Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

He married Lilly.

And one monstrousness was that she wouldn’t go along with a gag. Nor would she pluck laughter from despair. Despair depressed her; it gave her heartburn, like steak in a restaurant.

At this time — it was before he invented the basement — Feldman was a game player, a heavy gambler. He bet the horses, the ballgames, the fights, the elections, the first early launches of rockets. And though he mostly broke even, or better — he was lucky with money — he found that to be a bettor, to deal with bookies, accepting another’s odds as fixed and beyond his control as the value of a share on the market, was to make of himself a consumer like anyone else. He would have quit long before he ultimately did but for Lilly’s nervousness in the matter of his gambling. It worried her and she urged him to give it up. Her anxiety kept him going, but Lilly’s anxieties — her fear of bookies, the association of them in her mind with a gangster style that had ended with the end of Prohibition — were part of her character. She worried for the safety of relatives in airplanes flying to Miami, for the careers of nephews, the betrothals of nieces and cousins. She was not anxious only about her own life, assuming safety and happiness and good luck like guaranteed rights. Feldman saw that he was not getting his money’s worth from the gambling and abandoned it. On the other hand, he thought, if he could get her involved, concerned for her own losses, that would be something.

He made up games. Lilly played reluctantly. Sometimes they played gin rummy for wishes. The stakes weren’t high, a twentieth of a wish a point. Lilly was a good cardplayer, and Feldman did not always win. He sweated the games out. Even at those small stakes, ten to fifteen wishes could change hands in a single game. When he lost, however, Lilly’s wishes were always insignificant, unimaginative. She might ask him to bring her a glass of water, or to sing a song, or to clap his hands five times. Feldman insisted that she try harder, that she think of more damaging things for him to do.

“You’re wasting your wishes, Lilly. Do you think wishes grow on trees? Why do you want to win them if all you do after you get them is throw them away?”

“I like to hear you sing, Leo. You have a nice voice.”

“You try harder. It’s no fun for me otherwise.”

They had set a time limit, twenty-four hours, in which the winner had to make his wishes. By constantly harassing her and forcing her to think of more and more complex wishes, Feldman knew that he would be able to finesse at least half the wishes he owed her. She simply couldn’t think of things for him to do. (And the truth was he hated to sing songs for her, hated to bring her a glass of water, to clap his hands for her.)

Chiefly, however, he won. Then he let her have it. (Another rule he had invented was that you could never wish the other fellow to do something that the other fellow had wished you to do. It was a way of protecting himself, of course. Ah, he thought, this was better than playing with the bookies. It was a marvelous thing to make house odds. House odds, domestic bliss.)

“Lilly, I wish you to take a bath.” It was two in the morning. And when she had come from the tub, “Run around the block, Lilly, please.”

“Leo, my pores are open.”

“We are not fourflushers, Lilly. We are not welshers and Indian givers.”

He watched her from their picture window. She came back puffing. He opened the glass doors and stood in the doorway. “Lilly, pretend you’re drunk. Stagger around in the street and make noises.”

“Leo, it’s after two. People are sleeping. I won’t do it. I balk.” It was the formula for refusal. But they had another rule. If a player balked, he had to grant three wishes for the one he had balked at.

“Come inside,” Feldman said sullenly. “Bake a cake,” he wished half-heartedly. (She was on a diet.) “Have three big pieces and a glass of milk and go to sleep on the sofa.”

Then he lost a close game.

“Leo, I wish that you wouldn’t shout at Billy today.”

“I balk.”

“I wish you’d be nicer to me.”

“I balk.”

She sighed and had him count from a hundred backwards, say a tongue twister, read her the funnies, wind the clock, open the window, shut it.

Eventually, of course, she refused to play with him. It was the result of a fight. They had finished dinner, and Lilly was in the kitchen, fixing blueberries and sour cream. She still owed him a wish. Feldman saw a man on the sidewalk. “Lilly,” he called, “there’s a stranger outside. I wish you to go out and ask that stranger what he’s doing in this neighborhood.”

She didn’t answer and Feldman walked into the kitchen. Lilly was spooning blueberries into a bowl from a basket.

“Didn’t you hear me? I made my wish.”

“No, Leo.”

“He’s right outside. You can see him through the window.”

“No, Leo.”

“Are you balking?”

“I’m not going to do it.”

“Then say it. Say ‘I balk.’”

“I’m not going to do it.”

Feldman was furious. “You know the formula for refusing,” he shouted. Billy was in the kitchen, wrapping rubber bands on the doorknob. The sight enraged him. Billy was six years old and took sides. He would whisper to his mother that he loved her most and that Daddy was bad, and to his father that Mommy wasn’t very smart. Feldman pulled him away from the doorknob and told him to hide in his room. “A boy loses respect if he sees his father kick his mother’s ass,” Feldman said.

Lilly, saying nothing, continued to spoon the blueberries. She patted them around the sides of the bowl and fluffed them up with the spoon.

“When you finish there you can do the rest of the rubber bands,” Feldman said.

Lilly said nothing.

“What’s wrong with you?” Feldman demanded. It was one of his questions. He asked it when they were doing something together and he was having a better time doing it than his wife. He asked it on complicated occasions like this one, when his head hurt and there was a sourness in the air, unsortable wrong, rife and general as a high pollen count. “You be careful, Lilly. I am as fed up as a revolutionary, as righteous at this moment as a terrorist. You better watch out.”

Lilly was dipping sour cream onto the blueberries.

“ You’re a shitty sport ,” Feldman screamed, and went for her. When he tore the spoon out of her hands some sour cream got on his shirt. He stared at it as if she had drawn blood. “Oh, you will , will you?” he roared. In his room Billy was crying. Feldman thought of all the times she had refused him. In the car, nothing on the radio but static, he might suggest that they both make speeches. Inaugural Addresses or nominating speeches at the Republican National Convention. And she would refuse. She didn’t even want to hear his speech. Why couldn’t she say “I balk”? What would that cost her? More sour cream got on his shirt, and Feldman made a fist and punched her in the behind.

She overturned the blueberries in the sink.

“You son of a bitch,” Feldman screamed. “ Those are out of goddamn season! ”

“We shall never play gin rummy again,” Lilly announced softly. She had tremendous self-possession at this moment, superhuman dignity. She seemed as calm and studied and smug as a circus performer holding acrobats on her shoulder. It was too much for Feldman. The sour cream burned holes in his shirt. He pulled her from the sink and spun her roughly away from him. She went turning and twirling across the kitchen, rapt as a blind woman in a dance, concentrating on her injuries as if they were already memories. She fell back against the refrigerator, and Feldman imagined the black-and-blue marks, proliferating on her back like stains.