Confessions of a Crap Artist

14

In his hospital bed, Charley Hume looked up with surprise to see Nathan Anteil entering the room.

“Hello, Charley,” Nathan said.

“I’ll be darned,” Charley Hume said. He lay back again.

Nat said, “I brought you a couple of magazines to read.” He laid a copy of Life and True on the table beside the bed. “They say you’re going to be coming home in a couple of days.”

“Right,” Charley said. “I’m about ready for the big moment.” He lay watching Nathan. “Nice to see you,” he said. “What brings you down here to San Francisco?”

“Just thought I’d drop by,” Nat said. “It occurred to me that I’ve only been down to visit you one or two times, and then with someone else. You’re looking good. You know that?”

Charley said, “I’ll be on a diet. Isn’t that a hell of a thing? A real lousy one. To keep my weight down.” He reached out and picked up the magazines, noticing as he did so that he had read the Life. His brother-in-law had brought it from the library on his last trip. But nevertheless he went through the motions of glancing over it. “How’s everything been going?” he said finally.

“Fine,” Nat said.

“World treating you okay?”

“No reason to complain,” Nat said.

“Listen, boy,” Charley said. He took the bull by the horns, then. “I know about you and my wife.”

Across from him he saw Nathan’s face speckle with shock. “Is that so?” Nathan said. He pressed his hands together, clasping and intertwining … the flesh became white as he pressed. He did not look at Charley for a moment, and then he raised his head, saying, “That’s why I’m here. I wanted to come out and tell you, face to face.”

“Hell no,” Charley said. “That’s not why you’re here; you came down here to find out what I’m going to do when I get back up there. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. When I get back—” He lowered his voice and peered past Nathan, to see if anyone were passing the open door to the hall. “Want to close that door?” he said.

Getting up, Nathan went and shut the door and returned.

Charley said, “When I get back up to Drake’s Landing I’m going to kill that woman.”

After a long pause Nathan licked his lip and said, “Why? Because of me?”

“Hell no,” Charley said. “Because she’s a bitch. I made up my mind as soon as I came to, after my heart attack. One of us has to kill the other. Didn’t you know that? Didn’t she tell you? She knows it. Christ, we can’t both live in that house, and the only way one of us is going to leave is leave dead. I’ll never leave any other way. Neither will she. It has nothing to do with you. On my word of honor.”

Nathan said nothing. He stared down at the floor.

“She got me in here,” Charley said. “She made me have this heart attack. I don’t feel like having another one. The next one’ll be the end of me.”

Nat said, “I don’t think you’ll really kill her. You feel like killing her. But that’s different.”

“I’ll be doing you the greatest favor anybody even did you,” Charley said. “Don’t fight it. You’ll thank me someday, for freeing you from her. You don’t have the guts to break away on your own. I know that, just to look at you. God almighty, you’re sitting there practically begging me to do it. You want me to do it—because you know god damn well if I don’t you’ll be mixed up with this mess—with her—the nest of your life, and you’ll never get any peace.” He paused, then, to rest. Talking so hard made him feel winded and tired.

“I don’t think you’ll do it,” Nat repeated.

Charley said nothing.

“She has fundamentally sound traits,” Nat said.

“My fucking back,” Charley said. “Don’t kid yourself. She never lifted a finger in her life except to increase her hold over somebody so she could use them later on.”

Nathan said, “I think I can deal with her. I have no illusions about her.”

“You have one illusion,” Charley said. “No, you have two. The first is that you’d win out over her. The second is that you’ll even have a chance to find out. You better make hay with her during the next few days, because that’s all there’s going to be. She knows. If she doesn’t, she’s dumber than I think she is.”

Nathan said, “Suppose we break up. Suppose I stop seeing her.”

“That doesn’t make any difference. This has got nothing to do with you. I like you; I have nothing against you. What do I cane if she wants to go roll in the hay with you? She doesn’t mean anything to me. She’s just a lousy shit of a woman that I happen to be married to that I’ve got a lot against, and with this heart now I know sooner on later I’m going to fall over dead, so I can’t wait forever. I put it off too long as it is. I should have done it years ago, but I kept putting it off. I darn near lost my chance ever to do it.” He paused to get his breath.

“I don’t believe you would have got this idea in your mind,” Nathan said, “this idea about murdering her, except for this situation between her and me.”

“You calling me a liar?” Charley said.

Gesturing, Nathan said, “I know it’s because of me.”

“Then you know wrong. Believe me. I wouldn’t lie to you. Why should I lie to you?”

