Something Happened

'We never know what it's safe to say around you.'

'I'm afraid.'

'Of what?'

'What do you think of that? Of you. Of all of you. You've got me walking on eggs, you're all so God-damned touchy and afraid. Do you think I want you all afraid of me? I never know what I can say either around here without hurting somebody's feelings. It's worse than being with Green or Arthur Baron or Horace White. It inhibits me, in my own house. No wonder I yell a lot. Do I really yell so much?'

'All the time now.'

'I don't always mean to.'

'You're always so irritable.'

'I'm irritable all the time now. I'm always tired.'

'Maybe you're working too hard.'

'I don't work hard. I worry a lot.'

'Maybe you should try to get an easier job.'

'Don't you ever listen to me?'

'One where you wouldn't have to work so hard.'

'I said I don't work hard.'

'Well, maybe you should try to get another job.'

'I am trying to get another job.'

'Will it be harder or easier?'

'Easier, I think. More responsibility, but much less pressure. More money. More worry. I don't know.'

'Will you be able to make speeches?'

'What are you talking about?'

'You know what I mean. Speeches.'

'Yeah. All I want.'

'I hate Jack Green,' she says.

'Why?' I retort suspiciously.

'He's a lousy bastard,' she declares passionately. 'I'll never forgive him for what he did to you.'

'What?' I ask, feeling my face burn suddenly and a tense, protective anger begin to rise.

'Not letting you make that speech at the convention last year, like everyone else. I bet he's jealous of you, that's why. I'm surprised Arthur Baron let him do that to you.'

'It wasn't that important.'

'I know how hard you worked on it. I know how small it must have made you feel.'

'Are you doing this deliberately?'

'But how did it make you feel?'

'I don't feel any bigger being reminded of it now.'

'See?' she says. 'You're too sensitive to things like that. Maybe you shouldn't take this new job if you have to work too hard and worry more.'

'Maybe I won't. To hell with the money and the prestige and the success.'

'I don't think you ought to travel more.'

'I don't think you can keep your mind on one subject for more than one minute at a time, can you?'

'That's just the kind of remark you would make to me. That's just the kind of remark you would make to her, too.'

'I made it to you. Let's not fight now. I didn't come in here for that this time. You and I can fight later.'

'I'm not trying to fight.'

'Then stop needling me like an oh-so-innocent bitch. Or that I'm too dumb to know what you're doing. That speech is none of your business. Why bring it up all the God-damned time if it really makes you so angry? You do it just to remind me.'

'And I'm not angry at what you said just now about my mind. I know you think I'm the dumbest person who ever lived. And I'm not trying to pick on you now. But did you hear how you sounded just now? That's just the kind of thing you would say to her. That's just the way you would sound to her. Try to remember when you talk to her that she's only fifteen and a half years old.'

My wife is right.

I do not talk to my daughter as I should to a child, or would if she were somebody else's. I'm not nice to her. If my little boy misbehaves, I respond to him dotingly as a careless, mischievous, or overtired little boy who needs a kiss and a hug and the mildest of reprimands; it is a normal, predictable, endearing mistake, and I correct him tolerantly in an almost deferential way. If my teenage daughter does something wrong, it is something wrong: it is an insulting, intentional, inexcusable attack against me that requires swift and severe retribution. (I do not treat them the same.) I wonder why. Is it because she's a daughter? Or a first child, for whom my aspirations were too high, and in whom I am now therefore disappointed? Or is it that she is already in her teens, growing up and away from me, slipping free from my authority, already preparing to live without me, to challenge frontally my wisdom, morality, and ability, and threatening to dislodge me, if she can, from my shaky stronghold of dictatorial self-esteem? Will I have to endure and survive these same assaults and rejections from my little boy when he grows up too? I hope not, for I would derive no satisfaction (I think) in vanquishing him. (Thank God my third child is an idiot: I really don't mean that. What I do mean is that thank goodness I will at least be spared a rebellion from him. I know how I will feel when Derek dies, or when he is finally sent away: relieved, liberated, and I will release a long-compressed breath and say, perhaps even aloud to someone whom I may feel I can trust:

'Well, at last that's over with too now, isn't he?')

I try to remember when this rivalry between my daughter and me first began. I can't. It sometimes seems that we have always been this way with each other, that we have never gotten along any better or differently. I would like to make my daughter less miserable if I can, to help her to be happier and much more pleased with herself. I don't know how. (I like to trap my daughter in carelessness and lies in order to make her admit she's sorry.)

'She wants to know you love her,' my wife says. 'She doesn't think you do.'

'Well, I do. She knows it.'

'How?'

'I think I do.'

'By your actions? You never tell her.'

'That isn't so.'

'When?'

'She's my daughter. I can't say 'I love you' to my own daughter.'

'Why not?'

'It sounds like incest.'

'Only to you. She thinks you're disappointed in her.'

'You are. You certainly let her know you are.'

'Only because I know she can be better. She could be a good dancer or actress or piano player now if only she'd stuck to things when she was younger. She had so much talent. She could still study dancing or acting.'

'So don't deny it. Don't accuse me of that, too.'

'I know what happened to me. I wish I'd stuck to something. Like my mother wanted me to. I wish my father had kept out of it and let my mother make me practice more. I might be something today.'

'You could be the king of France.'

'I'm your wife. You never say 'I love you' to me either.'

'You're my wife, I don't have to.'

'That isn't funny now.'

'Are we talking about you again?'

'I'm not talking about that now. I don't know what to talk about. I don't know what to do with myself. I don't know how to kill time. What am I supposed to do with time if I don't know how to kill it?'

'Have another drink.'