Her brother could have done something for us; he could have offered us something. What was his big expensive gift to us? A lousy toaster. Doesn’t he know we need money?
I used to think, if only my grandfather were alive.
I used to think, if only Beethoven were alive, why, then I wouldn’t be so alone. Why, then, together, all of us banded in a tight circle with our arms around each other, Jesse too with his hard muscular arms, all of us with our backs turned against those walls that are moving in, why, then we could hold, then we could push the walls back, could keep them from squashing us flat, if only I weren’t alone. Because she can’t help, you see, not the way she is now. She’s too sweet and frail and confused, and she can’t help to hold back whatever it is that’s determined to flatten us, to drain all our young blood and leave us one-dimensional with only an angry helpless snarl on our flattened lips. We’re too young.
We’re too young to be flattened this way. But how can I stop it from happening if I don’t even know who I am, if there’s a hunger inside me to... to be, to grow, to live, to
“You never knew who the hell you were, and you’ve always been hungry.”
Ah, sure, talk about it, the wisdom of the very old. Hungry where? At your fat and overflowing breasts, was I hungry there? Lost where? In the dark jealousy of a love I could never consummate, hating him and loving him, knowing you were ours, yes, but really only his and never truly mine? Lost and hungry, yes, but why didn’t you ever tell me? Why didn’t you say, Sam, there are tigers out there, they are going to try to rip you limb from limb. Why didn’t you tell me that, Mother darling? Why did you leave me to discover it for myself with a girl who had never been told, either, a girl who thinks I know all the secrets when I know none of them at all? Why didn’t you tell me that I would have to go into the street naked and strangle tigers with nothing but love to protect me?
Tigers feast on love, didn’t you know that? The smell of love is fat and rich to their nostrils, and oh, they want to sink their claws and teeth into it; there is too much love in this world for the tigers. Throw love in their faces, hold up love as a shield, swing love as a sword, stand naked with only love as a cloak, and they will pick your bones clean, and you’ll never know who the hell you are or were.
The girl turned off the water tap.
The apartment was very still.
He sat alone and wondered who he was, and wondered why nobody had reported him missing to the Bureau of Missing Persons. He knew there was a Bureau of Missing Persons someplace in the city, and he knew that the first thing anyone did when her husband was late for dinner was to report him to that bureau and they would send around two detectives who asked for dental charts. He had read the newspaper this morning, and the only person missing was Edward Voegler, from a mental hospital. He knew positively he was not Edward Voegler, so how come nobody had reported him missing? And if nobody had bothered to report him, was he indeed missing, or was it simply a case of nobody giving enough of a damn to miss him?
“Have you got a radio?” he called to the bathroom.
From behind the closed door, the girl said, “Yes, on the bookshelf. The left-hand side of the bed.”
He found the radio, and turned it on. A group of little girls were singing a song that seemed to say, “I love him, I love him, I love him, and where he goes, I’ll follow, I’ll follow, I’ll follow...”
Then why didn’t you follow? he thought. Here I am, why didn’t you follow?
“I like that song,” the girl said from the bathroom.
“I wanted to get the news.”
“It’s too early for the news.”
“It ought to come on at eleven,” he answered.
“Come in here,” she said. “I want to kiss you before I put on my lipstick.”
He did not want to go to her because he suddenly felt the entire thing was her fault; she should have been more careful. It was not fair of her to grow as huge as a mountain with life clamoring inside her, a trembling volcano waiting to erupt; it was not fair. He wanted to get out of this apartment that restricted him, wanted to get away from this strange woman who was not Grace at all, not the Grace he had known, but rather some oddly deformed creature who moved ponderously and constantly complained of backaches. The little girls on the radio were shouting, “I love him, I love him, I love him,” in eternal cacophony, but if she really loved him, loved him, loved him, why had she allowed this to happen? He could remember those nights in his father’s car, their secret laughter about her brother Dan-Duke, could remember all of it with a painful nostalgia that made him wish she did truly love him, did indeed give enough of a damn about him to have called the Bureau of Missing Persons. He suddenly knew this was impossible. The voices of the chanting little girls gave way to the sound of what was supposed to be a beeping transmitter signal, and an announcer said that it was news time. He moved closer to the radio.
There was trouble of every kind in New York City and the world, and he listened to the woes of humanity while waiting to learn something about the specific woes of a very special human being who happened to be himself. But the radio told him nothing at all, and when the announcer was finished, a commercial came on in which a bratty kid kept yelling to his mother to bring some more Parks Sausages. He went to the radio and turned it off. The room was silent except for the sigh of the wind against the windowpanes.
He listened to the wind and decided to leave her.
Yes, he thought.
Yes.
Leave now. Go before it is too late.
Go kill all the tigers.
He stood by the window, looking down into the street.
Yes, he thought. You leave Grace now, and one day she is going to leave you.
The thought came into his mind unbidden, and he almost dismissed it at once because it was so utterly illogical. How could she possibly leave him one day if he left her now? He simply would not be there; you can’t leave someone who isn’t there. And yet the very absence of logic in the thought seemed to make it undeniably logical. Yes, it is true, he told himself. If I leave her now fat and misshapen with a baby in her belly, why, she’ll leave me someday; that’s all there is to it. He shrugged. There did not seem to be much sense in pursuing the thought, since he had already decided to leave her, anyway. But he found himself negating the thought, and then discovered there was at least some hope in negation.
If I do not leave Grace now, then one day she is not going to leave me.
Something was still wrong with the thought, but he could not imagine what. He had the oddest feeling that whatever was wrong had to do with Grace herself, and that he could do nothing to prevent her from leaving him forever whenever she wanted to. But at least the thought provided hope.