Confessions of a Crap Artist

13

One afternoon, when Nat Anteil drove over to the Hume home, the two girls greeted him excitedly as he parked his car.

“One of the sheep had a lamb!” Bonnie shouted, as he got out of the car. “She had a lamb just a couple of minutes ago!”

“We saw it through the window!” Elsie shouted at him. “The Bluebirds saw it; we were baking bread and we saw four black feet and I said, Look there’s a lamb, and it was. Mommy says it’s a female lamb, it’s a girl lamb. They’re out in back on the patio looking at it.” The girls skipped and raced along beside him as he went through the house and opened the back door onto the patio.

In an iron and canvas patio chair Fay sat in her yellow shorts and sandals and halter, sipping a martini. “One of the ewes gave birth,” she said, over her shoulder. “While the Bluebirds were still here.”

“The children told me,” he said.

She continued to gaze out over the field, past the fence and the badminton net. After a moment he made out the sight of the ewe. She lay on her side, like a great bag of gray and black. He could not see the lamb. The only motion was an occasional twitch of one of the ewe’s ears.

“That means they’re agitated,” Fay said. “When they twitch their ears. It’s a sign of distress in sheep.”

Presently the ewe struggled to her feet and he saw a tiny black spot on the grass. It was the lamb. The ewe nudged it, first with her nose and then with one of her hoofs. The lamb arose, shaking, and the ewe nosed it toward her sacks of milk.

“It’s already nursed,” Fay said. “I shut the dog in the bathroom, so if you go in there don’t let it out. Last year that god damn dog killed all the lambs. She found them when they were just born. They evidently still had the blood on them, and she apparently thought they were just meat.”

“I see,” he said. He sat down on a wicker chair to watch with her. The two girls, after hanging around awhile, went off on their tricycles.

Fay said, “It looks to me like she’s going to have another. See how fat she still is.”

“Don’t you think it’s just the milk?” he said.

“No,” she said.

Later, at sunset, while he was bringing the girls’ tricycles indoors, he saw the ewe lying on her side, again. This time the near part of her shuddered rhythmically, and he realized that Fay had been right. He went indoors to the kitchen. At the stove Fay was mixing a salad.

“You were night,” he said. “She’s in labor.”

Fay said, “It’ll be born dead. If there’s more than an hour lapse between births the second one is always dead.” She left her salad and went to get her coat.

“Maybe not,” he said, knowing nothing about sheep but wanting to say something to cheer her.

Taking the lantern—the sky had become dark and stars were appearing—they walked out across the pasture, to the ewe. Now she had gotten up and was cropping grass. Her lamb lay nearby, its head up.

“I’ll call the vet,” Fay said.

She telephoned the vet and talked with him for a long time. Nat wandered about the house, glancing out now and then at the field. Now he could see only the outline of the eucalyptus trees far off, along the highway.

Appearing from her bedroom, Fay said, “He says to call him back in an hour if nothing happens. He said possibly we could get her to walk around; that might speed up the birth. But he agrees that if it’s been this long there isn’t much chance.”

They had dinner. And then, before cleaning the table, they again put on their coats, got the lantern, and went out onto the field.

The light flashed first on one ewe, then another. “No,” Fay said, continuing to walk. “Flash it over there,” she said, pointing.

In the light he saw the ewe standing up, trailing behind her a web of black. The web, sagging like a cloth hammock, led to a pool of wet black in the grass. To him it looked like refuse, something voided. But Fay, walking toward it, said in a flat, empty voice, “It’s a dead lamb. A big lamb.” Bending down she said, “A perfect lamb. Looks like a male. It must have just been born.” With both hands she began to strip the bloody, wet web from it. Mucus trails covered the lamb’s face. “A male,” she said, turning the lamb over.

“Too bad,” he said, feeling no emotion, only a physical reaction, a revulsion to the blood and mucus web. Not wanting to touch the thing he hung back, now feeling guilt.

