The Water-Method Man

  You do such healthful, splendid work that I would hate to see this oversight hurt your reputation.

  Yours in nonprofit,

  Fred Trumper

  Fred Trumper

  918 Iowa Ave.

  Iowa City, Iowa

  Oct. 3, 1969

  The Business Office

  University of Iowa

  Iowa City, Iowa

  Dear Business:

  I'm afraid that this month I'll be forced to assume the $5.00 Penalty Charge for late payment of tuition.

  However, although I accept this $5.00 charge, I will deduct $5.00 from my tuition bill as a refusal to pay the newly added Recreation Fee (also $5.00), a school expense for which I am not willing to assume responsibility.

  I am a graduate student, I am twenty-six years old. I am married and I have a son. I am not at the University of Iowa for 'recreation' of any kind. Let them who recreate pay for their own fun. I'm not having any fun at all.

  The only reason I'm telling you this is that I thought there might be some misunderstanding on your part when you eventually receive my payment of tuition. You see, it might look as if I have ignored the Penalty Charge for late payment. That $5.00 I will pay; it is the other $5.00 that will not be included in my check. (Which I will get to you soon.) It is confusing, there being several $5.00 figures involved, but I hope I have made myself clear.

  Seriously,

  Fred Trumper

  (student ID 23 345 G) Fred Trumper

  918 Iowa Ave.

  Iowa City, Iowa

  Oct. 3, 1969

  University of Iowa

  Educational Placement Service Student Union Bldg.

  University of Iowa

  Iowa City, Iowa

  Atten. Mrs Florence Marsh Dear Mrs Marsh:

  Having paid my Service Fee to you some time ago, I expected that your services would be at least reasonable. Your current enclosure for 'Available Positions' does not strike me as reasonable in any way. I specified to you - in an endless form, filled out in triplicate - my capabilities, my field of interest, my degrees, and where (in what region of this country) I sought a teaching position.

  In regard to your current information, I do not want to meet an interviewer from Carother's Community College of Carother's, Arkansas, 'offering a position at their Maple Bliss campus, for five sections of freshman rhetoric at $5,000 per annum.' Do you think I am utterly mad?

  I told you: New England, Colorado or Northern California; at a college where I'd have some opportunity to teach more than freshman-level courses, for a salary of at least $6,500, plus moving expenses.

  Some service you offer, I must say.

  Dismally,

  Fred Trumper

  Fred Trumper

  918 Iowa Ave.

  Iowa City, Iowa

  Oct. 3, 1969

  Shive & Hupp

  Loan Associates, Farm & Town US Route 69, West

  Marengo, Iowa

  Dear Mr Shive & Mr Hupp: Sirs, I repeat: I am unable at this time to make my interest-due payment to you. Please refrain from sending me further form letters about your famous Rising Rate Scale, and your awkwardly veiled threats of 'constables'.

  Just do what you have to do. That's all I'm doing.

  Truthfully,

  Fred Trumper

  * * *

  Fred Trumper

  918 Iowa Ave.

  Iowa City, Iowa

  Oct. 3, 1969

  Addison & Halsey Collection Agency 456 Davenport St

  Des Moines, Iowa

  Atten. Mr Robert Addison Dear Bobby,

  Cram it.

  Best,

  Fred

  9

  Mice, Turtles & Fish First!

  TULPEN TAKES CARE of the bills now. I don't even see the checkbook. I contribute, of course, and every week or so I ask her how our money is.

  'Are you hungry?' she says. 'Do you have enough to drink?'

  'Well, sure, I have enough ...'

  'Well, is there something you need?'

  'Well, no ...'

  'Well, the money's just fine, then,' she says. 'I don't need any more.'

  'I'm fine,' I tell her.

  'Was there something you wanted to buy?' Tulpen asks.

  'No, no, Tulpen - really, everything's fine with me.'

  'Well, everything's fine with me,' she insists, and I try to force myself never to bring it up again.

  But I just can't believe it! 'How much do we have?' I ask her. 'I mean, just to get an idea of some rough figure ...'

  'Does Biggie need money?'

  'No, Biggie doesn't need a thing, Tulpen.'

  'You want to send something to Colm - a truck, a boat or something?'

  'A truck or a boat?'

  'Well, some special toy, is that it?'

