She used to say that most of the jokes he made were coarse, foolish and old or just made no sense but certainly weren’t funny except perhaps to an immature twelve-year-old boy who also wasn’t too bright, which was why she seldom laughed at them. That most of the books he read were written not to be read but only to be written about they were so obscure, pedantic, longwinded and dull. That all his tedious hard work at the typewriter was going to go for nothing because he wrote about people he hadn’t the clearest idea of, like what went on in their heads or how they felt or what their jobs or home life or history were about, besides that she was sick of him stinking up her sewing room all day with his body sweat when he typed. That almost all the so-called suggestions and advice he gave her son were the opposite of what she wanted the boy to know or do. That he was the worst driver she’d ever seen and every time she got in a car with him she took her life in her hands as well as her son’s if she was dumb or desperate enough to bring him with them. That he ought to grow a mustache to make his bland face more interesting, and when he did, that he should grow a beard to wipe out the devastating effects of the mustache, because he now looked a little like Hitler or Groucho Marx or someone else she didn’t like — anyway, awful, much worse than before and she was sorry she first encouraged him to grow it and now that he’d got to like that bush. That he was getting a big pot belly and also seemed out of breath half the time and he ought to run or exercise more and also dance a lot if he didn’t want to keep looking ten years older than he was and ridiculous in pants and shirts that were now four sizes too small for him. That he had to find a better-paying job or just two of the same-paying ones if he wanted to continue living with them, because she just couldn’t take any more, always being so close to broke. That the only thing he was really good for now was sex and more sex and that for sure wasn’t enough for what she wanted in a man and in fact was probably the easiest thing for her to find. That she did appreciate that he’d been there for her son at a time when he most needed a man and for the music he listened to sometimes that she occasionally liked and the dishes he’d concocted and introduced her to, like a simple vinaigrette dressing and slicing up raw mushrooms into the salad and beef Strogonoff and that vegetable curry with all the extras, things she never knew existed not that she couldn’t have lived without them. That he was a terrible baby sometimes, jumping back when a mouse darted across the room and being too afraid to chase after it with a broom, not jogging through certain streets because dogs there once ran after him and snarled. That he drank too much, talked too much and was so damn opinionated, as if nobody on the West Coast ever had a brainy idea but him or did anything with any taste, and he wore clothes that were completely wrong for this area and climate, railed against petty things that other people would just say “That’s life, what can you do?” to and swallow. Talked and made noises in his sleep to the point where she wanted to wear earplugs when she went to bed, but if she did who’d hear Brons if there was some kind of emergency and he needed them, since he also slept as if nothing in the world could awake him. His voice and choice of phrases and words sometimes were so vedy English that he sounded like the classic closet pansy. All the coffee he spilled on her rugs that he’d never in a year have the money to get professionally cleaned. His smelly bowel movements, the urine drops he left on the toilet seat, his body and head hair all over the bathroom floor and stuck in the shower soap. Why’d he stay with her for years? he thought. Why didn’t he leave after a few months or go those times she asked him to rather than cajole her to let him stay? She was right, a little into their relationship, when she said he only continued to live with her and claim he loved her and wanted to marry her because of her son. He took Brons to nursery most times, picked him up whenever he could too, had snacks with him after, made him lunch every day for school, got him up for school and made him breakfast while she slept and stayed with him at the corner till the school bus came, helped him with his spelling words for the weekly first-grade spelling tests, read books or told stories to him almost every night, played board games or cards with him when he was too tired to and wanted only to lie on his bed and read a book or had important other work to do but just because the boy asked him to. Did whatever he could for Brons. It was true the kid had him around his little finger, as Evangeline liked to say, but he didn’t think he ever did anything that was wrong or bad for him. Spoiled him, Evangeline said, but so much that Brons might never be the same after Gould finally left, because no one would ever give in to him that way again. Sat with him and the humidifier under a makeshift tent on the bed when Brons had a bad respiratory infection and trouble breathing. Spent the night on a mattress on the floor in Brons’s hospital room when he had his tonsils removed. Hoisted him onto his shoulders, hoisted him onto his back, ran or bounced around with him like that, the two of them pretending they were all sorts of things, cowboy on a bucking bronco, desert warrior on a camel, Bellerophon on Pegasus when he killed the Chimera, but mostly knight errant on his obedient horse, till they both dropped. Stayed by his bed most nights till Brons was very sleepy or asleep and a couple of times said to him because he liked to hear the answer to it—“Tell me,” “Tell you what?” “You know, what I am to you,” “You’re in my head forever and wherever and ever, so help my heart.”
