Living Room (35 page)

“Thought you were going to take a couple of days off. Can’t you keep away?”

“I could keep away forever.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Twitchy, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

We think about grocery lists, whom to invite to a dinner party, what movie to go see next, like a soldier, one foot after the other, we go where we go.

“Think you’ll get married one day?”

“Maybe by the time I’m your age…”

Shirley laughed.

“Some of the jerks I date are okay, but if you start talking about things, you know, they see themselves making the bread so you can be free to chase dustballs under the sofa. Okay, they say, work if you like until the baby comes, or work but make sure you’re home in time to cook dinner, well they don’t say exactly that, but that’s what’s in their minds.”

“Did you ever think of doing something besides punching a typewriter? You’re smart, you could—”

“Listen, Shirley, I like you too, but don’t improve me out of business. When I was in school they said you become a Ph.D., you’ll always have a job, right? You know how many Ph.D.s are out of work? Or engineers? You name it, artists, copywriters, I don’t care. Tell me one secretary can’t find a job in this town. Show me one secretary as good as I am who can’t make more money than a so-called professional her age. I have more security than the President of the United States.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Oh, did that Mrs. Bialek get to you?”

“Yes.” Shirley glanced at her watch. Time to leave for the hospital.

“And Sherry Concord? She wants you for a panel. Shall I get her?”

“Twitchy, I’m running to see the old man in Montefiore. Tell Sherry I’m not in a mood to be a public person.”

“What’s the matter with your father?”

Shirley’s watch said go. “I’ll be back in about three hours. Any news from Ford?”

“Mr. Crouch hasn’t said anything. Shall I buzz him?”

“No time.”

*

She expected to find her father in bed, blankets pulled up to his chin, his face a chalk mask. Instead, he was propped up in a wheelchair, Mrs. Bialek in a chair at his side. Not knowing what to expect, Shirley nodded first to him—he didn’t move—then to her.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Shirley said. Pointless to try to explain. As far as they were concerned, she had been too busy.

“How are you, Pop?” she tried again.

Hartman moved two fingers of a hand as if to say so-so.

His silence shattered.

“What does the doctor say?” she asked Mrs. Bialek.

Mrs. Bialek looked toward the wall, excommunicating Shirley.

“Mrs. Bialek, please don’t give me that shit. I’m here now. I’m sorry I couldn’t come. It was impossible. How bad is it?”

Hartman tried to talk to her with his eyes. He hadn’t learned how yet.

Finally, Mrs. Bialek said, “They say his speech, it might come back, it might not. It’s in God’s hands.”

Shirley thought of the black nurses she passed in the hallway sistering each other. Did they think the blacks invented soul?
Neshumah
was as old as the Jews, was it possible that Hartman would not be able to say
neshumah
to her anymore?

She had to simmer down. She could not alarm him. She should be cheering him up.

“I’ve been reading to him from the Bible,” said Mrs. Bialek.

The Old Testament,
Shirley thought.
Cheery book. Begat vengeance.

Shut up,
her mother clamored in her head,
be a daughter to your father.

Shirley took her father’s hands in hers. They were cold.

“Pop, thank heaven it’s not cancer. Thank heaven it’s not a heart attack.”

He seemed to want to say something to her.

This man, God, is a talker.
Say it,
she pleaded in silence.

Hartman looked plaintively at Mrs. Bialek.

“He has to use the bottle,” said Mrs. Bialek. “Maybe you should go out of the room.”

God, you are playing a joke with Philip Hartman. You are making him a child in front of his child.
The completion of an inexorable circle. Not perfection in design. Her mother would say,
It should hurt me, not him.
Plea bargaining.
Mine is not my mother’s plea, Jehovah, gore someone else’s ox.

Mrs. Bialek stood bottle in hand. “Go,” she said. “Hurry.”

Shirley fled into the hallway not to escape the sight of her father peeing into a bottle but to keep him from seeing her eyes welling. “Nurse, can I get to see the doctor who—”

“Sorry,” said the nurse, taking her hand off her arm.

I didn’t mean to touch your arm.
“I want to find out—” But the nurse was off.

Shirley saw the white-coated man, he must be a doctor, and stood herself in his path so that he had to stop. Her voice as calm as she could command it, she asked her questions.

“Yes, Hartman. I’m afraid he’s had a stroke.”

“Please be precise.”

The doctor was in a hurry to be somewhere else.

“A cerebral accident,” he was saying.

“How do such things happen, what is the prognosis?”

“I’m afraid I don’t have time to explain right now.”

She let him pass. She would have preferred to throttle him. Somewhere, Shirley thought, there must be a book that told about strokes and speech loss.

She sniffed courage, put her Kleenex away, gave them a minute more, then went back into the room.

“Pop,” she said quietly, touching his restless hand. “I’m going to make some calls from home. I’m going to get the best specialist in the field to give us an evaluation. I’ll hire a speech therapist. It’ll be all right.”

His expression seemed to say
what’s the use?

“Pop, is there anything I can do now? Would you like me to read to you?”

He shook his head.

“He should disown you!” said Mrs. Bialek, unchecked by Hartman’s anguished face trying to silence her.

“Can I get you some money?” asked Shirley.

“He has Blue Cross!” said Mrs. Bialek.

“Mrs. Bialek, can you call me and let me know when you won’t be here so I can visit him?”

At the door, she remembered the movie in which a priest held up two fingers in blessing. She turned to her father and held up a thumb. He seemed to understand.

