Stanley Elkin - A Bad Man

“Oof,” she said demurely.

“I can’t stand it,” Feldman roared. He stooped down and opened the cabinet beneath the sink. He pulled out the garbage pail. He reached inside it and scooped up great handfuls of garbage — ovoid clumps of wet coffee grounds, the pulps of oranges, eggshells, pits, bones, fat, the shallow rinds of honeydew melon like the hulls of toy boats. He flung all this onto the kitchen floor. He might have been sowing seeds.

In the distance Billy cried uncontrollably.

Lillyfolded her arms across her breast, a look of mock indifference on her face like that of someone who has just done a turn in a challenge dance. Feldman stopped short and dropped the rest of the garbage. He folded his arms across his breast. “You serve, Lilly, I think,” he said.

“Billy,” Lilly shouted, “come in here.”

Feldman was delighted. “What are you calling him for? This is between us,” he said.

“Billy,” she shouted again, “I’ve told you once. Come in here right now.”

“Leave the kid out of it,” Feldman snarled. He could have hugged her. Something magnificent was going to happen.

Billy appeared at the entrance to the kitchen, his face a smear of snot and tears. He seemed blind, breathless, choked as a child in a polyethylene bag.

“Go back to your room, Billy,” Feldman said.

“If you do I’ll follow and beat you up,” Lilly said.

“If she does I’ll kill her, Billy. Don’t you worry, son.”

Billy wailed.

“Pick up the garbage your father threw down. Every piece,” Lilly commanded.

Billy, crying insanely, moved toward the garbage.

“What is this?” Feldman said. “What is this?”

The little boy bent over a piece of lettuce coated with cocktail sauce and picked it up.

“Give me that,” Feldman cried. He pulled at it. The lettuce tore, and they each held a piece of it. Feldman turned to Lilly. “Is this how you raise a child?” he said angrily. Lilly’s arms were still folded. Billy, terrified, was on his hands and knees, pushing the scraps together. Feldman pressed the point of his shoe into the rind of an orange that his son was trying to pick up. “I had not realized, Lilly, that the boy is so terrified of you,” Feldman told her.

“Let me pick it up, Daddy,” Billy said. “Let me pick it up.”

“Get up, Billy,” Feldman said with great, deliberate compassion.

“I’ll do it,” Billy said. “Please. I’ll do it.”

“He’s hysterical,” Feldman said. “He won’t listen to me. You win, Lilly. You win. Tell him to get off the floor. I’ll pick it all up.”

“Get up, Billy,” Lilly said, “your father will do it.”

Feldman got down on his hands and knees. He breathed heavily. His palm slipped on something, and he fell forward awkwardly. His cheek lay in the wet coffee grounds. He got clumsily to his knees and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Listen to me, Billy. Make me a promise, son.” He hung his head down a moment, apparently trying to catch his breath. He rubbed his eyes, then put his hand back on Billy’s shoulder. “If she ever touches you, I want you to tell me, darling, and I’ll break her bones, sweetheart. You tell Daddy, honey, if Mommy bothers you, and Daddy makes you this promise, adorable, that he’ll smash her nose and pound her heart and crush her skull, pumpkin. You’re Daddy’s darlin’, chicken, remember that. She’s a great rough pig, angel, but Daddy will protect you. If that bitch ever bothers you — I don’t care where I am or what I’m doing — you get to a telephone, lamb chop, and call me up, and I’ll come home and put her in the hospital. Do you understand that, Billy? Do you understand that, dumpling? You’re getting to be a big boy, watermelon, and you’ve got to understand these things. Give Dad a kiss now and promise that you’ll never be afraid of her any more.” He put his hands behind the boy’s head and brought him up close to kiss him. “Now run and play, son,” Feldman said. “Poppy will pick up the garbage for you.”

Lilly’s arms had come unfolded. They hung down like untied laces.

Feldman looked at her through an eggshell and smiled and splashed in the garbage and thought: Your serve, Lilly, I think, your serve, Lilly, I think. It’s a regular second honeymoon, it’s a second regular goddamned honeymoon.

Although he had not touched himself in two days, the jerking off had taken it out of him and he was exhausted. Now he would be continent. It would be a new phase. He lived by phases, like an artist with a blue period, a green one, a red. Seeking some ultimate violet. Did others do that? Lilly didn’t; no one he knew did. Others had homogenized lives. Not Feldman. Feldman had periods.

How do you do it, Feldman?

This is how I do it, kid. I live by phases. Full Feldman. Quarter Feldman. Half-by-full three-quarter Feldman. Feldman waxing, Feldman waning. The astrological heart. Down through time to high night’s noony now.

The homunculus, little stunted brother of his heart, stirred. The homunculus, stony, bony paradigm, scaled-down schema of waxing Feldman, flexed its visey brothership.

“Ouch,” Feldman said. “You again.”

“Move over, O greater frater. Give a toy twin space.”

“No, pet. What can I do? I’m in solitary confinement. O solo mio.”

“Have a little consideration, please. I feel terrible. For days I’ve been riding your passionate bronco heart. I’m seasick. I must look a fright, Leo.”

“Are you sure you’re my brother? You talk like my sister.”

“Leo, please,” the homunculus said.

“O steak-knife soul in my heart’s bloody meat, leave off.”

“Listen, brother,” the homunculus said, “we have to talk. Watch your step. You forget you’re living for two. Why can’t you remember that? You specially. You’re your brother’s keeper if there ever was one.”

“My little brother,” Feldman said, giggling.

“To think,” the homunculus said, “I might have been alive today but for some freak in the genes. Alas the blood’s rip, alack my spilled amino acids, my done-in DNA. Woe for the watered marrow and the split hairs.”

“Don’t get clinical, you fossil.”

“Oh, Leo, I would have done things differently. I would have taken better care. You have no right—”

“ I have no right? I have no right? Didn’t you ever hear of primogeniture? You’re out of the picture, short division.”

“ Leo ,” his homunculus said sharply, “you stop that. All your cynicism — that’s just our father speaking. You insist on siding with him.”

“I never knew our mother,” Feldman said. “She was your department, death.”

“Don’t be sentimental either. Really, Leo, I’m surprised you try to pull this stuff with me. I know your heart. I’ve been there. I’ve been lying on it for years. It’s a rack, buddy, a desert, some prehistoric potholed thing. It’s a moon of a heart. It will not support life, Leo. So don’t start up.”

“You don’t happen to have a deck of cards on you, do you?”

“We have serious things to discuss, Leo.”

“I won’t listen.”

“Leo, you owe me. As a businessman you have always paid your bills.”

“I owe you? What do I owe you? What have you done for me?”

“Like Wilson,” the homunculus said slyly, “I kept you out of war.”

Feldman admitted grudgingly that this was so.

The homunculus smiled; it pinched. “What do you make of this bad-man stuff?” it asked confidentially. “Anything to it?”

“Why ask me?” Feldman said sourly. “You know my heart.”

“Only its terrain,” the homunculus said.

“My heart hurts.”

“Is that why, Leo? Is that it? Do you suffer much?”