Yes. To be a good king you would have to forswear having subjects. The moment you moved to rule would be the moment of your undoing. Other people’s flaws — and flaws were the yeast that let their loaves rise — would weaken your will. They would oppose it; they would cajole, they would seduce it. They would want so much — for themselves, for their families, for their friends and all those who they believed wished them well. Be good — to me, to mine — oh great and perfect Being. Joey believed Adam had eaten the forbidden fruit only as a favor. I have taken a bite, just as you begged me to, but only to make you shut up, so hush and let me be thoughtful now, alone in the peaceful shade. But Eve was busy getting pregnant.
27
Finally (after a few weeks during which Joey’s blameless spirit grew a loincloth and knee-high stockings, and in an increasingly material form began to sit about like the most contemptible functionary), Joey readied himself for the first day of his employment as his mother’s chauffeur. He winced when he recognized the romantic source of the resemblance. At whose court was he expecting to appear? He did not own a hankie, let alone a scented one, and the language of its use was truly foreign to him. So were Adam and Eve. So was the society of sultans, fans, and Negroes. So was the cultivation of crops.
Nor did Joey quite understand his aversion to Debbie’s blessed event. Why had he hated the idea of her marriage in the first place? Why should he care if she reproduced her kind, or mind that their mother, whose love he should have expected to share with his sis but had never really had to, was so delighted by her role as a person of whom society unanimously approved. Perhaps it was precisely because of that approval. Still, Joey had not sensed much rebellion in his nature — a great deal of quiet grief, some self-pity, a touch of envy, and an attitude of passive endurance toward a wrongheaded world — yes — but … all right … some unearned feelings of superiority, which he had already decided he must mask … yes, but not as a reveler does at a dance, rather as a surgeon does, shrouding his mouth not his eyes, before he performs his rites.
He disapproved of her husband and their rustic life, her workaday world, her smooth and easy accommodation to American ways, her enviable disposal of the past, yet what sort of level of living did he enjoy? Was there any lock he felt he would fit? one whose opening would make him a pasha, a gallant, a piano player, even? He had never felt he needed a reason for his distaste of Debbie’s showy ways, her saddle shoes, her short skirt, her letter sweater, her
beaux ………………………………………………
her ………………………………………………
her attachment to something so shallow as a school……………
her………………………………………………
careless glee …………………………………………
Debbie’s soybean and potato farm did not enjoy a traditional white two-story clapboard house with its mandatory wraparound porch. Its managers had settled for a prefab ranch: low, sprawling, and painted a color Joey’s mother had described as “dying daffodil.” A concrete slab was its only connection with the earth. The front windows were as wide as the draw of their drapes and faintly bayed like a distant dog, though curtains clouded the view, such as the view was: of plastic chairs idling in the yard, an empty road in front of an empty field, a postbox lonesome as a sentry. With its requisite rusty grill, a picnic table rotted in the rear. Because of a heavy overhang, the house appeared to be wearing a hat and seemed to have strayed from a suburb that, in turn, had strayed from its city. Now it sat in the middle of a flatness that also belonged to another state, shaded by its one big tree and encircled by a lawn of winter-yellow grass that made it seem in the beam of a theatrical spot.
You reached this house down a gravel road. The road was accompanied by two weed-filled ditches that occasionally stopped altogether as if they had grown tired of running alongside and then, revived by their rest, took up the race again. A fence post could be counted, less often a cattail, and, almost as an afterthought, a thicket, a foolhardy shrub. The land on either side had been stripped of its crop and lay cold wet dark and fallow. Birds had fled to find trees. Joey’s mood was morose; it was melancholy; it was angry; it was the mood of one who felt put upon, betrayed, discovered in the wrong, disturbed in his life when life seemed to be, for a change, proceeding properly.
The interruption was his mother’s doing. Miriam could not understand Joey’s attitudes and would not try to imagine why the prospect of Debbie’s baby was not a cause for rejoicing and a feeling of fulfillment, as if some significant aim in life had been realized. Begetting was so inevitable, Joey thought, it was as routine as dying, consequently it could be safely left to nature, and otherwise ignored, the way Portho’s presence was ignored even when he slunk indoors, even when he scattered magazines donated by doctors’ offices on one of the polished tables, even when he dropped off, even when he snored. In due course people were born, in due course they managed to walk, they learned to talk, they attended school, they got a job, partied, married, had kids, sold stuff, bought more, overate, drank to be drunk, were relieved to be regular, labored in order to loaf, lived that way a spell — its passage sometimes stealing years — coasting down due’s course — while they lost their hair, sight, hearing, teeth, the use of limbs, the will to live, until, in due course and as their diseases desired, they took to bed; they laughed their last; they said good-bye to the ones they said were loved ones — they curled up in a fist of aches — said good-bye to the ones they said were closest to them — complained about their care — said good-bye to the ones who came to kiss them off, said good-bye to comfort themselves with the sight of another’s going, said good-bye while the designated goer complained, complained of neglect, complained of fear, complained of pain, and disinclined going, but would go, go over, cross Jordan, nevertheless. They uttered last words that no one could understand; they curled up like a drying worm; they cried to no avail because weeping begot only weeping, wailing was answered with wails; they repented to no one in particular; they died as someone whose loss was likely to be felt no farther than the idler’s door, and dying, quite often, in debt for a cemetery plot, the service of a funeral parlor, in the pursuit of a false ideal. Joey didn’t see much to interest him in any of this. It was what was done between times that fascinated him, when due course was interrupted by dream or discovery, murder or music, though wars were, he had to admit, due course to a faretheewell. And he thought, more and more, that death, assuredly dire, was also something due.
His attention, now and then, took to leaning in Portho’s direction. He thought about those whose lives were so lean and broken there was no due course within them to enjoy, no lifeline to snap, for whom complaisance could never be a complaint about them, who didn’t know a norm, could not experience even the average, reach a grade of C on any exam, would never bathe in tepid water or enjoy warm, whose lives were simply endless stretches of suffering, and numbness was a coveted relief, death a reward. Maybe Debbie was concealing herself beneath a blanket of middle-class comfort. Didn’t she deserve both comforting and comfort? Didn’t she deserve an American identity? Joey had felt its force, the lure of security. Didn’t he also merit a little griefless good and his own soft harmless life?