George Mills (37 page)

“Well. Let’s climb down from this. For all my brave talk about obsequies it turns out that it’s inconvenient for me to die just now. It isn’t that I object to death. Indeed, I’m for it rather. But you saw yourself. There was a cookie in the deathbed. There will be crumbs in the winding sheet. Mary has accidents. She pees her bed and has nightmares. She weeps during recess and suddenly claims not to be able to see blackboards. She says she’s forgotten the multiplication tables, and neither Sam nor I can get her to do her homework. Her periods started over a year ago but stopped when I became ill. In a girl her age her psychiatrist thinks it an hysterical pregnancy on a heroic scale. But there’s nothing heroic about it. She’s simply craven regarding the idea of my death. Nothing I or Sam or her relatives do to distract her distracts her. Several thousand dollars have already been spent on tutoring her pleasure, but how do you distract the distrait? Such grief would be flattering if it was not clearly so self-serving.

“But all that’s beside the point. The point is that I may not die with Mary in such a state. It isn’t that I’d have no peace or that my daughter’s uneasiness would in the least mitigate Heaven’s perfect terms, but that my death just now would destroy her. She could die herself. As she doesn’t yet have the character for Heaven I can’t let that happen.

“Do you see my situation? I need another year. It may even be that Mary is part of God’s plan to fight my cancer.——Did you say something?”

“Why
wouldn’t
I be spared the ticket?” Mills grumbled.

“What?”

“On that highway, that speed trap. I’m elect as the next guy.”

Mrs. Glazer looked at him a moment, then went on. “The doctors think I’m crazy,” she said, “but as neither Paul nor the oncologist believes he can do anything for me and has given me up, I have their blessing. Sammy was more difficult. He secretly believes it beneath the dignity of a dean to have his doomed wife go lusting after miracle cures or traffic with quacks. When he heard what I was thinking of he urged me to take the money and go to Lourdes instead. He is a Jew and at least believes in the efficacy of psychology. I am Christian and an ex-madwoman, and don’t give a fart for psychology. I
already
believe. How would it help to drag my piety to a shrine?

“It’s probably hopeless, but I mean to go to Mexico for Laetrile treatments and need someone to accompany me, to assist me. It is impossible that Sam come with me. He will have to stay with the children. This is what I will give you.”

She named a figure which George thought was probably fair, within pennies of what he supposed people in her circumstances paid people in his. Allowing for inflation, it was probably pretty close to what Guillalume had given the first George Mills. It was certainly fair. It may even have been generous, and he saw that grace was not without its opportunities. But he had misgivings. The woman wasn’t easy. Compared to her, Laglichio, who knocked down esteem as easily as George broke down a bed, was a thoughtful, magnanimous person. Whatever Laglichio did, Mills knew, was in the service of angles, bucks. There was nothing personal. She would stand on a thousand ceremonies. But what the hell? It might work out. It might even be pleasant to be at last under the touchy guns of the fastidious. He was in his fifties, and though he was not a bad man—wasn’t he saved? elect as the next guy?—he’d had practically nothing to do with morality. There was no call for it in his neighborhood, not much call for it generally. There were no lovely lives, Mills thought. The world was charming or it wasn’t. He, everyone, paid lip service to righteousness, but only good order quaked their hearts. In Mills’s experience no one shot first and asked questions afterward. First they asked questions.

And then he thought, get down, be low, be low.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Mrs. Glazer looked at him, surprised. “I have cancer,” she said. “I already told you.”

“I figured it must be something like that. My wife’s always examining herself for that stuff, but so far she come up empty-handed.”

Mrs. Glazer stared at him. “Are you a fool?”

“I’m different.”

“Indeed.”

“Look, lady, your proposition sounds like it could be a really sweet deal, but all you told me so far is about your high hopes and funeral arrangements.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m trying to get an idea how sick you are. My kind can be pretty long on loyalty, but there’s a foreign country involved here. That funeral you keep talking about is supposed to take place stateside, but what happens if you die down there? I don’t speak Mexican. Maybe them other applicants do. They look foreign enough.”

“Other applicants?”

“Parked outside. In that car.” He pointed past the living room window and indicated the Chevrolet.

