—It is not for rent! now . . .
—Oh I understand perfectly, and for a sale of course you wouldn’t need to bother, buyers always have their own ideas it would just be throwing your money away and I wouldn’t let that happen to you would I.
—God knows what you’d let happen to us, Oscar you started all this now do something!
—Yes I tried to explain, when I called we just wanted some sort of appraisal because the property belonged to my father and . . .
—And this is Dad? she swooped at him red in tooth and claw cowering there in the armchair, life preserver muffled in a much darned brown sock in his lap at the ready —I. I should have known yes it’s, the nose? she backed off warily —I’d say, I’d say a whisker over three million? out of harm’s way now, —yes, say three million two with this sweeping view over the pond and the swans, look at them! You can’t find this anymore with these wetland setbacks, this four acre piece right up here across your driveway that just went for two million six with no view at all, did you know the people?
—We did not, why in God’s name would anyone pay two and a half million the house is a perfect rats’ nest.
—Oh it’s not for the house they’ll tear that down in a wink, it’s for the site, it’s quite an exclusive area here and right on the pond even if it’s only a cove there where they can’t take the trees down for the hundred and fifty foot setback and all they’d see is a mudflat even if they could but they’ll cut down everything else, they’ll have to for the house they’ve planned by this famous post modern architect, a regular showplace, they’re very wealthy needless to say I think they made it in parking garages and . . .
—But those were probably the men I saw in the trees there Christina, they must have been surveyors and . . .
—It all sounds perfectly revolting, I mean you don’t become wealthy building parking garages you simply get rich there’s quite a difference, chopping down everything in sight to build a showplace out here it sounds quite sickening, you can find your way out can’t you?
—Oh they’re going to landscape, I’ve heard they’ve put aside a million just for landscaping it should give real estate values here a real boost and, oh! It’s been such a pleasure talking to you I almost forgot my poor client sitting out there in the car, you don’t mind if I bring him in just for a moment to see your lovely view? It’s such a beautiful day and . . .
—I do mind! Oscar for God’s sake will you see her to the door?
—Oh no, no, I can find my way, another time then? Such a pleasure meeting you, you have my number yes and while I think of it you’ll want to do something about your driveway out there won’t you, I almost hit a deer coming in they are such pests, they’ll chew up everything in sight till not a tree’s left standing.
—Now where was I! She stood with her fingertips pressed to her temples until the doors up the hall clattered closed —my God, such a beautiful day! Just to get that odious woman’s voice out of my head, now where was I.
—I thought you were finding these papers for us to sign and . . .
—I thought that’s why I sent you in here an hour ago, now will you sit right down there with him and get it over with before I come back? I’m going out for a walk.
Such a beautiful day! or what had been till that odious woman’s voice reduced it to an epithet, and she shook her head as though to empty it of that jangling echo of words cluttering all that lay about her coming down the lawn toward the pond, toward the swans look at them! but they were already a distant trail of white across the water fled, like her, to rescue their serenity from a raucous visitation as she descended to the narrow strand, picking her way more slowly now the sandy edge gave way to reeds, to shoals of mud, to stagnant pools where suddenly the crows burst in a rage of cries that drowned her own, where a step further would have trampled what had been a sort of face snaggle toothed and staring up from eye sockets plucked clean, staggering back to recover her foot from the paw gently stirred there on the still backwater her balance almost lost again blinded by the flats of her hands, deprived like the breath she gasped for retreating to the hard crest of the road leading her away past those silent hulks shuttered for winter and on to the dunes looking far down the beach to the cut where turning the pond brackish came silent, flooding in, the main, a stiff breeze harassing her every retraced step and garbled metaphor the long way back under those mangled pines strewn with the jangling echoes of a million just for landscaping to clatter up the steps of that perilous veranda and the doors closing behind her, and her name reaching her the length of the hall, —Is that you Christina? You had a phone call, it was . . .
—Harry? When is he coming out.
—No, no Lily said it was somebody from his office, they said it was urgent and . . .
—Well if it’s so urgent couldn’t he have simply picked up the phone and called me himself? No I’ve told you what’s urgent haven’t I? signing these things and getting this memento mori with his green sock out of here, have you done anything about it?
—Yes I, it’s a brown sock now he said something about a hair of the dog and . . .
—I, don’t tell me about a hair of the dog! just, some tea, some hot tea.
—She’ll get it but listen, there’s only one thing for us to sign Christina that’s all, it’s a waiver and consent saying we won’t contest the will so it can be probated that’s all he brought.
—Well it can’t be! Coming all the way up here just for, couldn’t he have mailed it? both of them closing in —I mean, simply have mailed it? coming down on the sofa, the strength gone out of her —oh Lily, thank God bring me some tea will you?
—You okay? You look real pale.
—I’m, please just, just bring me a drink.
—There was this call for you, they said can you come right in there they sounded real serious, they . . .
