"No. He's the same."
She looks at me askance. She's been drinking wine again while helping the maid prepare dinner. Her bleary eyes are tense and patient. (I cannot meet them.) She senses something, and moves ahead carefully with mixed curiosity.
"Then you must have been with him a long time."
"I got his job."
"Did you?"
"I was promoted today."
"To what?"
"Kagle's job."
"Kagle's?"
"It finally went through."
"Was that the job?"
"Congratulate me."
"Did you know it was his job?"
"No."
"Yes, you did."
"I had a hunch."
"What happened to him?"
"Nothing."
"What will? I saw the way he looked."
"He was fired."
"My God."
"I fired him today. He doesn't know that yet. But I think he does."
"You fired him?"
"I had to, God dammit. He won't be fired. He'll be transferred somewhere else until he quits or retires. I can't keep him around. I couldn't use him after he's been in charge. He's embarrassing. He's sloppy. He'll run my work down."
"He's got two children."
"So have I."
"You've got three."
"So?"
"You're forgetting Derek again."
"So?"
"You're always forgetting Derek."
"So?"
"So's your old man." She is drunk and she is defiant.
"What the hell else am I supposed to do?"
"I'm better than you," she tells me.
"You want a new house, don't you? You liked the idea that I was getting a better job, didn't you?"
"I used to think I wasn't," she continues. "But I am. You like to think you're better than me. But you're not. I'm the one who's better."
"Yeah? And you'd be even better still if you'd lay off the wine in the afternoon."
"Your mother was right."
"Leave her out of it."
"You're just no good."
"I told you to leave her out of it."
"I never thought I was."
"You're always bothering me about money, aren't you?"
"No, I don't."
"The hell you don't."
"And neither do they. We don't bother you about money that much."
"And you wonder why I don't tell you I love you, don't you?"
"I never thought I was good at anything." There is undisguised scorn, calm, measured contempt that I've never seen in her before. "You don't help much there."
"Kagle isn't sore at me. Why are you?"
"Isn't he?"
"No. In fact, he's the one who recommended me to replace him."
"No, he didn't," she jeers, with a curling lip and a belittling shake of her head. "You knew months ago. He just found out."
"You're getting good at this."
"You taught me."
"At least you got something."
"But now I know I'm better than you are, aren't I?»
"Amn't I. There's no such construction as 'aren't'."
"Puddy poo."
"What'd you say?"
"Puddy poo."
"Where'd you get that from?"
"From you. You say it in your sleep."
"I'm going upstairs. I can't take this."
"Puddy poo. What about dinner?"
"Count me out. I'll celebrate upstairs alone. I've got to start working on my speech."
"What speech?"
"The big speech I'm going to have to make to open the convention. I'm head of the department now. That might not mean much at home but it means a hell of a lot there. I run the whole show. I can do what I want."
"Can you get Andy Kagle his job back?"
"Fuck you," I tell her.
"You're just no good, are you?"
"I told you. I warned you. I don't want you ever to say that to me again."
"I'll say anything I want," she shouts back at me heatedly. "I'm not afraid of you."
"Yes, you say that to me often," I remind her. "And then you sober up, and discover that you are."
She shatters. "You bastard." The tears form quickly and are streaming down her face. "You won another argument, didn't you?"
I don't feel I've won. I feel I've lost as I mount the stairs wearily. It's been a harrowing day at the office. The meetings were concluded at five to allow the rumors to spread and percolate through the company overnight. Kagle lingers later than the rest of us to confirm them appreciatively.
"I want you to know I had a big hand in it," he tells me. "I fought for you with Arthur Baron when he asked me to recommend someone who I thought could really handle it. They were thinking of someone like Johnny Brown or one of the branch managers. I told them you knew more about it than any of them. Now I'll be free to do the kind of troubleshooting work I like. Don't be afraid of any of it. I'll be around to help you all I can."
No, he won't.
"Thanks, Andy. What's that you've got there?"
"It's a perpetual-motion machine Horace White gave me. I'll bet you'd never be able to figure out how it works if you didn't know where the battery was hidden."
(Batteries run down. He'll have about ten days after the convention and then he'll have to take a leave of absence for a few weeks and move. Or retire. I have a plan.)
"What about me?" I maintain to Johnny Brown, who blocks my path skeptically with smoldering belligerence, his muscled jaws knotted for combat (and I wonder, perhaps, if he might not mercifully end my suspense by giving me my punch in the jaw right at the start). "You could have knocked me over with a feather when they told me, I was so surprised."
"I heard the good news the little birdies are chirping," Ed Phelps chortles to me softly by way of offering congratulations.
I elude Green. I don't see Red. I feel tense and exhausted on the train ride home. I could use one of my wife's tranquilizers. Even before I walk in the house I am feeling sorry for myself and don't know why. I go to our bathroom for a tranquilizer before I enter my study and close the door.
"What's wrong with Daddy?" I hope the children are murmuring downstairs in grave consternation, along with Derek's nurse, and that Derek too can perceive in some way that I am upstairs in my study with the door closed.
"He isn't feeling well," I hope my wife replies with sharp compunction.
I would like to feel that the closed door of my study or office produces the same ominous, excluding effect on others that the closed doors of certain people still create in me. (I am still affronted that my daughter always keeps the door to her room shut when she's inside. My boy does that too, now.)
I'm sorry I ever told my wife what I think my mother said to me before she died. (I'm also sorry I said "puddy poo" in my sleep. Now she'll have that on me, also.) I don't know what ever made me feel I could trust her. (A man must make a resolution never to reveal anything personal to his wife.) I was not even sure my mother said it. I wasn't sure she recognized me for more than an instant the last few times I went to visit her in the nursing home or remembered I was there as I sat at her bedside without talking for the twelve, then ten, minutes I stayed. I brought no more gifts of spicy meats and fish and honeyed candies; she couldn't eat. I gave her no gossip. She couldn't hear. I was not even certain most times that she was able to see anyone sitting there when her eyes were upon me.
"You're no good," she said. There was no voice. It was more a shaping of the words with her lips and a faint rustle of breath. I was surprised, and I bent forward over the cavity of her mouth that I was no longer able to look at straightly and asked her to repeat what she had said. "You're just no good."
Those were the last words I think I heard her speak to me. If I live to be a hundred and ninety years old, I will never hear any more from her. If the world lasts three billion more, there will be no others.
Those are some last words for a dying mother to tell a child, aren't they? Even a grown-up family man with a wife and three children. I felt sorrier for myself when I heard them than I did for her. She was dying anyway.
But I had to go on.
I don't know what made me think it was safe to confide in my wife. A long time passed before I did. I was feeling so sad. The world was a rusty tin can. We used to curl ourselves up inside discarded old automobile tires and try to roll down slanting streets. We never could. We made pushmobile scooters out of ball-bearing roller skates. It was easier to walk. Mommy caught me when I fell, kissed the place to make it well.