“Oh,” she said, “Max and Ruth. They must have slept late. They’re brother and sister. They live in their car. They’re not applicants.”

“For real? In their car? You let them park there?”

“Whoever is dean,” Mrs. Glazer said. “They park in front of the dean’s house. They’re really quite harmless. They go to all the public lectures at the university. The concerts and poetry readings. They eat the cheese and crackers. They stuff cookies into their pockets and drink the wine. It’s how they live.”

Mills nodded. Squatters, he thought, poachers. The old planted immunities and small piecemeal favors. The poor’s special charters and manumissions, their little license and acquittals, all law’s exonerate laxity and stretched-point privilege. He had to make himself low.

“Yeah, well,” he said, “they look like ordinary thieves to me, my way of thinking. I could run them off for you. No charge.”

“You’re very boorish, aren’t you?”

“Nah,” Mills said, “no. I’m pointing out possibilities. I’m looking for the fly in the ointment. That’s how I operate. In a way I’m protecting you. You’d want someone tough, am I right? In this situation you’d need a guy who could set aside his delicate feelings, not someone who starts bleeding at the sight of puke. Lady, I
eat
puke! And not at no concerts, not at no poetry readings.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Glazer said, considering.

“Sure,” Mills said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Sure,” Mills said. “My God, Mrs, listen to the way I build your confidence. I think I’m your man.” It was
exactly
what he thought. It was what he thought when he’d first heard her voice, when he’d listened to her prattle. He wanted this job, needed it. He had to make himself low, reserve and brutal syntax in his jaws like chewing gum.

“You just better not die,” Mills warned.

“I don’t intend to.”

“I want to go too,” Mary said from where she’d been listening in the hall.

“Mary!”

“I want to go too,” she said, still concealed.

“Don’t be silly. What about school?”

“Kids can get off if it’s educational. There’s going to be a unit on Mexico. I’d get extra credit. I want to go too.”

“Mary, I’m going down there to get well. I’ll be taking treatments. All the people will be sick there. As sick as Mommy.”

“Let me talk to her, Mrs.” George Mills said, and promised he would bring back a wonderful present for her.

“Oh, presents,” she said disparagingly. “My grandfather buys me all the presents I want. My Uncle Harry does.”

Mills barely glanced at the woman for permission. “Gee, kid,” George Mills said, guarding his protector, “I meant your mommy.”

5

T
o the poor most places are foreign, all soil not the neighborhood extraterritorial and queer. They cling to an idea of edge, a sense of margin. It’s as if space, space itself, not climate or natural resources or the angle at which a town hangs from the meridian, dictates situation and size, even form, even vegetation. They believe, that is, in a horizon geography, a geology of scenic overlook, the visible locutions of surface like merchandise arranged in a store. For them, Nature, the customs she fosters, seem to exist within serially located parallel lines. Science and history are determined by latitude and longitude, little else. Savannas and rain forests, jungles, seashores, mountains and deserts——those were the real nations.

The people were not strange to him, only their white shirts. Only their artifacts, their basketstraw heritage and adobe being. So much silver—it gleamed everywhere, so accessory he suspected that even the policemen’s badges were made of it—made his soul reel. So much marquetry—even the benches in the public squares and gardens seemed a sort of crocheted wood—gave him a sense of an entire country artisan’d into existence. The sun seemed a feature of the landscape, and he was enough conscious of the tremor-settled streets to suspect the delicate arrangements of the earth he walked upon, and to sense it sensed his steps.

It was all as mysterious and significant as the skinned rabbits and shaved chickens that hung upside down from hooks in the butchers’ shop windows, red and naked as political example.

