Confessions of a Crap Artist

8

They took an hour off to fly kites. His got up off the ground and stayed, not falling but not going higher; he ran along the mushy pasture, splashing, unreeling the string, and still his kite stayed up the same height, only now the string was played out, parallel to the ground.

Off beyond the horse’s barn, Fay raced like a water bug across a pond: her feet landed and rose, carrying her at enormous speed. Her kite shot straight up. When she stopped at the fence she turned, and they both saw nothing at first; the kite had gone so high that for a moment neither of them could spot it. The kite was directly above their heads, a true celestial object, launched out of the world’s gravity.

The children screamed to be allowed to take the string of Fay’s kite; they cursed Fay for not letting them fly it, and at the same time they marveled at her success. Admiration and anger… he stood gasping, holding his second-rate kite by its sagging string.

Having given her kite string to the children, Fay walked toward him, her hands in the front pockets of her jeans. Smiling against the mid-day glare she reached him, halted, and said,

“Now let’s put you on the end of a string. And I’ll fly you.”

That filled him with wrath, terrible wrath. But at the same time he felt so winded and spent from the kite-flying that he could not express it; he could not even yell at her. AU he could do was turn his back and without speaking start slowly in the direction of the house.

“What’s the matter?” Fay called. “Are you mad again?”

He still said nothing. He felt depressed, a complete hopelessness. Suddenly he wished he could die; he wished he was dead.

“Can’t you take a joke?” Faysaid, catching up with him. “Say, you look as if you felt sick.” Putting her hand up she touched his forehead, the way she did with the children. “Maybe it’s the flu,” she said. “Why did that upset you?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

“Remember,” she said, going along with him, “that time you had gone into the duck pen to feed the ducks—it must have been the first time you fed them, after we had just gotten them—and I was standing outside the pen watching you, and all of a sudden I said, ‘You know, I think of you as a pet duck; why don’t you stay in there and I’ll feed you.’ Could you have been thinking of that? Did my remark about the kite make you remember that? I know that upset you at the time. It was really a dreadful thing to say; I can’t imagine why I said it. You know I say every kind of thing—I have no control over my tongue.” Catching hold of his arm, she dragged against him, saying, “You know nothing I say means anything. Right? Wrong? Inbetween?”

“Leave me alone,” he said, jerking away.

“Don’t go in,” she said. “Please. At least play badminton with me for a little while… remember, the Anteils are coming over for dinner tonight, so if we don’t play now we won’t get a chance to play—and tomorrow I have to go into the city. So couldn’t we play, just for a minute?”

“I’m too tired,” he said. “I don’t feel well.”

“It’ll do you good,” she said. “Just for a minute.” Passing him, she raced across the field, the patio, and into the house. By the time he had reached the house, there she stood, holding up the badminton rackets and the shuttles.

The two girls appeared, shouting together. “Can’t we play? Where’s the other paddles?” Seeing that Fay had all four rackets, they struggled to get two of them away from her.

In the end they did play. He and Bonnie took one side, with Fay and Elsie on the other. His arms felt so tired that he could barely lift his racket to swat the shuttle. Finally, in running back to get a long one, his weary legs caught together, became rigid, and he tumbled over backward. The children set up a wail and hurried to him; Fay remained where she was, looking on.

“I’m okay,” he said, getting up. But his racket had snapped in half. He stood holding the pieces and trying to get his breath; his chest hurt and bones seemed to be sticking into his lungs.

“There’s one more racket in the house,” Fay said, from the far side of the net. “Remember, Leslie O’Neill brought it over to play, and left it. It’s in the cupboard in the study.”

He started into the house to get it. After a long rummaging about he found it; starting back out again he felt his head swim and his legs wobble like cheap plastic, the junk they use to make free toys, he thought. Toys they give away in cereal packages or hand out in stores … Then he fell forward. As he fell he reached for the ground; he sank his hands into it and clutched it. He tore it up, stuffed it into him, ate it and drank it and breathed it in; he lost his breath, trying to breathe it in—he could not get it inside him, into his lungs. And, after that, he could not do anything.

Next he knew he lay in a big bed, his face and body shaved. His hands, his fingers on the bedsheets, looked like the pink fingers of a pig. I turned into a pig, he thought. They took my hair away and curled what was left; I’ve been squealing now for a long time.