  'Jesus, never mind,' I say. 'I was just wondering, that's all ...'

  'Well, honestly, Trumper, you should say what you mean.'

  Indeed, I should stick to the facts. That's what she means.

  But I honestly think my avoidance of the facts has as much to do with my distrusting the relevance of them as it has to do with my lying a lot. I don't think the statistics in my life have ever meant very much.

  When my mother used to write me, she'd ask about the stuff we had. She was concerned about whether we had a toidy pot for Colm. If we had one, we were all right. My father also suggested snow tires: with snow tires we'd be happy all winter. I imagined their friends asking them how we were; my father would mention our winter driving, and my mother would bring up the toidy pot. How else could they have answered.

  Most recently in a terse phone conversation with my father, I was asked how I paid my bills. 'With checks,' I told him. (I guess that's how Tulpen does it.) 'You shouldn't send cash through the mails.' But he asked me as if that was all he needed to know - and knowing that, he would know about me.

  Rituals are more revealing than facts!

  For example, I once kept a tape recorder who was my friend. Also, I wrote letters to my wife; I mean, I wrote to Biggie while I was still living with her. Of course I never gave these letters to her; they weren't really letters, then; it was the ritual of writing them that mattered.

  I showed one to Tulpen.

  Iowa City

  Oct. 5, 1969

  Thinking of you, Colm - my only child. And you too, Biggie - those hospital smocks don't become you.

  The way you arise at six: your fine, firm, muscular lunge for the alarm; your warm collapse back against me.

  'Another day, Big,' I mumble.

  'Oh, Bogus,' you say. 'Remember how we used to wake up in Kaprun?'

  'All the snow piled against the window,' I mumble, by rote. 'Some of it blown under the sash, a little puff of it on the sill ...'

  'And the breakfast smells!' you cry. 'And all the skis and boots in the downstairs hall ...'

  'Talk softer, Big,' I say. 'You'll wake up Colm ...' who just then begins his cooing down the hall from our room.

  'Don't shout at him when I'm gone,' you say, Big - and you're out of bed, tucking me back in. Prancing over the cold floor, your large, upstanding boobs peek at the dawn; they point across the hall to the kitchen window (what symbol intended by that direction, I cannot guess).

  Then your bra, Big, seizes you like the bit shocks the horse. That damn hospital smock crinkles coldly down over you, and my Biggie is gone, anesthetized, sanitized; you're garbed as shapeless as a dextrose jug, which you'll see later this morning, upended, and dripping down its sugary strength to the elderly.

  You grab a bite at the hospital cafeteria, chatting with the other nurses; helpers. They talk about what time their men came home last night, and I know you tell them, 'My Bogus is in bed with our Colm. And last night he slept with me.'

  But last night, Big, you said, 'Your father's a prick.'

  And I've never once heard you use the word quite like that. I agreed with you, of course, and you said, 'What is it he wants you to prove to him?'

  I sai
d, 'That I'm capable of falling flat on my face.'

  'Well, that's where you are,' you said, Big. 'What more does he want?'

  'He must be waiting,' I said, 'for me to tell him he was right all along. He wants me to crawl across the floor and kiss his powdered doctor's shoes. Then I am to say, "Father, I want to be a professional man."'

  'It's not funny, Bogus,' you said. And I'd thought I could always count on a laugh from you, Biggie.

  'It's the last year, Big,' I told you. 'We'll go back to Europe. You can ski again.'

  But all you said was, 'Fuck'. I've never once heard you use the word quite like that.

  Then you just flounced in bed alongside me, leafing backward through a ski magazine, though I must have told you a hundred times that it's a poor way to read.

  When you read, Big, you set your chin on your high chest; your thick, honey, shoulder-cut hair juts forward, covering your cheeks, and all I can see is the tip of your sharp nose peeking out of your hair.

  But it's always a ski magazine, isn't it, Biggie? Nothing mean intended, perhaps, but just a reminder to me of what I've robbed you of, isn't it? When you find the inevitable Alpine scene, you say, 'Oh, look. Bogus. Weren't we there? Wasn't that near Zell, or - no! Maria Zell, isn't it? Just look at them piling out of that train. God, look at the mountains, Bogus ...'

