Benchley, Peter - Novel 07 (31 page)

 
          
 
"There's quicker ways to take paint
off," Duke said.

 
          
 
"Fuck do you care?''

 
          
 
"Right. Right you are."

 
          
 
Preston
said, "D'you know what happened to Marcia and Dan?"

 
          
 
Chuck didn't answer.

 
          
 
"I mean, they're gone."

 
          
 
Chuck rubbed some more, then muttered,
"Nobody's damn business."

 
          
 
"What isn't?"

 
          
 
"What they do."

 
          
 
"What do they do?"

 
          
 
"Nothin'. Not a Christ thing they didn't
have a right to."

 
          
 
"Then what—"

 
          
 
Chuck spun on them then and raised the
leather-backed buffer and, as if it were a Kleenex, tore it in two before
Preston
's eyes. "You're all the same! Matter
what nobody says, all the slick talk and smooth bullshit, you're all the
fuckin' same!"

 
          
 
Duke took a step back and started to speak,
but
Preston
grabbed his arm, and shushed him, for now
he knew. In his mind he saw Marcia and Dan in the cafeteria line, saw them
whispering, felt the intimacy he had felt that day, and he knew.

 
          
 
Here, in this backwater in the land of the
free and the home of the brave, lived a nasty little creature named Apartheid.

           
 
He closed his eyes and forced the bile in his
throat to reverse its course and return down his gullet.

 
          
 
"Sorry,” he said to Chuck. "I'm
really sorry."

 
          
 
Duke didn't know, of course, had no idea what
had caused Chuck to detonate, so all he wanted to do was mollify him.

 
          
 
"That's a really nice car," Duke
said. "Where'd you get it?"

 
          
 
"Oh yeah?" Chuck shouted, and he
stepped at Duke and actually took a swing at him, and when he saw that he had
missed by three feet and that Duke was back-pedaling like a guy in some
cartoon, he added, "So what? Not jigaboo enough? So fuckin' what?"

 
          
 
Preston
told Duke when they were safely on the path back to Chaparral.

 
          
 
At first Duke didn't believe it, but then,
because he couldn't think of anything more plausible, he did believe it, and he
said, "They can't do that."

 
          
 
"Who says?"

 
          
 
"It's gotta be a violation of ... I don't
know, the
Helsinki
agreement."

 
          
 
"They can do whatever they want."

 
          
 
"No way, man. I'm going on strike."

 
          
 
"Sure. That'll show 'em."

 
          
 
They walked in silence for a few steps. Then
Duke said, "What d'you guess Chuck makes?"

 
          
 
"Twenty-five? Thirty? Why?"

 
          
 
"That's a
nine twenty-eight
S-four ... a sixty-thousand-dollar car.''

 
          
 
Guy Larkin stopped them as they crossed the
common room. He had a sheet of paper in his hand, and he consulted it and said
to Duke, "Family Week. Clarisse is still a 'maybe.' She'll try to make
it."

 
          
 
"Great!" Duke grinned. "Two weeks
ago, she was a definite 'piss on you.' "

 
          
 
Larkin looked at the paper again and said to
Preston
, "Margaret will be here, with
Kirk."

 
          
 
Preston
started, then realized what had happened and said, "That's a typo."

 
          
 
"What is?"

 
          
 
"It should be 'Kim.' My daughter's name
is Kimberly."

           
 
THEY couldn't agree on anything.

 
          
 
They talked at meals, after lectures, during
walks. Some of them even tried to discuss it during therapy, but Crippin (whose
given name was Melvin but who wanted to be called "just Mel") and
Gwen cut them off, declaring the routine departure of two counselors to be an
unfit topic for therapy because it had nothing to do with recovery. It was over
and done with, whereas their recovery was just beginning.

 
          
 
Everybody had his or her own ideas about what
should or shouldn't be done.

 
          
 
Lupone said the thing was. Don't make waves.
What had happened to Marcia was none of his business, and in his line of work
people who got too nosy ended up as snapshots in their mothers' scrapbooks.
"Besides, I got less than three weeks to serve, so I don't care they give
me Pee Wee fuckin' Herman for a counselor."

 
          
 
Twist said that even though he had nothing
against Marcia, in fact she was pretty righteous, she should've known she'd get
in trouble for balling a honky, specially since all the big shots who ran this
place were the kind of folks who didn't think of black people as people but
just as things who made beds and served little tiny sandwiches with no goddam
crust on the bread.

