"For as long as it takes. I don't care if it's three weeks."
"That's really nice," Stern said. He looked with humility at the floor, as though he expected nothing more.
"You've been pretty good around here and I want to play fair with you," said Belavista. "I've thought it over, and that's the way I'm going to handle it. I'd like to chat some more, but I've got an appointment I can't break. So look, take it easy, get your mind off things, and everything around here will be all right."
"It's amazing the way something like this just happens to you," Stern said.
"That's right," Belavista said, tapping his foot, and Stern, aware that he was keeping him from doing million-dollar things, said, "I'll be rolling along now."
"OK, guy," said Belavista, and Stern left his office, the parachute blowing up big and painful inside him. Once, when someone at college had made fun of Stern for being from Brooklyn, Stern, whose father had made a little extra money at that time, enough to buy a car, had said, "My father can buy and sell you," to the boy. Now, hating his boss, he wanted to say to him, "My father can buy and sell you." If Belavista then pinned him down on the actual worth of his father, Stern would be vague and say, "He made a lot of money in the shoulder pad business."
It was late in the afternoon when Stern got back to his desk, an unsettling and nauseating time; each day at this time Stern would have to face going home and, at the end of his trip, driving past the kike man's house. He would do things, try to distract himself, talk to people and force jokes, but no matter what he did, he would eventually have to leave the safety of his office, where even Glover's pursed lips and his secretary's downbeat buttocks were comforts, and ride home to the kike man. Each night he would buy his newspaper at the station, sit among groups of hearty men, and when one named "Ole Charlie" told adrainpipe anecdote, Stern would raise his head and guffaw at the punch line as though he understood, that he was riding home to a faulty drainpipe too, and that bad drainage was his major concern in life also. And then Stern would bury his head in his newspaper and turn to an important section, like maritime shipping, and look very serious, making an almost physical effort to blend in with the men alongside him, as though if he looked exactly like them, he would become exactly like them, speeding home to drainpipes and suburban pleasures. But then, as his stop grew nearer, a panic would start in his throat. The maritime section would become a blur and he would think how nice it would be to go one stop too far on the railroad and get off in a new place, where he could go to a home fully furnished with Early American chairs, a wife educated at European schools, neighbors named "Ole Charlie," and a street devoid of kike men.
At his desk now, Stern thought that perhaps tonight he would send his wife to tell the kike man to stop everything, to stop tormenting him, because Stern now had an ulcer. He was not ever to hit Stern in the stomach and do anything to his family, because you don't do those things to a man if he's got an ulcer. Not if you wear veteran jackets and fly flags from every window. You're a man of fair play. Stern imagined the man hearing the ulcer news and muttering something, perhaps snickering wetly; but he would never fling Stern's wife down again and peer between her legs. You don't do that to a man's wife if he has an ulcer blooming in his belly and you're supposed to be American and fair. Stern thought how much better it would be if he had lost a leg or gone blind. Then the man would certainly never do anything to him again. If he were blind, that would be complete protection for Stern's wife and child. At a meeting, the man might tell with a giggle of the blind Jew in the neighborhood, but it wouldbe hands off Stern's wife and child. Perhaps, though, Stern had it all wrong. Perhaps the man's commando training would prevail. Never give up an advantage. If you blind a man; but there is still life inside him, jump on him and snuff it out. And Stern imagined himself tapping sightlessly past the man's house, his wife and child flanking him. The man would spot them, walk slowly forward, then gather some speed, put Stern out of commission with a judo chop, kick his child in the crotch, and then get his wife down to stab her sexually, and, worse, get her to wriggle and whimper with enjoyment beneath her conqueror while Stern thrashed blindly in the street.
Stern sipped milk now, got his desk in order, and thought of leaving the container in the center of his desk so that others would find it the following day and be consumed with heartbreak at the tragic symbol. At his desk, Glover spoke with pursed lips to the Board, and Stern imagined suddenly with fright that the moment he left for Fabiola's rest home, Glover would resign from the Board, renounce all effeminate mannerisms, marry immediately, and move into a split-level, thereby becoming attractive to Belavista. When Stern returned, his ulcer vanquished, Glover would be sitting at Stern's desk.
Stern's one Negro friend, Battleby the artist, came in then with sketches for Stern's labels and began immediately to fill Stern in on all his latest activities. A bearded Negro intellectual, he behaved as though his paintings were the major concern of all Americans and people walked the streets in a sweat, chafing to get late details on his career. When someone else in a room was speaking, Battleby felt threatened and would sweat and fidget, tugging at his collar and gulping deeply for air until the person stopped; then Battleby would swallow deeply and say, "They have some pen-and-inks of mine over at theWest Side Gallery, and a Guggenheim director said I'm one of the eight best young Americans in casein."
Battleby sat down now and said to Stern, "Here are the sketches. I'm doing something new with ceramics that an art editor has said promises to be one of the real technical contributions to the art world. You know my far-out comic strip? Well, the syndicate says if I can sharpen the punch line just a little, I have a good chance of selling it to them. The nudes are going quite well. I can sell almost as many as I like. I may teach a course this summer at Polytech in techniques of the French moderns."
For a moment Battleby seemed to forget his next achievement, and when Stern leaned forward to say something, a panic flew into Battleby's eyes and he began to fidget and sweat and tap his feet until he remembered and choked out the next line. "Showing. A showing. If I can come up with twenty-six canvases by September, there's a gallery on Madison that wants me. They once had an original Braque."
He plunged on in this style, and in a way Stern wanted him to continue all night, because he knew that when Battleby stopped, he would have to put on his jacket and go to the train. He wanted, though, to stop Battleby and talk to him about the kike man, but he was afraid to cut him off for fear of being thought anti-Negro. Because he was so embarrassed about his cowardice, he never really talked to anyone about the man down the street, and Battleby seemed a good person to talk to. Who could he repeat it to? A bunch of people up in Harlem? As Battleby went on about his achievements and the people who thought his work was fine, Stern wondered if he could get Battleby to stop being an intellectual for a second and tell Stern some special Negro things about kicking prejudiced people in the guts. He liked his friend's work, though he thought that Battleby used too many browns, tossingthem in inappropriately for ocean scenes, and that the paintings, if inhaled, would even smell a little Negro. He had a strong interest in Battleby's work, and yet another of his reasons for having Battleby as a friend was that down deep he felt he could count on the Negro to hide him from the police in a teeming Harlem flat if ever he were to kill someone. He hoped, too, though he could never suggest this, that Battleby would one night furnish him with supple-bodied Negro girls of Olympian sexual skills who would scream with abandon when Stern bit them gently. And now, as Battleby droned on, he even dared to hope that when he told Battleby of his predicament, the Negro would fling off his horn-rims and fill an open-cab truck with twenty bat-carrying Negro middle-weights, bare to the waist and glistening with perfect musculature. Then Battleby would drive them at great speed to Stern's town to do a job on the man down the street, the pack of them entering the man's house swiftly and letting him have it about the head.
