The Evening Star

  “Sometimes I wish I could be a virus in your brain,” Patsy said to Jerry—she didn’t bother to conceal her annoyance. “You’re always drifting away from me, and I have no idea where you’re drifting to. If I were a virus, at least I’d be there. I’d wiggle in so deep you’d have to think about me once in a while.”

  “When I think of you too much, I feel guilty,” Jerry said.

  “Guilty,” Patsy said. “Baloney. You don’t look as if you feel very guilty—of course you probably aren’t thinking of me, either.

  “Who were you thinking of, if not me?” she asked after a moment.

  “Bruno Bettelheim,” Jerry said—a stock answer. In fact, he had been thinking about Juanita’s invitation. Maybe he would go to the dance with her on Saturday night. Then maybe they would just head down the road—instead of taking the east ramp onto I-10, perhaps they’d take the west ramp. They could drive most of the night and then sleep most of the day in some small-town motel in West Texas. It seemed like time to get back to Nevada, but getting back to Nevada wasn’t so urgent that he would need to go straight there—he could take the talkative and curvaceous Juanita to L.A., city of her dreams, and help her get settled before wandering on north to Tahoe or Elko or wherever he decided to wander.

  “I don’t believe you feel guilty. Why should you? You haven’t hurt me,” Patsy said.

  “I feel guilty generally when I think about women,” Jerry said. It was mostly true, he mostly did. “And I usually feel specifically guilty when I think of a specific woman.”

  Patsy got up and put on a robe. She had the oppressed feeling she always got when the hour of breakup was close at hand. Part of the oppression consisted of all the unanswered questions that seemed to circulate through her system—first among them, why she had wanted Jerry so much in the first place. Why had she invested so much time and so much hope? She had had to drag him virtually every step of the way she had gotten him to go, and even so the affair had lasted only a month. She had once had men in her life who made her feel interesting; now she seemed only to be able to get men who made her feel the opposite, and at the moment she felt the opposite. She felt dull and a little stupid, but why? Maybe she had only wanted Jerry because Aurora Greenway had him. So she went after him and got him, they had a little nice sex, one or two lively conversations, one or two excellent dinners which she either cooked or paid for, and that seemed to be that. A breakup loomed, but there was nothing urgent about it, much less tragic—they had barely got to know one another anyway. In a sense, the most interesting thing about the affair was Aurora’s absolute silence with regard to both of them: the thought only made Patsy feel more oppressed. If the defining thing about a love affair was that Aurora Greenway, aggressive as she was, hadn’t even bothered to issue a challenge to it, what did that say?

  “Would you like to just forget that we know one another?” Patsy asked, coming back to sit on the bed. She sat far enough from Jerry so that he couldn’t touch her—not that he would be especially likely to try. What was more likely was that she would forget her annoyance and touch him. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if she forgot and touched him, but right at the moment she would rather not.

  “I don’t think I could forget that I know you,” Jerry said. “I do know you, and I have a good memory. I’m not going to forget that I know you.”

  “That’s a dishonest statement,” Patsy said. “Your good memory isn’t the point. I have a good memory too, but I’ve had lovers that I’ve forgotten utterly—I mean utterly. If I met them on the street I wouldn’t recognize them, and if one of these guys I’ve forgotten came up to me at a party and said, hi, we used to fuck, how are you? I’d probably slug him.”

  “I still don’t get the point,” Jerry said. “I’m certainly not going to forget you—not ever.”

  “Why not?” she asked, though his remark made her a little hopeful. It was possible that she was mistaking low key for no key.

  “For one thing, you know more about Rilke than anyone I’ve ever met,” Jerry said.

  “Oh, fuck you!” Patsy said, stung. “All that means is that I had a boyfriend who was translating him. Read that new biography and you’ll know as much about Rilke as I do.”

  “Yes, but you forget, I mostly don’t know women who read biographies,” Jerry said. “I mostly know women who wait tables. If they read anything it’s usually just their horoscopes.”

