‘Jesus, what a time for a car accident,’ Norm said. ‘Or maybe somebody’s reenacting Washington crossing the Delaware —’ Norm broke off, stifled by laughter.
‘You know some of these idiots around here,’ Gert began cheerfully to Marion, ‘get into a rowboat Christmas Eve and fall in. Our town’s called Washington Crossing, where he crossed on Christmas Eve to surprise the British at Trenton. Maybe —’
‘Let’s have the date, mom!’ said Derek. ‘Seventeen —’
The doorbell rang.
Gert set her two packages down on the floor under the tree. ‘God bless!’
‘Cliffie just jumped in the river,’ Brett said, more or less to Gert.
‘Huh?’ said Norm.
Brett went to the door.
Gert was listening, and Edith said, ‘It’s true, Cliffie jumped off the bridge – and the hospital’s just bringing him home.’
Norm looked at her blankly.
Derek took it in, Edith saw from his face.
‘I hope he didn’t hit any rocks,’ Derek said.
‘Come in,’ Brett said to someone at the door.
A tall redheaded young man came in with Cliffie in his arms. Cliffie was swathed in blankets. A second intern followed, ready to lend assistance. Marion got up from the sofa.
‘He’s all right. They thought since it’s Christmas Eve —’ said the man carrying Cliffie.
‘Put him on the sofa,’ Brett said. ‘Or does he have to —’
‘How you doing, Cliffie?’ asked George, who was still seated on the sofa.
Cliffie looked quite alert, was even smiling, but he didn’t say anything. The intern installed him in a corner of the sofa, setting Cliffie upright.
‘You’re all right, Cliffie?’ Edith asked, bending over him. ‘Where’s your hand?’ She had extended her hand. Cliffie was wrapped like a papoose. As soon as she thought this, she heard Gert saying:
‘… like a papoose!’
‘Oh, he’s warm enough now. That was the main thing,’ one of the interns was saying to Brett. ‘He’s not in danger, or we wouldn’t have brought him home.’
‘Can I offer you a drink?’ Brett asked the interns.
‘Well, I – We shouldn’t, because we’re on duty tonight,’ said the redheaded intern, looking as if he wanted to stay for a drink. ‘Your boy jumped, they said.’ He glanced quickly at Cliffie. ‘You should look into that. We’re just a hospital, you know.’ He was almost whispering.
Brett nodded. ‘You’ll send us the bill, I trust.’
‘Not sure there’ll be any. Not for something like this.’
The two men took their leave, Brett thanked them again, and all three exchanged wishes for a happy Christmas.
Gert had her hand on Cliffie’s shoulder, a mound of blankets. ‘How’re you feeling, Cliffie? You’ll want to go to sleep soon, won’t you? Are you hungry?’
Cliffie shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Why’d you jump, Cliffie?’ Brett asked. ‘You jumped, didn’t you? You didn’t fall.’
‘Oh, Brett, don’t question him now,’ Marion said.
‘If I don’t now, I may never get the answer – or the right answer,’ Brett replied.
Edith knew Brett was tired after a long day, that he was more ashamed of Cliffie than concerned about his state.
‘Do you know who pulled you out?’ Brett asked Cliffie.
‘We’ll find out, Brett,’ Edith said. ‘The whole town’ll know tomorrow.’
‘… Good King Wenceslas…
… on the feast of…’
They were back. No, passing by, Edith thought. No, back, because here it came louder. However, these were men’s voices. One singer broke off in a tipsy guffaw.
‘Nobody’s going to ask for alms, so we’re not ringing the bell!’ a man said, and his voice came clearly from the snowbound street, because no one in the living room was talking just then.
Gert had just lit a cigarette, and she shook the match out with a jerk of her wrist and said, grinning, ‘Bet that’s Male and Harry from the Stud Box, Norm. Sounds like ’em. They’re always clowning.’ She laughed a merry laugh.
The Stud Box was a men’s shop in the town.
