Instead, Heidi pulled back and opened one eye: “I really don’t want to make love with you, Joe.”
Surprised, all he could think to say was, “You’re upset.”
“No shit, Shakespeare.”
Triggered by her sarcastic, hostile tone of voice, Joe flared: “All right. Wonderful. What the hell.”
“You know something, Joey? For things to collapse this abruptly, they must have been disintegrating for a while.”
“We both admit it hasn’t been nonstop peaches and cream.”
Heidi stood up and nervously began to pace the room. “You know something crazy? I don’t even like you right now. In fact, it’s worse than that. I don’t have any feelings for you.”
“Heidi, let’s talk later, okay? I’m so tired I’m hallucinating. You won’t believe what just happened in Tribby’s airplane. A buzzard crashed through the windshield. We could have been killed.”
“Michael says the suitcase is still at the bus station.”
“He ain’t lying.”
“So now what?”
Joe shrugged. “Unless Peter comes up with a claim check, we’ll have to steal it.”
“You mean on top of adultery and dope dealing, you could have an additional charge of breaking and entering, maybe even armed robbery, tacked onto your record?”
“Maybe we should discuss this later. Honestly, I’m all played out.”
But she needed to talk. “After you and Michael left, I went with Suki Terrell to see Nikita Smatterling.”
“You what?”
“I told him what happened last night.”
“I’m gonna vomit! How could you—?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not an iceman, Joey. When the world caves in it helps to talk with somebody who understands.”
“He’s a charlatan! He’s a creep! He paints monkeys! He screws teenyboppers!”
“He said he felt sorry for you.”
“I feel sorry for him!”
“He said only if you were haunted by insecurity and pangs of sexual inadequacy would you haul off and pull a lousy trick like that.”
“She wasn’t a lousy trick, she was one of the best tricks I ever had.”
Without missing a beat, Heidi said, “Nikita thinks we should go to a counselor. He said you would only do something like that out of a deepseated hostility toward me that’s probably been fomenting for a long time. He said it probably wasn’t even a sexual act, per se, it was more like pure belligerence. And that if cantaloupes had recognized sexual properties, you would have accomplished the same thing by duking a melon.”
“He’s a shmuck! I don’t want my private life aired in front of that…” He really was going to throw up!
“You don’t have to be so superior. You know what he’s talking about.”
“The man is phony. He’s greedy. He’s—”
“Jesus, Joey, sometimes you can be boring.”
Heather knocked on the door. “Mommy?”
“What is it, lamb?”
“It’s the telephone. For Daddy.”
“‘Daddy’ is right here, Heather. You can address me directly.”
No way; not today. “Tell him it’s a girl. It’s Mrs. Ryan.”
“Tell him yourself!” Joe snapped, sitting up. “He’s right here beside your mother.”
“I don’t have to if I don’t want to.”
“Tell her I’ll call back later.”
“Mommy, she says to tell him it’s important.”
“Daddy knows it’s important, Heather. Mrs. Ryan is a very special person in his life.”
Women. One was vicious enough to call about his watch, the other would emasculate him with sarcasm in front of his own daughter. And the daughter, in cahoots with her mother, would seek to poison the paramour while at the same time assisting in the castration by handing over the sterilized scalpels, scissors, and other assorted tools.
Heather asked, “Can I come in?”
Joe hollered “no” in the same instant that Heidi said, “Of course, sugar.” Heather opened the door and stood there, frowning cutely (and knowingly like a fox) so as not to grin triumphantly. Her teeth were crooked, she would probably need braces—eight million dollars to give her the perfect mouth for future blowjobs!
Heather asked, “What are you guys doing?” Such a sly, wise, and absurdly cute child. Half the people—half the adults, that is—in town, had already told her she looked exactly like Tatum O’Neal. Five hours a day, already, Heather could spend at a mirror, combing her hair and daubing on eye shadow and lipstick. Three years hence, aged eleven, she would probably marry a forty-year-old Monacan prince, and commence flying around the world with Bianca Jagger, Andy Warhol, and John-John Kennedy.
“We’re having a discussion,” Heidi said.
“Actually, we’re having a fight,” Joe contradicted.
“What are you fighting about?”
Joe said, “Well, it seems that last night Daddy indulged in a slight indiscretion.…”
“Joey, I don’t think we have to explain!”
“You’re the one who’s going to monkey gurus and announcing over a loudspeaker what went on!”
Heidi said, “Look, can’t we just drop the subject in front of the children?”
“I didn’t invite the little brat in in the first place.”
“She’s not a brat, dammit. Heather, leave the room this instant.”
“You are so a brat!” Joe hollered. “You’re way too big for your tight little britches! Next time Mommy and Daddy are having a spat let us fight in peace!”
Shrilly, Heather shouted, “It’s not my fault the telephone rang!” Tears of theatrical rage spurted from her clever little eyes. “You’re a gigantic fucker, Daddy!”
“Well at least she finally called me ‘Daddy.’”
“You’re cruel, you really are.” Heidi added, “How could you speak like that to your own child?”
“We all speak to each other like that all the time.”
