—He already knows about these stupid archives doesn’t he?
—I’m talking about these stupid bills and stupid overdue accounts and stupid liens against your stupid salary Oscar, this whole stupid mess you’ve got yourself into, what do you plan to do.
—What do you expect me to do! Burrow in the cushions for change that fell out of his pocket when he went to sleep reading the paper? That’s what it would be like, asking him for money it would be like burrowing in the . . .
—Well you’ve simply got to make peace with him somehow, there’s your mother’s trust account in that Maryland bank you’d need his permission to go into that wouldn’t you? There’s something in this mess about an escrow payment on the mortgage, do you want to wait for them to step in and sell the place out from under us and try to explain that to him? Will you call him?
—Well I, maybe after lunch Christina, maybe . . .
—And what do you plan for lunch, poached salmon with carrots in the Spanish style? We’ve got to get some food in the house, if I look at another egg I’ll turn into one.
—Yes well, you can call the cab in the morning and . . .
—I am not going to call the cab! Spend money on cabs after what we’ve just, you can call Lily. You can call Lily can’t you? She’s got a car hasn’t she?
—But, to ask her to go shopping for us I don’t . . .
—I didn’t say I’d even think of doing that did I? She’d come back with God knows what, a frozen pizza and some Hostess Twinkies no, of course I’ll go with her.
Bread, celery, tea, soups, oil, chicken breasts, onions, vermicelli, lamb chops, capers, sour cream, butter —You can put all that right in the refrigerator Lily, and tea, didn’t we get tea? Put some water on will you? And I got this ginger preserve he likes with his toast, you might want to make tea for us right now I’m chilled to the bone and those dishes, maybe you can clear them up while we’re waiting, that is of course if there’s any hot water God knows what’s wrong with it, there’s scarcely enough to wash your face.
—Oscar had Mister Boatwright here, I thought maybe he fixed it.
—He had what?
—This old plumber, Mister Boatwright?
—I can’t imagine what you’re talking about, let me see if there’ve been any calls. Oscar? She burst down the hall, had Harry called while they were out? or had anyone? Well, had he finally got up the nerve to call Father? or would she have to do it herself, like everything else here. She’d asked Lily to stay to supper, a decent meal probably wouldn’t hurt her it might be that appalling haircut makes her look like something the cat dragged in, if she could simply stop that incessant chatter, her daddy and mother say they’re going to come up here and they’re going to get everything reconciled when she’s able to see them without that Reverend Bobby Joe always hanging around because she’s all they’ve got left now with her brother Bobbie gone God knows where but they’re still mad at her for where she went and made that dumb marriage outside the faith to this Jewish guy which Reverend Bobby Joe says like it’s some kind of a disease that all of a sudden just turned up again like this bad penny who’s suing your ridiculous accident lawyer for adultery so she’s real scared he’ll make her be this witness if he can find her —so you may have the chance to work another courtroom appearance into your own busy schedule Oscar, if you see what I mean. What are you reading there? He held up Hobbytime, —my God, like that ant farm you sent off for when you were seven and we had them all over the house oh, just put it down there Lily I think we can manage, before you wait, can you get that? If it’s Harry tell him I’m not, no I’ll talk to him give it to me, here. Harry? Oh . . . oh! followed by oh my Gods and but how awfuls, Nembutals? and finally —yes but do! It will do you good, you must be exhausted, when do you . . . Well whenever you can, if they need you in court then come out when it’s over, it can’t go on forever can it? resting the phone back in its cradle, cradling her head in her hand, —now. Where has she gone. Do you ever expect to see Ilse again? And will you do me a favour and call that therapist? unless you plan to spend the rest of your life lying around here like a beached whale. Do you think you can ask her to get rid of some of this trash?
—Wait, wait I want to keep that, I . . .
—This? She held up Hobbytime, —you’re going to start another ant farm?
—No, there’s a fish tank . . .
—My God Oscar. I’m going to have a bath. Unless she’s used all the hot water in the kitchen of course, and remind me to tell her. When she does those chops for dinner tonight for God’s sake not to overcook them.