Fay reached into the dead lamb’s mouth and opened its jaws. Then she began pressing its nib-cage, again and again. “It’s still warm,” she said. “Usually I come out and find their stiff bodies. This one was too big. It took five hours. He was cut off too long.” Now she had lifted the lamb by its hind legs and was slapping it. “You do this with baby puppies,” she said. “No,” she said. “It’s hopeless. Too bad. A perfect big buck lamb. Isn’t that strange? It gets so far, five months growing, and then it dies. What a shame.” She continued to massage it and clean its face and slap at it. The ewe, with her surviving lamb, had gone farther off. “They know when it’s dead,” Fay said. “Sometimes they’ll nuzzle it for an hour, trying to get it on its feet. She knows this one is dead. She isn’t trying to get it up.” Now she stood up. “Look at my hands,” she said. “Blood all over them.”

He said, “You want me to put it in the garbage can?”

“It’ll have to be buried,” she said.

Now he did not feel so squeamish. He picked it up by its hind feet. How heavy it was. Carrying it before him, he walked back toward the house. Fay came a step or two behind, flashing the light for him.

“Probably she could only have nursed one anyhow,” she said. “We’ve brought them in when they were too weak to get up, and washed them and dried them and fed them kano syrup and water and sent them back out. We never got a buck lamb. They’re so fragile. There’s always a good chance a buck lamb will die—they’re too big to get out.”

Using the pitch fork and shovel he dug a hole near the cypress trees, where the soil was moist.

“Anyhow,” he said, “you still have the other one.”

She said nothing.

“It was impressive,” he said, “to see you go and start removing that stuff from it without hesitation.” Like a farm woman, he thought. And in her shorts and sandals and blue cord coat. No fluttering or squeamishness … she had gotten that firm quality that he thought so much of. The quality that he knew existed in her, one of her best. It would come out, of course, in a situation like this. It had never occurred to her to hang back.

She said, “I should have breathed in its mouth. But I couldn’t bear to. With all that mucus. I guess I better phone the vet back and tell him what happened.” Leaving the lantern propped up for him, she went off into the house.

After he had finished burying the lamb, he washed his hands at an outdoor tap and entered the house after her. The girls had gone off to their rooms to watch tv. On the dining room table the dinner dishes remained where they had been, and he picked up some and carried them to the sink. He wondered where Jack was. Probably in his room; her brother had stayed out of sight, by himself, whenever he came over to be with Fay. He did not even eat with them.

“I’ll do that,” Fay said, appearing. “Leave them.” She lit a cigarette. “Let’s sit for a while in the living room.”

“Where’s your brother?” he said, as they seated themselves.

“At Claudia Hambro’s. A meeting of the group. Special emergency session.” She smoked meditatively.

“Are you depressed?” he said.

Beside him, she stirred about. “A little. More just thinking.”

“The business about the lamb would depress anybody,” he said.

“It isn’t the lamb,” Fay said. “It was seeing you getting ready to do the dishes. You shouldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” he said.

“A man shouldn’t do things like dishes.”

He said, “I thought you wanted me to do them.” He knew how she detested the dishes; she always got someone to do them for her, if not her brother then himself.

“I never wanted you to do them,” Fay said. She stubbed out her cigarette. “You should have said no.” Getting restlessly to her feet she began to pace. “Mind if I pace?” she said, with a quick, mechanical smile, almost a grimace.

Perturbed, he said, “You ask me, but you want me to refuse. You want me to say no to you.”

“You shouldn’t let me get you to do things. It’s wrong—the man should be the stronger one. He should exert his authority. The man is the ultimate authority in a marriage. The woman follows his lead… how’s she supposed to know what’s night and wrong if he doesn’t tell her? I expect you to tell me. I depend on you.”

He said, “And by doing things for you, things you asked for, I’ve let you down.”

“You’ve let yourself down,” she connected. “So I suppose yes, you’ve let me down. The best way to help me is to be yourself and do what you know is night. I’ll respect you more if you assent your moral authority. The children need that.”

He said, “It’s wrong for the children to see a man doing the dishes?”

“Doing anything the woman tells him. They should see him telling the woman what to do. That’s the principal thing I see in you—a deep moral authority. That’s what you bring to this house. We all need that.”

“And by that ‘deep moral authority,’ “he said, having difficulty breathing, “you mean my taking a firm stand and opposing you. Well?” he said. “Suppose I do oppose you? What will you do?”

