Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition (17 page)

The music picked up the house and shook it.

A door slammed next door. Now someone hammered on a door.

Paul looked down into his microscope once more, looked at nothing—while a prickling sensation spread over his skin. He faced the truth: The man and woman would kill each other, if he didn’t stop them.

He beat on the wall with his fist. “Mr. Harger! Stop it!” he cried. “Mrs. Harger! Stop it!”

“For Ollie from Lavina!” All-Night Sam cried back at him. “For Ruth from Carl, who’ll never forget last Tuesday! For Wilbur from Mary, who’s lonesome tonight! Here’s the Sauter-Finnegan Band asking,
Love, What Are You Doing to My Heart?”

Next door, crockery smashed, filling a split second of radio silence. And then the tidal wave of music drowned everything again.

Paul stood by the wall, trembling in his helplessness. “Mr. Harger! Mrs. Harger! Please!”

“Remember the number!” said All-Night Sam. “Milton nine-three-thousand!”

Dazed, Paul went to the phone and dialed the number.

“WJCD,” said the switchboard operator.

“Would you kindly connect me with All-Night Sam?” said Paul.

“Hello!” said All-Night Sam. He was eating, talking with a full mouth. In the background, Paul could hear sweet, bleating music, the original of what was rending the radio next door.

“I wonder if I might make a dedication,” said Paul.

“Dunno why not,” said Sam. “Ever belong to any organization listed as subversive by the Attorney General’s office?”

Paul thought a moment. “Nossir—I don’t think so, sir,” he said.

“Shoot,” said Sam.

“From Mr. Lemuel K. Harger to Mrs. Harger,” said Paul.

“What’s the message?” said Sam.

“I love you,” said Paul. “Let’s make up and start all over again.”

The woman’s voice was so shrill with passion that it cut through the din of the radio, and even Sam heard it.

“Kid—are you in trouble?” said Sam. “Your folks fighting?”

Paul was afraid that Sam would hang up on him if he found out that Paul wasn’t a blood relative of the Hargers. “Yessir,” he said.

“And you’re trying to pull ’em back together again with this dedication?” said Sam.

“Yessir,” said Paul.

Sam became very emotional. “O.K., kid,” he said hoarsely, “I’ll give it everything I’ve got. Maybe it’ll work. I once saved a guy from shooting himself the same way.”

“How did you do that?” said Paul, fascinated.

“He called up and said he was gonna blow his brains out,” said Sam, “and I played
The Bluebird of Happiness
.” He hung up.

Paul dropped the telephone into its cradle. The music stopped, and Paul’s hair stood on end. For the first time, the fantastic speed of modern communications was real to him, and he was appalled.

“Folks!” said Sam, “I guess everybody stops and wonders sometimes what the heck he thinks he’s doin’ with the life the good Lord gave him! It may seem funny to you folks, because I always keep up a cheerful front, no matter how I feel inside, that I wonder sometimes, too! And then, just like some angel was trying to tell me, ‘Keep going, Sam, keep going,’ something like this comes along.”

“Folks!” said Sam, “I’ve been asked to bring a man and his wife back together again through the miracle of radio! I guess there’s no sense in kidding ourselves about marriage! It isn’t any bowl of cherries! There’s ups and downs, and sometimes folks don’t see how they can go on!”

Paul was impressed with the wisdom and authority of Sam. Having the radio turned up high made sense now, for Sam was speaking like the right-hand man of God.

When Sam paused for effect, all was still next door. Already the miracle was working.

“Now,” said Sam, “a guy in my business has to be half musician, half philosopher, half psychiatrist, and half electrical engineer! And! If I’ve learned one thing from working with all you wonderful people out there, it’s this: if folks would swallow their self-respect and pride, there wouldn’t be any more divorces!”

There were affectionate cooings from next door. A lump grew in Paul’s throat as he thought about the beautiful thing he and Sam were bringing to pass.

“Folks!” said Sam, “that’s all I’m gonna say about love and marriage! That’s all anybody needs to know! And now, for Mrs. Lemuel K. Harger, from Mr. Harger—I love you! Let’s
make up and start all over again!” Sam choked up. “Here’s Eartha Kitt, and
Somebody Bad Stole De Wedding Bell!
”

The radio next door went off.

The world lay still.

A purple emotion flooded Paul’s being. Childhood dropped away, and he hung, dizzy, on the brink of life, rich, violent, rewarding.