He tried to squeal but all that came out was a rasp.

At that, a figure appeared. His brother-in-law Jack Isidore peering down at him, wearing a cloth jacket and baggy brown pants, a knapsack on his back. His face had been scrubbed.

“You had an occlusion,” Jack said.

“What’s that?” he said, thinking that someone had hit him.

“You had a heart attack,” Jack said, and then he went into a mass of technical details. Presently he went off. A nurse took his place, and then, at last, a doctor.

“How’m I doing?” Charley said. “Pretty robust for an old man. Lots of life in the old frame left. Right?”

“Yes, you’re in good shape,” the doctor said, and left.

By himself, he lay on his back thinking, waiting for someone to come. The doctor eventually returned.

“Listen,” Charley said. “The reason I’m here is that my wife’s responsible. This was her idea from the start. She wants the house and the plant and the only way she can get it is if I die, so she fixed it up so I’d have this heart attack and drop dead according to plan.”

The doctor bent down to listen.

“And I was going to kill her,” he said. “God damn her.”

The doctor departed.

After a long time, evidently several days—he saw the room get dark, then light, then dark, and they shaved him and washed him with warm water and a sponge, and had him urinate, and fed him—several persons entered the room and stood off together talking. At last, beside his bed, Fay appeared.

His wife had on a blue coat and heavy skirt and leotards and her pointed Italian shoes. Her face was orangish and pale, the way it often was early in the morning. Even her eyes were orange, and her hair. Her neck had wrinkles in it, as if her head had twisted back and forth. She carried her big leather purse under her arm, and as she came to the bed he smelled the leather of the purse.

Seeing her, he began to cry. The warm water from his eyes spilled down his cheeks. Fay got Kleenex from her purse, spilling things out onto the floor, and, crouching down, roughly rubbed his face dry. She scoured his face until it burned.

“I’m sick,” he said to her, wanting to reach up and fondle her.

Fay said, “The girls made you an ashtray and I had it fired down at the kiln.” Her voice sounded like the rasp that was his, as if she had been smoking too much again. She did not try to clear her throat as she usually did. “Can I get you anything? Bring you your toothbrush and pajamas? They didn’t let me until I asked you. I have mail for you.” On his chest, near his right hand, she laid a stack of mail. “Everyone’s writing, even your aunt in Washington, D.C. The dog is all right, the children miss you but they’re not feeling frightened or anything, the horse is all right, one of the sheep got out and we had to get Tom Sibley to get it with his pick-up truck.” She turned her head this way and that to stare at him.

“How’s the plant doing?” he said.

“They all send their regards. It’s doing fine.”

Later on, in the next week or so, he was considered well enough to be allowed to sit up and drink milk through a bent glass tube. Propped up on pillows he took in the sun. They put him in a cart and wheeled him around, raised and lowered him. Different people, his family, men from the plant, friends, Fay and the children, people from the area, came to see him.

One day as he lay out in the solarium, getting sun through the double windows, Nathan Anteil and Gwen Anteil came to see him, bringing a bottle of aftershave. He read the label on the bottle. It came from England.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Anything else we can bring you?” Nat Anteil asked.

“No,” he said. “Maybe the back issues of the Sunday Chronicle.”

“Okay,” Nat said.

“Has the place gone to pot? The house?”

“The weeds need to be roto-tilled,” Nat said. “That’s about all.”

Gwen said, “Nat was going to ask you if you wanted him to do it.”

“Fay can operate the roto-tiller,” he answered. For a time he thought about it, the weeds, the gallon bottle of white gas, how long it had been since the roto-tiller had been started up. “She can’t work the carburetor,” he said. “Maybe you could get it started up for her. It’s hard to get the mix right, when it’s been sitting.”

“The doctors say you’re doing fine,” Gwen said. “You have to stay here a while longer and recuperate, that’s all.”

“Okay,” he said.

“They’re building your strength back up,” Gwen said. “It shouldn’t be long. They’re really good here; they’ve got a really good reputation here at the U.C. Hospital.”

He nodded.

“It’s cold down here in San Francisco,” Nat said. “The fog. But the wind isn’t so much as back up at Point Reyes.”

He said, “How does Fay seem to be holding up under this?”

“She’s been very strong,” Gwen said.