“Respect you,” she said.

“No,” he said. “You won’t like it. Don’t you see the paradox? If I do what you say—”

She broke in, “That’s right. Shift the responsibility to me.”

“What?” he said.

Fay said, “I’m at fault.”

He stared at her, not following her fluctuation of mood. “No,” he said finally. “This is something we’re involved in mutually. That’s what we should strive for, a mutual sense of responsibility and authority. Not one of us manipulating the other.”

Fay said, “You manipulate me. You try to change me.”

“When?” he demanded.

“Right now. You’re trying to change me now.”

“I only want you to see the contradiction in what you want.”

“I see,” she said. “I see that you resent me.”

Nat said, “You want to fight, don’t you?”

“I’m just tired of your covert hostility,” she said. “I wish you’d be honest. I wish you’d express your hostility directly instead of in these devious ways, these pious pedagogic ways.”

For a time he was silent.

“You can go,” she said. “Any time. You don’t have to stick around here. Why should you? This isn’t your home anyhow. This is my home. This is my house, my food, my money. What are you doing over here anyhow? How’d you get in here?”

He could not believe he was hearing what he seemed to hear.

“You know you dislike me,” Fay said. “You’ve hinted at it in a thousand different ways. You feel I don’t take responsibility; you feel I’m demanding and self-centered and childish, always wanting my own way, that I’m not mature, that I don’t really love you—I just want to use you. Isn’t that right?”

Finally he said, “To—some extent.”

“Why can’t you stand up to me?” she said.

“I—didn’t get involved with you to ‘stand up to you,’ “he said. “I love you.”

To that, she had nothing to say.

Nat said, “I don’t understand. What’s this all about?” Getting to his feet he came toward her; he wanted to put his arms around her and kiss her. “Why are you in this state?”

“Oh,” she said, resting her head against his shoulder, “it’s something Doctor Andrews said today.” She put her arms around him. “He said that whenever I talk about you I don’t really depict anything. As if I never really see you. As if nobody’s really real to me. It was so much like something you said—maybe it’s true. God, if I thought for one moment it was true—” Drawing away, she gazed up at him. “Suppose it’s true, what Charley’s always said about me, and I never accepted. That I’ve degraded him and used him and absorbed him to get what I want. I was so spoiled as a child … I always got what I wanted. And if I didn’t I had tantrums. And he had to get drunk and come home and hit me; it was the only way he could fight back.” She stared at him starkly. “And I made him sick. And—possibly I want him to die because I’m through with him; I don’t have any further need for him. And I deliberately involved you with me, broke up your marriage—without any concern at all for Gwen, or even for you, so that I could get you because you’re good husband material and I need a new husband, now that I’ve used up the old one. And if you do stay with me, I’ll treat you the same way as I treated him. It’ll be the same thing over again; you’ll be running my errands for me, and doing my chores for me—I’ll degrade you, and then you won’t have any other recourse but to get drunk and hit me. If you even got to that, I’d die. It would kill me if you even hit me.” She ceased talking, then, and stood, gazing past him absently.

“I’ll never hit you,” he said, stroking her dry, short hair.

“Charley never hit anybody before me,” she said.

“The thing is,” he said, “that you and I can talk. We can discuss this. We verbalize in the same way. He doesn’t.”

She nodded.

“We can express our resentments. The way you’re doing now. We can deal with them directly.”

“Let’s face it,” Fay said. “I’m clumsy and vulgar. Why do you want me?”

He said, “Because you’re an intelligent, brave woman.” Stroking her, he said, “You remind me of a pioneer woman.” He was thinking of her with the lamb, now.

“You don’t think I’ll make you into a domestic servant?” Pulling away from him she went to get a log and kindling for the fine. “That’s what I want, an army of men: decorators to paint things, paint the house, gardeners, electricians, men to cut my hair, remodel the kitchen—add a new room on the house when I want a room to work in, to work on my clay in. Would you build me a room to work in? Where I can have a wheel?”

“Sure,” he said, smiling.