“A man shouldn’t have a daughter who thinks she’s God,” said Mrs. Bialek.

For her Shirley held up the middle finger of her right hand.

*

In the long taxi ride from the hospital, she thought,
I need to talk to somebody.
Mary, her favorite comforter? It wouldn’t be the same now; what she knew about Mary and Al would lie there like the knowledge of incest. Dr. Koch? The transference had worked, why couldn’t he have been struck instead of her father? Would she ever be able to take a walk in the park and talk things over with Philip Hartman, who couldn’t talk back? He was as helpless as Julie. Why does that sadistic sonofabitch up there shower things in bunches? In times of despond, two things could pull her out, fucking or writing. She told the driver to pull over at the next corner phone booth.

“Don’t take too long, lady,” said the driver. “I don’t make any money on waiting time. I gotta keep moving.”

She had never had the courage not to tip.

The operator got Al’s number for her and she deposited the coins.

“Al?”

“That’s the name.”

“I’m in the Bronx. I parked your car in Manhattan. If I can talk this crazy cabdriver into going to Westchester, will you…”

It was crazy. What was she doing?

“Al, listen.”

“I’m listening.”

How can I ask him if he wants to fuck just like that?

“How’s your father?”

“Bad.”

Ask him, what’s the big deal?

“Al, there’s something that can…”
Cheer me up? It’ll sound ridiculous!

“We don’t know each other,” she said.

“What’s on your mind?”

The taxi driver was motioning to her impatiently.

“Never mind!” she blurted and hung up.

In the taxi once again, she felt like ice, scrunched into herself in the seat. She studied the back of the taxi driver’s head. She’d heard of women who made cabdrivers. She didn’t want to get laid, she wanted to be loved! Of course the flu wouldn’t keep Al from getting it up, he’d be accommodating, he’d have a heart attack halfway. Why should he, there was no contract between them, there wasn’t even a relationship you could count on yet.

Well, there was always writing. A letter to Santa Claus? Dear Santa, little girl in the Bronx can’t get laid, wants to be loved, any loving reindeer in the mood? How about a want ad in the
Times?
Attractive, successful career female in need of succor. God is God unfair! A letter to the
Times
complaining about God? A letter to God complaining about the
Times?
She was at wit’s end. If her father heard her blasphemies, he’d turn over in his grave. What grave, he wasn’t dead yet! Wasn’t he? His voice the only egress for his brain, what was there left to life?

Why didn’t she just tell the taxi to take her down to the Staten Island Ferry, if she jumped from it midway, all she’d hit would be the turd-filled water of the harbor…she was drowning in shit anyway. Why was she so cold? How about an onrushing subway train, there’s macho for you, a blue-collar special crammed with feelers, pushers, body-rubbers, last night’s garlic, the incantatory Spanish, busboys, clerks, messengers, farting and joking, she would be killed by what New York had become, one huge fluorescent, spray-painted weapon to destroy anybody, any body hanging on to sanity, civility…

Why had the cab stopped?

“You’re here,” said the driver.

In front of her office building, cars behind them honking. She paid him, tipped too much in order not to wait for change, took the wooshing elevator to the thirty-first floor.

Past Twitchy without a word, she closed the door of her office, and stared out of the window at the stone of St. Patrick’s. The noise behind her startled Shirley. She turned to see Arthur standing in the door with a grin on his face.

I
want to be by myself now.

I am by myself now.

Arthur’s animated face was saying words as if through muted glass. “Ford’s bought the campaign!” He was coming toward her—why?—trying to put his arms around her.

She was like a board.

“Congratulations, Shirley, it was your doing!”

Now Twitchy stood in the doorway beaming. Behind her Shirley could see, her eyes squinting, Stewardson, Reardon, Moch, Marvin, Ellison, Chabrow, waiting for what?

“Fuck Ford!” she said, grabbing her pocketbook and wending her way through the back-slapping people outside her office door, hoping she didn’t have to wait for an elevator.

*

In the street, she started running. Twitchy, who had followed her down, caught up with her, took her elbow. Shirley wrenched free.

“Shirley, what’s the matter?” People were staring. “Is it your father’s stroke, I heard about your father’s stroke, please slow down.” She caught Shirley’s arm.

“Let me go!” Shirley screamed. “I’ve got to do something!”

“Is your father dead?”

“It’s not him. It’s me!”

“Please come back with me to the office.”

“I hate the office.”

“Let’s go somewhere for a cup of coffee.”

“Leave me alone.” Shirley turned toward her pursuer, held her handbag as if to strike Twitchy with it.

Twitchy stepped back. She looked right and left to see if she
could spot a policeman.

As she looked, Shirley turned and ran into the crowd, swallowed by it. Frantically, Twitchy ran, looked, ran, stopped. Lost.

Back in the office she told Arthur what had happened. “This time,” said Twitchy, “we won’t find her in the movies.”

“Maybe we should notify the police.”

“She hasn’t done anything.”

“I’m sure she’ll come back.”

Twitchy hesitated only a moment. “She said she hated the office.”

“You know where she lives?”

“Sure.”

“Maybe you should go there and wait for her.”

“I don’t have a key.”

“I mean downstairs. Any of her friends we could call?”

Twitchy nodded.

“Call them. Tell them to contact me if she gets in touch with them. Tell them about her state of mind. I’m worried.”

Twitchy called Mary Wood, who said, “It sounds so unlike her.”