Джозеф Хеллер - Something Happened

"Do you?"

"She could be. I think she could be very pretty if she'd lose some weight and take better care of her face and her hair."

"Why do you serve such fattening meals and keep cake and candy and ice cream in the house?"

"I know. I don't know why. I forget."

"None of us want it but you. And her."

"I won't do it anymore."

"I don't know what to say to her."

"She doesn't know what to say to you."

"I don't know how to talk to her when she tells me she thinks she's fat and ugly or asks me to tell her honestly, if she wasn't my daughter, would I think she was pretty. Would I like her? She's not fat and she isn't ugly, and she knows it. What am I supposed to say?"

"She doesn't know what else to say to you. She's afraid to say anything else. I don't know what to say to you either. I have trouble talking to her too."

"What are you talking about?"

"None of us know what to say to you. You're always so irritable. You always get so mad."

"Oh, come on."

"It's true. You make us feel so stupid. You try to."

"I'm not that bad."

"Maybe if you came home earlier or didn't sleep in the city so often."

"What has that got to do with anything we're talking about? I work late."

"Or came home less often. Sometimes we all get along better when you aren't here."

"Maybe I shouldn't come home at all."

"I didn't mean that."

"Are you suggesting a divorce?"

"No. You know that. Why are you bringing that up so quickly?"

"What are you complaining about?"

"I'm not. I'm sorry I said that. I don't know. I don't know why. I didn't mean to say that."

"Yes, you did. Or you wouldn't have said that, either. People say what they mean."

"So do you. She thinks you hate her."

"I don't. Sometimes I do. When she gets me mad."

"She says you never look at her."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"That you never look right at her, even when you're talking to her. She says you always look off to the side somewhere. She notices things like that. She thinks you despise her so much you can't even bring yourself to look at her."

"She's nuts. That's not true."

"Do you look at her?"

"Sure, I do. I don't know. I think I do. Why shouldn't I?"

"She thinks you don't love her."

"It isn't true."

"Do you love her?"

"Of course I do. Do you?"

"You know I do."

"You're always criticizing her. More than I do."

"She's afraid."

"Of what?"

"You."

"Shit."

"We never know what kind of mood you're in."

"That's some way we live."

"We never know what it's safe to say around you."

"I'm afraid."

"Of what?"

"What do you think of that? Of you. Of all of you. You've got me walking on eggs, you're all so God-damned touchy and afraid. Do you think I want you all afraid of me? I never know what I can say either around here without hurting somebody's feelings. It's worse than being with Green or Arthur Baron or Horace White. It inhibits me, in my own house. No wonder I yell a lot. Do I really yell so much?"

"All the time now."

"I don't always mean to."

"You're always so irritable."

"I'm irritable all the time now. I'm always tired."

"Maybe you're working too hard."

"I don't work hard. I worry a lot."

"Maybe you should try to get an easier job."

"Don't you ever listen to me?"

"One where you wouldn't have to work so hard."

"I said I don't work hard."

"Well, maybe you should try to get another job."

"I am trying to get another job."

"Will it be harder or easier?"

"Easier, I think. More responsibility, but much less pressure. More money. More worry. I don't know."

"Will you be able to make speeches?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You know what I mean. Speeches."

"Yeah. All I want."

"I hate Jack Green," she says.

"Why?" I retort suspiciously.

"He's a lousy bastard," she declares passionately. "I'll never forgive him for what he did to you."

"What?" I ask, feeling my face burn suddenly and a tense, protective anger begin to rise.

"Not letting you make that speech at the convention last year, like everyone else. I bet he's jealous of you, that's why. I'm surprised Arthur Baron let him do that to you."

"It wasn't that important."

"I know how hard you worked on it. I know how small it must have made you feel."

"Are you doing this deliberately?"

"But how did it make you feel?"

"I don't feel any bigger being reminded of it now."

"See?" she says. "You're too sensitive to things like that. Maybe you shouldn't take this new job if you have to work too hard and worry more."

"Maybe I won't. To hell with the money and the prestige and the success."

"I don't think you ought to travel more."

"I don't think you can keep your mind on one subject for more than one minute at a time, can you?"

"That's just the kind of remark you would make to me. That's just the kind of remark you would make to her, too."

"I made it to you. Let's not fight now. I didn't come in here for that this time. You and I can fight later."

"I'm not trying to fight."

"Then stop needling me like an oh-so-innocent bitch. Or that I'm too dumb to know what you're doing. That speech is none of your business. Why bring it up all the God-damned time if it really makes you so angry? You do it just to remind me."

"And I'm not angry at what you said just now about my mind. I know you think I'm the dumbest person who ever lived. And I'm not trying to pick on you now. But did you hear how you sounded just now? That's just the kind of thing you would say to her. That's just the way you would sound to her. Try to remember when you talk to her that she's only fifteen and a half years old."

My wife is right.

I do not talk to my daughter as I should to a child, or would if she were somebody else's. I'm not nice to her. If my little boy misbehaves, I respond to him dotingly as a careless, mischievous, or overtired little boy who needs a kiss and a hug and the mildest of reprimands; it is a normal, predictable, endearing mistake, and I correct him tolerantly in an almost deferential way. If my teenage daughter does something wrong, it is something wrong: it is an insulting, intentional, inexcusable attack against me that requires swift and severe retribution. (I do not treat them the same.) I wonder why. Is it because she's a daughter? Or a first child, for whom my aspirations were too high, and in whom I am now therefore disappointed? Or is it that she is already in her teens, growing up and away from me, slipping free from my authority, already preparing to live without me, to challenge frontally my wisdom, morality, and ability, and threatening to dislodge me, if she can, from my shaky stronghold of dictatorial self-esteem? Will I have to endure and survive these same assaults and rejections from my little boy when he grows up too? I hope not, for I would derive no satisfaction (I think) in vanquishing him. (Thank God my third child is an idiot: I really don't mean that. What I do mean is that thank goodness I will at least be spared a rebellion from him. I know how I will feel when Derek dies, or when he is finally sent away: relieved, liberated, and I will release a long-compressed breath and say, perhaps even aloud to someone whom I may feel I can trust:

"Well, at last that's over with too now, isn't he?")

I try to remember when this rivalry between my daughter and me first began. I can't. It sometimes seems that we have always been this way with each other, that we have never gotten along any better or differently. I would like to make my daughter less miserable if I can, to help her to be happier and much more pleased with herself. I don't know how. (I like to trap my daughter in carelessness and lies in order to make her admit she's sorry.)