Nathan said, “If you kill her, I’ll go to my grave considering myself responsible.”

At that, Charley had to laugh. “You? What do you think you are in this? When did you get mixed up in this? I’ll tell you. About ten minutes ago. Ten seconds! My fucking busted back.” He lapsed into silence, then.

“I’ll always know it was because of my getting mixed up with her,” Nathan repeated. “You’re simply so outraged about this that you’ve lost control of your own mental processes. You don’t really know what your motive is.”

“I know what my motive is,” Charley said.

At that moment a nurse, smiling apologetically, entered the room, looked around on the table for something, smiled at them both, and departed, leaving the door open. Nathan got up and closed it.

“Well I’ll tell you,” he said slowly, as he returned. “If you do try to do something to her, I’ll stand up for her.”

“Like standing up for Christ?” Charley said.

Nathan said, “I’ll do what I can to stop you.”

“Now I’ve heard everything,” Charley said. “Man, I’ve really heard it. A snot-nosed punk, a college kid, comes in here and tells me he’s going to take me on in a situation having to do between me and my wife. Why, you god damn punk nothing kid, what business is this of yours? Who the hell do you think you are? If I wasn’t lying here recuperating so I could get back up to Drake’s Landing I’d get up out of here and kick your balls down the hall and down the stairs to the main floor.”

Nathan said, “It’s too god damn bad, but as far as I’m concerned you’re an irrational, compulsive—” He groped for words. “Anyhow,” he said, “I feel sure I can handle you when the time comes. The type of man who beats up a woman is a pretty soft pile of shit when it comes down to it, in my books.” Arising, he started out of the room.

“She’s really got you hooked,” Charley said.

At the door, Nathan said, “I’ll see you.”

“Boy, she really has.” He tried to whistle, to show his incredulity, but his lips were too stiff. “Listen, I’ll tell you what she is. I’ve read books. I’m not the only one who can talk and discuss intellectual matters. I’ve seen you guys sitting around discussing Picasso and Freud. Listen to this. She’s a psychopath. You know that? Fay’s a psychopath. Think about that.”

Nathan said nothing.

“You know what a psychopath is?” Charley demanded.

“Sure,” Nathan said.

“No, you don’t because if you did you’d recognize her right off. The reason I know is that I talked to Doctor Andrews and he told me.” Actually, that was a lie. But he was too mad to keep to the truth. He had come across the term in an article in This Week magazine, several years ago, and the description had sufficiently fitted Fay to awaken his interest. “I don’t have to take a mail-order college course to know that. What is it she does that’s the key? She always wants her own way.” He pointed a finger at Nathan. “And she can’t wait, can she? She’s like a child; she always wants her way and she can’t wait. Isn’t that a psychopath? And she don’t care about anybody else. That’s a psychopath. It is. I’m not kidding you.” He nodded with triumph, panting. “The world’s something for her to drain dry, and people—” He laughed. “That proves it. The way she treats people. Look it up.”

“I admit she has certain character disturbances,” Nathan said.

“You know why she’s set her cap for you? By the way, you don’t think for a minute that getting hooked up with her was your idea, do you?”

Nathan shrugged, still standing by the door.

“She needs you,” Charley said, “because she knew if this heart attack didn’t kill me I’d come back and kill her, and she wants some man to step in and protect her. Exactly what you’re doing.” But even to him it sounded contrived and lame. “That’s why,” he said, but his tone lacked conviction, and he knew that he could not convince Nathan. For a moment he had had him going, but now he had lost him. “That’s one of the reasons,” he said, amending his statement. “There are others. She also figures she’ll need a husband when I’m dead. That’s a big reason, too. You two can sit around and talk, yak, yak, yak it up the rest of your lives. I can see you two sitting there at the dining room table.” He saw so clearly in his mind’s eye the table, the big windows overlooking the patio, the field… he saw the sheep, the horse—his horse—and the dog. The dog wagging her tail for Nathan exactly as she wagged it for him, greeting him in the same way. He saw Nathan hanging his coat in the closet where his coats hung—had hung. He saw him washing his face and hands in his bathroom, using his towel; he saw him looking into the oven to see what was for dinner. He saw him playing with the kids, playing airplane—carrying them around at arms’ length—

He saw him with his children, his dog, his wife, seated in his easy chair, listening to the hi-fl. He saw him throughout the house, using it, enjoying it, being at home in it, living in it as her husband, as the children’s father. “But you’re not their father,” he said aloud. And all at once he didn’t give a good god damn about getting back at Fay; he wanted nothing else but to be home, sitting in his living room, holding onto his life; he did not even want to ride the horse or play with the dog or lie in bed screwing his wife—the hell with that; all he asked was to be home sitting down watching them through the windows. Watching them, for instance, flying their kites, like on that last day. Fay running across the field with those long legs of hers, running so lightIy, skimming across the ground faster and faster.