The next time Battleby paused for breath, Stern said, "I don't feel so good. I've got to go away for a while. Look, we never talk, but I've got to talk to someone. Something happened to me out where I live. A guy did this to me because I'm Jewish. You probably run into a lot of Negro things. We never talked about stuff like this before, but I thought we could now."
Battleby fidgeted on his chair and gulped for air, blinking at Stern incredulously, as if to say, "You don't understand. The conversation is about me. I talk about things that have happened to me, and I don't get into other things."
Battleby said: "I've got some crucifixion oils I'd love for you to see. Real giant things with a powerful religious quality. I don't see how I was able to come up with them."
"No, I mean it," Stern said. "I have to talk to someone.What happened is that this guy got my wife down and looked inside her legs and she wasn't wearing anything. This is no fun for me to say, believe me. Then he said kike at her, and the worst thing is I never did anything about it. My kid was standing there. I walked over, but I didn't do anything, and now I'm sick and have to take off for a while. You probably run into a lot of Negro things like that."
A change seemed to come over Battleby now. It was as though he'd been hoping Stern would never get into personal affairs, but now that he had, he wasn't going to let his old friend down. He took off his glasses, wiped them, and began to gulp and shake his head, as though what he were about to say was so true and real he could hardly get it out. Then, in a voice that had all the patience and tolerance of an entire race of long-suffering Negroes, he said, "You have got to abstract yourself so that you present a faceless picture to society."
"We all do," said Battleby, shaking his head and replacing his horn-rims. "Every one of us do."
Stern, puzzled, but afraid that if he asked for elaboration, Battleby would find him anti-Negro, said, "All right. I'm going to start doing that thing right away."
"Good," said Battleby, rising to leave. "I'll call you as various things on me come up." And Stern, heartsick that he had not asked about the truckload of middle-weights, watched the heavy-necked Negro intellectual fly down the hall.
Talking to Battleby, Stern had not thought about his stomach, but now he touched it tentatively and a cloudburst of pain washed upward from his feet and filled his ribs. It was as though a sleeping ulcer had been annoyed and now waited within him, angry, red-eyed, and vengeance-seeking. It did not seem possible that such a large mass of terribleness could be cleared up without "goingin," and Stern was certain Fabiola was wrong after all. He imagined a scene in which a thin-lipped gentile surgeon would deftly slice down several layers inside him and then, after furtively looking about to see that no one was watching, reach in and pluck out fistfuls of things Stern vitally needed. The gentile would then sew him up, leaving Stern four more years of life, in order to avert suspicion.
He finished a container of milk, leaving it slightly crushed and forlorn in the center of his desk, and then walked slowly to the train station, stalling, hoping that something would happen, a minor car accident perhaps, that would eliminate his having to go past the kike man's house. Girls streamed by in the street with lovely unsettling bodies, and Stern imagined the eyes of a good one suddenly meeting his with instant understanding, the two of them going silently to her room to make love, and Stern, by the sheer violence of his thrust, passing the ulcer down through his stomach, out along his organ, and into her belly, where the girl would somehow accept it with more strength than he had been able to.
On the station platform, Stern stood next to two tall, starched, elderly men, both of whom looked like entire organizations in themselves. First one, then the other would make a hearty, obvious observation about the train system, delivered in a deep, resonant, corporational voice, and then both would chuckle with warm, folksy helplessness at the remark. When the train pulled in, leaving the car door a few feet from where they stood, one said, "Looks like that engineer went and missed us again," and the other jabbed him in the ribs and said, "He sure did," and then both laughed with heartiness. The first one said, "Guess we better get our seats before they're all gone," and the second said, "Else maybe they'll raise the price now," and then both howled and patted each other on the back.They took seats behind Stern, and one said, "Sure gonna miss these old rides when I take m'vacation." The other said, "Gonna have yourself a little fun, are ya'?" He dug the first in the ribs, and then both slapped their knees. The train was late getting started, and Stern thought he would join in and try one of their obvious remarks. He wheeled around and said, "Looks like we'll never get out of here." The pair looked at him with hostility.
After the train started, the men began to read newspapers, one of them holding his in such a way that the edge of it cut into Stern's neck, chafing it as he turned the pages. Stern wanted to turn around and ask the man to hold it another way, but he was sure the man would rise and make a speech to the other passengers about Stern, unveiling him as a Jewish newcomer to the train, editor of sin-town stories. He would first warm up the audience, getting laughs from some obvious but folksy remarks, and then deliver his denunciatory speech with confidence and authority, as though he were speaking to a board. He would then turn the floor over to Stern, who would begin a sophisticated anecdote, get confused, and finally slink down wordlessly in his seat, the sin-town editing charge unrefuted, while other gentiles in their seats applauded derisively and shouted, "Hear, hear; fine speech." He made irritated shrugs with his neck, hoping the man would get the idea, but the paper edge remained against his neck. Stern finally wheeled around, but when his eyes caught the other man's unblinking gaze, he looked upward, as though his intention had been to examine the car ceiling.
A conductor around the same age as the two men came and stood next to them, swaying in the aisle, and one of them said to the other, "He's sure got the racket, don't he?" The second one howled and said, "Betcha he's got a little snort in his pocket for you if you ask him," and thenboth rocked with laughter as the conductor shook his head in mock exasperation and said, "You guys are great kidders."
It was stuffy in the train, and Stern could not get his window open. He opened his belt all the way, as though to give the ulcer more room and comfort, but it seemed to swell and spread out, as though it would occupy any amount of space it was given. Stern felt uncomfortable and remembered suddenly that Fabiola had told him always to be on the lookout for a black coffee-grounds substance if he should have occasion to vomit. This thought, combined with the stuffiness and the paper in his neck, nauseated him; he was hemmed in by a small lady who glittered blindingly with jeweled ornaments. "I think I've got to get out of here and vomit," he said to her, getting up and making his way past her knees. "Why didn't you think of it before?" she said, shifting herself in annoyance. "You're halfway there." Stern got out into the aisle ant asked the conductor, "Which way to vomit?" The conductor considered the question a long time, then shook his head and began to walk to one end of the car. The two men stuck their heads in their newspapers, as though Stern had violated his twentieth rule since the trip began and was past all comment. He followed the conductor to the platform between cars. The conductor pointed to a corner of the tiny platform and said, "Vomiting's done in there on newspapers. I'll get passengers out the other way."
"Can I begin now?" Stern asked, not wishing to violate any vomiting protocol. Without answering, the conductor walked back into the car. Stern realized he had no paper and returned to the smoker, where he asked a man for some. "I'm not feeling so hot," he said, and the man said, "All righty," and gave him a section he had alreadylooked at. Stern spread it out in the corner of the between-cars platform and tried to vomit neatly and with as little fuss as possible. It occurred to him before he started that perhaps he might vomit forth the ulcer and then kick it off the platform, rid of it forever, but then he went ahead, and when he was finished, his stomach remained bloated with pain. He searched the floor now, looking for coffee grounds, but there was no trace of any, and in a sense he felt a little disappointed. He remained on the platform with the newspapers, guarding the area, as though to prove he didn't want to evade responsibility. He remained crouched next to the newspaper, and he wondered what happened to people who died on the between-cars area. Did they have a special procedure for getting them off the train? Were they taken off on stretchers, keeping up the ruse that they were still alive, or were they simply carried off in special body bundles?
