Something Happened   ::   Хеллер Джозеф

I am still afraid of him and perspiring copiously under the arms again. No wonder I am more and more prey to weird visions and experiences. (Some tickle my fancy. Some do not.)

The day before yesterday, I walked into a luncheonette for a rare roast beef sandwich on a seeded roll and thought I found my barber working behind the counter.

"What are you doing in a luncheonette?" I asked.

"I'm not your barber," he answered. I was afraid I was losing my mind. A week ago I looked out a taxi window and saw Jack Green begging in the street in the rain, dressed in a long wet overcoat and ragged shoes. He was a head taller, thinner, pale, and gaunt. It wasn't him. But that's what I saw.

I was afraid I was losing my wits. Yesterday I looked out the window of a bus and thought I saw Charlie Chaplin strolling along the avenue and believed I knew him. It wasn't Charlie Chaplin and I didn't know him.

My memory may be starting to fail me. I have trouble with names now and with keeping in correct order the digits of telephone numbers that have long been familiar to me. Pairs of digits from other telephone numbers push their way in. After all these years, I am not always certain anymore whether the seven-seven belongs in the first segment of Penny's phone number and the eight-seven in the latter or vice versa. I don't know every time if Red Parker's phone number is two-eight-o-two or two-o-eight-two. I do know Penny is pregnant again — not by me. I have given her money for the abortion. She will insist on paying me back when she's saved enough from the money she receives monthly from her parents in Wilmington. It used to be that every cocktail waitress I ran into had one divorce and two children who lived outside the city with the girl's mother. Now they've had two abortions. College students and young models, secretaries, stewardesses, and acting students have had one. Graduate students may have two, depending on their field of study. Jane is gone, along with the entire Art Department. (It was unprofitable.)

"Call me," I asked her. "As soon as you're settled. Or even before."

She did. When she called, I said I was busy and would call her back. I haven't. Sometimes when I'm asleep, I try to wake up and can't. Sleep has me in its grip, and that is my dream.

I am trying to get my affairs in order. I have written a list.

"Listen," I say to my wife one day in a quietly decisive manner. "We're going to have to sit down together soon and do some serious thinking about Derek. We're not going to be able to keep him forever, you know."

"I don't want to talk about it."

Neither do I.

I think I'm in terrible trouble. I think I've committed a crime. The victims have always been children.

"Are you angry with me?" I inquire of my boy with an appraising smile, in a voice I keep as bland as possible.

"No. I'm not angry."

A flicker of some kind has crossed his face. My question is disturbing him. I'm almost afraid to go on.

"You don't talk to me much anymore."

"I talk." He shrugs. "I'm talking now." He wiggles with unease, a downcast mood darkening his features. He will not look at me.

"Not as much as you used to. You're always in your room."

He shrugs again. "I like it there."

"You don't like me to ask you questions, do you?"

"Sometimes."

"What do you do in there?"

"Read. Watch television. I do my homework. Think."

"Alone?"

"I like it."

"You didn't use to."

"Now I do."

"Are you always able to do all of your homework without me?"

"Not always."

"What do you do?"

"It's all right if it's wrong."

"Wouldn't it be better, though, if it were always correct?"

"The teachers don't care. Can I go now?"

"Where?"

He smiles apologetically, anticipating the humor of his reply. "To my room."

"Sure," I consent genially, with a heartiness that is false. "I just wanted to make sure you weren't angry with me."

"You stay in your room a lot," he pauses near the staircase to argue over his shoulder defensively. "Mommy stays in her room. You don't think there's something wrong with me, do you?"

"But I always let you come into mine."

Oh, God — here he is, a sensitive, candid, alert little boy, no larger now, it seems, than he was as a toddler; and I am quarreling with him, near tears (and with a lump in my throat), as though I were a rejected suitor, fencing with him selfishly as I would with my wife or my daughter.

How shall I die? Let me count the ways. (No, I won't.) I've been through that juvenile exercise before and won't waste time. None is good. I'm unable to eradicate from my mind the image of that vigorous, prosperous, large, handsome man who fell dead in the lobby of my office building a few weeks ago as we were nearly abreast of each other. I saw him clearly as he fell forward. Even as he was doubling over and crumpling he looked the epitome of radiant and robust indestructibility until his face hit the floor with a soggy whack and blood from the impact shot out of his mouth. I continued walking past him without a hitch in my stride. I made believe I didn't see. When I got back from lunch, he wasn't there. He had been taken away. I was disappointed. Someone had distorted reality for the sake of neatness. (I have things organized very neatly now upstairs.) I still catch myself looking for him in the spot where he fell. I still remember him falling. This morning on my way to work I saw an unconscious derelict lying on the steps of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, staining the stone platforms with a fluid that could have been urine or whiskey. Policemen were there and had the situation in hand. They didn't need my help.

It's a good thing they didn't.

Woe, woe, alas, and alack. My wife is unhappy too again. We have arrived at a reasonable understanding: it isn't all my fault and there's not much I can do to improve things (even though I still won't tell her I love her and she refuses pointedly to ask). She makes no difference to anyone.

"I wish I had a career at something exciting."

"It isn't too late."

She lifts her eyes to study me in steadfast gaze. "It is too late."

"Of course it is."

She accepts the fact that Kagle was fated to go no matter what I did, and that if I had not gone in to replace him, I would never have been allowed to go anywhere else.

"You'd get a housekeeper, wouldn't you?" she says dreamily. "And put Derek in a home. Or you'd send the children away to boarding school and move into the city."

"If what?"

"If I committed suicide or died of cancer or just moved away alone or with some other man."

"Are you thinking of any of those?" I ask with healing indulgence.

"And I wouldn't blame you. I just don't make a difference to anyone.