“Suppose I ruined you,” she said. “Made you give up any hope of going on to school. Put a financial responsibility on you that tied you up for the nest of your life. – .supponting me and the girls, and I’d want to have more children, as soon as possible. Incidently, did I tell you about my diaphragm?”

“Yes,” he said.

She went on, “Force you to stay in the real estate business when you actually want to—” She hesitated. “Go on into a profession. Whatever it is.” Her eyes twinkling, she said, “What did you say you wanted to be?”

“Maybe a lawyer,” he said.

“Oh god, then you could sue me,” she said.

“I want to marry you,” he said. “I want to divorce Gwen and marry you.”

“What’ll we do with Charley?”

“Can’t you ask him for a divorce?” he said, feeling the tension everywhere in him.

Fay said, “It’s wrong. I know it’s bourgeois of me—it shows what a bourgeois nogoodnick I am. I just feel divorce is wrong; a marriage is for life.”

“Well,” he said, feeling futile, “then that’s that.”

“I guess that’s misplaced loyalty,” she said. “But I can’t help it. When I married him I married him for better or worse; I took those words seriously.”

He said, “So the only way you could leave him would be if he died.”

“If he died,” she said, “I’d have to remarry. For the girls’ sake. They need a father; it’s the father who establishes the authority in the home. He relates the family to the outer world, to society. The mother does nothing but keep everyone fed and clothed and warm.”

After a pause, with some trepidation, he said, “Why don’t you ask him?”

“Ask him what?”

“Which he’d prefer,” he said, feeling that he was making a mistake to say it, but, at the same time, wanting to say it to her. “Being dead on being divorced.”

At that, she got the fierce, cold look that he had seen only once or twice before. But when she spoke her voice was completely under control, as calm as he had even heard it. It had, in fact, a deeply national tone to it, as if she were speaking out of the depths of her wisdom and experience, from the most educated part of her. Not from emotion at all, but from the most widely-accepted, the most incontrovertible knowledge. “Well,” she said, “it’s a lot to ask a man, to take on the responsibility for children, especially another man’s children. I don’t blame you. You have a relatively easy life, as it is. In the long run I doubt if you could sustain this family. I’d really have to be married to a man who could support me. Let’s face it. You haven’t got the capability to do that.” She smiled at him, the brief, aloof smile that he had come to recognize. Almost a gracious smile.

There was nothing much more for him to say. Going to the closet he got his coat.

“Are you walking out on me?” she said.

Nat said, “I don’t see any point in staying.”

“Better you should walk out now,” she said. “It’s probably better for you, too, in the long run. Anyhow it’s easier. Isn’t it?”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

“Oh, it is,” she contradicted. “It’s the easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is put on your coat and go back home to Gwen.” She followed after him, to the door. Her face had a white, throbbing quality. “Won’t you kiss me good-bye?” she said.

He kissed her. “I’ll see you,” he said.

“Say hello to Gwen,” she said. “Maybe we could all get together for dinner some evening. Charley should be back from the hospital in another week on so.”

“Okay,” he said. Hardly believing that it was happening, he shut the door after him and walked across the gravel and cypress needles to his can. The outdoor light came on; she had put it on for him. The light remained on until he had backed from the driveway. Then, as soon as his car reached the road, the light went out.

In a daze, he drove home.

Suppose I hadn’t started to clear the dinner dishes, he thought. Would it not have happened? It would have, he decided. Sooner or later. Our mutual hostilities and doubts would have swum up and clashed; it was only a question of time. It was inevitable.

But he still could not believe it, and now, as he drove, he began to be afraid of how he would feel when he did believe it. How it would affect him when it began to become real.

When he drove up in front of his own house he saw a strange can parked there. Getting out, he walked up the steps and into the house.

In the kitchen, Gwen sat at the table with a glass of wine in front of her. Across from her sat a man he had never seen before, a blondhaired young man wearing glasses. Both of them glanced up with dismay. But almost at once Gwen regained her composure.

“Home early,” she said in a brittle, hostile voice. “I thought you were probably going to stay longer.”

“Who’s this?” Nat said, indicating the young man. His heart labored inside him. “I don’t feel like coming home and finding a strange car parked in front of the house.”