When the train stopped, the conductor diverted people in Stern's car to the other exit and then came back to Stern. "I guess you can go now," he said. "Try and do this before starting out or after getting there."
"All right," Stern said, and walked off the train, relieved that he did not have to go through a special trial for vomiters and that he was still allowed to use the train.
The sun was going down as Stern got into his car, and he wished now that there was some way to let the kike man know that this was a day in which he had just vomited and had gotten official confirmation of his ulcer and that, just for this one day, it was all to stop. He was to stop hating Stern and Stern was to be allowed to just put the man out of his mind. He was to be allowed to ride home just like any other man coming home to his family.
In a way, though, the ulcer that raged within him and the train vomiting seemed to release him and give him atiny flutter of courage. He drove toward the man's house with the feeling that he had been given the ulcer and had vomited in humiliation on a train and now there was little else that could happen to him. Once, when Stern was young, his mother had bought a corduroy jacket for his birthday and he had worn it in the street. The orphan boy, who had tormented and bullied him for months, swept down suddenly and tore the jacket from Stern's body, slipping into it himself and then dancing around in it tantalizingly, beyond Stern's reach. A coldness had come over Stern and he had advanced toward the boy with poise and self-control and said, "Give me that jacket." The onlookers had said, "Are you crazy? He'll crack your head." But the orphan boy, startled by Stern's show of resistance, had taken off the jacket and said, "Here. Can't you take a joke?" And Stern had put the jacket back on and then slipped into the old relationship, in which the bigger and stronger boy tormented and bullied him, knocking him against buildings, blackening his eyes, picking him up, and slamming him to the ground. Now, as he drove past the man's house, the feeling of control returned for an instant and he slowed down. He thought that he would walk into the man's house, take off his coat, and say, "Just wear this coat. I dare you to wear it. My mother bought it for me." And then, if the man put on the coat, Stern would somehow be able to crush him with a blow, battering his head through his living-room window. But then Stern thought, "What if he declines to wear the coat, grins wetly, and simply drives his fist into my ulcer-swollen belly, actually breaking open a hole in it?" And so Stern drove past the man's house, his hands shaking at the wheel.
Outside his house, with the dark coming on fast, Stern walked across the lawn, kicking furiously at fallen pears and crying through his nose. He did this for a long time,and he was not without the thought that perhaps it would help; he would be heard, someone would be touched, and when he dried his eyes, there would be no ulcer.
His wife had gone for the day, leaving the child in the care of a baby-sitter, and when Stern paid her and sent her away, he saw that his parents had driven out unexpectedly.
Stern's father was a small, meticulously dressed man whose years of cutting shoulder pads had made him terribly precise about details. Whenever Stern, as a boy, began the new side of a quarter-pound stick of butter that had been started on the other side, his father would slap his hand and say, "That's no way to do it. I can't understand you." He spent a great deal of time after meals scooping up bread crumbs with a precise rolling motion of the knife, not stopping until he had gotten every last crumb. His teeth were his best feature, and whenever he passed a mirror he would draw back his lips and try several varieties of smiles, practicing broad ones and quick, spontaneous grins. He had a special thin, six-note whistle, which Stern as a boy had always listened for late at night; it meant he was home, and Stern would watch him from the window, a small man, walking jauntily, on his way to the three-room apartment to practice a few quick grins before the mirror and then sit down to eat a meal with factorylike precision. Stern had not fancied the idea of having a small father, but one day he had seen this compactly built man point his nose up at a towering motorman on a crowded subway train and say, "Ah, button up or I'll dump you on your ass." The nose he had thrust up in the motorman's face had a jagged scar along its bridge which fascinated Stern. Whenever his father practiced grins, he would also check the scar, stretching it for agood look. Stern liked to run his finger along his father's nose scar, gently, as though it still might hurt. One day his father told Stern the scar had been given to him by two soccer players in a strange neighborhood who had suddenly lashed out and knocked him unconscious. The friends of Stern's father had gone looking for the men with steel piping but never found them. Stern liked that story and told it to people all the time, enjoying it when he could say, "My father's friends went looking for the guys with pipes." Stern wished he had friends who would do that for him.
When Stern's father had failed to inherit the shoulder pad business from his brother Henny, he had simply continued on as a shoulder pad cutter, smiling surreptitiously into mirrors, and seemed not to have realized that his whole life had gone down the drain. He did describe his brother Henny's death often, however, acting it out in vigorous pantomime. "They just found him sitting in a chair," he would tell the listener, "like this," and then he would let his knees bend a little, his arms sag at his sides, and pop his eyes, letting his tongue hang grotesquely from his mouth.
When the business dream had faded, however, Stern's mother had never recovered. It meant she could never own a home in Saint Petersburg and decorate it in Chinese modern. She had been a tall, voluptuous woman with much nerve. When Stern was young, she would just hail cars on the street instead of cabs, and then she and Stern would jump into them that way with whoever was driving. In restaurants she would grab celebrities and hold them by the sleeve, hollering across to the embarrassed young Stern, "I've got Milton Berle" or "I just grabbed Bob Eberle." After the business debacle, she aged swiftly and began to drink. She tried furiously to cling to her youth and did little dance steps all the time, humming toherself and executing them in subways, in bars, on the street. When she was with Stern in restaurants or anywhere in public, she would look at a strange young man and say, "He's for me" or "I could make him in ten seconds." Stern would answer, "I don't get any kick out of hearing things like that." The phrase "make" sickened him. He didn't want to know about his dated mother, with her slack, antique thighs and dyed hair, doing old-fashioned things with strange, dull men.
They waited in the house for him on this day, Stern's father in a slipover sweater, his mother in toreador pants, and they had brought along Stern's Uncle Babe, a thin man with giant Adam's apple who had spent much of his life in mental institutions. Married to a concert violinist and thought to be of modest circumstances, he had attended a recital one evening and run amok, certain there were poison gases in the air. When police subdued him, he was found to be carrying bankbooks showing balances of a million dollars. Stern had childhood memories of visiting him in frightening institutions, bringing him boxes of pralines, his favorites, and then seeing Uncle Babe led out in institution clothes, which were always too large. Stern would sit and smile at his uncle on a bench, and then, on the way home, his mother would say, "He has some head. As sick as he is, he can tell you smarter things than people on the outside."
Now, Stern's mother led forth Uncle Babe and said to Stern, "Look who I brought out for you. Uncle Babe. You always loved him."
Stern hugged Uncle Babe with great tenderness, as though to make up for all the wrongs done to him by heartless institutions, and Stern's mother said, "Get him to tell you about the market. To this very day, he has some head." Stern sat alongside his Uncle Babe and theconversation took the usual course. Uncle Babe would make a few statements about the financial world, too generalized to be put to any moneymaking use, and then would slide into a monologue about the difficulty of getting a decent piece of fish, various smells in the air, and how certain shirt fabrics itched your skin.
