Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar Part 13

"What the h.e.l.l's the stench in here?" he asked.

"BO?"

"No." He sniffed. "I know that smell. It's death! Yeah, death, all right-rotting, decomposing flesh . . . decay, rot, putrescence . . . . maggots, worms . . . that's it, all right, the real stuff. Where'd you hide the body?"

"Behind the fridge."

"Don't worry. You can cop an insanity plea. I'll get you a nice wing. Something quiet with the seniles-take a lot of naps. No, it gets too petty there. Maybe the hydrocephalics. You'd have to drink a lot more water to fit in. Aaaiiiyyyeee!" he suddenly screamed. "See them? There! Giant, swollen heads!" He was pointing at the window, eyes wild. "Whiskey, I need whiskey," he rasped, slugging from the bottle, then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Aaaiiiyyyeee." He shuddered quietly.

Aaaiiiyyyeee had replaced Has it come to this in his lexicon since he'd been working at Dunning, the state mental hospital. He claimed to see hydrocephalics everywhere.

We walked out along the cooling streets, away from the lake, into a deserted neighborhood where blue neon Stars of David glowed behind grated shop windows. We were pa.s.sing the old Guckenheimer, washing it down at water fountains, trading stories on our usual subjects-poverty, madness, slums, asylums-laughing like crazy. Harry kept breaking into the childhood song he'd started singing in my apartment:

"The worms crawl in,

The worms crawl out, They turn your guts.

To sauerkraut. . . ."

About four in the morning we found an open liquor store and bought another bottle. We sat drinking on a bench on the Howard Street El platform. Howard was the end of the line. El cars were stacked on the tracks, paralyzed, darkened, in lines that crossed the border into Evanston.

"We could probably walk to the next station before the train comes," Harry said.

We jumped down on the tracks and started walking, stepping carefully along the ties. The tracks looked down on the streetlights. We were even with roofs and windows reflecting moonlight. It was lovely, but we kept checking behind us for the single headlight that meant the train was coming. Then we'd have to jump the electric rail to the next set of tracks. The only danger was if we caught trains coming in both directions. We weren't saying much, our ears straining to hear the distant roar of the El, but it was perfectly still.

"This is the feeling I sometimes get in flying dreams," I said.

It was in that mood of ecstasy that I decided to p.i.s.s on the third rail. It suddenly seemed like something I'd always wanted to do. I straddled it carefully and unzipped my fly. I was just ready to let go when Harry split the silence with an Aaaiiiyyyeee.

"What's the matter-train coming?"

"Aaaiiiyyyeee!" he repeated.

"Hydrocephalics?"

"Suppose the current goes upstream and zaps you in the d.i.c.k?"

I carefully unstraddled the rail, zipping up my pants.

We were staggering now, which made it hard walking on ties, but made it to Fargo, the next station, with time to spare. When the train came we rode it three more stops, then walked east to the beach. By then a metallic sheen had spread from the auras of streetlights to the sky. In the faint blue light over the lake we were amazed at how filthy the beach was before the early crews arrived to clean it. Wire baskets overflowed. Piles of smashed cartons, cans, and bags littered the sand. It looked like the aftermath of a battle.

We began mounding garbage at the lapping edge of water the way kids mound sand for castles. A disk of new sun was rising across the lake from the general direction of Indiana. Two nuns, dressed in white with wimples like wings sprouting from their heads, glided past us and smiled.

"And the dawn comes up like thunder," Harry was singing.

We took our clothes off and lit the pyre of paper and cartons. Its flames flicked pale and fragile-looking against the sun and foil of water. We sprinkled on the last swallow of whiskey and danced around the fire, then took turns starting back in the sand and running through the blazing paper into the lake.

The squad car came jouncing over the sand just as I was digging in for another sprint. One of the cops was out before the car even stopped. He missed a tackle as I raced by him into the flames, splashing out into the water. I stayed under as long as I could, then just kept stroking out. They followed me in the car along the breakwater, loudspeaker announcing that if I would come back we could talk it over.

When I woke it was noon. I was on my bathroom floor with the mat tucked over me. In the next room Harry was saying to the landlord, "Death . . . It stinks of death in here . . . corruption . . . putrescence . . . rotting flesh . . . abandoned bones. . . . What kind of charnel house are you running here anyway?"

The janitor arrived and removed a mouse from behind the refrigerator. And sometime later a coroner told me one of the most awful deaths he'd seen was that of a man who'd urinated on the third rail.

As far as I could see, the restaurant didn't have a name except maybe Drink Coca-Cola. I went in because it had an awning-forest green with faded silver stripes. It was cranked down, shading the plate-gla.s.s window from the corona of setting sun. Forty-seventh had a number of places like it, mostly family-owned, bars that served hot lunches, little restaurants different ethnics ran, almost invisible amid McDonald's arches and Burger King driveways.

