Anne
“It’s the fault of men. As a group.”
“They don’t want us to bloom and flower.”
“Trying to keep all the prosperity for a few self-selected individuals. Men.”
“I’ve endured it on every side.”
“Whole societies have taken glee and satisfaction from heckling, humiliating and scourging me.”
“Thought I heard a skunk barking.”
“They are tearing me apart with their defamations that whole worlds chuckle about.”
“I think we should buy some cars or something, Firebirds and Cutlasses.”
“The inconsequence of your thought is a burden to me.”
“Stick a screwdriver down your throat if you mess with me. A big screwdriver.”
“Gotta get that bird’s nest on the ground.”
“You can start, in America, with just a nickel, and pretty soon you have a dime!”
“I’ve been busy, sorting buttons, one thing and another.”
“Polishing the doorknobs and getting the fug out of the corners.”
“A few rows of figgers I’d like you to check over.”
“Used to be able to stay up all night and roar. Can’t do that now.”
“Wash my fingers frequently, bubbling in responses to forms and questionnaires.”
“We watched a movie in which a giant chandelier visited the earth and a lot of little green wimps hung about the edges of the frame, cooing.”
“Yeah I saw that one.”
“Guy came up to me on the street, black guy, he says, ‘Can you spare a quarter for an American citizen?’ “
“You gave it to him.”
“How could I not?”
“Caught in the cognitive squeeze.”
“Pink always struck me as sordid.”
“He’s got those little spots on his hands.”
“Burns. From cooking fried chicken. The grease jumps.”
“If men knew what they were doing, they would cringe with fear.”
“Older people should be treated with respect, not much but some.”
“That’s really a very fine attitude toward older people. I admire you for that.”
“It’s hard to be bright and fresh when you’re too old.”
“You can accidentally shoot your dog. I’ve known cases of that.”
“Old men with canes gimping down the sidewalk. White hair and bent heads.”
“I dreamed about this pony last night. Very engaging pony. We kept it in Simon’s room.”
“They found more rabid skunks. Two in Brooklyn Heights and one at the World Trade Center.”
“If they get here, how will they get here?”
“From Brooklyn, they have to walk over the bridge. From downtown, all they have to do is walk up Hudson Street.”
“They could be on Hudson Street already. We wouldn’t know.”
“They could be in the graveyards. Hiding out in the graveyards behind the sagging stones. We wouldn’t know.”
“If they bite you then you’re dead.”
“No you have to have shots in the stomach. Forty-two shots in the stomach.”
“What they do is bite your domestic animals, your cats and dogs, and then your domestic animals bite you. Or they bite other domestic animals and eventually somebody bites you. Or your children.”
“I’m going to stay off the streets.”
“No just wear boots. Then if one approaches you you can kick it.”
“What does a skunk look like? I’ve never seen one.”
“It looks like a wallaby except that it has a different kind of head. Less attenuated. They’re black.”
“I’ve only seen them squashed on the road.”
“Maybe we should put chicken wire over the windows.”
“I think we’re getting into a panic here. Just wear boots.”
“Let Simon deal with them.”
“Do you think he’s brave?”
“No I don’t think he’s brave. But I think he’s smart.”
“If he’s smart why doesn’t he make us happy?”
“Who can make us happy? I mean if you look at it realistically.”
“He said his wife finally asked him to stop introducing her to people as ‘my wife.’ “
“That’s not unreasonable.”
“One day there won’t be any wives any more.”
“Or husbands either.”
“Just free units cruising the surface of the earth. Flying the black flag.”
“Something to look forward to.”
“Do you really think so?”
“What about the children?”
“Get one and keep it. Keep it for yourself. Hug it and teach it things. Everything you know.”
“But they need fathers, in theory. That kind of quality, that kind of rough quality…”
“I forgot about boys.”
“Reminds me of thick lumber stacked on the back of a truck, held down by chains —”
“How can we leave him?”
“How can we not leave him?”
“He’s gracious and good.”
“He’s not the only pebble on the beach.”
“It’s an impossible situation.”
“But I like it.”
“The thing is, whether we believe in ourselves or not.”
“It’s like three people reading a magazine at the same time.”
“But we’ll never see him again.”
“We’ll send postcards.”
“Little satisfaction in that.”
“Well you can’t have everything.”
“Something is better than nothing.”
“The thing is, we just have to have the courage of our convictions.”
“Well I’ve learned this: To make progress, you have to give up something.”
“How do you know that’s true?”
“It sounds right. It includes pain.”
“I have hope,” Simon says. “Not a hell of a lot of hope, but some hope. You need tons of hope simply in order to function. Got to think that everything will work out. I don’t think that’s condescending. I hope it’s not condescending. I’ve dealt with young people before. I taught Sarah to roll her eyes and groan, when she was four, we rehearsed it. She was attempting it already, herself, but she hadn’t got it right. My father believed in the Second World War, a good choice. I believe in bricklayers but even bricklayers get things wrong, you specify a course of contrasting brick, vary the pattern of headers and stretchers and they misread the blueprints. I don’t want to be condescending. Trees have integrity, can’t go far wrong with a tree. You want to make a building look good, budget heavily for trees. A bird in the tree is better than a kick in the prosthesis. That’s all I mean. Thank you and good night.”
“Simon, I don’t want to go,” Anne says.
“I don’t want you to go.”
“But I have to.”
“I understand that. But you could be foolish and unwise.”
“You’d get tired of me.”
“No. The reverse, if anything. We could sit around and watch old movies on television. That’s all I ask.”
“That’s not true.”
“I ask you, formally, to stay. Will you stay?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t work out.”
“We could enjoy it for a short time. Might be as much as two whole years.”
“You make it sound like a cancer situation. It wouldn’t be fair to the others.”
“When is anything ever fair to the others?”
Simon flew to North Carolina to inspect a job he’d done in Winston-Salem, a hospital. The construction was quite good and he found little to complain of. He admired the fenestration, done by his own hand. He spent an agreeable night in a Ramada Inn and flew back the next day. His seatmate was a young German woman on her way to Frankfurt. She was six months pregnant, she said, and her husband, an Army sergeant in Chemical Warfare, had found a new girlfriend, was divorcing her. She had spent two years at Benning, loved America, spoke with what seemed to Simon a Texas accent. Her father was dead and her mother operated a candy store in Frankfurt. They talked about pregnancy and delivery, about how much wine she allowed herself, whether aspirin was in fact a danger to the baby, and how both of her brothers-in-law had been born in taxis. She was amazingly cheerful given the circumstances and told him that the Russians were probably going to attempt to take over Mexico next. We had neglected Mexico, she said.