"He has some head if you can only keep him on the right track," said Stern's mother.
After a while, Stern arose and said, "I can't listen to anybody any more. I've come home today with an ulcer."
Stern's mother said, "I don't believe it."
Stern said, "I've got one, all right. With a large crater. In two days I have to go to a rest place for it. It hurts right now."
"That's what I needed," Stern's mother said, puffing at a cigarette. "I don't have enough. That's the perfect extra thing I need to carry."
Stern's father, standing small and round-shouldered, shook his head gravely and said, "You've got to take care of yourself. That's what happens. I've told you that and I've told you that."
Uncle Babe leaned forward, staring widely, and said, "I like a piece of fish on a night like this, but I don't like the way it smells."
"I'm going to have a drink," said Stern's mother. "And I don't need any comments either. Do you know where I'd be if I wasn't able to take a little drink?" She swallowed some Scotch from a shot glass and said, "I don't have any reason to drink, do I? No reason in the world."
"Maybe I'll just go upstairs and lie down," Stern said. "It hurts plenty inside me."
"I'm not going to worry about it," Stern's mother said. "I can't kill myself. I've had disappointments in my life, too. Plenty of them. I could tell you plenty."
"I am not interested in people's disappointments," Stern said. "My stomach hurts me."
"All right, so I said something wrong," she said. "Look, darling, stay downstairs awhile. Maybe it'll make you feel better. Talk to your Uncle Babe. You love him. You know his head."
"Maybe we could all use a little music in our systems," she said, instructing Stern's father to bring in a small accordion he carried in the trunk of his car. As a boy, Stern had sung at home to his father's accordion playing. His voice was not bad, and his mother had once taken him to a talent agent, who'd had Stern sing into his ear and then rejected him for poor head tones. But Stern's mother was rhapsodic over his voice, and now, as Stern's father played some warm-up trills, she sank into a chair and said, "Sing for me, darling. It'll make us all feel better."
"I'm not singing anything," Stern said.
"All right, don't sing for me, sing for your Uncle Babe," she said. "He's never heard your voice, and he's come all the way out here. He'll faint when he hears you."
"Jesus," Stern said. "I'm thirty-four." But when his father played an old ballad, he began to come in with the words.
"That voice," his mother said. "The same voice. I could die."
When he reached the bridge of the song, Stern said, "I'm not doing any more of this. I told you about my stomach. Doesn't anybody realize my stomach hurts? I've got a goddamned ulcer. I have to go away to a home."
"Don'tsing," said Stern's mother. "What am I going to do—put a bullet through my head? I only had an idea. I thought it would be good for everybody." Stern's father continued through the song, as though respecting a show-business tradition that no matter how adverse the circumstances, all numbers are to be completed. Uncle Babe leaned across to Stern's mother and said, "Listen, did you take a look at my shirt? I don't like the feel of it. It doesn't feel good on my skin."
"The crazy bastard doesn't even hear the music," said Stern's mother. "He's in a world of his own."
Stern's father wound up the ballad with an elaborate trilling effect, and then Stern's mother said, "Isn't your wife home when you have an ulcer?"
"She doesn't know about it yet," said Stern.
"She ought to be home if you're not feeling well," said Stern's father.
"I said she doesn't know. Listen, none of this is doing me any good. I'm going upstairs on the bed. I'm going to a home in a few days, and I've got to stay quiet until then. Nobody upset me about anything."
He went upstairs, and when his stomach touched the bed, it seemed to puff up with pain like great baby cheeks and he had to roll over on his back to be comfortable. A car moved into the driveway and he went to the window and saw his wife hop out, come around and kiss a man through the driver's window, and then run into the house. Stern got back into bed. She was downstairs for a while, and then she ran up the steps and knelt beside him and said, "What happened?"
"I've come up with an ulcer and there'll be some kind of institution in a few days."
"Oh, that's not so bad," she said, her great eyes wide, kissing his wrist. "You'll fix it right up in a few days."
"No, I won't," said Stern. "It's a big thing and it'll be in there for a while. I may have to be away for a long time."
She was wearing a tight jumper that hugged her flaring thighs snugly; the crease of her underwear showedthrough, and Stern had a sudden fear that she had just thrown on her clothes in a great hurry.
"Where were you?" he asked. "I thought you don't go anywhere out here."
"I went to a modern dance class today for the first time," she said, her eyes shimmering with warmth. "I thought it would give me an interest."
"But I've come home with an ulcer," Stern said.
"I didn't know that," she said.
"Who was the one in the car?"
"José," she said. "The instructor. He picks up the students and takes them home."
"I saw a kiss," said Stern, a slow and deadly beat beginning against his stomach walls, as though fists inside him were pleading for attention.
"Oh, that's just a thing he does, like show business. It was nothing."
"But I saw tongues," said Stern.
"No, you didn't," she said. "I can't help whathedid. I didn't use my tongue."
"Oh my God,then there was a tongue."
Stern's mother and father came up to the room, followed by Uncle Babe. All three stood in the doorway.
"That's some place for a wife to be when there's a sickness," said Stern's mother. "Out of the house." She downed a shot of Scotch and said, "And they wonder why I take a little drink."
"I'll be where I want," Stern's wife said, and his small father came forth, shoved his nose into her face, and said, "You'll be home with him."
Uncle Babe came into the room, eyes wide in the pale glare of the single bedroom lamp, and said, "I smell gas; open the window, somebody," and Stern had a picture of himself, thin and unshaven, sitting in oversized clothes on the bench of one of Uncle Babe's institutions, waiting forhis son and wife to visit him, the boy carrying a box of pralines for him, his favorites. The fists within him stepped up the rhythm of their beat, and Stern began to roll from one side of the bed to the other, hands tight around his stomach, as though to keep it from falling apart. "Call Fabiola," he said in a whisper. "Tell him no two days. I've got to go tonight. Oh, please, tell him I've got to get started tonight."
Fabiola told Stern of pills that would take him through the night and said he would arrange space at the home for the following morning. Stern awakened blinking to an agonizingly warm and lovely summer day. But the summer fragrance unsettled him; on such days his son would have to stand without playmates, sucking a blanket on a barren lawn, and Stern would at some point have to stand outside and perhaps see the man a mile down the road. Dark and dreary weather made Stern rejoice, because on such days there was no shame in staying inside the house, where it was safe. Down deep at the center of him there was a small capsule of glee that he was going to the home on this day; if dark and terrible things happened then to his family, he could not be held responsible. How could he prevent them if he was away in a home?
The midnight driveway kiss nagged at him now, and he reached for his wife as though to nail her down, to stake a claim in her during his absence, to mark her, change her in some way so there would be no smoothly coordinated backseat tumbles with José during his absence. She watched him like a great-eyed fourth-grade girl, but then her eyes closed, her skin became cold, and she clung to him with a nervous, clattering whimper, doing a private, rising-up kind of thing. He went at her with a frenzy, as though by the sheer force of his connection he could dosomething to her that would keep her quiet and safe and chaste for two weeks, but when he fell to the side he saw with panic that she was unchanged, unmarked, her skin still cold and unrelieved.
