The Marriage Hearse Read online

  A trifle insular and ingrown to be sure, but then we get on with the business of life too and no one hates us, so far as I know. I’m sure there are worse lives, and there are certainly many strange ways in which the horse-and-carriage of love and marriage rolls along its way. I recall an evening years ago when I was strolling alone near the Boston Common, in a slightly seedy section of Stuart Street, and I noticed a man harassing a woman, tugging at her blouse as she tried to push him away and move on down the block. He persisted obnoxiously, clawing at her and drunkenly imploring, while she calmly and firmly threw off his hands. Finally I arrived to intercede for her, Sir Locksley into the breach!

  “Is there any way I can help you, Miss?” I said. And she laughed uproariously and replied with a single all-encompassing intelligence,

  “Oh, no thank you just the same, he’s only my husband.”

  At which juncture you may be sure Sir Locksley withdrew precipitously from the joust, while the husband roared in drunken triumph. He was still lord of his own domain, he had his rights, and so off they went into a bar-and-grille on the block to get happy together. That was just one couple getting on with the business of life, reader, albeit their case makes it clearer than most why the French call this process l’awful wedlock!

  Now I was making some observations about the banter that went on at dinner and there is one more to make; we do not always go on like this, perhaps not even very often. We go on like this when we are playing our own little brand of keepaway, when something is slightly out of kilter and we are trying to make it pass for gaiety. As when Kim is wondering why I am late by ninety minutes (and why with all those extra minutes at my disposal I still managed to forget the butter) yet is damned if she’ll confess to such out-and-out pettiness. Or when I am engaged to visit with Maggie Cornelius later on in the evening and do not know quite how to arrange my face in the meantime.

  It’s easy enough for us and for us, too, quite natural, but it is all a bit deflected nonetheless, off-course if you will. It passes but there is a disagreeable distancing in the process that is felt and not enjoyed, although it can be enjoyed for its own sake on rare occasions, when the back-and-forth is so much fun itself that it actually serves to heal the lesion.

  So here goes Benny and Pa—yes I am M. and Reese and Maurice and also Pa (to Will and Sadie I was once Pa, am now Dad)—going to the corner variety under a light snow for a few groceries, and as we burst from the foyer into the cold sprinkle of flakes, I see the street is already coated and slippery, and I note with special pleasure that my heart is smiling. You see, to a child the snow must always seem wonderful—there will be no school, there will be sledding instead; snowballs to throw and snow-men to build, hot chocolate and maybe popcorn, too. Whereas for the groan-up the snow has a radically different message, as in Oh groan, the car won’t go, the buses won’t either, the kids are home from school and fighting. This is a problem, even a tragedy of perception that I am always conscious of, and I try to stay on the right side of the question. I try to peer through the frosted sash and say Oh goody instead of Oh groan and yet sometimes, especially when I remember the accursed automobile, I am heard to groan involuntarily, the sound slips out in spite of all my efforts to youthfully enthuse.

  Snow sticking to the ribs of the city. The scene before us is of an absolute whiteness, in the broad glare of the streetlamps even the sky is a swirling cape of white. Street and sidewalk have nearly merged, burying the gutter garbage below, and just now the world is a pristine and magical place. We have five skinny saplings on our block, baby maples granted us by the city years ago, and their knuckly branches are holding the snow, even the pitiful trunks are glazed.

  We skip past Ben’s favorite window, a place he always wants to visit and therefore has a few times with me in tow. This is the Arcade. The Arcade is one of the many many phenomena in modern life I cannot even begin to fathom. Beyond its tinted plateglass front, some two dozen TV screens are lined up side by side, like urinals, and lined up before them all day every day are two dozen American youths, passionately applying body-english to the constant glassed-in collision of dots and dashes, dabs of light that represent spaceships, dabs of light that represent bombs. Hundreds of them cram into this dark chamber to pass the day—the floor is a thick rug of cigarette stubs, the air is a dense foul carcinogenic fog. A mouse walking in there would drop dead on the spot from cancer. To me the joint is as sleazy and depressing as life can provide, the activity born of total despair, and yet they will work the games without cease, strung out all day like low-rent main-line gamblers at the one-arm bandits in Vegas, and looking every bit as serious in their stake. So much for what I know about life!

