Gilbert Sorrentino - Aberration of Starlight

He reaches into his breast pocket for a cigarette, but at that moment sees the flare of a match on the rapidly darkening porch and watches as Tom Thebus lights his pipe, the flame wavering and shifting, and he pushes the Camels back into his pocket. He imagines the heavy, false smell of his tobacco lacing the odor of citronella. How he loathes men who smoke pipes! He does not, or will not remember that he, as a young man, occasionally smoked one, but he refuses to remember almost anything of his youth — it seems a vast turmoil of sadness, wreckage, and waste. Bridget, her gold tooth, her white dresses, her false girlish voice when she was trying to make an impression.

The lightning shimmers again over the distant fields and hills, indistinct in the rain that pours down upon them, and the thunder booms closer. The wind is steady now in his face, the elms thrashing, and he rises to cross the road to the porch. Tom Thebus, he knows, will greet him with a pleasantry, and his daughter will avoid his eyes. Grace Sapurty will make a joke about sugar melting in the rain, as she has made the joke for eleven summers now, her fat arms a shocking white against the pink ribbons and pink bows and pink pleats. He descends the church steps as the first heavy, warm drops pock the dust of the road, his spectators raising little puffs of dust, there, and there, there, they hang in the air as if they might hang so forever.

My dear Bud,

I meant to write and thank you and Herb and the fellows for the first rate supper you arranged just before I left for Jersey. What with packing and this and that I haven’t had the time. So consider this a bread and butter note in all sincerity to you and Herb and Davy and even old man Neumiller.

The old Stellkamp place is the same as ever. It is strange to be here without my wife, God rest her soul, and to be staying six weeks. I feel like Rockefeller. But between you me and the lamppost I can’t wait to get back to the old routine. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

The Sapurtys are here. I think you met Ralph Sapurty two or three years ago when you and your wife drove over one Sunday after visiting your grandchildren, and the three of us walked to the Bluebird for a glass of beer. Well he’s still the same horse’s ass but there’s not a mean bone in his body. Did you meet Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt that day? A prince of a man who passed away last winter just about the same time as Bridget. Never sick a day in his life. Mrs. Schmidt is here as a guest of the owners. It makes it easier for me knowing that she has her own cross to bear. She’s a fine woman with never a complaint out of her and happy as the day is long.

The fly in the ointment here is that there is a wise acre here this summer, a divorced man with no shame to him at all. A real five-hundred-dollar millionaire with a little greaseball moustache and a coupe with a rumble seat. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and he is nothing but soft soap. You know the sort of article I mean. I take him down a peg or two when we play croquet although right is right, to tell you the truth he’s better than poor Sapurty by a damn sight. I’d rather play with my ten-year-old grandson than with him. It’s just like taking candy from a baby.

All right, Bud, time to close and wishing you good health and best regards to everyone in the office. I’ll see you all soon.

Regards,

John McGrath

You’ll do as you damn well please. That’s what you’re telling me, Skip?

I’ve got a right to some life, Poppa.

Life? This is the life you’re talking about?

Oh, Poppa.

Walking around here like the fifth wheel, I’m no more goddamn use than a fart in a gale of wind.

You have your friends. It’s not as if you …

My friends. That’s fine for you to say, making a spectacle of yourself. You’re so busy you can’t see out of one eye and you’re blind in the other. Friends. Baggy-drawers Sapurty. Ach der Kaiser Louis. Can’t get the smell of manure off him. My friends? This article Copan? My God, it’s a miracle the man doesn’t eat the plates and all.

But, Poppa, what good does it do if I don’t go to Budd Lake or go, or don’t go, I mean, anywhere? You at least have your croquet, and things. What about Helga Schmidt?

Leave Helga Schmidt out of the picture. What is all this sudden interest in her? Am I supposed to trot after a woman to hold my hand and tell me it’s all right for my daughter to fall all over herself over a nigger-rich Romeo? In a pig’s ass!

I don’t mean you should go running after anybody. I’m saying there’s a lot of people you can talk to, you don’t need a nursemaid.

And you don’t remember a goddamn thing you don’t want to remember. Doctor Drescher? All right, he’s a horse doctor but give the man credit where credit is due. You conveniently forget he says I’m not supposed to get aggravated after your mother passed away?

How do I aggravate you, taking your grandson bathing? Is he supposed to sit here and stare at the four walls like these other relics? He’s not even eleven years old.

Bathing. Bathing. What a sweet innocent you can be, God in heaven. I see right through all your playacting, don’t make me laugh. I haven’t been alive all these years and not learned something. You, with that Thebus article, like some chippy. You think you’re pulling the wool over my eyes with the boy tagging along? And Eleanor and that damn mutt Dave Warren? I wasn’t born yesterday, thank God.

I am not going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs every day and wait for the dinner bell and then twiddle my thumbs some more and wait for the supper bell. The other day when you had a face down to your shoes dragging along like a lost soul I stayed here. I felt sorry for you. If that’s what you wanted you got your wish. Do you know what Billy did that day? Do you? He spent the whole day down at the barn killing flies. Killing flies! Why the boy is mad with boredom. And you can come along anytime you want. When Momma was alive, o-ho, you were the life of the party, not a place you wouldn’t go. Lake Hopatcong, Delaware Water Gap, High Point… Many’s the day and night when you could have let Tony and I go somewhere if you minded the baby, but did you? Oh no. Do you want me to beg you to come bathing? Get down on my hands and knees? Oh, how things have changed so much since Momma died. Changed? Don’t make me laugh. The same old thing, the same old rigmarole. Nothing ever changes with us. I can talk myself blue in the face, you yes me to death. But the next day you forget all about it.

You want a change? Fine by me, just fine. You’ve got a roof over your head and food on the table, all the clothes you want. Here you are in the country on a vacation any girl would give her right arm for. Change? That’s jake with me. Just tell me when and we’ll see how you like it.

Oh, that’s it. The roof over my head. And Billy’s head. Don’t you ever get sick of throwing that in my face? My God, I thought you’d be sick of that one by now. I had to listen to it day in and day out from Momma, how grateful I should be, how thankful, even when I was working like a slave, waiting on her hand and foot before she went in the hospital. When Billy was six years old she even told him how grateful he should be to her that he wasn’t in the streets or in a home or an orphanage. What a thing to say to a little boy! Talking about an orphanage! And when we lived on 68th Street before Momma ordered you — yes, yes, don’t shake your head, ordered, I remember it like yesterday — ordered, ordered, as God is my judge, ordered you to stop paying the rent on that little apartment and took us in like two charity cases. When we lived on 68th Street do you think I’ll ever forget that breakfast we got from her on Sunday morning after mass? Two eggs and two pieces of bacon in a paper bag? We weren’t to be trusted to eat with you, Billy might ask her for another piece of bacon. Is it ever going to end, the roof? When I think of my life. If I’d known ten years ago I’d have to thank my own father for the roof over my head! God help us.