“She’s a very strong woman,” Nat said.

“The drive down here from Point Reyes is pretty bad,” Gwen said. “With the children in the car especially.”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s about eighty miles round trip.”

Nat said, “She’s come down every day.”

He nodded.

“Even when she knew she couldn’t see you,” Gwen said, “she still made the drive, with the kids in the back of the car.”

“How about the house?” he said. “Can she manage okay in such a big house?”

Gwen said, “She told me that she’s been a little uneasy alone at night, in such a big house. She had a couple of bad dreams. But she keeps the dog around. She has the kids come into her bedroom and sleep with her. At first she started locking all the doors, but Dr. Andrews said that once she got started on that there’d be no end of it, so she managed to throw off her fears, and now she doesn’t lock any of the doors; she leaves them all unlocked.”

He said, “There’s ten doors leading into that house.”

“Ten,” Gwen said, “Is that so.”

“Three into the living room,” Charley said. “One into the family room. Three into her bedroom. That’s seven right there. Two into the kids’ rooms. That’s nine. So there’s more than ten. Two into the hall, one from each side of the house.”

“That’s eleven so far,” Gwen said.

“One into the utility room,” Charley said.

“Twelve.”

“None into the study,” Charley said. “I guess it’s twelve. At least twelve. There’s always one of them hanging open, letting out heat.”

“Fay’s brother has been giving her a lot of help,” Gwen said. “He’s been doing all the shopping and housecleaning for her, running all kinds of errands for her.”

“That’s right,” Charley said. “I forgot about him completely. He’s there, if anything happens.” It had been in his mind that Fay and the children were the only ones there, alone in the house, now, without a man. The Anteils had overlooked him, too. None of them considered it the same as there being a man in the house, and apparently Fay felt the same way. But anyhow, Jack did the chores for her, so she did not have the burden of work around the house, along with her worry.

“There’s no financial problems that you’ve heard her mention, is there?” he asked. “There shouldn’t be. She has the joint checking account, and I have insurance that ought to be paying off around now.”

“She never mentioned any problem if there is one,” Gwen said. “She seems to have money.”

“She’s always down at the Mayfair cashing a check,” Nat said, with a smile.

“She’ll manage to get it spent,” Charley said.

“Yes, she seems to be doing okay,” Nat said.

“I hope she remembers the bills,” Charley said.

Gwen said, “She has a whole box of bills; I saw it on the desk in the study. She was going over them, trying to decide which ones to pay.”

“I usually do that,” Charley said. “Tell her to pay the utility bills. That’s the rule. Always pay them first.”

“Well, there’s no problem, is there?” Nat said. “She has the ready capital to pay all of them, doesn’t she?”

“Probably does,” Charley said. “Unless this god damn hospitalization is running too much.”

“She could always borrow from the bank,” Gwen said.

“Yes,” Charley said. “But she shouldn’t have to. We have plenty of money. Unless she fouls it up.”

“She’s quite resourceful,” Nat said. “Anyhow, she always gives the impression; I assume she is.”

“She is,” Charley said. “She’s good in a crisis. That’s when she’s the best. One time we were out on Tomales Bay in a sailboat and we couldn’t pump. The pump was busted. Water was coming in. She steered the boat while I bailed by hand. She never got scared. But actually we might have gone down.”

“You told us about that,” Gwen said, nodding.

“She can always get somebody to help her,” Charley said. “If she breaks down on the road she always gets somebody to stop.”

“A lot of women are like that,” Nat said. “They have to be. It’s almost impossible for a woman to change a tire.”

“She wouldn’t change a tire,” Charley said. “She’d rustle up somebody to change it for her. Do you think she’d change a tire? Are you kidding?”

Nat said, “She sure is a good driver.”

“She’s a fine driver,” he said. “She likes to drive.” He added, “She’s good at anything she likes to do. But if she doesn’t like to do it she doesn’t do it; she gets somebody else to do it. I never saw her do anything she didn’t want to do. That’s her philosophy. You must know that; you’re always talking philosophy with her.”

“She’s made the drive down here,” Gwen said. “There’s nothing pleasurable about that.”

“Sure she’s made the drive,” Charley said. “You know what she never has done and never will do? Think of another person besides herself. Everybody’s just somebody to do things for her.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Gwen said.