"Can you be a man again, my darling?"
"No," Stern said. "I've got something inside me. I've got to get up to that home. Listen, can you give up that ballet thing when I'm away?"
"No, I don't want to. It's the first thing I've had."
"OK, then," he said. "But no more tongues. Can't you drive home by yourself?"
"He drives the students home. The kissing is just a show-biz thing. Can't you be a man one more time? I'm going to have to jump on a telephone pole."
"I don't want you to say things like that," said Stern.
Outside, on the lawn, it occurred to Stern that he had never seen his house during the week at this precise time of day. It was eleven in the morning, a time when he was usually at work for two hours. He had gone to work on schedule for many years, and in his mind he had felt that if he ever stopped and stayed home one day, or left his job entirely, he would die. And yet here he was, standing on the lawn, looking at his home, and he was perfectly alive. Perhaps that was it, he thought; perhaps all he had to do was to stop work for one day and see that he could live and he would not have gotten the ulcer. His son came out and said, "How long will you be away?"
"A little while," Stern said.
"I can't wait for a little while," the boy said.
"I'll be back soon."
"I can't wait till soon. Listen, do you know where we are?"
"Where?" Stern said.
"In God's hand; right on his pinkie, as a matter of fact."
"Who teaches him God things?" Stern said to his wife.
"The baby-sitter. She's inside."
Stern said, "She shouldn't." He wanted to go inside and tell her to discontinue the God information, but he was afraid she would come after him one night with a torch-bearing army of gentiles and tie him in a church.
Stern's wife drove the car, and as they passed the man's house down the street Stern ducked down and made himself invisible, as though he did not want the man to know of his triumph. Stern was certain that if the man knew he had put Stern in a home, he would fly a dozen flags thrillingly from every window.
On the highway, Stern watched his wife's knees, apart as they worked the pedals; he imagined her dropping him off at the home, then going immediately to a service station and allowing the attendant to make love to her while her feet kept working the pedals so that she could always say that she had driven all the way home without stopping. She pulled into the driveway of the Grove Rest Home in the late afternoon and Stern, saying goodbye, squeezed her flesh and kissed her through her dress, as though by getting in these last touches he could somehow ward off the gas station attendant.
Part Three
A giant picture of a somber, bewhiskered, constitutional-looking man hung in the reception lobby. Stern took this to be Grove himself. The lobby was a great, darkened, drafty place, and as Stern passed the picture he instinctively ducked down a little, certain that Grove, in setting up the home, had no idea people such as Stern would be applying for admission. As Stern stood before the reception desk he expected an entourage of Grove's descendants to run out with clenched fists and veto him.
A tiny, gray-haired nurse looked up at him and said, "What can I do for you, puddin'?" Stern told her who he was.
"Of course, dumplin'," she said, checking her records. "You're the new intestinal. I'll get Lennie out for you. Does it hurt much?"
Stern said he'd had a bad night and asked what the rate was. She said three dollars a day. "That includes your three meals and your evening milk and cookie."
Stern had been ready to pay ten dollars a day and feltashamed at getting it for so little. She said, "Everyone pays the same rate, crumb bun," and Stern said, "I'll donate a couch later when I get out."
A tall, handsome Negro with powerful jaw muscles came out on steel crutches, moving slowly, adjusting clamps and gears as he clattered forward. He was pushing a baggage cart, and he threw his legs out one at a time behind it, as though he were casting them for fish.
"This is Lennie," said the nurse. "You'll like him. He's a sugarplum. Lennie, this is Mr. Stern, your new intestinal."
"Very good," said the Negro. "Bags on the cart, Mr. Stern. Patients to the left of me as we walk."
"I can handle them," said Stern. The Negro's jaw muscles bunched up, and he said, "Patients to my left. Bags on the cart."
Stern, afraid of his great jaw muscles, tossed his bags on the cart, and the Negro began to clatter forward, clamps and gears turning, leg sections rasping and grinding out to the side, one at a time. Stern fell in beside him, hands in his pockets, feigning a very slow walk, as though he, too, took days to get places.
"Are you originally from New York?" Stern asked. "I just came from there and it's funny, but the last guy I saw was a Negro artist friend of mine."
"There'll be no dinner," said the Negro, sweat shimmering on his forehead as he pushed the cart, looking straight ahead. "That's at five. You're late for milk and cookie, too. One lateness is allowed on that, though. Did the nurse furnish you with milk and cookie?"
"No," said Stern.
The Negro's jaw muscles tightened again, and he glared violently at Stern. He released the cart, turned around after much shifting and switching of gears, andbegan to make his way back to the nurse. Stern walked several steps behind him. When the Negro got back to the reception desk, he asked the nurse, "Did you give this intestinal milk and cookie?"
"No, I didn't, old stocking," said the nurse.
"That's what he claim," said the Negro, freezing Stern with another glare. Once again he shifted gears, arranged clamps, tugged and yanked at elaborate mechanisms, and finally turned and walked complicatedly down a dark ramplike hall, Stern falling in beside him. The darkness was dropping swiftly; parallel to the ramp and off in the distance were the blinking fights of a building that seemed to be set off by itself, deliberately isolated. Crowd sounds were coming from it, as though from a bleachers group that had remained long after a ball game.
"Is that where were going?" Stern asked the Negro.
"You're not to go there," he said. "That's Rosenkranz, where mentals are to be taken. And you're not to be social with attendants at Grove, such as myself."
He looked straight ahead as he took his zigzagging, clanking, spastic steps, and Stern was somehow convinced that this man was doing the most important work in the world. That there was nothing of greater moment than being the attendant for intestinals and being in charge of baggage carriers. Despite his complicated legs, he seemed a terribly strong man to Stern, who felt that even were he to flee to the Netherlands after a milk and cookie infraction, getting a fifteen-hour start, the Negro would go after him Porgy-like and catch him eventually. He wondered if somehow he might not be able to enlist the Negro and his great jaw muscles to fight the man down the street. He saw the man knocking the Negro down seven or eight times and the Negro disgustedly wiping off his clean intern's jacket, making clamp andgear adjustments, and then, handsome face serious and determined, great jaw muscles bunched, coming on to squeeze the life out of the kike man's throat.
They came finally to the end of the ramp and to a two-story dormitory, which Lennie identified as Griggs. He pointed to a room right inside the entrance and said, "One is not ever to enter the staff room. There is to be a line outside for medicines and, later, for milk and cookie. There'll be no leaving the grounds either; otherwise, strict penalties will ensue."
Stern's room was on the second floor. It took double the usual number of gear shiftings and fastener slidings for the Negro to mount the stairs, and when he was up there his jaw muscles were lumped enormously and his white intern's jacket was soaked. Stern said, "Thank you for all your trouble," and the Negro, after opening the room door, said, "One is to obey all rules here on the premises."