Heather said, “Is anybody gonna answer the telephone or not?”
“Well, if your father won’t have the common decency to talk to Mrs. Ryan, I will.”
“The hell you say!” Joe grabbed an arm, yanking her roughly back onto the bed. Stark-raving naked, in three Baryshnikovian leaps, he landed at the living-room telephone.
Gulping, Joe closed his eyes. “Hello?”
* * *
ALWAYS, IN THE HEART of a holocaust, there’s one stultifyingly placid imbecile. The voice zipping across town through skinny electronic wires sounded like a cross between Marlene Dietrich and Tokyo Rose. Her low, breathy “hi” sent electric shocks fanning across his pectoral muscles; the nipples stiffened. Another impulse heading south passed his belly button going ninety and almost triggered an erection.
“Listen, Nancy, I can’t talk right now.”
She acted as if, dressed in a silk house robe, he were reclining in a black Naugahyde Barcalounger, sipping a homemade piña colada while lazily digging “The Waltons” on TV.
“I just wanted to call and see how you were.”
“I’m great, really great. But listen…”
“Last night was fabulous.”
Four feet away, her arms accusatorily crossed, her wide-legged stance like that of a miniature Jolly Green Giant, Heather tried to face him down. In the bedroom, Heidi had been transformed, no doubt, into the largest human ear ever recorded in the western hemisphere. “Look,” he said into the telephone. “I’m glad. But right now I’m, you know, I’m at home with Heidi and my kids and I don’t want to talk.”
“I have your watch, Joe. I wound it so that it wouldn’t stop. It’s bad for the springs if you let them run down. When am I going to see you again?”
Joe hung up. Weirdos! Nudniks! Nothing else populated the world!
Heather asked, “Is she gonna give you back your watch?”
Heidi appeared in the doorway. “I’m sure Mrs. Ryan is going to give Daddy back his watch, darling. No dou
bt in person. And possibly even dressed in a see-through shorty negligee from Frederick’s of Hollywood.”
Her eyes, though slightly red and swollen, seemed maliciously humorous. A breath of apprehension from another world struck him. “Hey, where’s Michael?”
“Possibly out committing suicide because of the shame visited upon our once-happy family by his sadistic father.”
Suddenly, after all the pissing and moaning, Heidi had decided to be In Form. Clobbered, stomped, and humiliated; cheated, maltreated, and lied to; manhandled, insulted, and damn near raped—for a moment, flabbergasted, she had been incapacitated, almost whiny. But now, ending her free fall with the yank of an emotional rip cord, she was In Control again as the colorful parachute of her inner equilibrium fluffed open and blossomed. Just that abruptly, an altogether different person inhabited her body. The one he especially loved—a chunky, sexy, brash dingbat with a head of wild ringlets, expressive happy eyes, a big nose, and a comically mobile mouth and no chin, a kind of rich man’s Sophia Loren, a comedienne, a brilliantly instinctive person, a sexual lush as devious as the night is long, and as manipulative as the day is wide, with a heart on her sleeve as large as the moon, a tongue as acidic as a beaker of hydrochloric chemicals, a resilience as fabulous as that of a trampoline, and an arrogance (and abrasiveness) that might have driven him nuts had he not admired her chutzpah with all his heart.
Oh suddenly, how fiercely he adored her!
* * *
SELF-ASSURED, playing the woman scorned with gusto, Heidi strutted by him to the refrigerator. From here on in he had better gird himself, because there would be no more amateur histrionics.
She removed a carton of milk, a celery bunch, mayonnaise, and a tomato from the refrigerator, dumping them onto the counter. Riled, Heidi became a nosher. Even when not eating she had difficulty staying chunky, as opposed to fat (which Joe abhorred, an admittedly chauvinist hang-up). Her caloric binges could cause a terror in him.
At moments like this, Heidi took up smoking again. A pack of Winstons always resided in a top cupboard behind the Drano, the Raid, and the ant traps. Yanking over a chair, she retrieved those cigarettes right now, lit one up with a wooden kitchen match, and haughtily—viciously!—blew the smoke in his direction.
Joe retreated, waving hands to disperse the smoke—it might trigger his asthma. “Go ahead, give yourself cancer, see if I care,” he taunted. “Eat yourself to death, become a blimp, your tits aren’t big enough to support a potbelly.”
“What do you care?” Heidi busied herself slicing a tomato and smearing mayonnaise on a celery stalk. “You’ve found yourself another hussy.”
“What’s a hussy?” Heather asked.
Joe said, “Heather, why don’t you go take a bath?”
“I’m clean. I took a bath last night.”
“Then go to your room and cut out paper dolls.”
“I don’t wanna. And I don’t hafta, ’cause you can’t make me.”
“I’ll count to three,” the biblical patriarch warned, “and if you’re not in your room by then I’ll yank down your smarty-pants and give you six whacks on a bare fanny.”
