George Mills Part 19

"Look, lady, dinner is served."

"Maybe you ought to give me a puff. I hear it does wonders for chicken-fried steak."

"Yeah, well, I'm not an agency of the United Way."

"Ooh, you're angry." Cornell had started to leave the kitchen. "What I'd I'd like to know is how you find the time to come down here when like to know is how you find the time to come down here when there's so much to be done at home? there's so much to be done at home?"

"Nice meeting you."

"I'm a G.o.dd.a.m.n shut-in, Mister. You think it's a disappointment to me they give a marathon in the park I can't run in it? It ain't the long distances that get to you, honey, it's the yards and inches. Time and tide took the world away. You think you can buy me off with TV, radio call-in shows, f.u.c.king Action Line? My good friend got cancer and you lay down the house rules? She's tired, it might be better if I waited? She ain't taking calls from the lower cla.s.ses just now? She'll take mine though. Want to bet?"

"Hey, come on, what are you so excited about? Don't get so excited."

"How's whoosis, Audrey? Does she still bust out crying when she reads the paper?"

"Look."

"Can she get her own breakfast cereal yet? Or is she still too upset about the French Revolution? How's her husband? Is he still going to commit her if she don't shape up?"

"Judith had no right--"

"Oh, rights," she said. "Rights ain't in it, just needs. Like your pal, the one that's in love. Losey. And what about his wife, the woman on whaddayoucallit, academic probation? How's your kid?"

"What about my kid?"

"Well, we don't know," she said. "We ain't sure."

It was an exquisite situation and Messenger had to admire his dying pal and her still lively genius for humiliation. It was the wackiness, her locked-up years, all that time getting well when, denied the world and everything that was not therapy, everything not grist for her health, from Mrs. Carey's omelets and cold soups-her digestion in those years (she'd been a long time loony, almost, she'd said, a lifer) a lesson in nutrition (he could imagine her st.u.r.dy, high-fibered boweling the consistency and color of Lincoln Logs)-to her family, the ordinary aunts and uncles (though by "ordinary" one did not mean anything bogtrot or rank-and-file: he had seen the men's distinguished hair, their pewter sideburns, the women like seeded tennis players with their flat behinds and bellies and their hard, suntanned skin) and good-natured cousins-he'd seen them, too, and could not remember whether they were men or women: he supposed that what they had in common with each other and with Judith was not their character or sense of humor but only a frame of reference, the names of headmistresses and masters and coaches and ministers and cooks and servants, their generation itself, he guessed-and the brother almost old enough to be her father. Denied the parents themselves, those daughter-scorned victims who might, if they'd only been ministers or cooks, have gotten off, been dismissed as merely two more names in the lexicon. (And he'd seen them too, and come away impressed, even charmed, by that Chairman of the Board and his meticulously courteous wife, now dead, amazed and astonished as he always was by a wealth that seemed to have no immediate source or, what was even more astonis.h.i.+ng, product, that did not burn gas or coal, or supply widgets, or grow food, or win or even just fight wars, or get rolled up and tossed onto your lawn each morning--that was simply, as far as Messenger could see, just pure wealth, pure money, withheld from the planet's effects entirely, like the invisible original resources of a king or government.) Denied everything that could not induce health, hard news and strong books not permitted her, even, he'd heard, prime-time television, even make-up, even card or board games with the other patients in the common room. Allowed two things only: The first her psychiatrist (hers literally; they paid him seventy thousand dollars a year; he had no other patients), a stickler for every event of her mind who, if she had not already been mad, might have made her so with his endless inquiry-she was, it was said, his unpublished book--Judith: A Study of Causes-into her responses and reactions. And the other her lover, Sammy, the future husband and dean a simple graduate student in those days who may or may not also have been on retainer.

So that her talent for creative abuse, for industrial-strength practical jokes, must have dated from those days. Indeed, she had once said as much at a dinner party.

"When I was being fattened up back there on the farm, when they were getting me ready for the world, I wasn't permitted drugs. I wasn't even permitted sleeping pills. h.e.l.l, I wasn't even permitted shock therapy. I can remember looking at the faces of some of the other patients on my wing when they came back from electric shock. They looked as if they had just been jabbed in the eyes with Novocaine. I envied them their dulled wits and hamstrung wills. A crazy is so helpless anyway. No one believes her. That's the ultimate outrage anyway--that everyone's always considering the source. I tell you if I had smelled smoke and yelled 'Fire!' not a nurse or orderly would have looked up. You had to do grand opera to get a response from those people. I wouldn't do that. I became a sort of mad politician instead. I schemed constantly. We became pen pals."

