Something Happened

'He was reading a magazine.'

'That's my work.'

'She doesn't hate you!' my wife declares.

'What do I care?' I answer. 'It's a matter of supreme indifference to me whether she hates me or not.'

'And you're supposed to be so intelligent!' my wife exclaims.

'What does that mean?'

'She wants you to pay some attention to her once in a while. Can't you see that? And you're supposed to be so intelligent.'

'Will you stop that?'

'You think you're always so smart, don't you?'

'Stop.'

'All right. But if you'd only take the trouble to look at her once in a while, and listen to her, you'd see she doesn't hate you. She loves you. You never even show you know.'

'Okay.'

'You make her feel like a nuisance.'

'Okay, I said.'

'She doesn't hate you.'

'Okay!'

'Okay.'

I turn to stare at my daughter searchingly, my face still hard and scornful and belligerent (my defenses are up until I can make certain hers are down). She is standing perfectly still, as though meekly awaiting a verdict. I am awaiting some sign from her. She looks humble and penitent. She is alone. Her downcast eyes are grave and moist, and her ashen lips are pinched together sadly and are twitching, as though, despite all the forces of will she has amassed to hold her poor self together, she is going to collapse into shambles before us and begin crying helplessly, without pride. She is tense. My feelings soften with a sensation of irremediable loss (of something precious gone forever, of someone dear destroyed) as I study her pale, drooping, vulnerable face. I am tense too. I am unable to speak (maybe I do love her), and for a second I am struck with the notion that my wife is right, that perhaps my daughter doesn't hate me and does love me, and perhaps does need to have me know it (and needs to know also, perhaps, that maybe I think well of her). And I begin to feel that maybe I do care very much whether she hates me or not! (I don't want her to!) She must matter to me, I think, for I am nearly overcome with grief and pity by her look of tearful misery (and I want to cry myself), and I want to put my arms out to her shoulders to hold her gently and console her and confess and apologize (even though I have a vivid premonition suddenly that this is all a typical trick, and she will pull away from me in a taunting, jubilant affront as soon as I do reach out to comfort her, leaving me standing there ridiculously with my empty hands outstretched in the air, abashed and infuriated). I decide to risk it anyway — she is so pathetic and forlorn: I know I can survive the rebuff if it comes. Smiling tenderly, stepping toward her repentently, I reach my hands out to take her in my arms, apologize, and hug her gently.

She pulls away from me with a vicious sneer.

And I find myself standing there stupidly with my empty hands in the air, feeling hurt and foolish.

And my wife picks exactly that moment to cry:

'I'm the one she hates! Not you! I'm the one she can't stand!'

And I turn around to gape at her incredulously. (I had forgotten she was even there.)

'Don't you ever hear her?' my wife continues stridently, and runs toward my daughter as though she intends to smack her. My daughter flinches, but holds her ground steadily, glaring insultingly up into my wife's eyes with stubborn defiance, daring her, with a small, cold smile, to do more. 'What have I ever done to you?' my wife shouts af her. 'What have I ever done to her that she should hate me so much? Look at her! Don't you see the way she's looking at me right now?'

'Christ, yes!' I shout back at my wife. 'What the hell do you think I was talking about? Why the hell do you think I kick her out?'

'And you — you're no better!' my wife accuses me. 'You don't care either, do you?'

'Oh, Jesus!' I wail.

'Nobody in this house gives a damn about me,' my wife laments. 'Nobody ever loved me. Not in my whole life. Not even my own mother. Am I so horrible? What did I ever do to you or anyone else that you should all hate me so much? What makes me so horrible that you should all feel you can treat me this way? Tell me.'

'Oh, shit!' I groan disgustedly.

'Don't talk to me that way.'

'Must I really spend the rest of my life in rotten conversation like this?'

'What's so rotten about me?'

'Nothing.'

'What do I do that's so horrible?'

And I find myself wondering once again just what in the mystifying hell an able, well-read, fairly intelligent, sensitive, personable, successful minor organization executive like myself, sound in health (if not in tooth), provocative in wit, still virile and still attractive to many susceptible ladies my own age and much younger, is doing engaged seriously in such a low, directionless argument with two such people (children) as them, my shallow, melancholy, slightly inebriated, self-pitying wife (I often try to figure out what it was I ever saw in her so long ago that made me think I loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, except her good and willing ass, which is still not so bad and now even more willing. All in all, in fact, in the long run, I think I enjoy fucking my wife more than I do any of the others, although most of the ones I have gone with a second tune or more have been pretty good, too, and full of very surprising surprises, for a while. Jane in the Art Department will be a headache — I sense that already; she is gullible and unsophisticated and she likes to talk; her skin will be so clear and smooth it will almost hum to my touch, but she is still too young and pleasant, or simple-minded, to make much sense to me now. Some girls laugh a bit too loudly at just about everything amusing I say and drive me batty, between erections, once I recognize they laugh so readily and talk too much. That will be young, sweet, pleasant Jane. I know her already. But I also know I will grab for it lecherously at the next company party or sooner; and that I don't think I will want her to keep on working there with me after I do: she is a present I intend to give myself for Christmas this year, or earlier, and I am already in the process of wrapping her up) and my depressing, self-centered, self-pitying daughter, when I would much rather be concentrating on something else, on those two speeches I want to begin outlining (I like to get started on important things well in advance, on a long convention speech in case I am moved up into Kagle's job by then and am nominally in charge of the whole affair, and on my customary, unexciting, three-minute speech about the plans and activities of my department in case I am not moved up into Kagle's job and am still working for Green, who probably won't let me give it this time, either. I hate Green and will never forgive him or forget him for what he did to me at the convention by not letting me speak. I really don't want Andy Kagle's job — I never did want to do that kind of work or have power over so many people — but I will be heartbroken now if they don't give it to me: I will feel betrayed and disgraced, and I will want to slink away alone into someplace dark and weep and never come out. I am too weak to refuse it, and too vain to be indifferent to the honor. I don't even really need the extra money) and on the list of changes I will want to recommend when I am promoted into Ragle's job. (I will want to show Arthur Baron and Horace White that I am ready. There are people in nearly all our offices I will want to be rid of. I wish I could be rid of Green now, although I don't know who could replace him.)

'Tell me,' my wife repeats shrilly. 'What do I do?'

'You give me,' I answer, 'a pain in the ass. Both of you!' I add emphatically, with a long, warning look at my daughter to let her know unmistakably that I am including her also this time in my ire, and to deprive her of that pasty, crafty glee she customarily evinces whenever I turn abusive to my wife.

'Don't yell at me,' my wife snaps.

'I wasn't yelling,' I explain. 'I was speaking emphatically.'

'I can yell too, you know.'

'You are.'

'And don't say things like that to me, not in front of the children. Ever again. I don't care how you talk to me when we're alone.'