Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

“When we were kids and still all living together,” Mary said.

“Yes, then,” Helen said, “but afterward, too. On special occasions.”

“Yes. Well,” Noël said.

“Because there is something in color,” Patty said, “because there is something in color related to size, implicit in pattern demanding its shape. How would a curly tail look on a rabbit, do you suppose? Or the stripes of a tiger on the fur of an ape?”

“Hey,” Ben said.

“We grew—” LaVerne giggled, “ apart .”

“Stop it,” Oscar said.

“Right,” said Moss.

“You don’t fool us, sisters,” Gus-Ira said.

“Bastards,” Cole said.

“Yes, well, what do you expect?” LaVerne asked.

“Lotte broke the fucking set ,” Noël said angrily. “That’s what you’re thinking.”

“Ah,” Ben said.

“So cut out the sizes crap,” Sigmund-Rudolf said. “Cool it about the Dress Code.”

“They want one of us to die,” Noël said. “They think that would change things, even the score in the Magic Kingdom.”

“Don’t be silly,” Gertrude said. “That’s not what we mean. It isn’t.”

“It isn’t,” the girls said.

“We grew apart ,” LaVerne said again.

“Only Ben. Only you’re the same, Ben,” Ethel said.

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m not the same.”

“You are,” Oscar said.

“I’m sick,” Ben said.

“Sitting down,” Noël said, “it’s an invisible disease.”

Ben looked at Noël sharply. “You are silly,” he said. “Gertrude’s right, it isn’t what they mean.” He was speaking to all of them.

“Nobody wants anybody dead,” Mary said. “That’s ridiculous.”

“How do you live, Ben?” Gus-Ira asked. He supposed it was Gus-Ira. He was straining to keep them separate.

“You know how I live.”

“No. How do you live? Where do you go?”

“You know how I live. You know where I go.”

“We’ve grown apart,” LaVerne said.

“This one’s in Texas, that one’s in Maine,” Cole said. “And once a year, twice, you check in, drop a card, touch base. We get a call, meet for dinner, have a few.”

“It was better,” Sigmund-Rudolf said, “when you were still getting it from the sisters.”

“I never minded that,” Oscar said. “That wasn’t important.”

“No,” Helen said.

“I came eighteen hundred miles,” Ben said.

“How do you live? Where do you go?”

“I live along my itinerary,” Ben said.

“Joey,” Kitty sang softly, “Joey, Joey.”

“Yes,” Ben Flesh said, “sure. My life like a Triptik from the AAA. Here today and gone tomorrow. What is all this? Why are you behaving so? You know about me. I love you, for God’s sake. What is all this?”

“The showdown. Only the showdown.”

“The little stuff, Ben. Tell us the little stuff.”

“Outdoorsman,” Jerome said, “give us the inside dope.”

“Only what your life is like. Do you take a paper? What do you do about laundry? Is there Sarasota in you? Some winter quarters of your heart, hey?”

“I take all the papers,” Ben said quietly. “I buy magazines from the newsstand. I watch the local eyewitness news at ten. Everywhere they have blue flu I know about it. Where garbage isn’t collected. There’s something for you, if you want to know. There’s no garbage in my life. Except what collects in the car. The torn road map and the Fudgicle wrapper, the silver from chewing gum. But by and large I’m garbageless. I miss it, you know? The maid comes in and makes up the room. The Cokes come from machines in the hall and the dirty dishes go back to Room Service. Mail’s a problem. I use the phone. I don’t vote. Not even an absentee ballot. I could never meet anybody’s residency requirements. The franchiser disenfranchised. I file my taxes, of course. I use my accountant’s business address as my domicile. This? Is this what you mean? What you want? I have neurologists in twenty states, internists in a dozen, dentists in four. (One of my suitcases is just medical records.) There’s same-day service, so laundry’s no problem. Dry cleaning isn’t. But my bowels don’t know what time it is and buying clothes can be tough if there have to be alterations. Where do they deliver, what happens if the fit’s no good? Nah, there ain’t no winter quarters. Am I getting warm?”

“Riverdale,” one of them said.

“What?”

“Riverdale. You could have used Riverdale. As your domicile.”

“As easily Riverdale as your accountant’s business address.”

“I was never asked. Nobody asked me.”

“Oh, Ben,” Patty said.

“Well, it’s not the point really,” Lorenz said.

“What’s the point, Lorenz?” Ben asked.

“Did we have to ask you? Is that where you were standing? On ceremonies like a station of your itinerary?” Mary said.

The girls fussed over him. One took his hand. Another hugged him, a third kissed his cheek. But Ben was more interested in what the brothers were doing. There seemed just then to be a conspiracy of tolerance among them, the soft ticking glances of a deferred cruelty. These looks darted from each to each like a basketball passed around a circle. Maybe it was what one of them had said it was, the showdown. It seemed a theatrical term, but it was a theatrical family. He nodded to the girls, acknowledged their concern for his feelings, but moved carefully away from them and toward the brothers.

Ben and the family were in the big living room. There were theatrical posters behind framed, glare-proof glass, the musical comedies and dramas that Julius had dressed. “I did come eighteen hundred miles,” Ben said. Then it occurred to him how far they must have come. As LaVerne had said, they’d grown apart, as Cole, this one’s in Texas, that one’s in Maine. The Finsbergs had long ago taken their show on the road. There were second companies, third, eighth, and eleventh all over the country by now. Only two of the women and three of the men still lived in New York. Helen had moved to London last year. They must have traveled a greater distance than the circumference of the earth to get here. Thousands had been spent on air fares. “What’s the occasion?” he asked.

“The occasion?”

“Why are we here?”

“Didn’t you know?” Ethel said.

“It’s the unveiling.”

“The unveiling.”

“Of Estelle’s stone.”

“And Lotte’s.”

“But they died years ago, at least Lotte — Isn’t the unveiling usually on the first anniversary of the—”

“Yes,” Helen said. “But there was that business of the suicide.”

“The girls were very angry,” Gus-Ira said.

“Angry?”

“The boys, too,” Mary said. “You were furious, Sigmund-Rudolf.”

“Angry? Furious?”

“Water under the bridge,” Sigmund-Rudolf said.

“Angry? Furious?”

“He doesn’t understand,” Patty said.

“Of course not. How could he?”

“No.”

“No,” Ben said. “I don’t think I do.”

“We were identical , Ben,” Noël said.

“Identical,” said Maxene. “Human MIRV’s blooming from a single shaft.”

“As like as grapes on a cluster.”

“Identical.”

“Who gave the lie to snowflakes.”

“To fingerprints.”

“To keys on pianos.”

“If one of us boys had died, only another of us could have made the identification.”

“We would ask, ‘Are you here, Gus-Ira?’ ‘Are you here, Cole?’ ”

“Calling the roll.”

“Subtracting from nine.”

“That’s how we’d work it.”

“I could have identified you,” Ben said.