"Pen pals?"

"I wrote them letters. I reminded them of everything I knew about them, all I could think of that had just been jarred loose by the electric company, everything their doctors and the public utilities wanted burned out of them. It was one public service against another. They turned on the juice, I turned on the heat."

"Did they ever answer?"

"You bet they did! Among all those get well cards and cheery letters from home, I venture to say mine was the only mail with any real real news. They answered all right. They told me stuff about themselves their docs didn't know." news. They answered all right. They told me stuff about themselves their docs didn't know."

"Oh, Judy," Sam said.

"Oh, Sam. What's so terrible? We believed in trauma then, in dreams and childhood. In the raised voice at the vulnerable moment. It was a sort of astrology. The houses of Jupiter, the cusps of Mars. We believed in everything but character.--And I didn't do anything with their letters. I didn't use them for blackmail or flash them for gossip. I was interested in only one thing."

"Judy, please."

"Sam, please.--I was interested in only one thing. I was a kind of alchemist. All I cared about was the transubstantiation of dross into mischief."

The c.u.n.t, Messenger thought, and knew something he hadn't known he'd known. She'd made Sam dean. He didn't know how, but he couldn't recall either which were girl cousins, which boy, or where the money came from or if it even was was money at the bottom of the family fortune. It could have been anything. It could have been G.o.d's good will. Sam was Judy's man. Judy was Sam's friend downtown. He was money at the bottom of the family fortune. It could have been anything. It could have been G.o.d's good will. Sam was Judy's man. Judy was Sam's friend downtown. He was her her dean, dean, her her mischief. mischief.

And it was still an exquisite situation. Judy was dying, he couldn't lay a glove on her. Judy was dying, she held all the cards. She was a h.e.l.l of a foe. She was a h.e.l.l of a foe with her scorched-earth policies and land mines and b.o.o.by traps and all the rest of her devastating paraphernalia and time bomb vengeance.

That she had planned this he had no doubt. That she had known who her victims would be was another question. (Excepting the immediate family of course--Sam, the girls, possibly her father.) Was he he meant to be a victim? Messenger thought so. "If there's anything I can do," he had said. It was what everyone said. Surely he had been saved for the Meals-on-Wheels route. But how could she have known his schedule that semester, that he was conveniently free just those two to two and a half hours she would need him? How could she have known Mrs. Carey would be so cooperative, blurt out the names and disgraces of his friends, accuse Cornell of his habit, and hint at inside information about his children? How, finally, could she have known she would get cancer? meant to be a victim? Messenger thought so. "If there's anything I can do," he had said. It was what everyone said. Surely he had been saved for the Meals-on-Wheels route. But how could she have known his schedule that semester, that he was conveniently free just those two to two and a half hours she would need him? How could she have known Mrs. Carey would be so cooperative, blurt out the names and disgraces of his friends, accuse Cornell of his habit, and hint at inside information about his children? How, finally, could she have known she would get cancer?

But that was the point, wasn't it? She couldn't. Judith made mischief the way some people made money. Not to buy anything with it, just to have it ready to hand. If she was a vague irritant to them while she was alive, how much more of a pain in the a.s.s would she be when she died and there was no stopping her? Who else in the city knew of the griefs in the west county? Messenger saw these now as Mrs. Carey must have seen them--distanced by soap opera, attenuated in a medium of insulate otherness, flattened by the fact that they were not shared in any real way. Judith's achievement had been to trivialize what was most important to them, what kept them going and made them friends.

He would not eat the next leftover lunch. He would bring it to Judy.

2.

No one has called him Captain in years. He's Mr. Mead now. He would be Mr. Mead to anyone. To a president, to an enemy or friend, to the public health nurses who have the most intimate knowledge of what remains to Mr. Mead of Mr. Mead's body. To G.o.d Himself perhaps. It seems strange to him, and a little impertinent-for great age alters relation as well as vocabulary-that Louise should call him Dad. He can be no one's dad.

Because you outlive everything if you live long enough.

What changes he has seen!