 
          
 
Priscilla said it wasn't fair.

 
          
 
Clarence Crosby said he agreed but he was
dipped if he knew what they could do about it, since a bunch of drunks and
junkies weren't exactly the U.S. Congress that anybody'd listen to.

 
          
 
Hector said he'd been in so many joints in his
time and seen so many counselors come and go for so many different reasons that
he thought of them as interchangeable, and while he felt sorry for Marcia and
agreed that it was nobody's business what you put where on your own time, she'd
probably get another job in a day or two and chances were he'd run into her at
the next joint he went into, or for sure the one after that.

 
          
 
Duke said they were all chickenshit assholes
and why should they let some two-bit cowboy has-been and a bunch of fuckheads
who if they didn't have so much money they could buy off judges and get free
prescriptions from tame doctors would all probably be patients themselves tell
a class broad like Marcia how to run her life? They had to do something.

 
          
 
Like what?
Preston
wanted to know.

 
          
 
Priscilla said it wasn't fair, damn it, and
she was tempted to call her father, except that her father probably agreed that
people of different races should fraternize with their own kind.

 
          
 
Twist said he'd never heard anybody call it
fraternizing.

 
          
 
Lupone said he could probably make a call and
get somebody's knees broken, but they'd have to figure out whose knees deserved
breaking.

 
          
 
And so on and so forth, with nobody agreeing
on anything and nothing specific being suggested, let alone done.

 
          
 
Preston
began to avoid the conversations, not only because they didn't lead anywhere
but because he had worries of his own. Family Week was coming up, and even
though it wasn't really a week but only a couple of days, the prospect of
confronting Margaret and Kimberly panicked him.

 
          
 
What would they think of him? He was a
different person from the self-deceiving, self-pitying cripple they had last
seen weeping over a wastebasket almost four weeks ago. He wasn't sure exactly
how he was a different person, but he knew he was different. He looked
different—at least, he felt he looked different—eight or ten pounds lighter, no
longer bloated in the gut and puffy in the face, no more milky pink in the
eyes, no more ragged patches of torn skin around the base of his fingernails.
But the real difference, if there was a difference, was inside. He had a new
perspective on himself, on his disease. Yes, he was actually coming to see a
truth in what he used to think was facile, exculpatory nonsense: It was a
disease, not a character flaw, because it was something he couldn't help, like
hemophilia. He drank not because of professional pressure or financial pressure
or to escape but purely and simply (and how pure it was in its simplicity!)
because he couldn't not drink.

 
          
 
And the rationale wasn't just escapism,
either, not just a way of avoiding guilt, because if he had hurt people, and he
had, himself included, there was nothing he could do about it now except
apologize, which he would do, and try not to hurt them again. Which made it
easier to deal with what Margaret and Kimberly and Warren Storrow and anyone
else might think of him, because he had no control over what they thought of
him. He was responsible for what he did, how he acted, not for how people
reacted. If they didn't like him, couldn't accept him, too bad.

 
          
 
We do the best we can, and if that's not good
enough, well. . .

 
          
 
What would he think of them! Had they changed?
Had they concluded that part of the blame lay with them? It didn't, not really,
except insofar as they might have been "enablers," somehow
subconsciously behaving in ways that encouraged his drinking, like making
excuses for him or going along with his own pathetic excuses for himself. He
would tell them it wasn't their fault, especially Kimberly.

 
          
 
Why did she have to be put through this? If
anyone was an innocent victim, it was Kimberly. What did Margaret hope to
accomplish by bringing her along, exposing her to all the sordid details of a
world she should never have to know? He guessed that that Chris Evert woman at
his intervention, what's her name, had kept in touch with Margaret and had
pressured her to bring Kimberly along, had convinced her that only by forcing
all members of the family to face the whole truth could true honesty and openness
be achieved, without which the integrity of the family unit could not survive.

 
          
 
Whatever the hell that meant.

 
          
 
It was all a lot of sophistic cant.

 
          
 
Kimberly was a child, for crissakes.

 
          
 
But she'd learn something, that was for sure.
She'd have something special to bring to show-and-tell.

 
          
 
What I did on my spring vacation.