  “So what you’re going to remember about me is that I was overeducated—thanks a lot!” Patsy said. “I’d almost rather be remembered for giving good blow jobs.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you mad,” Jerry said. “What’s wrong with being remembered for knowing a lot about something? Most people don’t know much about anything.”

  “You’re so goddamn passive I have to force you to explain yourself,” Patsy said. “Then when I do force you, I hate your explanations. I think you better just get out of here, and don’t be looking out the window at my daughter’s tits while you’re going.”

  Angry, she hurried downstairs and opened a bottle of red wine. While she was drinking a glass of it, trying to calm down, Jerry came into the kitchen. He looked mopey and depressed, but not depressed enough to suit Patsy.

  “I really didn’t mean to upset you,” he said. “It was just kind of a philosophical conversation.”

  “All your conversations are philosophical conversations,” Patsy observed. “Even beaten down as I am, I’m still an emotional person. Maybe I’d like an emotional conversation once in a while.”

  “Can’t they be a little mixed?” Jerry asked.

  “Sure, but yours aren’t mixed, they’re just philosophical,” Patsy said. “They make people depressed—or at least they make me depressed. I come out of every single one of them feeling that my life is a complete failure. That’s a terrible effect to have on a woman.”

  “But your life isn’t a complete failure,” Jerry said.

  “How would you know?” Patsy asked. She felt like throwing the wine bottle at him.

  “Didn’t I tell you to leave?” she yelled. She felt that if he stayed she would just get angrier, and there would be a really ugly fight—ugly enough that Katie would hear it, which she didn’t want. Her children had heard too many ugly fights when she was married to their father.

  On his way home Jerry decided to cut by the tamale stand and accept Juanita’s invitation to take her dancing. He was in the mood for someone younger—someone with fewer cares.

  12

  The subject that interested Bump most was his own future.

  “Do you think I should live in Iran?” he asked his parents one morning as they were getting ready to go to the park. His father, at least, was getting ready. His mother was still in bed. She was awake but she still did not seem to be in a hurry to get up and go with them to the park.

  “Well, if you want to live in Iran, we’ll have to start you on Farsi,” Teddy said.

  “Is that the language they speak in Iran?” Bump asked. He was annoyed with his mother for being lazy. One of her bare feet stuck out of the covers. He grabbed it and tried to tug her out of the bed. But it was no use—she was much too heavy.

  “You’re supposed to come,” he said firmly. “Get up and come.”

  “You’re not the boss of me, Bump,” Jane informed him.

  “No, but you did say you’d come to the park,” Teddy reminded her.

  “I said I’d come but I didn’t say when,” Jane said with a smile. “It’s Sunday morning and I don’t have to work—I feel like staying in bed a little longer.”

  “No, you have to come now!” Bump said. “You’re supposed to obey.”

  “Obey who, kid?” Jane said, amused. “I certainly don’t have to obey you.”

  “Yes you do—I’ll bite you,” Bump said, in a fury because she just kept lying in bed. He tried to bite her foot, but she was too quick, jerking her foot back under the covers. Then, before he could move, she yanked him up on the bed and shook him—she was
a quick, bad beast when she was angry.

  “You are not to bite me, understand!” Jane said.

  “Don’t shake him so hard, he didn’t actually bite you,” Teddy said. He had already begun to hate the frequent, violent confrontations between his mate and his son.

  “He bit me the other day and broke the skin,” Jane said. “He wasn’t sorry, either. I think he’s a little sociopath.”

  “Come on, he isn’t even four yet,” Teddy said.

  “I want to go live in Iran,” Bump said, once his mother released him.

  “Go, and I hope the ayatollah gets you,” Jane said.

  “If you don’t come to the park I’ll bite you next time you go to sleep,” Bump threatened, angrily sliding off the bed. He wished he had some means of injuring his mother, but he didn’t, and by the time he and his father had reached the park he had become less angry.

  “She said something would get me if I go live in Iran,” Bump said to his dad. “What is it that might get me?”

