Shark Infested Custard (23 page)

       3. Pills.

       Dexamyl (46), Elavil (120), and hormone pills. This is an incredibly small selection of drugs for a woman to carry in her purse—you don't even list aspirin. The chances are she has a lot more pills than this, but takes them at home on a regular basis. If she carries Dexamyl around, she probably pops more than one a day (I'd guess three). That's because the usual prescription for Elavil is 3 per day, which makes one sleepy, being an anti-depressant-tranquilizer of no uncertain strength. So the Dexamyl will clash and counteract with the Elavil, providing Gladys with mercurial turns of mood. Talky as all get-out and then a gloomy lapse into a deep brooding silence. She will also be a little jumpy. The sudden slamming of a door will make her jump, squeal, bite her nails, which will be followed by a smile, a shake of the head, and an apology for over-reacting.

       She has a weight problem, and the dexamyl pills curb her appetite. The Elavil is to alleviate depression, and if she were not depressed, in fact, her doctor would not prescribe them—if she obtained them by prescription. So she has put herself in an ambiguous, ambivalent position. The Elavil will make her sleepy, and the Dexamyl will not let her sleep. She is weary, nagging, and happy by turns, and she will apologize following each time she scolds you about something. You also listed hormone pills which is inadequate evidence without the brand name, or generic make-up. I assume that they're female hormone pills, which means merely that she is going through the change of life. Once the change begins, hormone pills are needed to supplement what the body no longer provides in sufficient quantities to prevent backaches and osteoporosis. It isn't necessary to ask her if she is undergoing menopause. If she jumps up suddenly and turns the airconditioning down to sixty degrees, claiming that it isn't working properly, and then, if she just as suddenly turns it up to eighty again a few minutes later, she's had a hot flash. Your Gladys, Eddie, old buddy, will never see fifty again. You know how I feel about drugs, but if you don't get Gladys off this shit, she can have some severe physical reactions. (And find out what 'else'' she's on and let me know.)

       4. Dental floss, Lifesavers, Binaca golden breath drops, chapstick, two No. 2 pencils with gnawed eraser ends, paper clip containing small amount of ear wax, Bub's red-hot bubble gum, 2 sticks of Juicy Fruit gum, 1 needle with beige thread, 3 Q-Tips, hair styling brush with ivory handle, aforementioned Tangee lipstick, nail file with ivory handle, gold ballpoint pen with engraved legend "I stole this pen from Gladys Wilson," set of car keys and house keys on chain with brass marijuana pipe attached, 2 Medico cigarette holders (1 blue, 1 green), ivory toothpick in leather case, and 1 rabbit foot.

       Wow!

       Before proceeding let me take time out to congratulate you on your list making ability, including the counting of the pills (above 3). As a pilot your life is devoted to checklists, pre-flight, in-flight, etc, but very few people wd notice or put down on paper "gnawed eraser ends," "small amount of ear wax" in the paperclip. You're a keen observer, but then you have Observer wings as well as pilot's wings. If you did not have a full-time occupation as a co-pilot, I would have to put you down tentatively as an anal-retentive. But you escape or elude this impertinent classification the way medical students avoid being classified as psychopathic paranoids when they are given Rorschach tests. All they see is bones, blood, and organs—such is their preoccupation with such things—so it is as useless to give a medical student a Rorschach as it is to call you an anal-retentive. (Nevertheless, as an aside, Eddie, you'll feel a lot better about facing each day if you take a half-ounce of mineral oil before you retire each night.)

       The oral orientation of 4, above, is staggering, indicating that this woman was arrested at the oral stage early on. If nothing else is handy, she sits or stands around with one finger in her mouth, and another in her ass. Her nails must be bitten down to the quick (ten times for ten fingers). Her interest in oral sex is keen to the point of being honed. Congratulations! It explains, in part, why you've lived with her for more than a year, and if you take offense at this surmise, it is time for you to reexamine some of the other facets of your relationship with Gladys for positive—if there are any—correlations. For example, do you talk to her or does she talk to you—and about what? The distinction is crucial because you might be drifting, man, drifting. And drifting, ancient pilot, with more than 3,000 hours in multi-engined flight, ain't soaring. It is one thing to have "I stole this 'pencil'' from Gladys Wilson" on a box of 50 Number 2 pencils (my sergeant did this once up in Pittsburgh), but when it is 'engraved'' on a solid gold 'pen'', well, I'm sorry, man, her penial enviousness is majestically monumental. With Gladys, possession is ten/tenths of the law, and she will, if you allow her to do so, devour you completely. (I wish now, Eddie, I'd gone over this list with you the night you handed it to me in the White Shark parking lot.)