  'Well, we're in Iowa now, Big,' I remind you. 'We'll take a drive tomorrow out in the corn. We'll look for a slight hill. We might more easily find a hog with a sloped back. We could coat him with mud, I could prop up his snout and you could ski between his ears, down to his tail. Not much of a run, but ...'

  'I didn't mean anything, Bogus,' you say. 'I just wanted you to look at the picture.'

  But why can't I leave you alone?

  I keep at you: 'I could tow you behind the car, Big. You should slalom through the cornstalks, routing pheasants! Tomorrow I'll simply install four-wheel-drive in the Corvair.'

  'Come on,' you say; you sound tired. Our bedside lamp blinks, crackles, goes out, and in the dark you whisper, 'Did you pay the electric bill, Bogus?'

  'It's just a fuse,' I tell you, and leaving the warm groove you put in our bed, I pad down to the basement. It's just as well I'm here, because I've not been down in the basement today to spring the mousetrap that you insist on setting for the mouse I don't want to catch. So I spare the mouse once more and replace the fuse - the same one that always blows, for no reason.

  Upstairs, Biggie, you shout down to me, 'That's it! It's on again! You got it!' As if some marvel has been performed. And when I come back up to you, you've got your strong, blond arms folded and you're kicking your feet under the sheets. 'No more reading now,' you say, a fierce twinkle about your eyes, and those heavy feet swishing.

  Oh, I know you mean only the best for me, Big, but I know too that the thing with the feet is an old skier's exercise, good for the ankles. You don't fool me.

  I tell you, 'I'll be right there, Big. Just let me check on Colm.'

  I always watch him sleep for a while. What I mind about children is that they're so vulnerable, so fragile-looking. Colm: I get up in the night to make sure your breathing hasn't stopped.

  'Honestly, Bogus, he's a very healthy child.'

  'Oh, I'm sure he is, Big. But he just seems so small.'

  'He's good-sized for his age, Bogus.'

  'Oh, I know, Big. That's not exactly what I mean ...'

  'Well, please don't wake him up, with your damn checking on him.'

  And some nights, I cry out, 'Look, Big! He's dead!'

  'He's sleeping, for Christ's sake ...'

  'But look how he's just lying there,' I insist. 'His neck is broken!'

  'You sleep like that yourself. Bogus ...'

  Well, like father, like son; I'm sure I'm wholly capable of breaking my neck in my sleep.

  'Come back to bed, Bogus.' I hear you calling me to your groove.

  It's not really that I'm reluctant to go there. But I have to check the stove; the pilot light is always going out. And that furnace sounds funny; one day we will wake up baked. Then check the lock on the door. There's more than hogs and corn in Iowa - or there might be.

  'Will you ever come to bed?' you shout.

  'I'm coming! I'm on my way, Big!' I promise.

  Bogus Trumper was just checking and double-checking. You may call him improvident, but never blase.

  Tulpen was unimpressed with my letter for no one. 'God, you haven't changed at all,' she said.

  'I've a new life,' I said. 'I'm a different man.'

  'Once you worried about a mouse,' she said. 'Now it's turtles and fish.'

  She sort of had me there. My silence made her smile and lift, just slightly, a breast with the back of her hand. Sometimes I could really whap her when she does that!

  But it's true. I do worry about the turtles and fish. Not in the same way that I once worried about the mouse, though. That mouse lived in constant peril; it was my responsibility to keep him out of Biggie's trap. But Tulpen was already taking care of these fish and turtles when I moved in. Her bed is framed on three sides by bookcases, waist-high; we are walled in by words. And all along the tops of the cases, in a watery U around us, these gurgling aquariums sit. They bubble all night long. She keeps them lit with underwater neon rays. I'll admit that it helps when I have to get up to pee.

  But the aura around the bed takes getting used to. In a half-sleep, you actually feel underwater, in spooky color, turtles and fish circling you.

  She feeds the turtles with a single chunk of steak tied on a string; all night they gnash at the dangling meat; in the morning, the chunk is gray, like a dead thing, and Tulpen removes it. Thank God she feeds them only once a week.

  And once I imagined that the man in the apartment above was building a bomb. (He does something electrical at night; odd hums and crackles are heard, and the lights in the aquariums dim.) If that man's bomb blew up, there's enough water in those aquariums to drown us in our sleep.