And has outlived change too, the years, even the epochs of his own life, no longer discrete to him, or that things done one way were now done-if they were done-another, of the least importance. He is too old to be an old-timer, too old for that county courthouse ease where soul takes tea with soul or cronies swap cronies not viewpoint, opinion-they can't hold their bowels, how can they hold opinions?-but simple, loquacious mood, up there, static, displayed as artifact, veteran'd whether or no they have ever been to war, even the benches on which they sit become a sort of reviewing stand. He is too old to be a grandfather, too old to fish, whittle, lie, too old even to be marked by a distinct disease. That those nurses know him so well, and know so well what can be expected of him, has nothing to do with his being Mr. Mead. (There is a chart at the foot of his bed even though he is home and not in a hospital. Nothing is written on it except his name-Mr. Mead-not his pulse or blood pressure reading or temperature, no note about diet or medications--possibly his age.) They know him so well because he's a category, not a person. As an infant is a category. Finally, he is too old even to be Mr. Mead.

He tries to follow what his daughter and that fellow George, his son-in-law, are saying. It isn't really difficult if he concentrates. He recognizes the names even without the elaborate reference points and doc.u.mentation his daughter insists on supplying each time her narrative turns a corner or comes to one. He has been a sailor. It isn't difficult to orient himself.

"You remember, Dad. He used to have that TV show on Sunday mornings where he healed people of their sicknesses. Well, he's minister at Virginia Avenue Baptist now. That big old church that used to be Catholic? You remember. It was just over from Crown's? You used to take us to Crown's and treat us to ice cream when you came back from a trip. That time George got his Buick we went there. You, Mom, George and me--all of us. We had to park three blocks away because ma.s.s was still going on, and you told us about that river pilot who'd put into sh.o.r.e on Sunday mornings just to find a ma.s.s he could go to."

"Channel 11," Mr. Mead said.

"You hear that, George?" Louise said. "Dad still remembers all that river talk."

"That was the TV station he was on--Channel 11."

"What's that, Dad? Oh. Well he's the one who wants George to give the sermon."

His son-in-law brings the young man into the bedroom with him. He has his dinner but doesn't quite know what to do with it. He has never seen visitors in the house before. Perhaps he thinks that Louise and George are from the City, that they have come to sweet-talk him into going into a Home. Perhaps Louise thinks the young man is an official, that the City of St. Louis caters her father's meals.

"Oh, look Dad, it's your dinner. What did they bring you today? Ooh," she says, "tuna noodle ca.s.serole. Hot Billy roll and b.u.t.ter. Peach slices served on romaine lettuce with creamy dressing." She used to work in a school cafeteria. She actually recognizes this stuff.

As the young man feeds him-his daughter makes no move to take the tray from him-Louise rambles on. "Mr. Laglichio-you remember Mr. Laglichio, Dad; it was his truck George used when you got Mom that stove-has to hire a new driver. Lewis-you never met him, Dad; he came after you were already bedfast-won't go into those neighborhoods anymore. Mr. Laglichio told him half the people in the city go into those neighborhoods. Cops, the people who deliver their mail and read the meters and fix the phones. All the delivery people. Even cab drivers. Social workers." She looks in the young man's direction and blushes. "Anyway it might be a good opportunity for some young fellow. And George can't be expected to handle all the work himself. Maybe one of your mates knows someone looking for a job. I'll write Mr. Laglichio's number down and make a note what it's all about so you don't forget."

"Write it on my chart."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Aren't you going to eat your nice peach slices? You should eat fruit, Dad. That's what makes BM's. You don't want the man to tell them at City Hall that you waste food." She winks at the young man. "Dad knows better. He used to be a cook on the river. You cooked on the river five years, didn't you, Dad?" This is not like her. She talks this way, Mr. Mead thinks, because she loves to fuss over him and he is so invalid she thinks he can no longer be embarra.s.sed. She's right, he can't. "It's all a d.a.m.n bother anyway," she says suddenly, feelingly. "You don't have to eat fruit, and the last thing you need to worry about is whether Laglichio gets a replacement for Lewis. Lewis doesn't have to be afraid of the jungle bunnies anyway. The cops could go down there without their guns and pull cats out of trees. The man who reads the meter could read it in the darkest cellar as if it were the best news in the paper. The delivery man is welcome as Santa Claus, and the postman safer than the guy who brings the b.u.msteads' mail."

"Louise," George says.

"Louise," says Mr. Mead.

"Well it's so," Louise says. "Isn't it so, George? You're saved. I mean all you got to do is pray. All you got to do is pray for us. Just open your mouth and let her rip. 'Make things swell, Lord. Do all the other folks like you done me. Make things grand altogether.' Ain't that about the size of it, honey?"