One night she threw a glass of wine in his face. It was his wine, he’d been holding it, but he’d put it down to make a call on the kitchen phone. The wine sprayed all around him — cabinets, ceiling, floor; glass flew out of her hand by mistake, she later said, and hit his face and cut him but smashed against the wall. She’d overheard him making the call. He was telling a woman he’d known before he’d met Evangeline that he was going to pack his essential things right away and somehow get to her place in Berkeley, and if the buses weren’t running this late along El Camino and then from San Francisco or no friend would drive him to the Greyhound in Redwood City or all the way, he’d even splurge his last buck on a cab, for that was how much he wanted to get away. He and Evangeline had had a terrific fight that night, he then said he was leaving; she said “Shut up, you’ll wake the kid,” he said “What do you think our row was doing, and don’t you think he should know by now how we really feel about each other?” she said “Great, couldn’t be better, what a deal I won’t pass up: get your ass out of my house, you filthy bastard; disappear for good.” The woman said she could put him up for a few days, or more if it worked out between them, but they’d see. He said he should be there in a couple of hours if he made good connections, less if he got a ride right to her. “Anyway, don’t wait up; put the key behind that brick, if you still use it and it’s still a safe spot. I have your address and I think I remember where it is. Just tell me, does the key turn to the left or right?” Then the wine came and next the glass and then the threat not to use the phone again to call a friend or she’d get the cops. Knapsack and typewriter packed, he’d wiped the wine off the cabinets, ceiling and floor, looked in on Brons but didn’t bend down to kiss him or touch his head, knocked on her bedroom door and said “Just want you to know, I’m going now. I’ll try to catch the last bus at the stop. If I don’t make it, don’t worry, I’m not coming back. I’ll slide the keys under the front door after I lock it, and tell Brons I’ll call him tomorrow afternoon or night and of course that he had nothing to do with my going and that I absolutely love him,” and she said “Why are you telling me all this?” and he said “I thought it was important, especially that I wasn’t leaving the front door unlocked; so, I’ll see ya,” and she said “Hold it, will you?” and opened the door and she was crying and he said “What the hell are you crying for?” and she said “Please don’t be obtuse,” and he said “Okay, and I didn’t mean it that way,” and he cried and then, maybe the tenth time since he started living with her — about to go, his things on his shoulder and in his hands, his things by the door, his things on the other side of the door and once on the sidewalk while he waited for a cab he’d called to take him to a friend’s place — they made up and went to bed. He called the woman first and said he was staying, Evangeline and he had worked it out, and she said she was disappointed but understood and probably it was for the best—“No doubt it was, if you patched it up so fast; though after what you said happened tonight and what I could make out from her in the background in our first call, who can say if you’re not risking your life by staying another night — excuse me, because you probably love her.” “Do you think we get into these uncontrolled howling brawls just to have the greatest times in bed?” Evangeline said after and he said “I don’t think so; I hope not. They’re real, unfortunately, at least on my part; I truly hated you and wanted to flee,” and she said “Then flee, nothing’s holding you: no kids or contract or dues,” and he said “That what you want?” and she said “You can see that right now it’s not, but who can say for later if we have another mad brawl. We should try to work out what causes them. I know we’ve said that before, but this time to really work at it: therapy together, speaking to people whose judgments we trust, reading about it; whatever helps. Even if it doesn’t result in any long-standing arrangement for us with the whole caboodle kit of wedding rings and children thrown in, we’d find out for future relationships, and some perhaps of longer standing than ours, what bugs us about living with someone. And for the time being just to make it better for each other and Brons, since our fights damage him.” She’ll change her mind, he thought; if he just does his best to keep things smooth between them for a year and goes along with everything she says about helping them stay together and learning why they’re at each other so much, she’ll want to get married and have a kid with him and then maybe a second one, when she sees how helpful a husband and good a father he is with the first one, and even three kids if her body can take it. Three’s the number he wanted for years, he thought, but of his own. “What I’d love,” he said in bed that same night, “is just to have one good solid no-great-spats year,” and she said “That’d suit me. But I have to admit that another side of me says it wouldn’t be altogether healthy, or right for our natures, not getting things out fast and furiously that way, and think of those terrific screws we’d be missing right after we made up again. But we’ll work toward it. More than anything, there’s Brons to consider, as I said. You’re my dear.”