He realized that Nathan was talking. What was he saying? Something about realizing that he wasn’t their father. He tried to listen, but he couldn’t; he felt too woozy and tired to listen. So he sat staring down at the foot of the bed, while Nathan talked.

If I could just get back, he thought. Please. Nothing else. Just back. With my Elsie. Driving my pick-up truck. Doing the shopping, laying pipe for the ducks’ water trough—anything. Scrubbing the bathtubs and sinks and toilets, carrying out the garbage… 1 don’t give a good god damn what it is. Please.

Fuck it all, he thought. It’s all gone. I’ll never get back; I know that. I’ll never see that house again, never in a million years. And this other guy, this snot-nose, will walk in and take it all, and have it the rest of his life.

I ought to kill them all, he thought. Her and him, and that warped creep of a brother, him and his lurid pulp story that he whipped together to get sadistic pleasure out of reading to me. That nut. A family of nuts. A world of them. Like the flying saucer nuts over in Inverness Park. The pack of them at work as a team, like the Eisenhower-Dulles team.

God damn it, he thought, I will get back there, and when I do I’ll get them. Even if! don’t get back there—I’ll still get them. I’ll get them anyhow.

“Listen,” he said. “You know who I am? I’m the one person in the world—the only one—who can save you from that fucking woman. Isn’t that right? You know it. Right? Right?”

Nathan said nothing.

“Nobody else can do it,” Charley said. “You can’t, your wife can’t, Doctor Sebastian that old fuddy minister can’t, her nutty brother can’t, the Fineburgs can’t—nobody in Marin County or Contra Costa County or Sonoma County can except me, because it would take killing her, and by god you know I’ll do that. So you better pray for me; you better go home and sit in your parlor and watch tv and wait and pray for me to get home and live long enough, because you’re the one who’s going to benefit; you’ll benefit and nobody else will. And ten years from now—hell, ten days!—you’ll be so god damn glad. You really will be. And something in your mind tells you that. It’s your subconscious. So go home. Don’t mix in where it doesn’t concern you. When she phones you up, don’t answer the phone. When she drives up in front of your house and toots her horn, stay indoors. Ignore her. For one week.” He shouted the words. “One week, and you’ll be okay! And then you can go on and get your degree and become whatever it is you want to be—otherwise you know what’ll become of you?”

Nathan said nothing.

“I don’t have to tell you,” Charley said, and in him it was the greatest sense of triumph and joy that he had felt in all this, in everything that had happened. It was almost a mystical sense. He did not have to say, because the expression on Nathan’s face showed that he already knew. “Do you know what that means?” Charley yelled at him. “That means I was right. If I wasn’t right, you wouldn’t know. It’s not in my mind. It’s the truth. We both know it. We know about her, both of us, you and me. So that proves it; it’s true. Right?”

Nathan said nothing.

For the first time, Charley thought. I can see it clearly and know she really is that way; it isn’t in my mind. She really is a grade A number one bitch, because I can read this boy’s face, and he can read mine, and it’s in both of us.

Thank god, he thought. I can know for sure.

“Right?” he repeated.

Nathan said, “I went into this recognizing her defects. When I first met her I wasn’t pleased by her. I saw all these qualities.”

“In a pig’s ass,” Charley said. “You fell for her the moment you laid eyes on her.”

“No,” Nathan said, glancing up. And Charley saw that he had been mistaken. I lost him again, he thought. Damn it.

“So you had an inkling,” he said. But he had said the wrong thing, and he could not get it back. “It just shows that underneath you realize I’m right.”

Nathan said, “I’ll see you.” He opened the door, left the room, shut the door behind him.

After a time Charley thought, Maybe he’ll go through with it. Stick by her. The stupid son of a bitch.

I am sick, he thought. It’s true. What can I do if he decides to take me on? Before my heart attack I could have handled him with one hand; I could have split his skull. But now I’m too weak. In fact between the two of them, with her keen mind, her alertness, and his physical attributes, they’ll have me. Between them they’re a match for me, the way I am now. The jerks.

The trouble with me, he thought, is I’m a stupid man. I can’t talk good enough, not like they can. I fucked it up.