Something Happened

'Like what?'

'What you said.'

'Then stop being one.'

'You're so clever.'

'I know.'

'It's no wonder they use such filthy language, when they listen to you. It's no wonder they talk to me the way they do.'

'Oh, stop.'

'I'm not going to let you talk to me with such disrespect,' my wife goes on vehemently. 'Not anymore. Not even when we're alone. I'm not going to put up with it. Do you hear me?'

'Fuck off now,' I tell her quietly. 'Both of you.' My wife is stung. Tears spurt into her eyes. (I am sorry immediately. I feel small and shameful already for having said that.)

'I could kill you for that,' she tells me softly.

'Then kill me,' I taunt.

'I wish there was someplace I could go.'

'I'll find one.'

'I wish I had money of my own.'

'I'll give it to you.'

'That's some way,' my daughter observes softly in a petulant tone, 'for a father to talk to a fifteen-year-old child.'

'Go — ' I begin (and pause to conceal a smile, for her reproof is humorous and ingratiating, and I am tempted to laugh and congratulate her) '- away to boarding school.'

'I wish I could.'

'You can.'

'You stop me.'

'Not anymore. And that's some way,' I exclaim, 'for a fifteen-year-old child to talk to her father.'

'I didn't —»

'Yes, you —»

'I only started —»

'— and you know it. I get — you know something, kid? I bet you'll never guess in a million years what I get from all these frank and honest discussions of yours that you insist on having with me.'

'Headaches.'

'You guessed!' I declare, hoping that I will be able to make her laugh. 'I get piercing headaches,' I continue (pompously, after I fail, for I feel myself inflating grandly, and crossly, with a delicious thrill of outrage. I am nearly ecstatic with grievance, and I forge ahead vigorously in joyous pursuit of revenge). 'Yes, I get piercing headaches from all those brain tumors and cerebral hemorrhages you keep giving me. And stabbing chest pains from all the heart attacks you keep telling me you wouldn't feel so unhappy about if I got.I would feel unhappy if I got one! In fact, I'm starting to feel pretty damned miserable from having to listen to both of you tell me all the time how miserable you feel.' My wife and daughter are silent now and cowering submissively (and a flood of self-righteous gratification begins to permeate and sweeten my throbbing sense of injury. I feel so sorry for myself it is almost unbearably delicious. I also feel mighty: I feel potent and articulate, and part of me wishes that Green or someone else I yearn to impress, like Jane, or Horace White, or perhaps some terribly rich and famous beauty with marvelous tits and glossy hair, were in a position to witness me so fluent and dominating). 'I'm sick,' I remark misleadingly in a falling voice, just to puzzle them further a moment. 'Yes, by now I am sick and tired of having both of you people come barging in here, into my study, whenever you feel like it, just to tell me what a lousy husband and father you think I am.'

'You were reading a magazine,' my wife remarks.

'You too?' I jeer.

'We're going.'

'This is my study,' I remind her caustically (and desperately) in a surly, rising voice, as she turns to leave. 'Isn't it? And now that I think of it, just what the hell are both of you doing in here right now — in my study — when I've got so many important things I want to get done?'

'Which is more important?' my wife makes the mistake of asking. 'Your own wife and daughter, or those other important things?'

'Please get out,' I answer. 'That's the kind of question I never want to be asked again the rest of my life.'

'All right. We'll go.'

'So go.'

'Come on.'

'No, stay!' I blurt out suddenly at both of them.

'We're going.'

'You stay!' I demand.

'Aren't we?'

(All at once, it is of obsessive importance to me — more important to me now than anything else in the whole world — that they stay, and thatI be the one who is driven out. Out of my study. My eyes fill with tears; I don't know why; they are tears not of anger but of injured pride. It's a tantrum, and I am obliged to give myself up to it unresistingly.)

'I'll go!' I cry, as both of them stare at me in bafflement. I stride toward the door with tears of martyred grief. 'And stop sneaking these extra chairs in,' I add, with what sounds like a sniffle.

'What?'

'You know what I mean. And all of you always take all my pencils and never bring them back.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Whenever you redecorate. This God-damned house. You dump chairs in here. As though I won't notice.'

My wife is bewildered. And I am pleased. (I am enjoying my fit exquisitely. I am still a little boy. I am a deserted little boy I know who will never grow older and never change, who goes away and then comes back. He is badly bruised and very lonely. He is thin. He makes me sad whenever I remember him. He is still alive, yet out of my control. This is as much as he ever became. He never goes far and always comes back. I can't help him. Between us now there is a cavernous void. He is always nearby.) And when I whirl away again exultantly to storm out, leaving my silent wife and daughter standing there, in my study, at such a grave moral disadvantage, I see my son watching in the doorway. And I stamp on him before I can stop.

'Ow!' he wails.

'Oh!' I gasp.

He has been waiting there stealthily, taking everything in.

'It's okay!' he assures me breathlessly.

Clutching his foot, hopping lamely on the other, he shrinks away from me against the doorjamb, as though I had stepped on him on purpose, and intend to step on him again.

'Did I hurt you?' I demand.

'It's okay.'

'But did I hurt you? I'm sorry.'

'It's okay! I mean it. It doesn't hurt!'

'I didn't mean to step on you. Then why are you rubbing your ankle?'

'Because you hurt me a little bit. Before. But it's okay now. I mean it. Really, it's okay.' (He is supplicating anxiously for me to believe he is okay, pleading with me to stop pulverizing him beneath the crushing weight of my overwhelming solicitude. 'Leave me alone — please!' is what I realize he is actually screaming at me fiercely, and it slashes me to the heart to acknowledge that. I take a small step back.) 'See?' he asks timorously, and demonstrates.