"That's about the size of it," George says.

"I have another delivery," Messenger says.

"Hey, don't run off," Louise tells him. "Stick around while my husband changes the world through prayer."

Mr. Mead laughs. Then George and Louise do. Cornell Messenger also starts to laugh.

"What?" Mr. Mead asks. "What?"

"I hate to come into hate to come into this this neighborhood," Cornell manages. neighborhood," Cornell manages.

"Happy birthday, Dad," his daughter says. "You thought we forgot, didn't you? Oh," she says, "I bet you forgot yourself. I'm ashamed of you, Dad. That means you forgot Mom's, too, because hers was yesterday. Did you forget that, Dad?"

"I did," Mr. Mead says.

"Is today your birthday?"

"She says so."

"Of course it is," Louise says. "I made pumpkin pecan pie. I'm going to fix you a piece too, Mister. I hope you don't mind using a napkin on your lap instead of a plate."

"I pray he don't mind," George says quietly.

"I forgot my own birthday," Mr. Mead says approvingly. "I was a sailor twenty years and lived by landmark and azimuth and time. I was a sailor twenty years, five of them cook. I was already old but even down there in the galley I always knew where I was, could tell which farms we'd pa.s.sed from one seating to the next."

"Tell about the time the boat was stuck in the ice, Dad. When you and Mom and the rest of the crew had to walk across the river to the Arkansas side."

"No, no," Mr. Mead says. He wonders why he said that about being a sailor. He is too old to make overtures, too old to give a.s.surances that he had once been young or known a world wider than the room in which he now lies. Evidently he has not always been so reticent, though he has no memory of decorating his life with anecdote. Perhaps she heard the story from her mother, though it's possible she had it from him. People had their own frequencies, were constantly sending messages of self, flas.h.i.+ng bulletins of being, calling stop press, overriding, jamming the weaker signals of others.

George wonders about the Meals-on-Wheels man. He knows of course, as Louise must, despite what she's said to the old man, that he doesn't work for the city. He doesn't have the look of a civil servant. He would look out of place at the Hall, even paying a traffic fine or property taxes. He can't imagine him buying license plates or going to the clinic for a vaccination. He suddenly realizes that he's been denied access to an entire cla.s.s of people. He has never been in their homes or done business with them. He watches Cornell pick at his pie as if it were somehow extraordinary, something ethnic.

"How about another slice?" George asks.

"Me? No thanks. It's really quite good."

"Sure. It's from a recipe."

"You remember, Dad. I got the recipe in trade school that time I thought I'd bake for the school lunch program. You thought it was delicious but told me all those ingredients would have tied up the galley." She turns to Cornell. "There wouldn't have been anywhere to store the pumpkins."

She is embarra.s.sed that a stranger brings her father's lunch. It looks bad.

Messenger believes they don't know anything about him.

Mr. Mead, the old farmer, the old sailor and river cook, the ancient, if Louise is right, birthday boy--Mr. Mead, on this ordinary afternoon in St. Louis, has a moment of special clarity, brighter and more exciting than the routine orientation and simple daily legibility of his life. His body, which these past--How many years had he been an old man?

"Is it really my birthday?"

"Of course, Dad." The woman nods almost imperceptibly in Cornell's direction.

"Is it?" he asks the man who has brought his lunch.

What's going on? Cornell wonders. Are they having the old-timer on? Didn't he just have bakery in his mouth? How old he must be. Cornell raises his fork toward Mr. Mead. "Happy birthday," he says.

Louise is a little irritated with her father. They've never been separated-the trips on the river were business-but they were not really close. His fault. He was independent always. Even old he is independent. People in a family shouldn't have to woo each other. She's always sent him cards, brought gifts, kept track of his anniversaries and celebrations, kept score on his life. Now he asks a stranger if it's really his birthday. She's not sore because he doesn't trust her-he's old, it's easy for a person her father's age to become confused-but because all all his confidence has not been blasted. Some remains. He appeals to strangers, outside authority. his confidence has not been blasted. Some remains. He appeals to strangers, outside authority.

He remembers now. Not because Harve's father has wished him happy birthday. He remembers. remembers.