  PA AND BENNY GO FER BUTTER

  For as I indicated, my own son loves the Arcade. He wants to live there, if I have understood him correctly, and someday he may; we all may. At the moment, however, he is able to keep his mind on the snow, the designated treat, and he attempts to pack a snowball between his palms. The snow is light dust, the kind that will stick to anything except itself, and it falls apart through the woolly fingers. I grab his hands and drag him over the snow fast, right down the middle of Franklin Avenue, sliding on his shoes, and he laughs wildly with joy and anxiety. Immediately we stop he is trying to get a snowball going and once more the elusive powder sifts through his skinny fingers to the ground.

  “Spit on it.”

  “Yuk!”

  “Seriously, kid, drool on it.”

  “Papa!” he says, working out of his brook-no-nonsense stance, arms crossed over his little chest.

  “Okay, don’t. But it won’t pack till it’s wetter. What was it we were after—ice cream?”

  “Brrrr,” says Ben. His shoulder blades are scraping his earlobes now, he has a posture for every remark.

  “Dessert, though. How about pound cake?”

  “How about pound cake.”

  “Right. Pound cake it is. And what else?”

  We are at Cal’s Variety on the corner and as always Cal is there to wait on us in person. Cal is sixty years old and a few years ago, in great confusion over his failing business, made a few changes which since have made it thrive. He began selling lottery tickets and naked-lady magazines, and of course he cornered, as it were, the tonic and cigarette concession spilling over from the Arcade. Now he’s got six thousand a month in new revenue from those sources and all things considered we are lucky he continues to sell us the newspaper and fresh eggs and butter.

  “Milk, I think,” says Ben. I know he is getting tired, never would have forgotten otherwise.

  “That’s it! It’s butter. The milk reminded me.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  I ruffle the thatch of black hair on his head and we settle up with Cal. He hands Ben a lollipop, as usual, and we thank him profusely, as usual. As usual too, I confiscate the lollipop as soon as we round the corner. Cruel cruel.

  “Where’s your hat?”

  Benny shrugs. He has no more idea where his hat is than a dead man would. This kid can lose a hat in broad daylight standing stock still with two groan-ups watching him like hawks. What chance did I have alone in the dark and snow against such sleight-of-head? Another day, another dollar, reader. These hats cost exactly one dollar, you see, I buy them a dozen at a time from the Army-Navy surplus store downtown so that Benny Hatseed here can sow the cityside with them.

  “Here, kid, wear mine.”

  One size fits all! He puts the watch-cap on his head and we start off with our butter and cake. I count off exactly ten strides and then wheel around; the hat is still there. We have less than fifty yards to cover now between here and the Hall, but I have absolutely no illusions about retaining the hat. To me, the hat is already gone. I am thinking about the white snow and Ben’s perfect black head of hair. Will and Sadie have lighter hair, Blaney blonde. Ben’s is Orenburg black. My own is neutral, mousy brown going on mousy gray. If you ask Ben what color my hair is he’ll tell you “no color”. Even if you fed him the
answer he would say that cause he calls ’em as he sees ’em, like the late Bill Klem.

  I am reminded, by blackness and whiteness, of an incident that took place at “school” last week. Benny goes three mornings a week to a day-care where his class is a regular gallimaufry of races and nations. It’s even better than an “ethnically aware” place, it’s ethnically relaxed, no one is selling anything. There is one boy, however, who is the most race-conscious individual I have ever encountered, much more intensely preoccupied than any adult I’ve known. The kid, his name is Kabala, does a bit of pounding, the odd fist worked into games and conversations, and last week he stuck a pretty fair left into Ben’s bread-basket.