Stern's room was long and thin and rancid, as though aging merchant marine bosuns with kidney difficulties had spent their lives in it. A small middle-aged man with a caved-in chest and loose pouches under his eyes sat on one of the two beds in the dim light and said, "Hey, what's this?"
"What?" asked Stern.
The man had arranged his hands in a tangled way, as though he were scrubbing them, and was holding them against a lamp so that a clumping, knobby shadow showed against the wall.
"I don't know what that is," Stern said.
"See the dingus? See the wang-wang?"
"What do you mean?" Stern asked.
"You know. It's sexeroo. Screwerino."
Stern looked at the shadows again and, as the man manipulated his fingers, Stern thought he could make out a rough picture of a pair of sexual organs in contact.
"That's pretty good," Stern said.
"Check these," the man said, pulling a medallion out of his T-shirt and beckoning Stern closer. Stern looked at it, a carving of a lion and a deer, which turned into a pair of male and female genitals when tilted at an angle.
"See the dingus? Can you see the wang-wang? You want to hold it and fool around with it awhile?"
Stern actually wanted to get a better look at it, but he said, "No, thanks. I'm just getting in here and I want to take it easy. I'm going to just lie down and not do anything for a while."
"I got that last set from a guy carved them in prison. Listen, do you want me to do another one on the wall? I can do blowing."
"I just want to lie down here," said Stern, "and take it easy the first night. I have some things on my mind."
Stern got down on the bed and thought again about the man down the street. He imagined coming home and finding out that the man had moved away, unable to make his mortgage payments. Or that he had developed a lower-back injury, so that the least motion would cause him agony. Stern saw himself running over with extended hand and showing the man that he would not take advantage of him, that he would not fight him in his weakened condition, that Jews forgive. He wanted opportunities to demonstrate that Jews are magnanimous, that Jews are sweet and hold no grudges. He pictured the man's boy falling down a well, and Stern, with sleeves rolled up, being the first to volunteer to work day and night digging adjacent holes to get him out. Or the man's child being stricken with a rare disease and Stern anonymously sending checks to pay the medical bills but somehow letting the man know it was really Stern. And then he saw himself and the man becoming fast friends from that point on, Stern inviting him in to the city tomeet Belavista, showing the man he didn't mind his work clothes. But mostly he wanted the back injury, and clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes hard, as though just by straining he could make it happen. If only there was a way, he thought, that he could pay to make it happen—even a large figure like $8,000, which he would work off at $10 a week.
His room-mate asked, "Do you mind any farting?" And Stern said, "I don't have any views on that."
"I cut loose a few," said the man, "but I wanted to ask, because I know a lot of the younger ones object."
The room was thick with the smell of merchant marine sheets, and Stern sat up, touching his stomach to see whether it had gotten any better since he had come to the home.
"I've got something in here and I wonder how long I'm going to have to take to get it out of here," Stern said.
"I've got the weakness is all that's wrong with me," said the man. "I've had it ever since I left the circuit. I did comedy vignettes. I used to get fifty-two straight weeks in those days, but snappers killed me off and I can't work any more. You see, I never used many snappers, maybe three a night. What I'd do is work around m'crowd, futz them along a little, nurse them, slowly giving them the business, and then, maybe after twenty minutes, I'd come in with m'snapper. I'd use maybe three a night, four tops. Nowadays the new ducks throw them out a mile a minute, no futzing in between, just one after another. Anyone who books you wants you to shoot out a million snappers before he'll even consider you. Well, I just couldn't change my style, and now I've got the weakness."
"I don't know what to say to any of that," Stern said. "I'm just here to get rid of something I've got in here."
"Suck what?" said the man.
"What do you mean?" asked Stern.
"That's one of them. One of my old snappers. I'd ask a Saturday night bunch if they had any special song requests, and when they hollered out a few, I'd take my time, do a little business with m'feet, and then say to them, 'Suck what?'"
The room seemed to have gotten narrower, and Stern was afraid that someone would seal him in with the merchant marine sheets and the old actor.
"I'm just going to go out and get the feel of the place," Stern said, getting up from the bed.
Stern walked outside in the hall and got his first look at the half man. Starting with his neck and going all the way down his body, about half had been cut away. In the shadows, with a handkerchief around his neck and a violin in his hand, he made a beseeching sound at Stern. His voice seemed to come from some place a foot away from him and sounded like a radio turned on a little too loud and tuned in to a small, dying station in New Jersey. Stern walked ahead, his face frozen, as though he did not see the man, and on the way down the steps he heard an off-key violin melody played with sorrow and no skill, muffled by a closed door. Stern wondered whether at some future date, when halves started to be taken out of him, he too would be farmed off to a home to sit unloved in the shadows and play a tortured violin.
Downstairs on the front porch a scattering of people talked beneath a great insect-covered bulb. An old man, gray-haired, draped over a wooden banister like a blanket, winked deeply and called Stern forward. In the weeks to come, Stern was to see him clinging insect-like against poles, draped over rails, propped up against walls, but never really standing. Whenever the people at Griggs moved somewhere as a unit, to meals or to the outdoor stadium, the strongest would always carry Rooney, whoweighed very little, and see that he was perched or propped up or laid comfortably against something. His main concern was the amount of money great people had or earned, and his remarks were waspish on this subject. He poked Stern in the ribs and said, "Hey, the President don't make much dough, does he? I mean, he really has to hustle to scrape up cigarette money." He chuckled deeply and, poking Stern again, said, "You know who else is starving to death? Xavier Cugat. I mean, he really don't know where his next cuppa coffee's comin' from." He became convulsed with laughter. "He goes to one of them pay toilets, he's got all holy hell to scare up a dime. Jesus," he said, choking with laughter and poking Stern, "we wouldn't want to be in his shoes, would we? We sure are lucky not to be Cugie." He started to slip off the rail and Stern caught him and propped him up again. "Thanks, kid," said Rooney. "All them guys are starving, you know."
A tall, nervous, erupting teen-age boy was on the porch, pushing back and forth in a wheelchair a Greek youth who Stern learned had had a leg freshly cut off in a street fight. A blond nurse with flowering hips passed by and the Greek boy said, "The last day I'm going to jazz that broad. They're going to let me out, see. That's when I tear-ass up the steps and catch her on the second floor and jazz her good. I going to jazz her so she stays jazzed."
"Where are you tear-assin'?" said the tall boy. He combed his blond hair nervously with one hand as he pushed the wheelchair. "You got one leg gone."
"Shut up, tithead," said the Greek boy, concentrating hard. "I jazz her. Then they come after me and I cut out to Harlem. I cut out so they never find me."
"Where you cuttin'?" asked the tall, nervous boy. "You can't cut nowhere."
"You're a tithead," said the boy in the wheelchair.
Stern approached the pair and the tall, blond boy said, "How are you, fat ass? Jesus," he said to the boy in the wheelchair, "you ever see such a fat ass?"
Stern smiled thinly, as though this were a great joke and not an insult.
"I've put on a little weight because of something I've got inside me," he said. "It certainly is a lovely night."
The tall boy erupted in violence. "You trying to be smart or something?"