I sat on the padded stool, revolving slightly, watching the traffic go by on Western, knowing if I could eat I'd get my rhythm back and things would be all right. I picked the mimeographed menu from between the napkin dispenser and catsup bottle. Nothing unusual: hamburgers, hot beef sandwich and mashed potatoes, pork chops. Handwritten under soups was Homemade Sauerkraut Soup.

I'd never had sauerkraut soup before. I'd been thinking of zupa, but of something more medicinal, like chicken rice. "Homemade" sounded good. How could sauerkraut soup be otherwise, I thought. Who would can it?

"Yeah, ready?" the waitress asked. She was too buxom to be grandmotherly.

"Sauerkraut soup."

She brought it fast, br.i.m.m.i.n.g to the lip of the heavy bowl, slopping a little onto the plate beneath it. It was thick and reddish, not the blond color of sauerkraut I'd expected. The kind of soup one cuts into with the edge of the spoon. Steaming. The spoon fogging as if with breath. The peppery smell of soup rising like vapor to open the bronchial tubes. I could smell the scalded pepper and also another spice and then realized what colored the soup-paprika.

After a few sipped spoonfuls I sprinkled in more salt and oyster crackers for added nourishment. The waitress brought them in a separate bowl.

Sometimes I wonder if that place is still there on the corner of Forty-seventh. I like to think it is-hidden away like a hole card. I daydream I could go back. Drive all night, then take the bus to the factory. Open my old locker and my coveralls with steve st.i.tched over the pocket would be hanging on the handle of the push broom. Walk in the gra.s.s down Western Boulevard. Sit at the counter sipping soup.

Outside, the crepe-paper colors were fading into a normal darkness. A man with a hussar's mustache, wearing a cook's ap.r.o.n, was cranking up the awning with a long metal rod. Neon lights were blinking on. I ordered a second bowl. I was never happier than in the next two years after I'd eaten those bowls of soup. Perhaps I was receiving a year of happiness per bowl. There are certain mystical connections to these things. Only forty cents a bowl. With my paycheck in my pocket, I could have ordered more, maybe enough for years, for a lifetime perhaps, but I thought I'd better stop while I was feeling good.

Deborah Eisenberg.

THE FLAW IN THE DESIGN.

I float back in.

The wall brightens, dims, brightens faintly again-a calm pulse, which mine calms to match, of the pale sun's beating heart. Outside, the sky is on the move-windswept and pearly-spring is coming from a distance. In its path, sc.r.a.ps of city sounds waft up and away like pages torn out of a notebook. Feather pillows, deep carpet, the mirror a lake of pure light-no imprints, no traces; the room remembers no one but us. "Do we have to be careful about the time?" he says.

The voice is exceptional, rich and graceful. I turn my head to look at him. Intent, reflective, he traces my brows with his finger, and then my mouth, as if I were a photograph he's come across, mysteriously labeled in his own handwriting.

I reach for my watch from the bedside table and consider the dial-its rect.i.tude, its innocence-then I understand the position of the hands and that, yes, rush-hour traffic will already have begun.

I pull into the driveway and turn off the ignition. Evening is descending, but inside no lights are on. The house looks unfamiliar.

It looks to me much the way it did when I saw it for the first time, years ago, before it was ours, when it was just a house the Realtor brought us to look at, all angles and sweep-flashy, and rather stark. John took to it immediately-I saw the quick alliance, his satisfaction as he ran his hand across the granite and steel. I remember, now, my faint embarra.s.sment: I'd been taken by surprise to discover that this was what he wanted, that this was something he must have more or less been longing for.

I can just make out the shadowy figure upstairs in our bedroom. I allow myself to sit for a minute or so, then I get out of the car and close the door softly behind me.

John is at the roll-top desk, going over some papers. He might have heard me pull into the drive, or he might not have. He doesn't turn as I pause in the bedroom doorway, but he glances up when I approach to kiss him lightly on the temple. His tie is loosened: he's still in his suit. The heavy crystal tumbler is nearly full.

I turn on the desk light. "How can you see what you're doing?" I say.

I rest my hand on his shoulder and he reaches up to pat it. "h.e.l.lo, sweetheart," he says. He pats my hand again, terminating, and I withdraw it. "Absolutely drowning in this stuff . . ." He rubs the bridge of his nose under his gla.s.ses frames, then directs a muzzy smile my way.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in a tree," I say. "In a cave, with no receipts, no bills, no records--just no paper at all . . ." I close my eyes for a moment. Good. Eclipsed-the day has sealed up behind me. "Oh, darling-did you happen to feed Pod?"

John blinks. "No one told me."

"It's all right. I didn't expect to be so late. Maybe Oliver thought to."

Gingerly, I stroke back John's thin, pale hair. He waits rigidly. "Any news?" I ask.