  The teacher grabs Kabala and asks him is he sorry. No way. Also if he wishes to spend snack-time on the blue bench in the vestibule. No way. Well if he doesn’t tell Ben he’s sorry, he will miss snack for sure. (Sorry folks, sometimes you just gotta strong-arm them.) So Kabala turns to Benny and gives him a playful, patronizing sort of fist, friendly fist on the shoulder, and tells him, “Sorry, white.”

  Can’t beat that. Ben scarcely noticed—it was so in keeping with Kabala’s character that it sounded perfectly correct. When I joshingly said “Hey white, it’s time for bed” that night, he looked altogether perplexed: “Why’d you call me white?”

  We lie down within the small triangular frontage of Locksley Hall and arc our limbs to make angels in the snow, then start up the stairs brushing off each other’s backs. I dart back down to retrieve the hat, catch Ben on the fourth floor landing, and scoop him up in my arms. We are home warm, my pal and I, ready for our cake. Ben and I sit at the table, Kim is already at her desk. I drink coffee with my cake, and bring a cup in to my bride.

  “I’m going to grab a quick shower,” I say, colloquially.

  “Aren’t you going to read B’s story to him?”

  I always read B’s bed-time story, it is more or less my purpose in life to do so. It was the main reason I needed Ben, originally, when Will and Sadie were suddenly too old to want me reading to them. The little ingrates wanted to read without me! I learned from the experience, however, and know better now. With those two, reading was encouraged early on, they always had a book in their mitts. With Ben, I encourage TV, dumb puzzles, neurotic eating—anything to hold him back intellectually.

  “Of course I’ll read, but I want to have a shower first. That way,” I conclude brilliantly, “my hair will be dry when I leave the house.”

  “You don’t have to wash your hair.”

  “I know that, but it just will get wet.”

  “It will get wet after you leave the house too, M. It’s just too late. You didn’t get home till nearly seven.”

  “He doesn’t have play group tomorrow, though, he could stay up a little longer.”

  Are we bickering? Are we bickering over nothing, to no purpose? Will we stop soon?

  “Choose,” says Kim. She has not stopped.

  “Shower. Story. Shower.”

  “Choose!”

  “Goodness! I’ll read.”

  I pull Ben into the bathroom and quickly lock the door. I turn on the shower full volume and let it run while Benny brushes his teeth. Kim’s feet hurtle down the hall, Kim’s hand turns the door-knob.

  “Locksley!”

  “Just a little joke, puss,” I smile, floating the door ajar. “Okay Banjo, let’s read.”

  I yank down a volume of Gogol’s short stories and plunge in to the opening of “The Diary of a Madman”, waiting for Kim to stop me. Is she baiting me or am I baiting her? Are we having fun? Ben stops me first.

  “This sounds dumb.”

  “Sorry, white.”

  “Come on, papa. Read Lyle.”

  I do as much. I find and read Lyle the Crocodile, a story which I like but which needs re-writing badly. I generally rewrite a story as I read it, except for the handful of great ones, and I know how important it is to record and remember each alteration. If you revise the graven text differently from one week to the next, even slightly, you lose. A kid will call you out on this every time. And when they learn to read a bit over your shoulder, My Lord what a hassle! “You left out that part, papa.” (You bet I did, pumpkin, been leaving out the dull parts for years.) “Hey you’re right, sweetheart, I did. Good for you.” The written word, you see, always the written word, it’s sacred.

  Now Benny is down for the count and I am standing under the shower feeling okay. Feeling good, actually—good to be home, good to be going out. Perhaps I will stop in for a glass every day at Bourbon-on-the-Charles. Sets you up just right, the workingman’s martini, probably sets you up as well each time. But here a hand has entered the shower stall to distract me.

  “Ten of eight, you know. You haven’t forgotten A.B. Locksley, have you?”

  “Memory like an alligator.”

  “Elephant. Is that why you’re getting all spruced up? For Adele?”

  “No, Adele likes me a touch grubby. I’m getting spruce for Bruce.”

  “Well she just phoned to make sure you’re coming.”

  “Did you tell her it’s snowing?”

  “I gave her credit for knowing, actually. It’s just a flurry.”

  “It could get bad.”

