—Did it occur to you that the damned thing won’t move? The wheels locked or something, maybe it’s the battery. Can you make me some tea?
—My God, you do have trouble with vehicles don’t you, where is she, what’s her name.
—If I knew where she was do you think I’d been sitting here in the rain? She hates that little room you’ve put her in I’ll tell you that Christina.
—I’ll put her in your old room on the top floor when you were a little boy, she can go up there and play with your rock collection, just turn your head a little. No, this way.
—What’s the . . .
—It’s not bad at all is it, your scar. You’d hardly notice it.
—You’ll notice it, I just have to ask Harry, I thought he was coming out with you.
—He’s getting some things from the car Oscar listen, before he comes in, he doesn’t want to make a Federal case of it but these phone calls you’ve been making to his office, he’s been terribly busy and he just can’t put up with them. He even said that you’d . . .
—Well if that’s what he, if he hasn’t even got time to . . .
—No but that’s what he said Oscar, it isn’t his time, it’s their time, the law firm’s time, they charge their clients for fifteen minutes if they talk for three he’ll explain it to you, it’s . . .
—Their clients? I thought he was my brother in law, I thought you wanted me to make him feel like a member of the family, isn’t that what you do if you’re a member of the family? help out when somebody in the family needs your advice?
—But that’s the point Oscar, you’re not a client, you’re not paying them for his advice, that’s why he’s come out here today, a Sunday, he brings work home, he eats late, this case he’s been working on it’s in the millions of dollars it’s been going on for years, he hasn’t a minute to himself he said you’d even asked him to go to this movie for you we just haven’t had the time. That’s why we’re late getting out here now, he had to make some calls before we left and I told the garage to bring the car around while I got your groceries together and I’d meet him in front of the building, and of course it was raining . . .
And of course they’d both been out there, waiting in the rain by the time the car appeared, the grocery bag already split down the side. He’d drive, he told her, get it over with and make an early start back, —and you? You’ve decided to stay out there?
—My God Harry I don’t know, my coat’s caught in the door here can you wait? She got it open, slammed it and —I won’t know till we’ve seen him. He’s been out of the hospital for three days and he’s already got everything in a turmoil, that nine hundred dollar chair I got for him he’ll probably break his neck in it and this woman I brought in, white columnar thighs to break a bull’s back isn’t that what you said once? Whether she can cook but she may get his mind off of Lily long enough to be careful! She’d seized the dashboard, clinging there with a tremor —my God . . .
—Did you see that?
—No but please just, be careful . . .
—Did you see that? his knuckles gone white on the wheel, —steps right in front of the car and holds up his hand, did you see that?
—God Harry just be careful. They’re crazy. I mean you’re the one who told me that aren’t you? take for granted everybody in this city’s crazy till they show you otherwise? You could have killed him.
—Better than just knocking him down, see a car like this one they know how much liability you’re carrying and you’re in court for the rest of your life.
—Just the rage. If you saw his eyes, that’s what this city runs on, where it gets its energy. Rage.
—It’s the money, Christina. The rest of it’s . . .
—It’s not The Marriage of Figaro I’ll tell you that. She’s got a new lawyer for her mess of a divorce who wants to handle Oscar’s accident, shock, injury, loss of income, disfigurement, a million, five, God knows what nonsense, you said he’s called you?
—Called me? sweeping up the avenue through the burst of a cab’s horn so close she started, freed into traffic lifting both hands from the wheel for a gesture —called me! I told you, look Christina. I told you to speak to him, he gets me at the office and I can’t get him off the phone. I don’t want to hurt his feelings but you know the pressure we’re under down there. A client calls and knows it’s costing him seventy five dollars just to pick up the phone but Oscar, it never occurs to him that . . .
—Well it doesn’t Harry, that’s just the point, it just doesn’t occur to him. Flat on his back, I mean what’s more natural than to reach for the telephone and he’s been simply frantic since this movie opened, he’s just getting used to the idea that he has a brother in law he thinks he can turn to and when he can’t reach you, when they tell him you’re in court . . .