“Oh,” Gwen said, in the same voice; its venom, its vast amount of loathing for him, staggered him. He had never heard her speak with such sarcasm, such giving to each syllable a sense of cruelty, the articulation of cruelty toward him, cruelty toward everything. As if, at this moment in their relationship, she could feel nothing but this. Nothing else remained. It was her total feeling. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you and Fay would be together for the nest of the evening. Maybe the nest of the night.”

The young man started to get to his feet.

“Don’t leave,” Gwen said, shifting her attention to him, but still using the same tone. “Why should you leave?” To Nat, she said, “We’re right in the middle of working something out. Why don’t you go away and come back some other time?”

“Working what out?” he said.

“An understanding,” she said. “Between the two of us. This is Robert Altrocchi. He lives down the road. Where the birds are. He raises parakeets and sells them to the dime stones in San Francisco.” Nat said nothing.

“Do you mind?” Gwen said. “If we go on?” She made a motion of dismissal toward him. “Go drive off,” she said.

To the young man, Nat said, “Get out of here.”

Arising with elaborate slowness, Altrocchi pushed away his wine glass and said, “I was going. I have to get to work.” At the doorway he halted and said to Gwen, “I’ll see you at the usual time, then?”

Ignoring Nat, she said, “Yes. Call me or I’ll call you.” Now she had gotten into her voice—no doubt with great care—a tone of affection. “Good night, Bob.”

“Good night,” Altrocchi said. Presently they heard the front door close, and then the man’s car drive off.

“How’s Fay?” Gwen said, still seated at the table. She sipped her wine, eying him above the glass.

“Fine,” he said.

“It’s okay for you to be with her,” Gwen said in a wavering voice, “but not okay for me.”

“I don’t want to come home and find a strange car here,” he said. “I never brought Fay here,” he said. “It’s wrong to bring somebody here. That’s unfair. You can go out and see anybody you want, but don’t bring them here. It’s my house, too.”

“We can’t go to his house,” Gwen said, raising her voice. “He’s married and they have a six-month-old child.”

Hearing that, he felt crushing melancholy and hopelessness. So this was the consequence of his relationship with Fay. Not only had his own marriage been marred, ruined, but somebody else’s, a man he had never seen before in his life, a man with a new baby.

“If it’s okay for you—” Gwen began.

“I gave you the example,” he interrupted.

She said nothing.

“You’re paying me back,” he said. “This is my payment. Some guy I never saw. His wife and child have to suffer so you can get back at me. I want to marry Fay. I’m serious. You’re not. Are you? You know you aren’t.”

Gwen said nothing.

“This is terrible,” he said. “This is the worst thing I ever heard. How could you do a thing like this?”

On his wife’s face the expression of suffering and determination increased. Everything he said only made her feel more strongly.

“One of us has to get out,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “You get out.”

“I will,” he said. Going into the bedroom he sat down on the bed. “I don’t feel like it right now,” he said. “Later.”

“No,” Gwen said. “Now.”

“Go to hell,” he said, feeling perspiration stand out on his forehead. “Shut up,” he said weakly. “Don’t talk to me any more, or I can’t be responsible.”

Gwen said, “Don’t threaten me.” But she stopped talking to him and went off by herself into the living room. He heard her seat herself on the couch.

The house was silent.

Good god, he thought. We’re through. My marriage is over. Where am I? What’s happened?

While he sat there, Gwen reappeared. “I’ll go,” she said. “So you won’t have to be away from her. I’ll go to Sacramento and stay with my family. Can I take the can?”

“If you take the car,” he said, “how can I get to work?” His heart beat so fast and so hand that it was a great effort to speak; it cost him all his energy and after each word he had to rest.

“Then drive me to Sacramento and come back,” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

“Let me see what I have to take,” she said. “I won’t try to take everything tonight. I’ll come back tomorrow. Maybe I won’t go to Sacramento tonight. It’s too far. It would take all night to get there. I’ll stay in a motel. There’s one in Point Reyes, night here.”

“No,” he said. “I’ll take you to Sacramento.”