       There was this black man with diarrhea who went to see a black doctor, recently graduated on the quota system. The doctor consulted his diagnosis book: "You got locked bowels," he told the patient. "But I got diarrhea, Doctor," the patient said. "That's because," the doctor said, "your bowels is locked 'open!''"

       In other words—and to make you smile, I hope—don't take my unlicensed diagnosis too seriously. The only textbook cases are in textbooks, and we were told in college to be leery of any so-called textbook case because it might be a shammer, don't you know. So disregard my advice (above) on the mineral oil, and take a tablespoonful of Metamusil in an 8-ounce glass of water before you go to bed instead.

       5. Lumping the various plastic cards together, there is little significance in Gladys having courtesy check-cashing cards for Food Fair, Kwik-Chek, Publix, and fuel cards for Standard, Texaco, 66, Sinclair, and Soc Sec card, or checkbooks for three banks, plus one savings bankbook, nor even her Am Express, Diner's, bank I.D., and membership card for Fairchild Garden. Burdines, Sears and Jordan Marsh charge cards are merely handy, as is MasterCard. But it 'is'' peculiar that she only has two one-dollar bills in her wallet. You undoubtedly eat well, and I suppose that Gladys is a good cook, seeing that you get steak, mushroom gravy, and baked potatoes, even if she only eats four ounces of the meat and supplements it with a little cottage cheese, but if you wanted to borrow 2 or 3 hundred dollars from her you wd not be able to get it in cash. No cash will she provide for you (not that you need it), but her presents to you in the form of clothes, I'd say, are expensive, if you'll take them. But as I recall, you don't even own a suit or sports jacket. The only coat I've ever seen you wear is your uniform jacket. When we lived in Dade Towers, you slept in your underwear, but I have a hunch that you are now sleeping in silk pajamas, and you have an expensive dressing gown—a gown that you wear frequently because Gladys is frequently turning the airconditioning down to 60, or lower. If you want to make Gladys happy, let her buy you some tailor-made uniforms (you can always use them), but don't ask her for a twenty dollar bill if you're leaving the house by yourself (if you can still occasionally get away in the evenings by yourself). Also your old USAF leather flight jacket needs replacing: why not let Gladys order you a nice tailor-made leather jacket (about $350 or $400) from Spain? A new leather jacket will look good with your tie-dyed jeans, Ho-Ho T-Shirt, and flight boots, and you'll make the old lady very happy.

       6. The photographs.

       Your descriptions read okay, but I would still like to look at them myself before making a positive judgment. But, taken together, the four photos add up significantly. The wallet photo of the watercolor of Gladys by Augustus (Edwin) John—when she was 18—is more than just a conversation piece. Too bad he didn't date it (or if he did, you didn't put the date on the list). You told me about this photo before, and that her first husband kept the original painting. I'll tell you one thing, though, and I don't have to see the photo. She 'never'' looked that beautiful, man, not at 18, or any other age. And if you think this is a harsh and hasty critique, the next time you pass a library, enter at the risk of disillusionment, and compare A. John's watercolor of Dylan Thomas with a 'photograph'' of the poet. If you ask Gladys for an actual photo of herself at 18, she'll tell you—and I'll bet money on this—that she somehow lost all of her early photo albums. By now, though, I imagine that she actually believes she did look that good as a girl, and because she has still kept her lush, girlish figure, despite two children, why in hell shouldn't she?

       Her son teaches Art History at San Francisco State, and her daughter is married to a 'dentist'' in Seattle. So why does she only have a photo of her son at age 14, and one of her daughter at age 12? Why not a few recent 'adult'' pictures? Because—I think—that's the last time she had complete control, or domination over them. Not only did they manage to get away, they got 'far far'' away. They have put a continent between them, they never visit Fla, and the last time she saw them both together was at their father's funeral. (Any woman who marries a man who spends his days with his fingers in somebody's mouth has got to be desperate to get away.) Her son—and this is a mean surmise—who became an Art History teacher instead of an artist, probably didn't get away soon enough.