—Because I’ve finally told Doris that whenever he calls I’m in court, that I’m in conference, that I’m out of the office, I’m not trying to make a Federal case out of this Christina but you’ve got to do something. I thought he resented me intruding on the family by marrying you, try to show him some family concern, fine. That’s what I’m doing today, now, Sunday, but even that woman we met at the hospital? the one with the blood bath, you actually gave her my number too?
—Trish?
—Well who else. Maybe you should just tell your friends I’m a public relations man, that I’m in ladies’ underwear, an ad account executive, something completely useless that . . .
—Trish would love you in ladies’ underwear Harry.
—Look I’m serious! She got on the phone with her whole life history, the time they took her to Payne Whitney when she cut her wrists? Patched her up, gave her some pills, when they sent her a bill for eleven thousand dollars she tried it again, now she wants to sue this hospital for something she calls foetal endangerment?
—Because that’s what she was doing there. I mean she came in for that amniosomething, centesis, that test they give pregnant women our age to make sure the baby won’t be born with one leg or eight thumbs and she’d have it aborted, she’s already got a sweet little boy about ten named T J and when that blood got spilled on her obviously that’s the first thing she thought of. She just wants to be sure before she marries Bunker.
—I see.
—I don’t think you do, Harry. I mean if she married him first and then got these tests and had to have the abortion, she’d be stuck with Bunker on her hands for no earthly purpose until God knows when, he’d be awfully expensive to unload and of course he doesn’t know a thing about the boy.
—If she’s thinking of making him a stepfather, I don’t . . .
—Of making who, Bunker? You see you don’t listen, I mean this boy she’s been seeing, where do you think the pregnancy came from. Of course she hasn’t mentioned it to him, he’s trying to be a writer and obviously hasn’t got a penny you can’t seriously picture her married to him, she’s twice his age and I mean Bunker’s twice hers but he’s so pickled he’ll last out the century and if Bunker got in there and anything happened to her T J would never see a penny.
—The rate she’s going looks like old Bunker’s onto a sure thing.
—Well you can’t laugh at them Harry, making fun of people’s troubles I mean that’s the way it sounds sometimes, if you could just stop and try to see their good side?
—Married the wrong man, Christina. We don’t get to see much of the good side, greed, stupidity, double dealing, a system like ours you expect it to bring out the best in people? One lawyer to every four or five hundred and most of them can’t afford one anyway, the ones who can like your friend here are even worse, make a mess of things and expect to be rescued, they . . .
—You didn’t need to be rude to her.
—I was not rude to her! When I finally got a word in . . .
—That all you could talk about was money.
—Exactly. Look. I told her I don’t do matrimonials. I told her I don’t do negligence. I told her I could se
t up a conference for her and there’d be a charge, if the firm took her case there’d be a retainer, it happens every time. The minute you mention money they think you’re being rude when that’s all they’ve got on their minds in the first place, look at Oscar. Perfectly happy if the insurance company would just pay his hospital bills till Lily drags in this ambulance chaser whetting his appetite for damages? Why I went into corporate law in the first place where it’s greed plain and simple. It’s money from start to finish, it’s I want what you’ve got, nobody out there with these grievances they expect you to share, have you got a dollar? Another dollar, for the toll.
—I don’t, wait . . . she dug deeper, —here. It’s just what I . . .
—Look at Oscar with this damn movie, you’ve got to explain to him Christina, these phone calls and the rest of the . . .
—I don’t see why you can’t explain it to him yourself, I mean it’s just what I said earlier isn’t it? about being taken seriously? Simply explain to him that you look out! My God Harry, you shouldn’t drive when you’re upset, that little green car anybody who drives a car like that don’t you know he’s going to try to prove something?