  “Yes well you’d better not get yourself stuck out there. You make it there, you better make it back.”

  “We are tough as nails tonight, aren’t we? Remind me never to forget the butter again, would you, Tiger Lady?”

  “Sorry, M. It isn’t the butter, of course. You know. Sometimes it can get to you around five-thirty, six o’clock. Gets you right in the old chemistry.”

  “Was he cranky?”

  “We both were, really. Just a long day’s journey into night. You are looking very well, M., by the way. I’ll say that much for you.”

  “That much, eh. Thanks.”

  “Thanks? Aren’t you supposed to go, And you’re not so bad yourself, or something?”

  Nice to hear we’re looking well, reader, and though modesty forbids making any such claim for myself (except to say if you are curious you might check out the dust-jacket photo they used on Drowning at the Oasis to get a rough idea) I ought perhaps to provide enough simple data to help form an image before I go on to describe and perhaps even rhapsodize a mite over the Orenburg lass. Myself: an even six feet (sexipede?) and trim enough at 168 but far from feeble, clean-cut shaggy in style with a fair-skinned bony face and killer-gray eyes, and, as noted earlier, the mousy brown hair going mousy gray in spots. None too vivid, I suppose, though I am staring straight at the looking-glass to glean these details. But we were never intended to describe our selves well.

  Kim. She is thirty-seven now, looking maybe five years younger. Her eyes are very blue, Caribbean blue, and her curly hair is black. Pretty neat, huh? They are great eyes too, large but quick, sharp and expressive. Her face can be very gay, leaps up allegro, all the features smile. Soft skin never sullied by cosmetics, longish neck, freckles on her breasts (just a few near the top), a swimmer’s flat stomach and long slim legs. 5’5”, 116 pounds. Favorite eats: Korean beef, when it’s done right. Music: the Brandenburg (or sometimes Orenburg) Concertos. Author: George Eliot, whom she tries to remember to call Maryann Evans.

  I was about to close out the thumbnail sketch with the topic “Favorite Position”, just a half-assed little joke really, and the odd thing is I couldn’t prevent a flash image of Maggie Cornelius from cutting in on Kim’s portrait. Not because of any peculiarity or exoticism in Maggie’s sexual profile; more often than not she’ll just climb on, though there is an individuality to it, reader. And one can hardly deny that the sexual aspect looms a bit in a love affair. Anything else is permissible, no one cares about anything else that goes on between a man and a woman, so there is no saying it isn’t sex, it has to be sex, hasn’t it?

  But Kim. I and Kim spent a large part of our first year together in Europe. By the way, I tend to say “I and Kim”—which may strike your ear oddly—instead of “Kim a
nd I” because I discovered early on that I could not say “Kim and I” without envisioning Yul Brynner in The King and I and it makes me feel bald just thinking about that play. Hence I and Kim. Hence too I and Maggie, most often, cause now it has become a form of sorts, but not I and Adele cause Adele and I were earlier.

  But Kim. And our little trip to Europe. I had been over once before in the role of the mindless tourist, taking the neighborhoods of the continent for so many items on a shopping list, consuming them and checking them off. Kim had been there many times before with the Orenburg entourage—her father is the ambassador—chiefly among what Lyndon Johnson used to call her “fellow Amurricans”. We may have had different ideas of what the trip was for, we may have minimized these differences in the planning stage. For me the thing was to break out, to have an adventure—yes, even then. You see I had not gotten around much since Will was born, and then Sadie. I had been grounded in my late twenties, ground down between my family and my literary ambition, and then suddenly I was thirty-three and free. Sort of.

  I should have been ecstatically happy. The split with Adele had seemed obvious to us both, a nice harmonious divorce and the kids would be fine. The 2000 Hour Year was making headway despite good reviews and I still had most of the advance for Sweethearts and Criers, so all was quiet on the fiscal front. Moreover I loved Kim Orenburg, wildly I loved her, could not quench the salty thirst for her, and here we were on the loose together from Stockholm to Paris. There was only one problem. I even knew it. I should have gone on the loose alone that time, I should have done it My Way.