But a fish tank? when they could better be watched in living colour and much wilder variety spawning and feeding, fin ripping and vacant staring glassy eyed from far grander submarine vistas and exotic plant and coral strewn habitats right here on his nature program, spared those custodial concerns for wind and wave, temperature and salinity, aeration, pH balance, light and filtration and the daily toll of all those mouths to feed confined, best of all, where they could be summoned and banished in an instant like those hordes of his own species crowding the channels elsewhere rather than actually having them all over the house here firing guns, spouting news events, telling jokes, doing pushups, deep knee bends, shuddering with diarrhea, howling half dressed and full of passionate intensity humping guitars like the monkey with the greased football loosing mere anarchy upon the world where three’s a crowd even in a house as large as this one, how long did he think she expected to stay? Just let her cool down, leave it to Harry, it couldn’t all go on forever could it? and she wasn’t still on the warpath like she’d been when he’d driven off without her, muttering —I could kill him! or, in the car when they’d gone shopping for groceries, snapping —Murder? yes. Divorce? never! interrupting a barrage of questions prying into everything from adultery to revenge and this lecherous accident lawyer, dry skin, depilatories, mammograms, reconciling with Daddy since tragedy’d struck coming down, all of it, to money, to the question of money right down to that faltering moment over seven dollars at the gas station but mostly, it was mostly just this feeling that —we never get to be alone anymore like it used to be Oscar, like remember that time we were doing it outdoors in the woods with those pine tree needles sticking into me with that squirrel watching us doing it and that rabbit where we were scared any minute she might see us? where any minute now she might come through the door with some new perplexity embracing household management, errands, the laundry or cornering him alone with —where in God’s name she got hold of that car, it’s really putting your life in her hands, she says it needs a new alternator whatever that might be, but I’m sure she imagines you’ll pay for it, of course the reason she’s never got a penny is that everything she’s got goes on cosmetics, she’s panic stricken at the thought of a wrinkle let alone this lump she rattles on about in her breast but I’m sure you’ve managed to find that all by yourself haven’t you, is that the same shirt you’ve had on for a week? I’m almost afraid to trust her with the laundry after what happened to my beige cotton blouse and that little white alarm clock, have you seen it recently? I suppose she’s managed to break it too like she did the last of those hideous Spode teacups, we simply can’t go on like this Oscar do you ever expect to hear from Ilse again?
—Yes she called, while you were both out shopping she . . .
—Well thank God. When do you expect her.
—Well she, I don’t. I told her I didn’t think we could . . .
—That we can’t afford her? My God, it’s costing us more in sheer carnage than whatever her miserable wages came to isn’t it? and you’d like to see everything around here taken care of by me and this poor girl out there right now mopping the kitchen floor just to save a few dollars?
—It’s, no Christina it’s her sister, she . . .
—It’s no more her sister than the man in the moon, I think your mind’s beginning to go Oscar. I trip over her every time I walk through the door don’t I?
&n
bsp; —I mean Ilse, Ilse’s sister the one with the cataracts. She wants to get back out here to work but she’s afraid her sister will have an accident because she can hardly see and gets confused about the gas stove, so she offered to . . .
—She offered to bring a blind woman out here for the rest of us to wait on while she’s busy blowing up the house?
—No, no she just thought she could put her sister in the cubby in the top floor where she wouldn’t be in the way, that she could peel vegetables and things like that to help out just until spring when the weather gets . . .
—Till spring! My God Oscar, has it occurred to you to worry about getting through the winter first? sitting here with the television running while you stare out at the, look. Look, can you see him out there? Reared up on the top step of the upper lawn beneath the window clutching an acorn, head darting, tail twitching, the squirrel scampered off at the wave of her hand, —did you see him? You think maybe he was trying to tell you something? One of Hiawatha’s mangy little refugees setting up his layaway plan for the hard times ahead while Hiawatha sits here on the shore of Gitche Gumee, the minute old Nokomis walks into the wigwam he opens a book, his eyes seeking sanctuary on the page where It seemed to me that the surface of the lake had changed, often dramatically, each time I looked back at the water—you’re not even watching this grisly thing then? are you? with a wave at the silent screen where, as though abruptly dismissed by the toss of her hand, the stretcher borne writhings of survivors of a tenement fire blazing away in the background gave way to the decorous designer sheeted writhings of a middleaging arthritic enduring languorous massage with a heat penetrating unguent and a Florida backdrop Kissing Pain Goodbye, had he called that therapist? Well not exactly, no, he’d told Ilse he didn’t think things would work out so he’d just send her the money and —Send her what money! Well, that last week she was here and had to leave when her sister called on such short notice that —She left us in the lurch with nothing in the house but half a dozen eggs while we’re paying her through the roof to handle your God knows what in there in the bathtub? Get that down to a quid pro quo now for every gallon of gas that goes into that death trap when we go shopping and maybe she can take right up where Ilse left off, of course I’m sure she already oh, Lily? you’ve finished out there? Yes sit down for a minute, something I meant to ask you talking to him till I’m blue in the face while he sits there staring at a book, will you look at him? A minute later a sudden wind had transformed it into a blustering Scottish loch with a surface current and whitecaps. The light can change with an equal suddenness—and can we turn that thing off if no one’s watching it? Yummy! a waffle crowned with peanut butter being drenched with maple syrup abruptly displaced by a barefoot procession of bulging eyes and distended bellies fleeing a famine in Ethiopia —and bread? do we need bread? and flour, there’s a pencil right there under that napkin we’d better make a