‘Faggots,’ said Norm good-naturedly. ‘Can I have a re-fill, Brett?’
‘Help yourself, Norm!’ Edith said. She had put rye, whisky, rum, gin, and the ice bucket on a card table, in easier reach than the bar cart.
‘I think Santa Claus or a friend of yours brought you an interesting present from New York, Cliffie,’ Marion said, bending toward him. ‘Want to see it now?’
‘Oh – he can wait till tomorrow,’ Edith said. Cliffie looked all right, but was in a trance, Edith thought. She was familiar with his trances. ‘Want to go to bed, Cliffie?’
Cliffie didn’t answer, though he looked at his mother. He was not quite smiling, but he was enjoying perhaps the happiest moment of his life. He loved being wrapped up like a mummy, so that he couldn’t even lift an arm or a hand, loved being warm and cozy and fussed over, because he really had jumped off the bridge. He could hardly believe it himself, that a couple of hours ago he’d climbed over the metal parapet which was nearly as high as his shoulders, looked down for a few seconds, then jumped – into the darkness, into the water. Even at camp, he hadn’t had the courage to jump off a diving board, even when the distance had been much less and he could see what he was jumping into. Cliffie was also amazed that he’d been rescued, and pretty quickly. The seconds when he’d thought to jump, and had jumped, had been brief and magical. Had it been he? Of course! Here he was, and he knew quite well that he’d just been in the hospital in Doylestown, with people hovering around him, giving him hot tea, putting hot water bottles at his feet. Cliffie felt that he was a changed boy, that he might sprout wings, that he might have stupendous powers from now on. He was happy.
Cliffie’s dream of glory was jolted, slightly, by a clatter on the staircase, a little shriek from his mother in the hall, a yell from somebody else. George was groaning, mumbling something.
‘You all right, George?’ said Marion in the hall.
Cliffie giggled, shivering and shaking at the same time under his blankets. Old Uncle George had fallen on the stairs! Ha-ha! Maybe fallen on his ass, or his nose!
Brett and Edith were getting George to his feet. He had fallen forward, thank goodness, and had only a nosebleed, or so it seemed, because Marion, the nurse, busied herself with Kleenexes and soothing words.
‘What else tonight?’ asked Marion, laughing.
Edith was in a mood to laugh also, but part of it was hysteria, she knew. They got George up to his bed, made sure he was all right, didn’t want Ovaltine or anything else.
*
The present-opening took place Christmas morning, as was the Howlands’ custom, and with this went eggnog in silver mugs, and spice cookies. The Zylstras gave them a portable barbecue grill with battery lighter and a bag of charcoal. Cliffie got a transistor radio from George. Brett and Edith gave the Zylstras a turquoise towel set to match their bathroom in New York. The cat romped noisily amid discarded wrappings. Edith opened Melanie’s present the last, a pretty Mexican box with a rooster design, and she thought at first it contained nothing but tissue paper until she found an envelope which held a check for a thousand dollars and a note: ‘Am not very imaginative this year, so will give you this for you to use your imagination on – with love always from your Aunt Melanie.’
‘A check,’ Edith said to Brett with a grateful sigh. ‘Isn’t she a darling?’
And Cliffie also was happy. He loved getting presents, loved the transistor radio that was shiny and new and all his own, and loved equally his gift from the Zylstras, a Superman suit of black tights and cape (yellow-lined), and a kind of metal trumpet to yell through, which apparently came with the suit. Plus a black mask. The suit fitted perfectly, and clung to him. Cliffie, feeling better than new that Christmas morning, donned the suit at once in his own room in the back downstairs corner o
f the house. He leapt up so he could get a view of hips and legs in his mirror. Superman! And he felt worthy of wearing it, because he had jumped off the Delaware River bridge the night before. Not for him the Washington Crossing silliness in a rowboat! He swilled Coca-Cola while the adults drank their eggnogs. Cliffie stalked about the living room in great strides, glancing at himself in the big rectangular mirror over the blanket chest. Then he slipped out the door, knowing his parents wouldn’t have let him go out without a coat and snow boots.