"What do you mean?" said Stern in panic.
"Talking like that. You trying to make fun of us?"
"Of course not," Stern said.
"What did you say lovely for? We're just a bunch of guys. The way I see it, you think maybe you're better than the rest of us."
"It's just a way to say something, is all," said Stern.
The boy was a strange mixture, exploding with rage one minute and lapsing into a mood of great gentleness the next. The latter quality took over now, and he began to pour out his thoughts, as though he might never have another chance to talk to someone so smart he used "lovely" and wasn't even showing off. It was as though the occasion called for conversation only on the highest level.
"I've got bad blood," he said, the violence gone. "I couldn't get into the Army with it. I work on high wires, you know. I'm the only one who don't use a safety harness. You know, I'll just swing from one wire to another. The guys see me, they flip out. I'm not afraid of anything. You get killed; so what? Then my blood gets lousy and I have to stay in bed three months, six months, I don't care. I just like to have freedom. A bunch of us guys was sitting around at Coney Island eating a plate of kraut and the man comes over and says it's time to close and takes away my plate of kraut. He didn't say it nice or anything. Rightaway he's stepping on our head. So we really give it to him and run the hell out of there. I hit him with the whole table.
"But you see what I mean?" he said with an overwhelming tenderness, as though Stern were his first link with civilization and he wanted Stern to interpret his position before the world. "A guy has to have freedom. The whole trouble with everything is that there's always somebody stepping on your head when you're eating a bowl of kraut."
"Sounds pretty reasonable," said Stern.
"Are you sure you're not trying to show us up?" the boy said, erupting again and taking Stern by the collar.
"No," Stern said, imagining the boy hitting him with a table.
"You're all right," the boy said, the gentleness returning. "I'll bet the only reason you have a fat ass is because you're sick, right?"
"That's why," said Stern.
"Maybe one night—George, you, and me—we all go downtown to get some beers."
By sliding and slipping from railings to banisters, Rooney had attached himself to a pole close to the trio. "You know who don't have a pot to piss in?" he said. "The guys who run this place. They don't eat good at all, do they?" he said, chuckling deeply and clinging to the pole like a many-legged insect.
The little staff room inside the front door lit up now, and from within, behind a counter, the Negro attendant said, "Line up for bandage and pill. Staff quarters are not to be entered."
The porch people lined up outside the staff room, Rooney sliding and clinging along as the line moved. The old actor had come downstairs and was standing alongside a dark-haired woman with sticklike legs and a thinmustache. Her head was covered with a kerchief and she tittered shyly as the old actor whispered things into her ear. He was very courtly toward her, making deep, gallant bows, and Stern wondered whether he had shown her any medallions. Stern stood at the end of the line next to a paunchy, middle-aged man who introduced himself as Feldner. "You're an intestinal, I hear," the man said. "I had what you had, only now I'm in here worrying about something else. You're a pretty smart boy. I heard you say lovely to those kids. What do you do?"
"I write labels for products," said Stern.
"I worked the casinos all my life," said the man. "All over Europe, lately the Caribbean. But I was always betting on the wrong rejyme. I'd put my money on a rejyme, see, and then I'd be working a table, making my three clams a week, when bingo, a plane flies over, drops a bomb, and we got no more casino. Once again Feldner's got his money on the wrong rejyme. One rejyme in South America give me an ulcer, what you got. But now I'm worrying about something else. How'd you like to write a book about a guy who always bet his money on the wrong rejyme?"
When Stern's turn came, he saw that the Negro, inside the staff room, had taken off his intern's jacket. He had great turbulent shoulder muscles, and Stern wondered what his legs looked like, all fitted up in their contraptions.
"Bullet got me in the high ass region," he said, his back to Stern, preparing Stern's medication. "Pacific. It pinched off a nerve and caused my legs not to move."
Stern welcomed the sudden intimacy and said, "You get around fine. I never saw anyone handle things so smoothly. When I was a kid, I used to go up to the Apollo on Amateur Night in Harlem. You'd see some really fine acts there. That's where Lena started, and Billy Eckstine."He put his foot inside the door and the Negro turned swiftly, jaw muscles pumped up with rage, and said, "There is not to be any entering of the staff room."
Stern said, "All right." He was the last one in line, and when he had swallowed his medicine, the Negro lowered the staff-room light and Stern went upstairs. On the top step the half man was waiting for him, a bandage around his neck. As Stern approached, he flung open his bathrobe in the shadows and said, "Look what they did to me," his voice coming from a static-filled car radio on a rainy night. Stern pushed by him, making himself thin so as not to touch him, closing his eyes so as not to see him, not daring to breathe for fear he would have to smell the neck bandage. He got into his narrow room and shut the door tight and wondered whether the half man would wait outside the door until he was sleeping and then slip into bed beside him, enclosing the two of them in his bathrobe. The old actor was wheezing deeply and Stern got between the damp merchant marine sheets, wondering whether Fabiola hadn't made a mistake in sending him to this place where he had to look at half men, as though to get a preview of horrors in store for him. He touched his middle and, disappointed that the great globe of pain still existed, began to pat it and knead it down, as though to hurry along the treatment. As always, his last thoughts before dropping off to a nightmare of sleep were of the man down the street. It struck him as unfair that no matter how many pills he put inside his stomach, no matter how gently he rubbed and patted it, no matter how healthy he got at the Grove Rest Home, he would still have to go home and drive past the man's house twice a day. The man would still be there to start Stern's belly swelling again. How unfair it was. Couldn't bodies of medical people be dispatched to tell the man that Stern was receiving treatment, was getting better, and he was to leave him alone and not bother his wife and child, otherwise Stern would crack with pain once more? Bodies of medical people with enforcement powers. Couldn't Grove send a group of envoys of this nature on ahead of him before he got home, so the man would know?
Stern awakened the following morning to a sweetly cool summer morning, and waiting to welcome him was the actor, standing barefooted in a great tentlike pair of old actor's underwear, sequined in places, gathering the folds of it into his stained pants, and rubbing his meager arms.
"Got to get the pee moving," he said. "What did you think of my doll? That's good stuff, boy. Gonna get me some of that stuff."
Stern said she was very nice and dressed quickly. The old actor, still rubbing his arms, said, "You ought to try this. Nothing like it to get your wang-wang in shape."
Downstairs, on the porch, the Griggs people stood around silently in the dewy morning, and when Stern and the actor arrived, they all began a dumb march to the dining room, a broken parade led by the tall, erupting boy with the boneless, insect-like Rooney in his arms. Carrying Rooney was a privilege that went to the strongest of the group. After them came the Greek boy, wheeling along furiously, saying, "Wait up, fuckers," and then the main body, followed finally by the half man, old-fashioned toothache towel around his neck, radio-croaking to the wind. In the dining room he took a table by himself. Stern sat with Feldner and a small, scowling man who kept invoking the power of his labor union. He tried a roll, found it hard, and said, "I don't have to eat a roll like that."
"Why not?" Stern asked.
"I belong to a powerful union."
Later, when his eggs were served, he said, "Union gets you the best eggs in the country."