  One night, with such a thought, I considered calling Dr Jean Claude Vigneron. For one thing, I have a complaint: the water method isn't quite working out. But more important, I just wanted to hear the voice of a confident man. And maybe I'd ask him how he got to be so cocksure. I think it would have pleased me more, though, to find a way to shock him, to fluster that confidence of his. I thought of calling him very late. 'Dr Vigneron?' I would say. 'My prick just fell off.' Just to see what he'd say.

  I told Tulpen my plan. 'You know what he'd say?' she said. 'He'd say, "Put it in the refrigerator and make an appointment with my secretary in the morning."'

  Even though I suspect she's right, I was glad she didn't doff her boob to me then. She's more sensitive than that. That once, she turned out the aquarium lights.

  10

  Let's Not Lose Track of Certain Statistics

  IT GRIEVES HIM to remember lovely little Lydia Kindle, enraptured with freshman German, wanting ballads, or even opera, hummed to her in the Muttersprache. He obliged her; he made a tape for her of her very own. Deep-throated Bogus Trumper lulling her senseless with his favorite songs. It was to be a surprise.

  He gave her the tape one afternoon in the language lab.

  'Just for you, Miss Kindle. Some lieder I knew of ...'

  'Oh, Mr Trumper!' she said, and scurried off to her earphones. He watched her big-eyed little face concentrating over the rim of the listening booth. At first she seemed so eager; then she crunched up her pretty face critically; she stopped the tape - broke his rhythms! - played it back, stopped it again. She took notes. He went over to ask what was wrong.

  'That's wrong, isn't it?' she asked, pointing to her elfin scribbles. 'It's not mude, it's mude. But the singer missed the umlaut sound every time.'

  'I'm the singer,' he said in pain. It's so hard to be criticized by the young. And he added quickly, 'German isn't my best foreign tongue. I'm really involved more in the Scandinavian languages - you know, Old Low Norse? I'm afraid my German is a bit rusty. I only thoug
ht you'd like the songs.' He was bitter with the heartless child.

  But she said, then, so high and birdlike, as if her throat were pinched, or being kissed, 'Oh Mr Trumper. It's a beautiful tape. You only missed mude. And I just loved the songs. You've such a nice big voice.' And he thought: A big voice?

  But all he said was, 'You may have the tape. To keep.' And retreated, leaving her stunned in the listening booth. Under the earphones now she dreamed.

  When he closed the lab for suppertime, she skipped after him - careful, though, that she didn't touch him with her silky little clothes.

  'Going to the Union?' she chirped.

  'No.'

  'I'm not going there either,' she said, and he thought: She eats her supper in birdfeeders, hopping from one to the other all over town.

  But all he said was, 'Where are you going?'

  'Oh anywhere, nowhere,' she said, and tossed her light, fine, nervous hair. When he said nothing, she coaxed him: 'Tell me. What's Old Low Norse like?'

  He said some words for her. 'Klegwoerum, vroognaven, okthelm, abthur, uxt.' She shivered, he thought. Her shimmery little dress hugged her snug for a moment, then breezed loose again. He hoped she was sincere.

  Being so frequently insincere himself, Trumper suspected the motives of others. His own motives struck him as bottomless. To be diddling this farm child in his mind while his own wife - Lady Burden, the Mistress of Cope - suffers more banal encounters.

  Biggie waiting in line at the A & P, in the check-out aisle marked, eight items or less. She has less than eight items: she couldn't afford more. She lolls over the sparse cart, feels something old and athletic stirring her: an urge for the giant slalom. She puts her feet close together, one slightly ahead of the other, and shifts her weight to the downhill ski and bends her knees into a springy lock position. Still leaning on the market cart, she wedels ahead in line. Behind her, a soft and shapeless housewife glowers indignantly at Biggie's broad waggling; through Biggie's stretch pants, her rump is round and taut. The housewife's husband tries not to look, pretends he's outraged, too. Inside Biggie's cart, Colm has already opened a box of Cheerios.

  Now the confrontation with the check-out girl, tired and sweaty this Friday-night rush to consume. She almost doesn't notice Biggie's check, but the name is a hard one to forget. Trumper is one of the suspicious ones. The girl checks an ominous list and says, 'Hang on a second, will you, ma'am.'