He's going to die. It isn't a premonition. No Indian instinct commands him to cut himself from the herd. He is under no compulsion to be alone, to be anywhere but where he is. His knowledge of his death doesn't even come from outside himself. And now he pinpoints the exciting clarity, the special orientation. It's his body which has had the first inkling, his skin which cannot feel the bedclothes or register weight. His toenails which no longer slice back into his flesh, and his bones which no longer harbor pain, the gray blaze of years' duration which has served as a sort of measuring device. (I am as tall as my pain.) His teeth which no longer have dimension, their honed edges and the b.u.mp of gums and the false-scale depth he has plumbed with his tongue. His stubble which he no longer feels when he draws his lower lip into his mouth. He is neutral as hair. And though residual movement remains-he can draw his lower lip into his mouth, he can open his eyes, shut them-and at least the minimal synapses which permit him his speech, he can no longer feel it resonate along its dental and aspirate contacts and stops, his voice as alien to him as if it came from a radio. (How can it even be heard?) His nervous system is shutting down, fleeing its old painful coordinates as if a warning had been given, like the blinking of lights, say, that signal people to leave a public building. He is dying.

And now he can't speak either. Or close his eyes. And death has come to certain emotions. He means to be afraid, is certain he is afraid, yet he feels he feels no fear, his mind and body not up to it, unable to accommodate it now that his resources are so depleted, as if on the occasion of final things, in emergency conditions, life entertained only that which was still essential to it, like a level-headed victim, like a clever refugee. Though he should be surprised, the nerves of astonishment have been cut. no fear, his mind and body not up to it, unable to accommodate it now that his resources are so depleted, as if on the occasion of final things, in emergency conditions, life entertained only that which was still essential to it, like a level-headed victim, like a clever refugee. Though he should be surprised, the nerves of astonishment have been cut.

Though he can no longer see or hear her-just now his ears have turned off-he knows that his daughter is beside him. Probably she is holding his hand. And he tries, helplessly, uselessly, to return the pressure. He could as easily fly. (Is he flying?) And now affection is deadened too, all all the emotions tapped out as his skin. He knows what he the emotions tapped out as his skin. He knows what he should should be feeling-and now italics leave him-as he had known seconds before that he should be afraid, that he wanted to be afraid, but it is all impossible. He may only-blinded, deafened, without italics-witness his death, less involved, finally, than the man, what's.h.i.+sname, the lunch guy's pal, who was going to have his wife committed if she didn't cheer up. He'd be grateful if grat.i.tude were any more available to him than fear or sight or the weight of his bedclothes. be feeling-and now italics leave him-as he had known seconds before that he should be afraid, that he wanted to be afraid, but it is all impossible. He may only-blinded, deafened, without italics-witness his death, less involved, finally, than the man, what's.h.i.+sname, the lunch guy's pal, who was going to have his wife committed if she didn't cheer up. He'd be grateful if grat.i.tude were any more available to him than fear or sight or the weight of his bedclothes.

Now he is almost used up. Denied physiology, he regards his Ches.h.i.+re decline with what? With nothing. What should have been of interest, the most personal moment in his life, is now merely consciousness, knowledge, the mind's disinterested attention. He is like someone neither partic.i.p.ant nor fan who hears a ball score. Like a man in Nebraska told it's raining in Paris. He watches death with his knowledge and no money riding on it.

He is alone in the map room, cannot perceive the quadrants of his being as his sectors succ.u.mb and are obliterated and do not, for all their pale, attenuate traces, seem even poignantly to flare in the face of their extinguishment. Typography and symbols fail him, all the niceties. He cannot read the signs and illuminations, the channel buoys, all the white lines in the road, all the lodestars and mileposts, vanes and windsocks and load-line marks that could show him boundaries or indicate how low he rides in the water. (And now even the circuits that make a.n.a.logies have been discontinued.) He is almost history, narrative, gossip.

He knows he cannot see. Has he eyes? He knows he cannot hear. Has he ears? He knows he cannot feel. Has he flesh? Is his sphincter open? Has he still a body? Is it turned to bruise? Does it run with pus?

All that is left to him finally-and he could use his astonishment now if he were able-is what he will become when he no longer knows it. Nothing sacred is happening here, nothing very solemn, nothing important. There is almost certainly no G.o.d. He would tell George Mills not to bother about his salvation if he could, but it doesn't make any difference that he can't. What could he use now if it were still available to him? His amazement? No. His fear? Certainly not. His old capacity to care for them? Useless. Any of his feelings? No. Useless, useless.