 
          
 
For "Family Week" was a misnomer,
and not merely because of the duration of the event. It wasn't designed to
bring a family together to mend ties that had been shattered by booze or pills
or needles. It was bringing families together with other families, with the
patients like baited bulls in the center of the ring, so that aggrieved wives
and abused children, resentful husbands and confused parents could spill their
venom and vent their hatreds and air their horrors—all for the edification of
complete strangers, so that (he guessed) they could go home thinking either,
"Holy shit! And / thought I had it bad!" or "Holy shit! I must
be out of my mind to have hung around as long as I did!"

 
          
 
That, at any rate, was the portrait of Family
Week painted for Preston by other patients as they lurched, wan and trembling,
from the meeting rooms and rushed back to the comfort of their common rooms,
the kind words of their fellow outcasts and the solace of a pint of ice cream.

 
          
 
The first they knew that the day had arrived
was when Larkin made the rounds of the breakfast tables and told them—Preston,
Duke, Twist, Crosby, Hector and Lupone—that they were excused from lecture and
were to report to rooms in Peacemaker. He suggested that they make themselves
"presentable."

 
          
 
"Me?" Lupone said. "What I got
a visitor for?" "Your brother," said Larkin. "He asked
permission to come, even though it's early for you. We thought it would be
okay."

 
          
 
"My brother.”

 
          
 
Larkin checked his clipboard.
"Raffi."

 
          
 
"Oh." Lupone said softly. It was the
first time
Preston
had heard Lupone say anything softly.

 
          
 
"Anybody seen Priscilla?" Larkin
asked.

 
          
 
No one had.

 
          
 
"Never mind, I'll find her. She's
probably making herself look fabulous for Mom and Dad. Have a great day."

 
          
 
"You don't like your brother?" Duke
said to Lupone.

 
          
 
"I don't got no brother."

 
          
 
"So who's Raffi?"

 
          
 
"'Vindicatore, like Li'l Bit. They sent
him to check up on me. If he decides I ain't doin' so good ..."

 
          
 
"What?" Duke laughed. "You get
demerits?"

 
          
 
"You could say. He arranges for me to
swallow my tongue."

 
          
 
Preston
put
on a clean Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, pressed slacks and loafers. He
had taken a jacket and tie from the closet and was about to tie the tie when he
thought, No, don't look like the same tight-ass you were when you left. You're
an inmate, a patient, a changed man.

 
          
 
Let your eyes reflect the agony of
self-knowledge.

 
          
 
"Who you got comin'?" Hector asked
Twist as they walked down the corridor.

 
          
 
"The old lady. She said if they give her
the day off."

 
          
 
"Where she at?"

 
          
 
"Runs payroll for a Bob's Big Boy."

 
          
 
"Hey, smart."

 
          
 
"Yeah." Twist smiled. "Only
dumb thing she ever done was hang out with me. Wh'about you?"

 
          
 
"Surprise," Hector said. "Got a
buddy runs hookers. I never know who he's gonna send to play Corazon. That's my
honey on the admission form. Sometimes it's a big fat mama painted up like a
subway car. That kind likes to give me all sortsa shit about how I slap 'em
around. Sometimes it's a skinny little thing like she's been eatin' lizards.
That kind hassles my ass 'bout walkin' out on her and the twins." He
laughed. "One time one a them played it up real fine and got all teary
'bout how I prob'ly couldn't remember the names a the goddam twins. Fucked if I
could, either, I couldn't think up names fast enough. Did they rip my ass for
that!"

 
          
 
"What you bother for?"

 
          
 
"Hey, man, you gotta have a family on
Family Week. That's all part a the game."

 
          
 
Walking beside Duke,
Preston
saw him light a third cigarette from the
butt of the second one. "You love her, don't you,"
Preston
said.

 
          
 
"Who knows?" Duke said. "What's
love? All I know is, she doesn't come, it means I got no one." He sucked
enough smoke into his lungs to asphyxiate a bison. "You know what my social
life was before I met Clarisse? My friends were a TV set, an eye patch and a
little fridge I kept a bottle of vodka in. I'd sit in bed and watch TV and
drink the vodka. After a while, I'd start to see double so I'd put the eye
patch on, go from stereo to mono so the double image'd go away. I'd wake up in
the morning with the eye patch on and a big puddle of cold vodka on my chest
from where the glass spilled, and the TV set playing Sunrise Sermonette.
Yessir, good times were had by all." He dragged the cigarette down to a
nub and tossed it in an ashtray. "Nobody should have no one."