—All right I’ll call them! Now will you do as I ask? and she was back up for the phone, Mister Lutz? All right, Mister Peyton then? out of town? both of them? but who was the, —what? I said I’m his wife aren’t I? This is ridiculous, why don’t you know how to reach them! finally banging it down —my God, you never heard such confusion, they all sound scared out of their wits I mean no wonder Harry thinks the whole ship may go down. Sailing in there to confront Bill Peyton over pensions and balance sheets, if they’re forcing him out can’t he simply call me? already assailing the phone again —you see? He’s not answering, I suppose I’ve got to simply go in, driving all of us out of our minds he’ll be standing there in a towel naked with a drink in one hand like the last time just didn’t want to upset me, stupid predicament he got himself in no reason he should bother me with it, nothing I could have done with my hands full out here running this madhouse find my sweater will you, Lily? I thought you were making tea, the beige one, Oscar stop standing there, he found this idiotic paper to be signed didn’t he? Well where is it.
—With the will, here, he wants us to read the will before we sign to make sure we under . . .
—But I thought it was already probated, I mean why in God’s name would we contest it if we’re the sole beneficiaries, equal shares and per stirpes and the rest of that nonsense?
—There’s a bequest in there for him Christina, a bequest for five hundred dollars and he must be afraid that we’d . . .
—And that’s why he came all the way up here? My God I’ve never heard such a miserable, where’s a pen, can we get this ridiculous business over with?
—When it’s signed by a witness and . . .
—Well Lily can write her name can’t she? Has he got a pen? and she stood over him searching deep among worn folds of worsted, reminded of a case down there where they had an old night watchman who couldn’t write signed his pension checks with his thumbprint till somebody noticed he must be over a hundred and ten years old with the checks still coming through and when they investigated they found his thumb in a bottle of formaldehyde up on a kitchen shelf with the green tomato preser
ves and —just give me the pen!
—But Christina wait, you’re not taking my car are you? one step behind her up the hall —you can’t just leave us here you can wait for him to call, can’t you? and at the door —you’re just using this! You’re just using it as an excuse to get away and leave us with . . .
—Exactly.
Name three African countries beginning with C.
—You ought to get on one of those Oscar.
—One of what! he snapped over the clamour of the studio audience greeting Cameroon.
—He’s already up to almost four thousand dollars, they let you choose your own category and you could . . .
—Listen, we’ve got a game show going right here, she just drove out with my car how are we going to get him out of here, I don’t know when she’ll be back we’ve got to shop for food and . . .
—You want a ham sandwich?
What breed of African antelope is named after an American car? And the din went on interspersed with graphic portrayals of lower back pain and laxatives, arthritic fingers and acid stomach, incontinence and hemorrhoids each summoning a moan of satisfaction embracing fellowship with this geriatric fraternity in armchairs, loungers and contorting mattresses throughout the land gnashing dentures over Black Bean Nacho Chips and Tater Skins with another pull at the brown sock as afternoon displaced the morning and the conquest of Africa eighteen thousand dollars the richer had long since given way to the interminable war between the animal and vegetable kingdoms on the nature program where a potato leaf under attack by a caterpillar provoked a lethal case of indigestion in its assailant and a belch from the solitary audience intruded upon with suggestions for his departure by bus? by plane? He must have got a round trip ticket hadn’t he? as mountain pine beetles busy boring out lodgings to lay eggs for a new generation in the mighty ponderosa pine were assailed by a noxious flow of resin engulfing the tiny nursery, they could even call a cab to get him to the airport while the weather was still fine, it could change overnight with a storm, a blizzard, marooned here with the ham whose aroma even now crept near lending its pungent emphasis to a coyote tobacco plant rewarding a jack rabbit’s ravin with a severe attack of diarrhea, she’d found this can of creamed corn in the recipe book where it told you how to make these ham croquettes for supper when darkness had set in and the flowering clusters of wild parsnip flooding their grazing predators with poison had been displaced by Serbs slaughtering Croats on the evening news.
—Well he’s dead isn’t he? she said as he gasped scraping the last of his croquette into the trash. —He was floating around on top of the fishtank so I threw him away. You think I should go down there Oscar? I tried to call Mama before they do this operation on him only they were busy getting all this spiritual counseling in case the Lord calls him so I hardly know what I’m doing. You think you should go in there and feel his pulse? With those ashes he’s got in that can up there on the shelf by your grandfather’s picture in that black smock thing we can just leave this croquette and everything out here on the table for when he gets up in the night, you want to finish this wine? He gets up about five times and you hear this trickle trickle trickle in there, couldn’t he close the bathroom door and just get it all done at once like everybody else? Old men, he muttered something about old men pouring off the last of the wine, a gland called the prostate that can swell up when men get old and cut off the flow from the bladder so —that’s what Daddy has! she’d got her breath again, —this operation where they’re going inside him and cut if off that’s why I’m scared, you think I should go down there? A fairly common operation from all he’d heard, the real danger was cancer, if they got in there and found —cancer? What about me! she took up later pressing his hand to her breast there in the half dark —feel it? did it get any bigger? Well? she’d been told to have an x-ray hadn’t she? a mammogram? —I’ll go tomorrow, I’ll go when she brings the car back out tomorrow.
