“He made the arrangements that night and packed her off to the asylum the next day.

“ ‘Now,’ Victor says, ‘we’re just another broken family in July, me and the kid, driving back from Burger Chef in a blue K Car.’ ”

“Poor kid,” George Mills said.

“Who?” Messenger said. “Danny? The hell. He’s in the ninety-ninth percentile. The little fag reads six years above his grade level.”

“That doctor’s wife was over, that student, Mrs. Losey?”

“Nora,” Messenger said. “Yes?”

“She was over to the house. Some sort of homework for her school. She took pictures.”

“There’s this rehab project.”

“She the one flunking out?”

“On academic probation, right.”

“Whose husband’s having the affair?”

“With Jenny Greener, yes.”

“A girl was with her. That was her name I think.”

“They’re classmates,” Messenger said. “Nora introduced them.”

“Then what happened?”

Because he was listening now. Because there were only reruns on television anyway and he was listening now. Salvation or no salvation. Listening despite himself. Because they could almost have been more Millses.

“He goes out of town,” Messenger said. “He’s much in demand. Symposiums. Universities. He’s an expert in the new microsurgical stuff. Sutures finer than spider web. Instruments no bigger than computer chips. He can sew on your fingerprints, he can take out your germs. Like the little cobbler in fairy tale. He’s much in demand. Sun Valley and Aspen, Fiji, the Alps. All the pricey climes of the medical — Palm Springs Memorial, the Grosse Point Clinic, Monaco Mercy, Grand Cayman General.

“He goes out of town. He lectures his colleagues. He screws their wives. Never the nurses, never the help.

“He says ‘I won’t touch a student. And my patients — forget it. If I touch a patient I’ve already scrubbed. I’m not talking what’s ethical, what’s professional or ain’t. None of this has fuck-all to do with my Hippocratic oath. It’s just I still think it’s kicky I’m invited places. Maybe I’m spoiled. I won’t cross a street if it’s not on the arm. I won’t take a vacation. I’ve this thing for doctors’ wives.

“ ‘Country club country. I love being made over, wined and dined, fussed. I never get used to it. I don’t think I will.

“ ‘Lunch turns me on. Tennis-togged women, ladies in tank tops. I like to take off their sweat bands. I love those little bracelets of the untan, the wrist hair where it’s been pressed down under the elastic. I love the way it smells, sweat running with perfume and the better soaps. I like their jewelry, their diamond rings and great gold chains. I love the way their jewelry smells. You know what, Cornell? I can make out the karats, the troy grains in pearls. You believe me? It’s true. The expensive like a whiff of sachet. I can smell money in a purse, coins, even checkbooks, the stamps in their passports, plastic on charge cards, a Neiman-Marcus, a Saks.

“ ‘Christ I’m a bastard. I cheat on my wife. If I had a dollar …’ he tells me. (And I listen to this stuff, who got lucky maybe a dozen or so years ago, and that with a drunk, a woman under the influence, who may have been a little crazy behind the alcohol. But who celebrates the occasion — March 19—like some dear anniversary.) He tells me this shit. Me. So I tell you. You can’t cheat on your wife, you cheat on your friends.

“ ‘We’ll have left early,’ he says, ‘gone separate ways to the parking lot. She gets in my rental car or I get in hers, but I love when they drive, when they take me ’cross bridges and she grabs the toll. When she picks the place, where we can go. Listen, it’s Cairo, what do I know? It’s Cairo, it’s Russia, it’s somewhere South Seas. It isn’t the money, you know that, Cornell. I’m the one being fussed. I’ve published the paper, made the keynote address.

“ ‘And maybe they are nurses, or were before they married their husbands and became doctors’ wives. Hell, I suppose lots of them were nurses, most of them maybe. But up from the nursery and doctors’ wives now. So it’s all right, it’s okay.