  “An ayatollah,” Teddy said. The park was peaceful, almost empty—just one or two other parents were out early with their kids. Bump could have had the slide completely to himself, something he rarely got, but he seemed to be more in a questioning mood than a sliding mood.

  “What does the ayatollah do?” he asked from the top of the slide.

  “An ayatollah is a holy man,” Teddy said, just before Bump went down the slide.

  Once in the park, away from Jane, Teddy felt much calmer. Seeing Bump glide happily down the slide, just as any little boy might, renewed his sense of normalcy, or order—it was something he was apt to lose whenever Jane and Bump had one of their confrontations. Some of their confrontations frightened him badly, because neither of them held back. What if Jane broke Bump’s neck or something while shaking him? What if Bump snuck up on Jane while she was asleep and stabbed her in the eye with a pencil? He told himself he was letting his imagination run away with him, but he couldn’t help it. His deepest fear was that Jane or Bump would really injure one another in one of their confrontations. If that happened, life would never be the same—not his life, anyway. Then it would become a life sort of like Tommy’s, only outside a prison rather than inside one.

  Bump reached the bottom, but he didn’t get off the slide.

  “What does a holy man do?” he asked, preoccupied with the question of Iran, a place he had often heard mentioned on the radio.

  “They worship—they’re like ministers or priests,” Teddy said, realizing that that was probably not a terribly helpful description, since Bump had never been inside a church.

  “Do they cook little boys in big ovens?” Bump asked.

  “No, they don’t bother little boys at all—you’d be perfectly safe even if there were a hundred ayatollahs in this park right now,” Teddy said, “Where did you get that idea?”

  “My mother said she cooked me in her stomach,” Bump said. “She cooked me but I came out before I burned.”

  “Your mother said that?” Teddy asked. He didn’t believe it. As soon as he had learned to talk Bump had started saying things like that and attributing them to Jane, who denied having said any of them.

  Bump nodded as he eased off the slide. “I’m going to make poison and give it to her and she’ll turn black,” he said. “Then she can’t get me back in her stomach and cook me till I burn.”

  “But she can’t get you back in her stomach anyway,” Teddy said. “You’re much too big to fit in anyone’s stomach.”

  “I could fit in a giant’s stomach,” Bump said, starting back up the ladder to the top of the slide. “I could fit in a whale’s stomach or a grizzly bear’s stomach or an elephant’s stomach.”

  “Yes, but your mother is just a human woman,” Teddy said. “She isn’t a giant or a whale or a grizzly bear or an elephant.”

  “She could blow herself up and become a giant,” Bump said, looking down at his father again from the top of the slide. “She told me she could.”

  “Oh, Bump, I think you’re fantasizing,” Teddy said. “I don’t think your mother told you she could blow herself up and become a giant.”

  “She told me it in a dream,” Bump said. “She said she could swallow me and cook me in her stomach until I burned completely up.”

  Then he went down the slide again.

  “I think you just had a bad dream,” Teddy said. “Your mother is not going to swallow you and cook you in her stomach. It’s impossible, and anyway she doesn’t want to.”

  “I don’t trust my mother,” Bump said. He had stopped himself just at the bottom of the slide, and was swinging his legs.

  “Well, you should trust her,” Teddy said. “She’s a very good mother.”

  “I may drop a bomb on her head and blow her head off,” Bump said. “Are the ayatollahs black all over their skin?”

  “No, they just wear black clothes,” Teddy said.

  “I might go live in Iceland where the seals live,” Bump said. “Seals don’t eat little boys.”

  “Hey, when did you get so worried about being eaten?” Teddy asked, as Bump jumped down and walked toward the swings.

  “I felt my mother’s stomach and it was hot like an oven,” he said, taking Teddy’s hand as he walked.

  “Everybody’s stomach is hot, more or less,” Teddy said. “Your own stomach is hot as an oven, sometimes.”

  Bump put his hand under his T-shirt and felt his stomach. “If I could find a tiny little boy who was only as big as a bug I’d put him in my stomach and cook him,” he said with a grin.

