Джозеф Хеллер - Something Happened

"Good girl, grandma!"

It takes a moment for all of us to comprehend. And when we do, all simultaneously it seems, we roar with laughter and begin applauding and congratulating this little girl and ourselves exuberantly (and my daughter, seeing this response of raucous gaiety she has stimulated, bounces and rocks with glee so vigorously in her high chair that we fear she will fall out or topple over), for my mother (her hair was not all white yet, her face not all disiccated and creased) had merely lifted a glass to her lips and drained it of some strawberry punch. But my daughter was watching her. And when my daughter, who was herself being trained then by my wife and me to drink from a glass and faithfully rewarded with handclaps of delight and cries of "Good girl!" whenever she succeeded, saw my mother drink from a glass, she banged her own hands down with delight and approval and called out:

"Good girl, grandma!"

(Not long afterward, my mother could not drink from a glass unless someone held it to her lips.)

It was a small thing, an incident of tiny surprise, but it filled the room with rolling waves of tremendous pleasure and warmth. (All of us there were happier people then and closer to each other than we have ever been since.) All of us rejoiced and united in merry praise of my daughter and made the sunniest predictions, and my daughter was so exhilarated by the sheer volume and intensity of such good feeling and elation that she sang out "Good girl, grandma!" two or three more times (no longer spontaneously, but with discerning calculation) and bounced and rocked on her throne of a high chair, giggling her hearty laugh, luxuriating in her triumph and in the looks and words of adoration directed toward her. (She knew. I was proud of her then, I remember. So pleased with what she had said. So devoted and protective.) All of us marveled breathlessly at her cheerful wit and beauty (she was our miracle) and foresaw sparkling attainments. And even my mother, who tended to be cynical toward everything superstitious, was convinced, she declared, that my daughter had been born under an exceedingly lucky star and would enjoy a brilliant, happy, unblemished future. My daughter really was a darling child, and everybody loved her then, even me.

That was just about the last time I saw my daughter so happy. That was just about the last time I saw my mother happy. It was shortly afterward that I made my decision not to invite my mother to live with us, which meant she would have to live the rest of her life alone. Words were not necessary. The omission itself was an indelible statement. (She never asked, never made me say so. She made it easy for me. She was very kind to me about that.) Although I would have dinner with her every other week, at her apartment or ours, and on appropriate family holidays. (I would even drive her home. None of us wanted her, not my wife, not my daughter, not my sister, not me.) Not much after that, she suffered the first in a series of crippling brain spasms that robbed her at the outset of her ability to speak and at the end of her ability to think or remember. (As my mother faded away, speechless, in one direction, Derek emerged, speechless, from the other.) And there you have my tragic chronicle of the continuity of human experience, of this great chain of being, and the sad legacy of pain and repudiation that one generation of Slocums gets and gives to another, at least in my day. (I got little. I gave back less.) I have this unfading picture in my mind (this candid snapshot, ha, ha), and it can never be altered (as I have a similar distinct picture of my hand on Virginia's full, loosely bound breast for the first time or the amazingly silken feel of the tissuey things between her legs the first time she let me touch her there), of this festive, family birthday celebration in honor of my little girl at which my old mother and my infant daughter are joyful together for perhaps the very last time. And there I am between them, sturdy, youthful, prospering, virile (fossilized and immobilized between them as though between bookends, without knowing how I got there, without knowing how I will ever get out), saddled already with the grinding responsibility of making them, and others, happy, when it has been all I can do from my beginning to hold my own head up straight enough to look existence squarely in the eye without making guileful wisecracks about it or sobbing out loud for help. Who put me here? How will I ever get out? Will I ever be somebody lucky? What decided to sort me into precisely this slot? (What the fuck makes anyone think I am in control, that I can be any different from what I am? I can't even control my reveries. Virginia's tit is as meaningful to me now as my mother's whole life and death. Both of them are dead. The rest of us are on the way. I can almost hear my wife, or my second wife, if I ever have one, or somebody else, saying:

"Won't you wheel Mr. Slocum out of the shade into the sunlight now? I think he looks a little cold."

A vacuum cleaner that works well is more important to me than the atom bomb, and it makes not the slightest difference to anyone I know that the earth revolves around the sun instead of vice versa, or the moon around the earth, although the measured ebb and flow of the tides may be of some interest to mariners and clam diggers, but who cares about them? Green is more important to me than God. So, for that matter, is Kagle and the man who handles my dry cleaning, and a transistor radio that is playing too loud is a larger catastrophe to me than the next Mexican earthquake. «Someday» — it must have crossed my mother's mind at least once, after my denial and rejection of her, since she was only human — "this will happen to you." Although she was too generous to me ever to say so. But I know it must have crossed her mind.)