“Don’t tell me about my wife,” he said. “I know my wife; I’ve been married to her for seven years. Everybody in the world’s a servant. That’s what they are, servants. I’m a servant. Her brother is a servant. She’ll get you to wait on her. She’ll sit there and have you doing things for her.”

The doctor came in and said that the Anteils had to go. Or perhaps it was the nurse. He saw a white figure approach; he heard them talking. Then the Anteils said a rapid good-bye and were gone.

Alone, he lay in the bed, thinking.

Several times in the next few days Fay visited him, with and without the children, and Jack, and friends.

The next time that the Anteils came back only Nat came. He explained that Gwen had to go to the dentist in San Francisco, and that she had let him off here at the U.C. Hospital.

“Where is this hospital?” Charley said. “What part of San Francisco is this?”

Nat said, “Out around Parnassus and Fourth. Getting toward the beach. We’re up high, overlooking the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. It’s a stiff walk around here.”

“I see,” Charley said. “I could see houses, but I couldn’t figure out what pant of the city it was. I don’t know San Francisco very well. The green I saw must be the park.”

“The beginning of the park,” Nat said.

After a time Charley said, “Listen, has she got started getting you to do things?”

With deliberation, Nat said, “I’m not sure what you mean. Both Gwen and I are glad to do anything we can, not for her as such but for you, both of you. For the family.”

“Don’t let her get you to do things,” he said.

Nat said, “It’s natural to do things, anyhow it’s natural to do certain kinds of things. Of course, there’s a limit. We both recognize, Gwen and I, that she’s impulsive. She’s frank; she speaks right out.”

“She’s got the mind of a child,” he said. “She wants something so she goes after it. She won’t take no.”

Nat said nothing to that.

“Does it bother you?” Charley said. “My saying that? Good god, I don’t want you trotting around doing errands for her. I don’t want to see her nob you of your self-respect. No man should do a woman’s errands for her.”

“Okay,” Nat said in a low voice.

“Sorry if this upsets you,” Charley said.

“No, it’s okay.”

“I just want to warn you. She’s an exciting person and people are drawn to her. I’m not saying anything against her. I love her. If I had to I’d marry her again.” No, he thought. If I could I’d kill her. If I could get out of this bed I’d kill her. He said aloud, “God damn her.”

“It’s okay,” Nat said, to make him stop.

“No,” he said, “it’s not okay. That bitch. That devouring bitch. She ate me up. When I get back there I’m going to take her apart piece by piece. God, you know your original reaction to her. I heard. You told Betty Heinz that Fay was a bossy, demanding woman and you didn’t like her.”

“I told Mary Woulden that I had difficulty dealing with her because she was so intense,” Nat said. “And I said she was bossy. We patched it up.”

“Yes,” Charley said. “She was sore. She can’t stand that.”

“We haven’t had any difficulty carrying on a relationship with your wife. We’ve had a very equitable relationship with her. We’re not terribly close to her, but we enjoy her company; we enjoy the children and the house—we like to be over there.”

Charley said nothing.

“To some extent I know what you mean,” Nat said presently.

“Anyhow it doesn’t matter,” Charley said. “Because when I get out of here I’m going to kill her. I don’t care who knows it. I don’t care if Sheriff Chisholm knows it. She can swear out a warrant. Did she tell you I hit her one time?”

Nat nodded.

“She can swear out a warrant for felony wife-beating,” he said. “It’s all the same to me. She can get that twenty-dollars-an-hour psychoanalyst to swear in court that it’s all in my mind, that I’m eaten up with hostility, that I resent her because she has taste and refinement. I don’t care. I don’t give a good god damn about anything. I don’t even care about my kids. I don’t care if I ever see either of them again. I don’t expect to see that house again; I can tell you that. I’ll probably see them, the kids; she’ll bring them here.”

“Yes,” Nat said. “She’s been bringing them down regularly.”

“I’ll never get out of this hospital,” Charley said. “I know that.”

“Sure you will,” Nat said.

“Tell her I know it,” he said, “and I don’t care. Tell her it’s all the same; I don’t give a good god damn. She can have the house. She can remarry anybody she likes. She can do anything she wants with it.”

“You’ll feel better later,” Nat said, patting him on the arm.

“No,” he said. “I won’t feel better.”