—She hasn’t even called has she? His hand warmed to its task, to the neighboring breast —I don’t know when she’ll come back, she just used that call for an excuse to get out of here, out of this madhouse she called it it was just an excuse, Harry will be there with a towel around him and a drink in his hand they’re probably having a great time right now at some fancy . . .
—Listen! She stalled his hand rounding her thigh till the shuffle of carpet slippers had passed in the hall —no, there’s something wrong Oscar, the way they sounded when they called, will you turn off that light in the fishtank? as the faint sound of a trickle reached them, —it’s spooky.
A heavy mist pierced by sporadic gunfire waking the day, waking the sleeper to a confusion of realms with a fleeting white disc up there that might have been the sun or the moon confounding the day shapelessly enveloped out over the pond obscuring the opposite shore colliding with history as spectacle, the shotgun blasts with Hooker’s opening volleys through the morning mists down on Jackson’s two divisions bestriding the Hagerstown pike where by midmorning the slaughter was done, the attack repulsed and the mist burned away by the sun as it proved to be now over heels of toast and more tea meliorated by today’s hair of the dog muffled in a much darned black sock all hopelessly aswirl for lack of a recipe to bring the ingredients together in some grand design illuminating the whole in this battle all tactics and no strategy, leaving no course open but getting to choose your own category in history as a game show.
What famous Civil War general was shot down and killed by his own men? abruptly conjuring history costumed as theatre: We are speaking of General Jackson, sir! clamouring through the clutter of blasted hopes and grand intentions, history as madness, the God-driven man who knows without question and acts, but admire him? riding forth in the dusk hand pointed heavenward to organize the pursuit rolling up the Union flank at Chancellorsville in one of the most brilliant manoeuvres in history as war, seizing death in victory and his commander left crippled without his right arm’s divinely sanctioned audacity to prolong the slaughter for two more years staring its futility square in the face embracing war as madness with his General Ewell was it? who thought he was a bird? did bird songs and ate birdseed?
What three famous men living or dead have had the first name Rudolph.
Hitler? —Good God! he muttered, backing off furtively from the solitary audience propped up before the screen there in a litter of crusts and glossy wrappings —Good God! again, bursting into the kitchen, —can such stupidity really exist?
—You said you wanted somebody to talk to didn’t you?
—I didn’t mean him I meant, I mean him yes, plain as the nose on his face when Lee lost Jackson the whole cause was lost but he wouldn’t face it, he kept the slaughter going for two more whole years, half starved boys without shoes in their first long pants blown to bits at Vicksburg, Chattanooga, the Wilderness, that old fool in there with his fried hog rinds talking about the noble cause it was vanity, vanity that’s all it was, look at Gettysburg. Lee might have taken Meade at Gettysburg but he couldn’t get his act together, do you think Pickett would have led that insane charge if Jackson had been around taking his orders direct from the Almighty?
—I don’t know Oscar, but we’re out of bread.
—Have you looked? We can’t be out of everything.
—There’s this jar of olives.
—We’ll starve him out, he muttered, coming down heavily on a wooden chair to seize the wine bottle there on the bare kitchen table and cling to it like a stanchion, —he wants some more Tater Skins when we go shopping how does he think we, will you hand me a glass? I never knew anyone could be so selfish even Christina, I can’t even reach her. When I called there I got some awful woman who said she was Harry’s sister I didn’t know he had one, when I said where’s Christina she said she didn’t know or give a damn and hung up, what about your friend’s car the one with red hair?
—He dumped her so she needed it back, all he wanted off her was what he got off of me but just wait! You can hire a cab can’
t you?
—To go shopping for Tater Skins? splashing wine on her hand where she set down the glass, —we can’t even . . .
—We can starve him out Oscar but what about us, am I supposed to just sit here eating Cream of Wheat while you get the DT’s drinking all this wine?
Bent unsteadily over the basin for a late afternoon shave the ultimate confusion of realms collided upstairs and down, reaching for a towel all unawares as he’d been of that excursion laid out erect beside her on a bed littered with cans of shoe polish that he was, as real as anything, this very instant walking naked into the junkyard of the mind here in the sunroom where sleep tempered the soft rise and fall of her belly and the descent of an intinerant hand idly scratching the warm crest mounting the vulvate den massed thick with hairs like some mortal Gorgon spread for the thrust of an impudent tongue in the shaving mirror turning to search a drawer for a clean shirt from the sticky doings in that marshy venereal bog where Dionaea muscipula closed the spined hinges of pudendal lips summoning up the legendary vagina dentata as he zipped up his trousers on their oblivious tenant, a faint whimper and flick of her tongue the only avowal of his visit, licking her lips and her hand rising gently kneading her breast coming over on her side where time passed over her unbroken and unheard as his footsteps down the stairs, her face still buried in the pillow when his howl burst down the hall full upon her starting her up crying out —I’m coming! where he stood as though turned to stone staring wide with horror at the screen, fifty, a hundred of them writhing in a ball round eyes mirroring nothing in this mating frenzy of darting tongues’ search for the scented female among them seizing him by a rigid arm stumbling down the hall beside her to the kitchen drawn up panting, both of them, recrimination prompting her abrupt recovery with —so there! didn’t I tell you? That’s what it will be like!
—But what, what are you talking about!