There was movement next door—slow, foot-dragging movement.

“So,” said the woman.

“Charlotte—” said the man uneasily. “Honey—I swear.”

“ ‘I love you,’ ” she said bitterly, “ ‘let’s make up and start all over again.’ ”

“Baby,” said the man desperately, “it’s another Lemuel K. Harger. It’s got to be!”

“You want your wife back?” she said. “All right—I won’t get in her way. She can have you, Lemuel—you jewel beyond price, you.”

“
She
must have called the station,” said the man.

“She can have you, you philandering, two-timing, two-bit Lochinvar,” she said. “But you won’t be in very good condition.”

“Charlotte—put down that gun,” said the man. “Don’t do anything you’ll be sorry for.”

“That’s all behind me, you worm,” she said.

There were three shots.

Paul ran out into the hall, and bumped into the woman as she burst from the Harger apartment. She was a big, blonde woman, all soft and awry, like an unmade bed.

She and Paul screamed at the same time, and then she grabbed him as he started to run.

“You want candy?” she said wildly. “Bicycle?”

“No, thank you,” said Paul shrilly. “Not at this time.”

“You haven’t seen or heard a thing!” she said. “You know what happens to squealers?”

“Yes!” cried Paul.

She dug into her purse, and brought out a perfumed mulch of face tissues, bobbypins and cash. “Here!” she panted. “It’s yours! And there’s more where that came from, if you keep your mouth shut.” She stuffed it into his trousers pocket.

She looked at him fiercely, then fled into the street.

Paul ran back into his apartment, jumped into bed, and pulled the covers up over his head. In the hot, dark cave of the bed, he cried because he and All-Night Sam had helped to kill a man.

·    ·    ·

A policeman came clumping into the house very soon, and he knocked on both apartment doors with his billyclub.

Numb, Paul crept out of the hot, dark cave, and answered the door. Just as he did, the door across the hall opened, and there stood Mr. Harger, haggard but whole.

“Yes, sir?” said Harger. He was a small, balding man, with a hairline mustache. “Can I help you?”

“The neighbors heard some shots,” said the policeman.

“Really?” said Harger urbanely. He dampened his mustache with the tip of his little finger. “How bizarre. I heard nothing.” He looked at Paul sharply. “Have you been playing with your father’s guns again, young man?”

“Oh, nossir!” said Paul, horrified.

“Where are your folks?” said the policeman to Paul.

“At the movies,” said Paul.

“You’re all alone?” said the policeman.

“Yessir,” said Paul. “It’s an adventure.”

“I’m sorry I said that about the guns,” said Harger. “I certainly would have heard any shots in this house. The walls are thin as paper, and I heard nothing.”

Paul looked at him gratefully.

“And you didn’t hear any shots, either, kid?” said the policeman.

Before Paul could find an answer, there was a disturbance
out on the street. A big, motherly woman was getting out of a taxi-cab and wailing at the top of her lungs. “Lem! Lem, baby.”

She barged into the foyer, a suitcase bumping against her leg and tearing her stocking to shreds. She dropped the suitcase, and ran to Harger, throwing her arms around him.

“I got your message, darling,” she said, “and I did just what All-Night Sam told me to do. I swallowed my self-respect, and here I am!”

“Rose, Rose, Rose—my little Rose,” said Harger. “Don’t ever leave me again.” They grappled with each other affectionately, and staggered into their apartment.

“Just look at this apartment!” said Mrs. Harger. “Men are just lost without women!” As she closed the door, Paul could see that she was awfully pleased with the mess.

“You
sure
you didn’t hear any shots?” said the policeman to Paul.

The ball of money in Paul’s pocket seemed to swell to the size of a watermelon. “Yessir,” he croaked.

The policeman left.

Paul shut his apartment door, shuffled into his bedroom, and collapsed on the bed.

·    ·    ·

The next voices Paul heard came from his own side of the wall. The voices were sunny—the voices of his mother and father. His mother was singing a nursery rhyme and his father was undressing him.

“Diddle-diddle-dumpling, my son John,” piped his mother, “Went to bed with his stockings on. One shoe off, and one shoe on—diddle-diddle-dumpling, my son John.”

Paul opened his eyes.

“Hi, big boy,” said his father, “you went to sleep with all your clothes on.”

“How’s my little adventurer?” said his mother.