Cliffie walked in more or less stockinged feet (though they had some kind of stiffening on the bottom) through snow that had been swept off the sidewalk but was still a few inches thick. He had the black mask over his eyes, and therefore had to turn his head sharply in various directions to see where he was going. He hailed people he didn’t know at all, saying, ‘Merry Christmas from Superman!’ and was rewarded by laughter and returns of the same.
He walked – by now wet up to his ankles – to the bridge from which he’d jumped last night. There the bridge was, solid and gray in the sunlight.
‘Hey!’ said a small boy who was with his parents.
Cliffie recognized him, a fellow called Vinnie or Vincent who went to his school.
‘Cliffie?’ said Vinnie.
Cliffie ignored him, and strode on toward the bridge, but suddenly turned and said, ‘Superman greets you!’ raising his right arm.
Vinnie looked stunned.
‘You’re going to freeze!’ said the woman.
Cliffie leapt up and hunched himself over the rail of the bridge, bracing his shivering body on his forearms.
‘What’re you up to?’ said a man in galoshes, clumping past on the bridge.
Cliffie ignored him. The river’s edges, both sides, were prettily adorned with clumps of snow on rocks and bushes. Some rocks were visible, gray and sharp. Amazing he hadn’t a scratch on himself from the rocks, Cliffie thought, but then – he was Superman! Cliffie ran swiftly across the bridge, dodging a car, to have a look from the other side, and just then became aware of a running beige figure over his right shoulder.
His father!
‘Cliffie! Dammit!’ Brett said. ‘You going to do it again?’
‘No-o!’ Cliffie yelled, suddenly hating his father who was putting an end to everything.
‘Dammit, you caused enough trouble last night! Come on!’ Brett took Cliffie by the hand, fairly yanking him, and seeing that Cliffie’s feet were wet, Brett picked him up by the waist and carried him in one arm like a sack of wheat, turned the boy slightly so he could breathe. ‘Honestly, Cliffie – Do you want pneumonia next?’
Cliffie erased his thoughts, and endured the short walk home. He stomped his feet on the doormat, entered the warm house calmly, but even so his mother was hovering, telling him not to wet the waxed floor. Someone spread wrappings from Christmas packages under his feet.
Tea again. A sweater over his Superman outfit, the pants of which they had compelled him to take off, because they were attached to the wet feet. The hospital blanket again over his legs as he sat on the sofa. ‘I’m still Superman!’ Cliffie said to the whole room.
Cliffie was pleased by the way the adults stood around wordless, looking at him.
5
2/Feb./57. Bugle still tootles along, though barely breaking even now. I refrained from noting its initial success, thinking it bad luck to do so. People (advertisers) simply don’t need it, and that’s the crunch. Gert’s (and I must say my own if I do say so myself) editorials are damned good, and dear old Gert writes extra letters under another name sometimes. Not enough people seem to care enough.
The hopes Edith had had for Brett’s taking Cliffie fishing or rowing – some people did row a bit on the Delaware, some even ventured out in small sailing craft in summer – simply hadn’t materialized. Brett didn’t enjoy taking a walk with Cliffie in the woods because Cliffie (according to Brett) announced after fifteen minutes that he was bored and wanted to go home. Of course Brett wasn’t much of an outdoor man himself. He liked to do jobs like insulating the roof, or putting up shelves in his basement workroom. But Cliffie didn’t like such tasks, and had always been clumsy with his hands. He didn’t grip even a Coca-Cola bottle properly, much less a hammer. It was an everyday thing for him to drop a knife or fork on the edge of his plate. The articulated thumb, praised by anthropologists as man’s blessing (along with the monkeys of course) was in Cliffie short and stiff, and of about as much help as another little finger. His ineffective hands seemed to proclaim that his grip on life or reality was nil.