They had been in Mexico almost four days and Mrs. Glazer had still to receive her first treatment. They had rented a car in El Paso and crossed the Rio Grande to Juarez, Mrs. Glazer insisting they stop for the hitchhikers standing on the Mexican side of the bridge. George handled the money, the blue, red and yellow tissues of currency, soft as old clothes. He signed the insurance forms and answered the border guards’ questions. She gave him her tourist card to carry. He signed the register at their motel while she remained in the air-conditioned car. He settled her in her room and turned down her bed. She had him call Sam before he went to his own room. Standing, he relayed both ends of the conversation to and from the easy chair in which she sat. They had arrived safely, he said. He and the children already missed her, he said. The girls had to do all their homework before they went out. Mary couldn’t have a milk shake till after dinner. Milly wasn’t to make any arrangements for Wednesday afternoon. That’s when auditions for
Nutcracker
were scheduled, he said. The trip had tired her, he said, and she thought she’d put off her first visit to the clinic till morning.

A boy rose from a camp chair in which he’d been sitting, handed something to an old woman, and came up while George was still parking the car in the lot.

“Joo here for treatments?”

“Do you speak English?”

“Ain’t that English? Joo here for treatments?”

“Information.”

“What informations joo want?
Si.
Sure. It work. Cure up jore cancers. Fix joo up fine.”

Mills started past the boy.

“Hey,” called the boy. “Joo, Misters. Joo got to take number. I give joo.”

But Mills ignored him.

Two receptionists in nurse’s uniforms sat at registration desks at the back of the crowded room. George went outside to get a number.

“Joo need me to watch jore cars? I watch jore cars,” the boy called after George as he started back toward the clinic. “That ways nothing awfuls happen. Nobody break jore window or puncture jore tires or tear off jore antenna or pour sugars in jore gas tanks.”

George turned around.

“How much?”

The boy grinned at him. “Joo got a Joo.S. dollars on you?” George handed him a dollar.

“Crowded in there? Many peoples?” The boy wiped imaginary sweat from his forehead, pulled at his shirt, pretended to fan himself. “Joo want to rent my chair for a quarter? Sick peoples need to sit down.”

“What’s your number?” a very old man asked him, smiling, when he was again inside. He wore an old-fashioned taxi driver’s cap with a button that said “Official Guide” where the badge number would have been.

“Ninety-five,” Mills said.

The old man’s smile disappeared and his eyes filled with tears. “Ninety-five,” he said feelingly. “You come all this way, all this far from
el Estados Unidos,
and they give you ninety-five. Tch-tch.”

“It’s all right,” Mills said.

“No,
señor! No
all right! I jam shame for my people. I jam shame for those two whore daughters of whores who call themselves typists. So slow. Tch-tch. They call themselves train typists? They are train pussies! Customers have to spell out for them all everything. Ninety-five.” The old man spit on the floor. “You be here all week. I get you thirty-seven. Five pesos.”

“No thanks.”

“Five pesos. That isn’t even a quarter.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Sure,” the old man said, “wait. You in good shape. I can seen it for myself. Your tumor ain’t bad. You got all the time in the world.”

“I’m not sick,” Mills said, “it isn’t for me. I’m making arrangements for the lady I work for.”

“
Verdad?
” the old man said. He seemed relieved. “I’m happy for you,
señor.
I am happy but puzzle. If it isn’t for you, then why you waste your time in such a place? Plane to El Paso,
verdad?
Rented a car? First time in ol’ Mayheeho,
si
? Sure. Is beautiful day, si? Gift me seven pesos, I get the cunts to call out ninety-five, we go for a ride.”

Mills looked at the young women. Twenty-eight had been the last number called.

“Could you do that?” he asked.

“
Caramba, señor,
” the old man said, “thees girls is my sisters!”

“No,” Mills said. “I don’t think so.”

“Seven pesos. That’s thirty cents.”

“It’s thirty-five cents,” Mills said.

“Where do you change your money?”

“At the motel.”

The old man groaned. “No,
señor,
” he said patiently, “never change money at the motel. Always go to the Midas Muffler. Change it there.”

“Jesus, leave me be, will you?” Mills said. “Everybody has his hand out. I had to pay the kid in the parking lot to watch the car.”

The old man was horrified. “The kid? Not the old woman? The
kid?
How much you give him?”

“A buck.”

“Sure,” the old man muttered, “he’ll go to the Midas Muffler and get twenty-three point eight pesos for it. Here,” he said, “
take
thirty-seven. I jam shame for my people.” He put the number into George’s hand.

“What about the car? You think he’d do anything to the car?”