—Cuts me off because he wants me to take him seriously, exactly. Look, I can’t explain things to Oscar because I can’t get a word in. Because you want this great show of brotherly concern I’m supposed to get as upset as he is over this monstrous injustice, the minute I mention money we’ll end up just like your friend with her foetal endangerment. He probably doesn’t have a case. If he does the chances are it can’t be won. They get these nuisance suits all the time, people with grandiose ideas about suing Hollywood for millions even if he’s got one, even if Oscar’s really got a case with this play of his he’s got to know it will cost him money. He’s got to know you can always lose a lawsuit and your money with it, that’s the point, has he got it? the money? Because you don’t start something like this on what they pay a college history teacher.
—Well I know that, no. He just does that, the teaching I mean, it just goes in to the bank every month I don’t think he makes any connection between it and these students he detests no, there’s a trust his mother set up for him before she died because Father married money that first time, just the way his father had, so what does Oscar show up with? Somebody whose idea of share the wealth is getting her purse stolen, but I mean all that was before Father married again, married my mother I mean so I’ve never known what it amounts to and Oscar’s always been awfully careful about what’s his and what’s mine. Why is that funny.
—Careful.
—Well why is that . . .
—First time I met him, first time I came out to the country to see you? That downstairs hall bathroom, I hadn’t closed the door tight and I hear Oscar’s footsteps come creaking down the hall, suddenly as he passes his hand slips in and switches the light off and leaves me there sitting in the dark.
—I don’t think that’s odd at all, he’s just not used to having strangers in the house, I mean with half the place shut off to save heat there’s nothing odd about being upset by sheer waste is there? It’s the way we were brought up, you get letters from him with the address pasted over some political fund raiser or cripple benefit or God knows what because be can’t bear to see the postage wasted, you don’t waste you don’t want and putting up with my mother my God, you couldn’t blame him. I mean if you’re brought up like that you’re going to go one way or the other when the times comes, throw your money out the window or separate the clean bills from the dirty ones, right side up, the twenties and tens inside and then the fives, the ones think about it, I mean you couldn’t blame him. That egg he wouldn’t eat at breakfast when he was what, seven? and she puts it in front of him again at lunch? Roast chicken for dinner and he’s still sitting there gritting his teeth against that egg it went on for two days, he just wouldn’t give in till that second night he finally went to pieces, threw the whole thing on the floor and shouted which came first! the chicken or the egg! and he was sent to bed, he went up the stairs singing it and he stayed there, he even managed to run a fever. God knows what went on between Father and my mother, he never said a word but I’d see him looking at Oscar sometimes, watching him with that cunning little smile he gets when you don’t know whether he’s pleased or that you’d better watch out.
—Tell you one thing, I’d hate to argue a case before him when he’s sober.
—Well you only met him that once Harry, he was hardly at his best.
—Kept calling me counselor, that courtly manner and the gravy spots on his tie I’m not even sure he knew who I was. He seemed to think I wanted to discuss Justice Holmes’ dissent in the Black and White Taxicab case, he’s got total recall for the year nineteen twenty eight when he was clerking for his father on the High Court and now the press down there trying to heat things up over this Szyrk decision, madness in the family and all the rest of it, have you seen that ad for this damn Civil War movie? Based on a true story, have you seen it? All they’d need is a look in his chambers there, sweltering, cigarette smoke you could cut with a knife, must have been a hundred degrees and that Christ awful life size plastic praying hands thing of Dürer’s standing there on the window sill upside down like somebody taking a dive, think that’s his idea of a joke?
—God only knows, he’s . . .
—If it is it’s a pretty good one.
—Well of course that’s why Oscar’s so frantic, I don’t mean this mess about Father but this awful movie, you can’t blame him. I mean that’s why he tried to write his play in the first place, for his grandfather, you can imagine, I mean even after he’d retired from the Court he used to dress to go out to dinner and Oscar had this solemn little task, transferring his gold watch and chain and the gold pen knife and change from the pockets of the suit he’d had on to his evening clothes it went on right till the last, he didn’t die till he was ninety six and then suddenly there’s this little boy with his own mother gone and his father marching his new wife into the house dragging this little girl behind her, my God. Because he’d have died before he’d have taken a penny changing his grandfather’s money from one suit to the other but now he’d watch his chance to go through the seat cushions in that big chair in the library where Father sat when he read the papers, I mean think about it. Because his grandfather was really the first friend he ever had.