list, go shopping without one when you’re hungry and you come home with everything in sight, flour. I said flour didn’t I, if we need it or not just to be safe there’s no earthly reason you can’t make a perfectly smooth béchamel sauce with this new processed flour Lily, you can try it again tonight with, write down cauliflower yes, we haven’t had cauliflower it should be quite cheap now it’s that time of year after all, isn’t it. Oscar? do you think of anything? That time of year? watching those fragile fingers stumble paused over the spelling of cauliflower when yellow leaves, or none, or few he could have told them, and here came the squirrel again emptyhanded back down the steps to scamper off across the lower lawn toward a white oak for another acorn till at last when hard times came he’d have not the faintest notion where he’d buried any of them in this frenzy of survival serving neither himself nor even his kind but another vast kingdom, a different order entirely, planting white oaks broadcast —and while we’re at it, tea, we always need tea, and yes sugar, just to be safe. Wasn’t that what all this was about, after all? from the squirrel down there in the throes of its own monstrous miscalculations to that rabbit lunching nearby, panic quivering through every fibre of its being and beauty nothing but beginning of terror it was still just able to bear for what might that very instant be circling overhead or slithering toward it in the discoloured grass? All this, as she’d charged a minute before, trying to tell him something, there was simply no getting through a thought, let alone putting two of them together to make an idea, before she came up with something else out of nowhere, something in yesterday’s paper about the parties in that ridiculous Cyclone Seven case exchanging places? renewing the fray now that horrid dog was out of the way with its genuine simulated Spotskin® and all the rest of it, Minjekahwun, Wear ’Em With The Skinside Inside, of simply getting through a page of the book here by the shining Big-Sea-Water, dark behind it rose the forest where the pigeon, the Omeme, building nests among the pine trees? At times there is a clarity of detail at great distances when, for example, each branch of a thorn tree on the far bank is minutely sharp to the eye. Instantly it will become a dull strip of grey, and without a cloud in the sky to account for the change. This can produce mild hallucinations as the middle distance advances and recedes where a moment before gusts had flung up the branches of the pines like the skirts of the beautiful Wenonah being ravished by the West Wind, by the heartless Mudjekeewis bending low the flowers and grasses and you can soon begin to feel oppressed by the strange gloom of this lake, with its isolated houses and its wide lawns that slip into the water as if the lake were slowly flooding and in flocks the wild goose, Wawa, flying to the fenlands northward and the squirrel, Adjidaumo, rattling in his hoard of acorns and the serpent, the Kenabeek —all coming right around full circle and probably getting it wrong at that, she came on, —have you heard a single word I’ve said Oscar? What is that you’re reading. The jumble rattling around in your head, how can you expect us to know what you think when you simply sit here without a word, it’s really quite rude. Pretending to read while I’m talking to you, can you answer my question? What was it I asked you. Have you thought any more about calling Father? Changing sides in that idiotic lawsuit they’re just trying to drive him around the bend, as though things weren’t already bad enough with all this nonsense about impeachment, about inherited madness running in the family, to simply sit down and write him a letter? Well? Well, he could have told them about all that, how John Brown’s mother and grandmother both died mad —but on second thought he’d probably pass for Exhibit A himself will you take a look at him right now?
—Me? Oh, but they always told me that these things you inherit go from father to daughter, from mother to son like Bobbie had this nice head of hair, only Daddy was bald ever since I remember and Mama . . .
—Before you carry this too far Lily, Oscar is simply my step brother, I’m not his sister or his half sister either.
—Oh. I thought they’re the same, he . . .
—Well thank God they’re not, you talk about a nice head of hair if his gets any longer he can wear it in braids and stick in a couple of eagle feathers, the wealthy recluse on the family estate sitting here gaping out at the Big-Sea-Water while his father sits down there and lays down the law, of course he doesn’t dare call him up, or put on his magic mittens and write him a letter.
—But maybe he’ll just forgive and forget? Like Daddy, when Daddy knows how sorry I am that I did these things I shouldn’t have done? and these things he thought I should do and I didn’t? That it was all my fault, these mistakes I made and how sorry I am that I got him upset and I don’t deserve him to pity me, and I can ask Mama to talk to him and help me out because I know deep down how he loves me and always wanted me to have the best so he won’t stay mad at me, he’ll forgive and forget and . . .
—You’ve made your point, but I think you should know that your mealymouthed Daddy and Oscar’s father are about as alike as night and day, and the day Judge Crease forgives and forgets you’ll know the moon is made of green cheese. Yes and write down cheese, let’s get this over with before
it rains. I thought we might try veal.
—Oscar liked the chicken the way we had it.
—Well he’s always been fond of veal, we haven’t had it in an age, Oscar? We’ll have to have some wampum if you, my God now where has he gone. Sitting here pretending to read a book while we’re in the midst of talking to him, the minute he hears me mention money he disappears while we’re waiting on him hand and foot, you won’t be warm enough in that. There’s a jacket of mine you’d better slip on, it’s a sort of grey tweed right there in the hall and bring my raincoat while you’re at it. And you have the list? when they got outside, and then once in the car —drop me at the drugstore while you’re getting gas, as they swerved up the ruts in the driveway —and for God’s sake, will you please tell them to wash the windshield? If we’re going to be killed I’d like to see what hits us, will you meet me right there in the grocery? Back by the fruits and vegetables, —mushrooms, while I’m finding those you can look for some heavy cream, just a small one, it goes bad so quickly with only the three of us.
—But what about Harry?
—What about Harry.
—But I thought, so we wouldn’t have to go right out shopping again, I thought he might show up any minute.