Stern ordered some cereal. When he took a spoonful, Feldner stopped his hand and said, "You can't eat that."
"How come?" Stern said.
"Not in the condition you're in," he said. "I had what you got. You're a nice kid, but it would tear you up."
"I get to eat cereals," said Stern. He buttered some bread and Feldner said, "Are you trying to commit suicide? I told you I had what you got. I been all over the world, in every kind of country. You're in no shape to eat that."
"I have a different kind of doctor," Stern said, eating the bread but wondering whether Feldner's doctor wasn't better than Fabiola.
"There's only one thing you can eat with what you got," said Feldner.
"What's that?" Stern asked.
"Hot stew. The warm is what you need. It warms you up in there and heals everything up. The way you're eating, you're dead in a month."
"I have a doctor who says bread and cereal are all right," Stern said, but the pain ball seemed to blow up suddenly beneath his belt and he wondered whether to call Fabiola and check on stew.
At the next table, the old actor made courtly, charming nods at the mustached stick woman. When she turned to blow her nose, he stuck a fork up through his legs, poked Rooney, who clung to a chair next to him, and said, "Hey, get this wang-wang."
At Stern's table the sullen, scowling man said, "They don't take oddballs in my union. Any crap and out you go." Finishing his meal, Feldner patted his lips and said, "You better be careful, kid. I know what you got in there.You can't go eating shit. You get the hot of a stew in there and you'll see how nice it feels. I know. I'm worrying about something else, but I had what you got."
At the meal's end, the half man, who had sat alone, eating swiftly and furtively, got to his feet and began to gather everyone's dirty dishes and stack them in piles.
"It's always the worst ones who are the nicest," said the plump dining-room waitress. "It was that way at Mother Francesca's, too." Stern had been aware of the half man eating alone, had felt his eyes, and at one point had been compelled to go and sit with him, staring right at his neck bandage and saying, "Don't worry. I'll sit with you. In fact, I'll stay with you until the last half is taken away." He felt that maybe if he sat with the half man, someone would sit withhimlater, when he himself began losing halves. But on his way out of the dining room, when the half man looked up at him, he ran by frightened, as though he didn't see him.
Outside, the old actor grabbed him and, pointing to the mustached woman up ahead, whispered, "I'm going to get me some of that. That's real sweet stuff. You got to work it slow when you're handling one of them sweet dolls."
Stern stayed five weeks at the Grove Rest Home, and during this period the pain balloon that had crowded tight against his ribs began to recede until he was able to fasten the snaps of his trousers around his great girth. On some mornings during these weeks he would awaken and for an instant feel he was at the New Everglades, a mountain resort where he often spent summers as a child with his mother. Those summers days he would get up early and run down to cut a purple snowball flower for his mother to wear, wet and glistening in her hair, at the breakfast table. They were lazy, wicked times, and since he wasthe only young boy at the resort, he spent them among young women, playing volleyball with them, doing calisthenics, and staring fascinatedly at the elasticized garments they kept tugging at as the material crept below their shorts line. Afternoons he would lie in the bottom of a boat while his great-breasted mother, wearing a polka-dotted bathing suit that stared at him like a thousand nipples, rowed across the narrow resort river to the hut of a forest ranger who lived in the woods opposite the resort all year long. Stern hunted mussels in the shallow river water alongside the hut, and when his mother emerged from the hut she would say to him in the boat, "A hundred girls at the hotel and I'm the only one can make him." To which Stern answered, "I don't want to hear anything like that." Later, in the afternoon, Stern would sit at the resort bar with his mother, taking sips of her drink while his mother told the bartender, "That doesn't frighten me. I'll give him a little drink at his age. It's the ones that don't get a little drink from their mothers you have to worry about."
The men around his mother at the bar told dirty jokes to her, and one afternoon one of them, holding his palms wide apart and parallel, said, "Baby, my buddy here has one this long, so help me." His mother folded up with laughter on her barstool, and Stern, suddenly infuriated, hit the man in the stomach to protect her. His mother pulled him back and said, "You can't say things to his mother. He'll kill for her." Later, getting ready for dinner, Stern's mother would take him into the shower with her and he would stare at the pathetic, gaping blackness between her legs, filled with a terrible anguish and loss. Then he would rush down to cut another flower for her and, in the coolness of the evening, begin to feel very lush and elegant, as though no other boy in the world was having as wicked and luxurious a time as he, the only boyin a grown-up resort. His mother would tell him, "You're growing up too fast. You know more than kids ten years older than you." And later in the year, at school, Stern would tell his friends, "Boy, do I know things. Did I see things this summer. My mother isn't like other mothers. She just doesn't go around acting like a mother." And yet, with all the panty glimpses on the volleyball court and the barroom sips of drinks, the dirty jokes and the nervous showers, what did he actually know? It remained for a busboy in back of the resort kitchen to tell him about the sex act. Stern couldn't believe the actual machinery and said, "Really?" and the busboy said, "Yeah. When you put it in them, they get a funny feeling up their kazoo."
The Grove Rest Home had the sweet summer coolness and the proper fragrance, but it was a parody of a resort, with all its facilities torn and incomplete. Stern heard there was a small golf course and borrowed clubs one morning, setting out to look for it. He tramped the length of the institution and finally spotted a flag in the center of some tall weeds far beyond the kitchen. A bald man with a thick mustache stood alongside the single hole of the golf course, hands locked behind his back, puffing out his cheeks and flexing an artificial leg in the style of a British colonel surveying a battlefield. He said he was an electrician. A hot wire had fallen on his leg and sheared it off. His main difficulty had been in dealing with his grown son, who couldn't get used to having a one-legged father. "I told him you get older, these things happen, but he wouldn't buy it and kept spitting on the floor." The man spoke with a thick Brooklyn accent, but when he was silent, flexing his leg, he took on an amazingly autocratic demeanor, a British colonel once again. "Are you playing?" Stern asked him. "No, I'm just standing next to the hole here."
The golf course was a broken, one-holed, weeded one,and Stern's days at the Grove Rest Home seemed weeded and broken, too. There were no scheduled activities, and between meals Stern passed the time in the library, reading peripheral books, ones written by people who had been close to Thomas Dewey and others about Canada's part in World War II. The only newspaper available was a terrible local one devoted almost entirely to zoning developments, but Stern waited for it eagerly at the front door each night, pacing up and down until it came. He looked forward, too, to "milk and cookie" each evening at seven, which was the nearest thing at the Home to a special treat. One night, when he was in line for his refreshment, the mustached woman squatted down on the front porch and began to urinate, throwing her kerchiefed head back and hollering, "Pisscock, pisscock." Gears clanking and grinding and seemingly slower than ever, Lennie came out from the staff room and made for her, finally getting there and carrying the woman, screaming, up to her room. Later, Stern learned she had been taken to Rosenkranz. In the room that night, the old actor said, "I really liked that doll. She was sweet stuff, I mean really sweet. Too bad she got the mentals. When she gets out of here, I'm going to get me some of that stuff, you wait and see."