Gilbert Sorrentino - Aberration of Starlight

His grandfather was shouting at him from the roof to come up! come up! and he woke up and saw his grandfather in the dark, leaning out the window, shining a flashlight down and across the road. He was yelling and really mad, and he kept yelling about the time! the time! and what did he think his daughter was, and telling somebody to come up, goddammit to hell! Billy suddenly felt sick when he understood that he was yelling at his mother . And at Tom, too. But really mostly his mother. He said “Gramp” and his grandfather turned his head and told him to go back to sleep. Then he just stood at the window without shouting anymore but he kept standing there, shining the flashlight. Billy lay still, stiff, with his eyes closed, then heard his grandfather pull the window down halfway and hook the screen. In about a half a minute he heard the porch door close and footsteps on the stairs. It was his mother, he could tell. He wondered where Tom was and why he didn’t come in with his mother. She passed by the door of their room and started up the stairs to where her room was. She was crying very low, like she had a handkerchief to her mouth. Billy lay rigid, wondering what had happened. He heard a scratch and opened his eyes a little to see his grandfather light a cigarette and sit down on his bed. His grandfather said, in a whisper to himself, “One-thirty in the morning. A spectacle. One-thirty.” Billy wished hard but he was afraid that everything was spoiled. As he was going back to sleep he heard a man’s footsteps pass the door and start up the stairs. That must be Tom. Everything was really spoiled. He wanted to yell out curses but started to cry.

The next morning he saw that his mother’s eyes were red and he knew that she had been crying. Things were very strange at the house when they all had breakfast, his grandfather seemed very loud and happy, and talked about how the weather was changing, fall was definitely in the air, almost time to get back to the old grind, but it would be a relief. He even spoke to Tom the same way, all smiles and jokes, but it gave Billy the creeps. His mother sat very quietly, picking at her breakfast and leaving her second cup of coffee half-drunk. For some reason, everybody else was as loud as his grandfather, but their voices were phony and reminded Billy of how the kids in school talked when they put on a pageant for Open School assembly. Mrs. Schmidt was even waving her arms around the way Wanita Whiteman did when she played Lady Freedom last term. Tom smiled and smiled but Billy didn’t remember him saying a word except to excuse himself to go out on the porch and smoke his pipe. When breakfast was over, Tom wasn’t on the porch. Billy wanted to go and look for him, not to ask him anything about his grandfather yelling, he just wanted to be with him, but then it was time for mass and they went to the white wooden church in Mr. Sapurty’s car. Mrs. Schmidt usually went in Mr. Copan’s car but she said that the weather was bothering her arthritis, and when they left she was sitting on the porch with his grandfather and Dave Warren, who wasn’t a Catholic, at least he never went to mass. At mass, his mother didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything and when they rang the bell she didn’t even beat her chest or bow her head, just stared right in front of her so that he was afraid the priest even might say something to her.

When they got back, his mother changed into a pinafore and came downstairs and then she and his grandfather went across the road and sat together on the church steps and Billy was afraid that his grandfather was going to start yelling at her again. He was standing in front of her and a couple of steps lower and swinging his stick back and forth and talking and talking right into her face. His mother kept looking past him at the far fields where the cows were grazing, tiny black-and-white and brown-and-white dots, they looked like little toys in the hazy sunlight. His mother came across the road when the dinner bell rang and his grandfather followed, but she went upstairs and at the table he said that she had a headache and wanted to lie down for a while. Tom came in late and excused himself, saying that he’d taken a long walk, and then he started to talk to his grandfather about the wonderful collie that Mr. O’Neill down the road had, yes, he’d had a long talk with him that morning and did his grandfather know that Mr. O’Neill fed the dog a pint of heavy cream in the morning, a sirloin steak in the afternoon, and another pint of cream at night? That was all he got. His grandfather said that Mr. O’Neill was a wonderful man and had raised prize-winning collies all his life, he had one, a big dog named Harriet, that had been the most beautiful dog that he’d ever seen, but she was killed about five years ago by some damn fool in a coupe that took a curve on two wheels. Then they were silent and all that Billy heard was Mrs. Schmidt talking at the next table about her relatives in Germany and how happy they were that everything was beginning to be the way it was before the terrible war and how this Hitler was doing wonders and how he wanted only peace for the German people. Tom looked up at the ceiling with a little smile on his face, smoothing his moustache with his fingers. It wasn’t a very nice smile but Tom didn’t say a word.

In the afternoon, Tom took him and the Copan girls swimming— nobody else felt like going because it had clouded up and got a little chilly, and his mother was still up in her room with a headache. It was cold at the lake, and after about an hour or even less, Tom said that he thought they really ought to get home before they all came down with the chills. When they got back, Tom changed into a pair of slacks and a sweater and said that he had to go into Hackettstown to take care of some business matters and make some phone calls and probably wouldn’t be back for supper. He told Mrs. Stellkamp that he was going to really try, though, because he didn’t want to miss the bread pudding that she made for Sunday night dessert. She told him not to worry, she’d save him a good portion and he could have it any time he wanted. She sounded really polite, like a waitress.

After Tom left, Billy went up to his room and played with his China Clipper. The whole place was deathly silent and he wondered what everybody was doing. His grandfather wasn’t playing croquet — nobody was — and Mrs. Schmidt and Mrs. Copan, who usually sat in the sun near the kitchen garden and crocheted, weren’t there. Well, there was no sun to sit in. He walked upstairs and knocked at his mother’s door and called to her, but she said that she really wanted to rest and would see him at supper. Her voice sounded really sad and tired and he was afraid that something really bad had happened while he had been at Budd Lake. Although last night had been bad enough. It was funny that nobody even mentioned it once.

Tom didn’t come back for supper and his mother had something light, some poached eggs on toast that Eleanor took up to her room because she said that though she was feeling much better she thought it would be wise to stay in bed and rest. Mrs. Schmidt sat at their table for the first time, and in his mother’s chair! He didn’t like it much but his grandfather didn’t seem to mind a bit, he even looked like he liked it. A lot. Mrs. Schmidt was talking about him finally drawing the line and his grandfather was smiling the way Billy hated to see him smile, with his false teeth hanging out of his mouth like someone had just glued them on the inside of his lips. He didn’t want to listen to what they said because he knew it had something to do with all the yelling. They both seemed really happy about it.

After supper he hung around the church steps for a while, waiting for Tom to come back, but by nightfall he still hadn’t returned. Billy went down to the barn but Louis had finished milking and so he came back and sat on the church steps again, listening to his grandfather and Mrs. Schmidt and the Sapurtys and Copans laughing on the porch. It was all sad and really rotten to him without his mother and Tom there and he knew that it would be like this the rest of the vacation. He wanted desperately to go back to the city. Now. By the time he had to go up to brush his teeth and wash, Tom still hadn’t come back.