"When I was a baby," my daughter asks, "did you ever play with me?"

"Sure," I reply. "What do you think?" A warning shudder of some kind shoots through me at her question, turning my skin icy.

"Did you ever pick me up and toss me into the air," she inquires, "or give me piggyback rides, or tell me stories before I went to bed, or carry me around in your arms and talk baby talk to me and say very funny things?"

"All the time," I answer. "Of course, I did." Her look of doubt shocks me. "What kind of monster do you think I am?"

"You don't do anything like that now."

"You're a big girl now. I always yell out hello when I come home, don't I? You don't even answer."

"Did I have parties when I was little? Birthday parties?"

"You sure did. Very beautiful parties. Mommy went to a lot of trouble to make them very good ones."

"I don't remember them."

"Yes, you do. You mention them."

"I mean when I was very little. And all our relatives came and made a big fuss over me and gave me expensive presents?"

"Yes. I used to play with you a lot. I used to go right in to see you every day as soon as I came home from work. You were the first person I wanted to see. I always played with you."

"Mommy told me you did. But I didn't believe her."

"What kind of person do you think I am?"

"You're never the same. You always change. Sometimes you laugh at something I do. Sometimes you get angry and annoyed when I do exactly the same thing and want me to go away. I don't like it when you drink. I never know what to expect."

"You're like that too."

"You're a father."

"It isn't easy."

"You don't know how to be a father."

"I try to be. I always tried my best. I try now. I used to play with you every night as soon as I came home from work," I rush on earnestly, the words pouring from me in a torrent of virtuous reminiscence as I seize the chance to explain to her once and for all and exonerate myself forever from whatever blame and neglect she charges me with. "I even played baseball with you with a plastic bat and ball when you were a little girl and didn't know it was a boy's game, and taught you how to swim. I'm the one who taught you. I asked you to put your face down in the water and float and promised that nothing bad would happen to you if you trusted me and did. You believed me then and weren't afraid. And that's how I taught you. Every day as soon as I came home from work, you were just a little baby then and we lived in the city, I would take my hat off, I wore a hat then, one of those funny fedoras with brims that people still wear, and put my head down near you and let you grab my hair. You used to love to do that. Maybe because I had a lot more hair then, ha, ha. You were just a tiny little girl then and couldn't even stand or walk. I would kiss Mommy on the cheek when I walked in and go right in to see you every day as soon as I came home. I would bend my head down and you would grab my hair with both your little hands and pull, and you would laugh and bounce and scream and kick your legs with such wild excitement that we were always afraid you were going to bounce right off the bed or kick your way right out of the crib. Ha, ha. You would giggle like crazy. And Mommy would watch and laugh too. We used to do that every day as soon as I got home from work. And later when you were older," I go on rabidly in obsessive recollection, "after you had your tonsils out and came back from the hospital, I used to have to tell you a story every night before you went to sleep, or you wouldn't go to sleep. You insisted. It was your right, ha, ha, to have a story from me. Every night, and it usually had to be the same story. You didn't like new ones. First it was Cinderella and then it was Peter Pan too after you saw Peter Pan on television. I used to have to act Peter Pan out for you. You would make me. I bet I nearly broke my legs every night jumping from the couch to the floor when I pretended to fly for you. Ha, ha. Then there was Peter and the Wolf, and Siegfried — I once read you the whole story of Siegfried, and you were so soft-hearted then that you even began to cry in sympathy for that dumb blockhead Siegfried, so I never read it to you again — and that one about the rabbit and the tar baby, and for a while I tried telling you The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, but you didn't like that one at all because the little boy got eaten up at the end, I think, so we went back to PeterPan and Cinderella. And in Cinderella, whenever I came to the part where the prince asks Cinderella to marry him, you would interrupt and answer: 'Sure, prince! Don't you remember? Mommy does. 'Sure, prince! you would cry, ha, ha, and we would both laugh. And Mommy would stand in the doorway and listen, and she would laugh too. When I was out of town, I would try to get to a telephone in the evening before you went to sleep and tell you the story long distance. And I had to tell you the stories in exactly the same way every time. You would make me, ha, ha. If I changed a line or ever tried to leave something out just to speed things up, you would correct me right away very severely and make me do it exactly the way you wanted me to. Oh, you were so strict and determined. Like a stern little princess. Ha, ha. You knew all the stories by heart, and you didn't want me to change a word. Every night. Ha, ha. Don't you remember?"