Edith’s great-aunt Melanie visited every six months or so, and stayed about five days. Edith adored her visits. They talked of a variety of things – old family stories that Melanie might have heard from her own grandmother’s knee, Thomas Mann’s essay on Nietzsche and The Will, school integration (the South would do better than the North, Melanie predicted), and the proper way to make dill pickles. Melanie’s visits brought an extra treat in that Cliffie put on his best behavior. But Edith knew that Melanie was not fooled. She always had a gift or two for Cliffie, always talked with him as if he were a human being worthy of respect and love, but Edith knew that Melanie simply didn’t like Cliffie, didn’t or perhaps couldn’t understand him. ‘There’s nothing to hang onto in him, is there?’ Melanie had said once. Or had she really said it? But Edith knew that was Melanie’s feeling. ‘Is he showing any interest in girls as yet?’ Melanie asked when Cliffie was fourteen or so. It was for Aunt Melanie a rather bold question. Edith said not as far as she could see. Cliffie was unsure of himself, Edith had added quite unnecessarily, and the subject had been dropped.
These days, Edith knew, kids twelve, maybe younger, were attempting intercourse. There was something bizarre, even depressing about it, Edith thought. Cliffie perhaps had a fantasy world as definitely peopled as that of – the Marquis de Sade came first to her mind. She was under no illusion that Cliffie was innocent, naive in heart and mind. Was he still a male virgin? Edith smiled to herself at the thought. Very likely not. Whom did he meet, hanging around Mickey’s, a popular seedy bar on Main Street, where kids Cliffie’s age could have soft drinks but weren’t supposed to be sold beer? Gert fairly boasted about Derek’s conquest of an eighteen-year-old assistant of the family dentist in Trenton. Had Brett ever had a talk with Cliffie about the facts of life?
‘But – what’m I supposed to tell him? At his age,’ said Brett, looking nearly as blank as Cliffie did sometimes. ‘After all, his voice has already changed. Fourteen —’
‘Well – don’t you think it’s a little funny he’s never had a girl friend, not even a crush —’
‘He wouldn’t necessarily tell you,’ Brett interrupted.
‘Oh, Brett! Kids phone. They write letters. It —’
‘Kids these days are illiterate.’
‘It even crossed my mind he might be queer, I swear.’
Brett laughed heartily. ‘I doubt it from the way he borrows my razor. Trying to scrape up a beard.’ Brett shook his head, still grinning. ‘Honey, did you manage to pick up my shoes today? That heel job?’
Edith had.
‘All right, Edie, I’ll take him out camping – this next Saturday. I promise.’
Edith imagined an overnight camping trip, the two of them talking across a bonfire. Man to man. Edith smiled at the triteness of it, but it must work sometimes, or people wouldn’t keep trying it, or talking about it. She knew Brett considered it a sacrifice of his weekend time. Brett liked his own little projects, liked reading and making notes for a book he intended to write on the origins of war.
‘But if it’s self-confidence you’re talking about again, I’m afraid I can’t inject him with that,’ Brett said.
So Brett and Cliffie went off the following Saturday after lunch, equipped with sleeping bags, tarpaulin, flashlights, the Winchester .22, sandwiches, alcohol stove, instant coffee, a thermos of soup, a big jug of fresh water. Edith relished her hours alone (except for George), even d
eclined an invitation from the Quickmans next door for Saturday dinner. Brett and Cliffie were back Sunday evening around 8, dinnerless, but Edith had not eaten as yet. Cliffie looked as usual, grinning, taciturn, as he switched on the television before even removing his nylon jacket. Only Brett was – somehow – not his usual self, a little tense, maybe a little angry. Edith knew something had happened. Had Cliffie recounted a saga of erotic conquests, all fantasy, Edith wondered.
Brett was close-mouthed until he and Edith were ready for bed, their bedroom door closed.
‘I woke up this morning and found him standing over me with the gun,’ Brett said. ‘Funny – isn’t it?’
The gun. The .22, Edith thought. She could imagine Cliffie pointing it. Smiling? ‘Joking, you mean.’