  They played in the park for over an hour, but Jane did not appear. When they finally walked home they saw Claudia’s car parked outside the apartment. The door to the bedroom was shut when they went up. On the way home Teddy had bought a paper from their own 7-Eleven so he could devote some study to the want ads. Three convenience-store clerks had been blasted in Houston within the week, one of them only six blocks from where he and Jane worked. They had talked it over and decided it might be time for one or both of them to change jobs.

  While Teddy read the want ads Bump went into his closet and had a long conversation with himself. Later, when Jane and Claudia emerged from the bedroom, Bump emerged, too, and said he wanted to be an ayatollah.

  “Give me some black clothes,” he demanded. Jane draped him in a black shirt and made him a hood out of an old black scarf. There was a full-length mirror in the bathroom—Bump went in and studied himself for a bit. When he came out he was all smiles.

  “I like being an ayatollah,” he announced.

  Jane and Claudia were in a rollicking mood. After some debate about what would constitute the ideal breakfast, Jane made French toast.

  “I shouldn’t eat it, I’m getting fatter by the day,” Claudia said. It was true—Claudia was heavy—but she more than made up for it by being cheerful and upbeat. Although Teddy experienced a bad moment or two of jealousy when he came home and saw the bedroom door shut, he was, on the whole, glad that Claudia was in Jane’s life, and thus in their life as a family. Claudia was really the only person who could coax Jane out of her mad, bad moods. If Claudia had not come over, Jane could easily have remained in her confrontational mode all day, which would have meant more fights with Bump, more shakings, and probably fights with Teddy as well. His stomach was in a knot as it was, and if Claudia hadn’t come it would only have been in a worse knot before the day was over.

  “He looks like a midget rock star,” Claudia said, meaning Bump—he had gotten tired of his black ayatollah hood and had taken it off temporarily. He was messing around in the syrup, trying to draw letters in it with one finger.

  “I’m trying to make the alphabet but my syrup keeps drowning it,” Bump said, giggling. His hair had never been cut in his life; long brunette curls hung almost to his shoulders. Sometimes he liked to shake his head rapidly in order to make the curls swirl.

  “Maybe we should cut his hair this morning,” Jane suggested. She looked rosy and very chee
rful. Once in a while she reached under the table and tickled Teddy’s thigh a little in hopes of convincing him that, despite Claudia, she still wanted him around.

  “Maybe,” Teddy said. “Or we could just take him to a barbershop sometime and let a professional do it.”

  “Nope, no barber’s touching my little boy’s hair,” Jane said.

  Bump was still making letters in the syrup. “Do you think I will ever have wings?” he asked.

  “Why do you want wings, sweets?” Jane asked, nuzzling his neck.

  “If I had wings I could fly up in the sky with bombs and drop them on people,” Bump said. “Then when all the people were killed I could live with the vultures.”

  “Yes, but birds can peck,” Jane pointed out.

  “What would you do if a big bird pecked you?” Claudia asked him.

  Bump reflected for a moment. When he was in a good mood he had an angelic grin. “I’d get some French toast, and if the bird pecked me I’d drown it in syrup,” he said, grinning his angelic grin.

  “He’s got an imagination, I’ll say that for him,” Teddy said that night. He had just finished reading Bump about a dozen stories, the last one a Tomi Ungerer story whose hero was a vulture. The vulture, Hugo, was now Bump’s favorite literary character.

  “If everyone in the whole world died, would there be enough vultures to eat all the bodies?” Bump asked with a big, long yawn. Before Teddy could answer, or at least speculate, Bump had gone to sleep.

  “It’s good that he’s imaginative,” Jane said.

  “I know it’s good,” Teddy said. “I wish I could remember my fantasies from when I was his age. His are so violent. I just wonder if mine were that violent.”

  “Does it worry you or something that Bump has violent fantasies?” Jane asked. She was in bed, but she hadn’t put on her gown, often a sign that she might welcome a little sexual attention.