"News," he says. "Nothing to speak of, really." He turns back to the desk.

"John," I say.

"h.e.l.lo, darling," he says.

"Lamb chops," Oliver observes pleasantly.

"I'm sorry, sweetie," I say. "I'm sure there's a plain pizza in the freezer, and there's some of that spinach thing left. If I had thought you'd be home tonight, I would have made something else."

"Don't I always come home, Mom?"

"'Always'?" I smile at him. "I a.s.sumed you'd be at Katie's again tonight."

"But don't I always actually come home? Don't I always come home eventually, Mom, to you?"

He seems to want me to laugh, or to pretend to, and I do. I can't ever disguise the pleasure I take in looking at him. How did John and I ever make this particular child, I always wonder. He looks absolutely nothing like either of us, with his black eyes and wild, black hair-though he does bear some resemblance to the huge oil portrait of John's grandfather that his parents have in their hallway. John's father once joked to me, are you sure you're the mother? I remember the look on John's face then-his look of reckoning, the pure coldness, as if he were calculating his disdain for his father in orderly columns. John's father noted that look, too-with a sort of gratification, I thought-then turned to me and winked.

"You're seriously not going to have any of these?" John says.

Oliver looks at the platter.

This only started recently, after Oliver went off to school. "You don't have to, darling," I say.

"You don't know what you're missing," John says.

"Hats off, Dad." Oliver nods earnestly at his father. "Philosophically watertight."

Recently, John has developed an absent little laugh to carry him past these moments with Oliver, and it does seem to me healthier, better for both of them, if John at least appears to rise above provocation.

"But don't think I'm not grateful, Mom, Dad, for the fact that we can have this beautiful dinner, in our beautiful, architecturally unimpeachable open-plan . . . area. And actually, Dad, I want to say how grateful I am to you in general. Don't think, just because I express myself awkwardly and my vocabulary's kind of f.u.c.ked up-"

John inclines his head, with the faint, sardonic smile of expectations met.

"-Sorry, Dad. That I'm not grateful every single day for how we're able to preside as a family over the things of this world, and that owing to the fantastic education you've secured for me, I'll eventually be able-I mean of course with plenty of initiative and hard work or maybe with a phone call to someone from you-to follow in your footsteps and a.s.sume my rightful place on the planet, receiving beautiful Mother Earth's bounty-her crops, her oil, her precious metals and diamonds, and to cast my long, dark shadow over-"

"Darling," I say. "All right. And when you're at home, you're expected to feed Pod. We've talked about this."

Oliver clasps my wrist. "Wow, Mom, don't you find it poignant, come to think of it? I really think there's a poignancy here in this divergence of paths. Your successful son, home for a flying visit from his glamorous inst.i.tution of higher education, and Pod, the companion of your son's youth, who stayed on and turned into a dog?"

"That's why you might try to remember to feed him," I say.

Oliver flashes me a smile, then ruffles grateful Pod's fur. "Poor old Pod," he says, "hasn't anyone fed you since I went away?"

"Not when you're handling food, please, Oliver," John says.

"Sorry, Dad," Oliver says, holding up his hands like an apprehended robber. "Sorry, Mom, sorry, Pod."

And there's the radiant smile again. It's no wonder that the girls are crazy about Oliver. His phone rings day and night. There are always a few racy, high-tech types running after him, as well as the attractive, well-groomed girls, so prevalent around here, who absolutely shine with poise and self-confidence-perfect girls, who are sure of their value. And yet the girls he prefers always seem to be in a bit of disarray. Sensitive, I once commented to John. "Grubby," he said.

"Don't you want the pizza?" I say. "I checked the label scrupulously-I promise."

"Thanks, Mom. I'm just not really hungry, though."

"I wish you would eat something," I can't help saying.

"Oh-but listen, you guys!" Oliver says. "Isn't it sad about Uncle Bob?"

"Who?" John says. He gets up to pour himself another bourbon.

"Uncle Bob? Bob? Uncle Bob, your old friend Bob Alpers?"

"Wouldn't you rather have a gla.s.s of wine, darling?" I ask.

"No," John says.

"Was Alpers testifying today?" I ask John. "I didn't realize. Did you happen to catch any of it?"

John shrugs. "A bit. All very tedious. When did this or that memo come to his attention, was it before or after such and such a meeting, and so on."

"Poor Bob," I say. "Who can remember that sort of thing?"

"Who indeed," John says.

"We used to see so much of Uncle Bob and Aunt Caroline," Oliver says.

"That's life," John says. "Things change."

"That's a wise way to look at things, Dad," Oliver nods seriously. "It's, really, I mean . . . wise."

"I'm astonished that you remember Bob Alpers," I say. "It's been a long time since he and your father worked together. It's been years."

"We never did work together," John says. "Strictly speaking."