She studied him and then, without a word, she went into the other room again. At first he heard nothing, and then he realized that she was beginning to get things together. He heard the sound of a suitcase being dragged from the closet.

“I’ve decided you’re right,” he said, staying where he was. “I can’t drive you to Sacramento tonight. Wait until tomorrow—sleep here, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Gwen said from the other room, “I’m not sleeping with you tonight. You go over to her house and sleep, if you want me to stay here.”

“You can sleep on the couch,” he said. “Or I will.”

“Why don’t you go back there?” Gwen appeared in the doorway. “Why did you come home so early?”

He said, “We had a fight.” He did not look at her but he could feel her eyes on him. “Nothing important. There was a lamb born dead and it upset her. It was horrible; it looked like a thing made out of wet tar.” He began, then, to tell her about it. For a moment she listened, and then she disappeared. She had gone off and resumed her packing. Feeling rage, he leaped up from the bed and followed after her. “Don’t you want to hear?” he demanded.

“I have enough to think about,” Gwen said.

“You could listen to this,” he said, standing in the center of the room while she packed. “Why won’t you listen? It seems a hell of a thing to me, one hell of a thing, that you won’t even listen. It really makes me feel bad.”

“I’m sorry about the dead lamb,” Gwen said. “But I don’t see what it matters. I let you go and stay with her, and I never said anything; I let you do what you wanted, and when people came by and wondered where you were I said you were down in Mill Valley working late; I never told anybody about you and her.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’re going to do when he gets back from the hospital,” Gwen said. “What are you going to do? Won’t he find out? Somebody’ll tell him—you know nobody can keep things a secret in these little towns. Everybody knows everybody.”

“If you leave,” he said, “then there won’t be any doubt of it. No doubt at all.”

“You want me to stay,” she said, “to save you from being killed on whatever he’s going to do when he gets home?”

“He won’t do anything,” he said. “He’s a sick man. He’ll be in bed for months, recuperating. He almost died. He could still die. It wouldn’t take much.”

Bitterly, Gwen said, “Maybe the shock of finding out will be enough. Then you’ll have clear sailing.”

“I love her,” he said. “I want to marry her. This is all something I feel proud of. I know that sounds incredible—”

“No,” Gwen said. “It doesn’t sound incredible. You’re drawn to her because you see the children, and I know you want children, but we couldn’t have them because of your school. Is she going to put you through school? This way you can have both—you can go to school and at the same time have a big nice house and kids and everything else you want. 1-bone steaks for dinner. Right?”

“I want a stable home and family,” he said.

“You know what I think will become of you if you marry her?”

He could not keep himself from saying, “What do you think?”

“You’ll be a handy man and domestic servant, keeping that place going. Keeping her house going. You’ll balance her budget, turn down the thermostats to save money on the heating bill—”

“No,” he interrupted. “Because it’s off. I’m not seeing her again. We broke up.”

“Why?”

He said, “Because of what you said just now. I don’t want to wind up a domestic servant, doing her dishes for her.” As he said it he felt the full weight of his disloyalty fall on him. His treason to Fay, not to his wife; it was Fay that now held his loyalty, his sense of being morally obligated. Standing there in his own living room, with his own wife, telling his wife that he was through with Fay, he knew that he was not through with her, not if he could help it. The pull was too strong. He yearned for her. He yearned to be back in that house with her. The rest was talk.

“I don’t believe it,” Gwen said. “You’ll never have the strength to break off with her. She’s got you completely tied up. She always gets her way; she’s got the mind of a two-year-old child—she wants what she sees and she gets it because she rides rough shod over everybody else.”

“She recognizes that,” he said. “That’s why she goes down to Doctor Andrews. She’s struggling with it.”

Gwen laughed. “Oh?” she said. “You’re optimistic? Then why are you breaking up with her?”

To that, he could give no answer.

“I don’t see how you could get involved with a woman like that,” Gwen said. “Do you want to be bossed the nest of your life? Do you crave to be back in a child-parent relationship?”

“I’m tired of hearing about it,” he said.

“I’m not surprised that you’re tired of hearing about it,” Gwen said. “What I wonder is will you even be tired of living it.”

Going outside, he sat in the car and waited while she packed.