—Fine . . . He ran a hand over her knee, drawn up that close to him on the seat there, —take a nap. Because I’ve tried to tell him, haven’t I? that he can’t copyright his grandfather?
—And the rain, Harry? her voice already falling away, —just don’t drive so fast?
And the rain, steady as the highway stretching out ahead like the day itself, lightened at last now the car turned south off the highway into a road, a byroad, as the —Sorry!
—Well my God! seizing the dashboard again, —you knew that bump was there didn’t you? through the gates, past PRIVATE ROAD MEMBERS AND GUESTS ONLY, passing STRANGERS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO ENTER down a ribbon of disrepair prompted at discreet intervals along its way by names on the order of Whitney, Armstrong, here a Kalli-kak freshly lettered, even a Hannahan posting driveways off to the right, to the left turning in at a weathered Crease to splash up the pitted drive —and these dangling limbs look at them, twelve hundred dollars to those tree people they should pay us for damages, drive up as close as you can will you? by the steps there?
They heard the racket before she got out of the car, through the rain running up the wet steps of that veranda to tug at the door as he came round the side of the car for the grocery bag, a suitcase, newspapers, round the side of the house to the tradesmen’s entrance where a door led through to the kitchen and —Harry? in here, we’re in the sunroom, maybe you can help?
It was the obstinate chair of course, —a little safety lock down here Oscar, you must have brushed a hand against it.
—I did not brush a thing against it. Hello Harry. Christina’s making some tea.
&
nbsp; —Well it’s late enough Oscar, I brought out some sturgeon, maybe we’ll just want lunch? But he’d already ordered up tortellini for lunch, told that woman to fix it in some broth and then something in an Alfredo sauce and salad if anyone could find her, bad enough just trying to find anything herself, scissors, any scissors, those ginger preserves, his copy of Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All! because he certainly couldn’t scale the shelves in the library the mess it was in since they’d moved things around to put a bed in there for him where he couldn’t reach the phone that had already ring twice since he’d been left sitting here in the rain, abandoned was really the word for it, he’d had her look in his room upstairs for his play in a black pebbled binder and she finally came down with an old address book and the papers, had they brought out the newspapers? Not that he could read them if they had because that was the worst of it, his glasses, —what that woman could have done with my glasses I haven’t been able to read anything but the headlines since the day before the, the mail even the mail, wherever she’s hidden the mail like every illiterate in this whole illiterate country I have to watch the news trimmed to fit that damned little screen between the hemorrhoid and false teeth commercials, can you imagine what the rest of the audience looks like? America has taken Spot to its heart, did you see it last night? Every idiot in sight down there with something to sell, dog candy, hot dogs, Free Spot! buttons, Free Spot! T shirts, Spot dolls with huge wet eyes and that whole hideous Cyclone Seven? peddling this take apart puzzle model and a game where you try to get the dog out with magnets shaped like a dog bone? Marching around for animal rights, artists’ rights, black rights, right to life, abortion, gun control, Jesus loves and the flags, Stars and Stripes, Stars and Bars and then somebody . . .
—Oscar, just . . .
—Yes and then somebody throws a beer bottle and they . . .
—And Father right in the midst of it, that’s . . .
—And why shouldn’t he be! Why shouldn’t he Christina he started it all didn’t he? with that, that decision he wrote for this awful little dog? Schoolchildren sending in donations so this cheap sentimental vision of our great republic shall not perish from the earth, you know that story by Stephen Crane? A Small Brown Dog? where a lonely little boy and a simpering brown dog make friends and the whole thing gets so syrupy the drunken father finally throws the dog out the window? I’d do the same thing, it’s being reprinted everywhere how the same man who wrote it could have written The Red Badge of Courage, you think they’re not making that into a television special too? Everybody grabbing part of the act, the Civil War nobody gives one damn for it till they see these headlines PATRIOTIC GORE IN NINETY MILLION DOLLAR SPECTACULAR, have you seen it?