He remembers-peculiarly, memory still flickers, and a certain ability, probably reflex, to muse, to consider; all this would be something to share if he could, to tell them that memory is the last thing left in the blood when you check out, that you die piecemeal, in sections, departments, and it's memory goes down with the s.h.i.+p, though it might be different with different people; maybe it's important sometimes, maybe it's sacred once in a while, and G.o.d might come for some but not for others; Christ, he's dying like someone stabbed in opera, opera, stumbling around with a mouthful of arias (Jesus, is there hope? Where did the images and italics come from? He isn't sure but certainly there is no hope. stumbling around with a mouthful of arias (Jesus, is there hope? Where did the images and italics come from? He isn't sure but certainly there is no hope. He He does not hope.), and maybe that's why death was so long-winded, why disease took as long as it did--to give the systems time to wind down, but that'd be different for different people too; maybe some went with a great flaming itch they couldn't get to-his first large woman. does not hope.), and maybe that's why death was so long-winded, why disease took as long as it did--to give the systems time to wind down, but that'd be different for different people too; maybe some went with a great flaming itch they couldn't get to-his first large woman.

Well, woman. woman. She was fourteen years old and weighed one hundred and seventy-four pounds. Lord, she was big. It wasn't fat, circus lady fat, jinxed genes and a broken pituitary. What was merely chemical-he imagined cells in geometric replication, like a queer produce that laced some glandular broth-did not become human for him. It was never just weight which tickled his fancy, great boluses of flesh which draped their heavy arms and thighs like a sort of bunting. Great heavy a.s.ses so big their cracks seemed like surgical scars. Immense bolsters of breast that piled and rolled on their chests like tide. But some She was fourteen years old and weighed one hundred and seventy-four pounds. Lord, she was big. It wasn't fat, circus lady fat, jinxed genes and a broken pituitary. What was merely chemical-he imagined cells in geometric replication, like a queer produce that laced some glandular broth-did not become human for him. It was never just weight which tickled his fancy, great boluses of flesh which draped their heavy arms and thighs like a sort of bunting. Great heavy a.s.ses so big their cracks seemed like surgical scars. Immense bolsters of breast that piled and rolled on their chests like tide. But some idea idea of heaviness, of ma.s.s and strength and density which sent out a kind of gravity. of heaviness, of ma.s.s and strength and density which sent out a kind of gravity.

It sure attracted me, me, he thinks, whose p.r.i.c.k has just gone out, its nerve ends snuffed, doused as wick, and who recalls, with detachment, almost dead, too, not against his will but in dead will's leaden absence, all s.e.xual nostalgia gone, all bias-- he thinks, whose p.r.i.c.k has just gone out, its nerve ends snuffed, doused as wick, and who recalls, with detachment, almost dead, too, not against his will but in dead will's leaden absence, all s.e.xual nostalgia gone, all bias--that stout girl. (Always one of the code words. Stately, plump, buxom, portly. Words whose meanings he knew but looked up in a dozen dictionaries just to see them written out.) stout girl. (Always one of the code words. Stately, plump, buxom, portly. Words whose meanings he knew but looked up in a dozen dictionaries just to see them written out.) That stout girl. Her strapping, robust, st.u.r.dy sisters. Their heavy haunches, their meaty hams. Their thick hair and big hands. Their full busts and statuesque figures. stout girl. Her strapping, robust, st.u.r.dy sisters. Their heavy haunches, their meaty hams. Their thick hair and big hands. Their full busts and statuesque figures.

Because maybe we really are are clay. Something in flesh which takes an imprint and strikes us off like medals, human change. clay. Something in flesh which takes an imprint and strikes us off like medals, human change.

"You can't," she said, and hoped he could, that someone could.

"I don't know," he said. "I'd have to try."

"Maybe in water."

"Oh no. On land." (And that moment has before him all his fantastic, dumb ideal. The woman who can't be raised even in water, who drops on him like female anchor, sunk, unbuoyant treasure, against all the annulled, mediate influence of displacement, whelming him, his striving, kicking, bucking limbs. All I ever needed, he thinks, was to be drowned real good, and does not remember his actual wife who actually was.) "You can try, but if I fall and hurt you it's not my fault."

She was not even teasing, he thinks now. Nor was I. I had such dialogues by heart. I put them through them like a cross-examiner with my ploys like so many idioms, leading them on, and my professed disbelief just one more idiom.

"No, that can't be so. Your bathroom scale is off."