A basically idle threat. Not because he wouldn’t punish her, but because she was impervious to those whacks. Heather often deliberately disobeyed to provoke him, so that she could lie across his lap, eyes squinched and teeth gritted, taking everything he had to give her. This wasn’t much, because Joe had a horror of hurting children. In the end, Heather would jump up and, a big arrogant grin splitting her cocky face, she’d sashay away, taunting her father: “Ha ha, that didn’t hurt even as much as a mosquito bite.”
“Next time,” he always retorted, “I’ll hit you so hard they’ll stop you in El Paso for speeding!”
This time, however, so much emotional confusion convoluted the situation that Heather opted against a pink butt. Slowly, she repaired to her digs. Or anyway, to the doorway, where she stopped, turned, and defiantly faced them.
“Inside,” Joe ordered. “Inside the room.”
“I am inside my room. There’s the line, right there, and my toes aren’t even touching it. I did exactly what you said to do. Technically, I’m inside my room.”
“Shut the door, Heather, or I’ll bite your head off!”
She slammed it so hard all the glasses in all the cupboards rattled.
Heidi said, “Your foul mouth certainly has produced a charming daughter.” Her mouth was so full of junk Joe could barely distinguish her words. And all that food in her mouth triggered absolute panic. For eight years he had been telling her, “You should eat more carefully, you’re getting fat.” For the same eight years she had constantly replied, “What are you talking about? In the last three weeks I’ve lost ten pounds.” Joe had often teased her with a joking refrain: when she least expected it, he would snatch her ample belly with one hand, announcing, “Ladeez and gennulmun, it sure took a lotta pasta to make this a-wunnerful panza!”
“Your foul mouth pitched the bottom half of every inning,” he counter-punched.
A sudden snap! sounded at the nearby window: a lampshade spun half around as tiny glass shards sprinkled across the linoleum at their feet.
Heidi exclaimed, “What was that?”
“Some kind of gunshot?” And then he saw a hole in the window, a tiny round scalloped dot. Joe remembered that exact same hole from his days as a BB-gun-toting juvenile delinquent on Long Island, wearing—even on hot summer days—a football helmet, overcoat, and gloves in order to stalk similarly attired neighbors with his Red Ryder Daisy Special. Leaping to an open window, he yelled: “Michael!”
The kid had split, but he couldn’t have gotten far. “Michael, I know you’re down there! Come out from wherever you’re hiding!”
Sheepishly, Michael emerged from behind the Green Gorilla.
“Get up here! Right this instant!”
“I didn’t mean…” But why protest when life was hopeless? Christmas had come early, and his goose was cooked. Of all the accidental sins to commit, he had pulled off one of the real lulus. The only felony worse would be to put out Heather’s eye with a pencil, or get caught setting fire to a cat. His morose shuffling progress across the yard indicated he knew very well he probably wouldn’t see another BB gun, or weapon of any sort, until his forty-sixth birthday—if then.
The blow, consigning him, if not to hellfire and damnation, at least to a summer of pariahhood, had already fallen so hard that when Michael reached the front door he actually knocked.
“What are you knocking for?”
“Oh, I forgot.” He opened the door, walked inside, and stopped in front of the coffee table on which sat a goldfish bowl teeming with sea monkeys.
Joe said, “I don’t believe you just did that.”
Michael gulped, half nodded, half shrugged, glanced sideways as if wondering could he make it to the window, leap through the glass, and give one last shout—“Vive la liberté!”—as he sailed down to a grisly demise among the tattered vehicles belonging to residents of the Castle of Golden Fools.
“Do you know how close that shot came to hitting your mother?”
Head tilted to the absolute nadir of head-hanging, Michael shifted uncomfortably and sniffled, no doubt wondering why society always had to read you the self-righteous riot act before it guillotined, garroted, electrocuted, stamped, shot, or gassed you to death.
“Suppose that BB had hit one of us in the eye?” Even as he spoke, Joe realized his words constituted the exact same phrase two billion, eight hundred thousand parents had uttered dating back from the present to April 13, 1927.
At his side, Michael held the gun—too late!—with self-conscious caution, pointed straight down at the floor the way his dad had taught him.
For his next trick, Joe was expected to confiscate the BB gun and break it savagely into pieces with his bare hands, as he had often threatened to do if he ever caught Michael using it carelessly. “You’d better treat that BB gun just as if it were a real r
ifle!” two billion, nine hundred thirty-three thousand parents had threatened ever since March 1, 1926. To which a similar number of slit-eyed brats straining to race around the corner and slaughter all the myrtle warblers in the pear trees had silently replied, “How can I treat a rinkydink little gun, that can’t even shoot a harmless BB farther than twenty yards, like a real weapon, Dad?”
As a kid, Joe himself had had fantasies of kicking down his parents’ bedroom door gangbusters-style and charging their connubial mattress firing little copper pellets from the hip in machine-gun fashion at his childhood tormentors, riddling their bodies with a million BBs that would penetrate only a millimeter under their skins, proving once and for all that even if you deliberately wished to off somebody with a BB gun it was an impossible task.
Perhaps, instead of smashing the gun, he would simply lean it in a corner where Michael could see it every day, but not touch it (under pain of instantaneous death) until his twenty-first birthday.