       The reason for this rude judgment is, of course, the 4th photo—the one she wangled from your mother in Ft. Lauderdale when you (stupidly, and I told you so at the time) took Gladys up to meet her. Why, for God's sake, would she want a photo of you in your Culver military academy uniform taken when you were only 12 years old? If she likes uniforms so much, why not a current photo of you in your airline uniform? Or in your USAF (Res.) uniform? There can only be one answer. Gladys sees in you the manly little boy she wanted her son to be, and if there isn't something incestual about her attachment (adherence is a better word), why does Gladys call your mother every week (when your mother doesn't call her first) to trade t.l.'s? If you don't want to think about such things, try, at least to extrapolate.

       I've been thinking on and writing this report for about 4 hours, and I'll let the rest of the shit go. You can ask Gladys why she still carries a Wash. D.C. driving license that expired 15 years ago, and you might ask her why the business cards of her gynecologist, opthamologist, insurance man (Prudential), and lawyer all bear Anglo-Saxon names. Jesus, do you know how hard it is to find WASP gynecologists and lawyers in Miami?

       But enough.

       I reread the report, and I'm sorry about the negative tone of the over-all comments. Gladys is a beautiful and well-groomed woman, and it was quite evident from her possessive attitude toward you—on the night we went to Sloane's-for-Steak—that she is really crazy about you. Psychology works better with rats than it does with people, Eddie, and most of it is bullshit, but propinquity is valid. I have a lot of faith in propinquity, and it rarely fails: if you continue to live with Gladys she'll talk you into marrying her. In some respects, you and Gladys remind me of Wolfe's Monk Webber and Esther Jack in 'You Can't Go Home Again'', except that Mrs. Jack was safely married, and Gladys is free...

       "O lost, and by the wind-grieved, ghost, come back again."

       Hank

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Eddie Miller folded Hank's report on Glady's handbag and, without reading it, shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans. He had made his decision already, and to read the report now would be strictly academic. He would read it later on, when he had more time. He read Hank's letter three times. He read it hastily in the Miami Springs Post Office, where he kept a P. O. Box, and reread it twice more, taking his time, while he ate a breakfast of blueberry pancakes, sausage, and coffee at The Pancake House on Flagler Street.

       Thinking about Hank's letter, Eddie came to the conclusion (if he read rightly between the lines) that the letter was somewhat in the nature of a cry for help. A man writing is not the same as a man speaking, but the tortured joviality, or tone of the letter, emphasized Hank's unhappiness, or disenchantment, with Chicago.

       Eddie was familiar with Schiller Park, the suburban town within Chicago which was not unlike Miami Springs and Greater Miami. Miami Springs and Schiller Park, because of their proximity to International Airports—O'Hare and Miami—had restless transient populations, and a vast number of airline employees in temporary residence. Both towns had a substantial permanent population of steady citizens, as well, homeowners, who came into frictional conflict with the outgoing lifestyles of the transient residents. The homeowner residents of Miami Springs had not been overjoyed by the designation, "Miami Springs: Haven for Swingers," applied to the suburb by an enterprising 'Herald'' reporter who had dug the night life along the strip, and the singles-only apartment houses. In Schiller Park, the hard-drinking working men, who quaffed tankards of ale and dreamed of the day when Wallace would take up his residence in the White House, disapproved of young stewardesses with long-haired dates entering the dark, smelly, neighborhood taverns. There was no comparable high-life, or pick-up bars in Schiller Park as there were in Miami Springs, but there was no need for them: Chicago was a real city, not a group of sprawling suburbs like Miami.

       Although Dade County boasted of an over-all population of more than a million, Miami itself only had a population of 350,000. The remaining residents were scattered over the county in twenty tight communities with their own shopping plazas, movies, and churches, all of them fighting the notion of becoming a single, unified city.

       Miami Beach, a skinny sandy island, cut off from the mainland by Biscayne Bay, was, in Eddie Miller's opinion, merely Boyle Heights (in Los Angeles) without the hills. Eddie rarely went to Miami Beach. To see fifty guests sitting on a hotel veranda in metal chairs staring across Collins Avenue at another fifty guests sitting on a veranda of another hotel was too depressing. Old Americans used to go to Los Angeles to die before World War II. But the ancients now came to Miami Beach to die instead. Except, perhaps, for Brooklyn, Eddie had read somewhere, Miami Beach had more doctors and hospital beds per capita than any other American community of comparable population density, and Greater Los Angeles, with its polluted skies, had apparently lost the geriatric business to Miami Beach forever.