“O.K.,” said Paul sleepily. “How was the show?”

“It wasn’t for children, honey,” said his mother. “You
would have liked the short subject, though. It was all about bears—cunning little cubs.”

Paul’s father handed her Paul’s trousers, and she shook them out, and hung them neatly on the back of a chair by the bed. She patted them smooth, and felt the ball of money in the pocket. “Little boys’ pockets!” she said, delighted. “Full of childhood’s mysteries. An enchanted frog? A magic pocketknife from a fairy princess?” She caressed the lump.

“He’s not a little boy—he’s a big boy,” said Paul’s father. “And he’s too old to be thinking about fairy princesses.”

Paul’s mother held up her hands. “Don’t rush it, don’t rush it. When I saw him asleep there, I realized all over again how dreadfully short childhood is.” She reached into the pocket and sighed wistfully. “Little boys are so hard on clothes—especially pockets.”

She brought out the ball and held it under Paul’s nose. “Now, would you mind telling Mommy what we have here?” she said gaily.

The ball bloomed like a frowzy chrysanthemum, with ones, fives, tens, twenties, and lipstick-stained Kleenex for petals. And rising from it, befuddling Paul’s young mind was the pungent musk of perfume.

Paul’s father sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?” he said.

Paul’s mother rolled her eyes.
“Tabu,”
she said.

(1955)

W
E’VE KNOWN
the McClellans, Grace and George, for about two years now. They were the first neighbors to call on us and welcome us to the village.

I expected that initial conversation to lag uncomfortably after the first pleasantries, but not at all. Grace, her eyes quick and bright as a sparrow’s, found subject matter enough to keep her talking for hours.

“You know,” she said excitedly, “your living room could be a perfect dream! Couldn’t it, George? Can’t you see it?”

“Yup,” said her husband. “Nice, all right.”

“Just tear out all this white-painted woodwork,” Grace said, her eyes narrowing. “Panel it all in knotty pine wiped with linseed oil with a little umber added. Cover the couch in lipstick red—
red
red. Know what I mean?”

“Red?” said Anne, my wife.

“Red! Don’t be afraid of color.”

“I’ll try not to be,” Anne said.

“And just cover the whole wall there, those two ugly little windows and all, with bottle-green curtains. Can’t you see it? It’d be almost exactly like that problem living room in the February
Better House and Garden
. You remember that, of course.”

“I must have missed that,” said Anne. The month was August.

“Or was it
Good Homelife
, George?” Grace said.

“Don’t remember offhand,” said George.

“Well, I can look it up in my files and put my hand right on it.” Grace stood up suddenly, and, uninvited, started a tour through the rest of the house.

She went from room to room, consigning a piece of furniture to the Salvation Army, detecting a fraudulent antique, shrugging partitions out of existence, and pacing off a chartreuse, wall-to-wall carpet we would have to order before we did another thing. “Start with the carpet,” she said firmly, “and build from there. It’ll pull your whole downstairs together if you build from the carpet.”

“Um,” said Anne.

“I hope you saw Nineteen Basic Carpet Errors in the June
Home Beautiful
.”

“Oh yes, yes indeed,” Anne said.

“Good. Then I don’t have to tell you how wrong you can go,
not
building from the carpet. George—Oh, he’s still in the living room.”

I caught a glimpse of George on the living-room couch, lost in his own thoughts. He straightened up and smiled.

I followed Grace, trying to change the subject. “Let’s see, you are on our north side. Who’s to our south?”

Grace held up her hands. “Oh! You haven’t met them—the Jenkinses. George,” she called, “they want to know about the Jenkinses.” From her voice, I gathered that our southerly neighbors were sort of lovable beachcombers.

“Now, Grace, they’re nice enough people,” George said.

“Oooh, George,” Grace said, “you know how the Jenkinses are. Yes, they’re nice, but …” She laughed and shook her head.

“But what?” I said. The possibilities raced through my mind. Nudists? Heroin addicts? Anarchists? Hamster raisers?

“In 1945 they moved in,” Grace said, “and right off the bat they bought two beautiful Hitchcock chairs, and …” This time she sighed and shrugged.

“And what?” I demanded. And spilled India ink on them?
And found a bundle of thousand-dollar bills rolled up in a hollow leg?

“And that’s all,” Grace said. “They just stopped right there.”

“How’s that?” said Anne.