Jernigan, page 15
“Where to begin,” I said. “Okay, first of all I had one of Danny’s little friends tell me he might be suicidal.”
“That Danny is?” she said. “Or the friend is?”
“Please,” I said, holding up my hand. “This is not the time. So first I find this out—no, actually, first I find out this friend of Danny’s has taken up residence in my house. Then I find out Danny is suicidal.”
“I wasn’t making a joke, by the way, Peter. I was honestly confused. Sorry if I’m so stupid.”
“Then,” I said, ignoring this, “I get back here, where I find your daughter in the midst of having a bad acid trip and screaming to be taken to the emergency room. Where we have just finished spending an edifying several hours cooling our fucking heels and finally getting in to see a doctor and getting shot up with tranquilizers. Plus a little interrogation about the living arrangements around here. Just for good measure.”
“Oh my God,” said Martha, looking toward the hallway. “What happened? Is she all right?”
“How the fuck would I know?” I said. “I mean, you saw her. She walks and talks. Whatever they shot her up with put a stop to the screaming meemies at least. Which believe me is no small boon.”
“Oh my God.”
“But what I particularly wish you’d been around for was when they were giving her the shot and she tied herself off with her belt. That was really attractive. You know, to get a vein up? You should’ve seen the doctor taking that in.” I stopped for a swallow of that gin. Pissed me off that I’d watered it down. “You told me Clarissa had once had a little drug problem,” I said. “You never told me she was shooting up, for Christ’s sake.”
“What did you think I meant, that she was taking too many aspirin?”
I took another swallow. “You should have told me.”
“Right,” she said. “So you’d look at her like a freak. And me like some welfare mother. She needs to be treated like a normal child, Peter. It’s part of her recovery.”
“Right,” I said. “Some recovery. She’s recovered so well that all she does anymore is drop a little acid now and then and jump out of her fucking skin.” What I didn’t add was that it was a friend of Danny’s who’d given it to her; this didn’t really fit into a rant about Martha and her daughter. “Jesus,” I said, “some fucking situation I got myself into this time.”
“Well,” she said, “you didn’t use to mind it.”
“I didn’t use to know what it was,” I said.
“The rate you put that stuff away,” she said, “you’re in a really great position to be making judgments on Clarissa.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Touché. Too fuckin’ shay. I’m fucked up, right? I’m the fucked-up one.” Jabbing a forefinger into my chest. Then I had to laugh. “God, I sound just like Ralph Kramden,” I said. “Did you hear it?”
She stared. “Is there some particular time of the day,” she said, “when you might be sober enough for us to actually talk? I think we could really use it.”
“I’m ready to talk,” I said. “What. Because I can stand outside myself for one second, I’m suddenly not in any shape to deal with anything? I was in enough shape to get your daughter to the hospital. You want to talk about shape?”
“I’m going to go check on Clarissa,” she said. “You’ll excuse me?”
“Thank you,” I prompted her.
“For what?” she said. “What are you thanking me for?”
“Forget it,” I said. “Go.” I flopped a sloppy-wristed hand to dismiss her. “You might check on Danny while you’re at it.”
“Of course,” she said.
I sat there at the table, in my accustomed chair, head of the family, and drank off the rest of that watered-down gin. Waste of good gin to water it down, though actually it wasn’t because it was still the same quantity of gin. Well, at least Danny was safe in bed, presumably, so that much could wait. But this whole thing was unbelievable. I felt like just crashing on the couch tonight, but I couldn’t even do that because then in the morning the kids would know there’d been a fight. Morning meaning when the alarm went off in a few hours. Some schoolday tomorrow was going to be.
I got up, went to the refrigerator, took a good belt of gin straight out of the bottle, then poured the rest of it into the peanut butter jar, and that was all she wrote for Old Mr. Gordon’s. I sat down at the table again to drink this last inch and try to figure out where to sleep. Go back to my house? While it still was my house? Except the God damn fat kid was there. And doing what? Innocently revelling in videos and canned frosting to console himself for not getting into Clarissa’s pants? Or playing a far deeper game? I mean, what if he hadn’t simply popped a Pez or some such, and all the time he’d been talking to me he’d been sneakily tripping his brains out, holding himself together while he watched, say, my face disintegrate. Which was probably even more dangerous than manifestly freaking out, like Clarissa. I thought about it in terms of pressure: Clarissa’s freakout had been an ultimately harmless outrush, whereas whatever was building up under that surface that Dustin was using so much counterpressure to maintain—no need to finish the thought. Then I wondered if thinking of the mind in this kind of Newtonian way made any sense. Which was as far as I’d managed to get with my thinking when Martha came back in.
“I guess they’re both asleep,” said Martha, sitting down in her accustomed chair, the one across from mine. “I kind of tapped on the door and all I heard was breathing.”
“Hey, as long as they’re breathing,” I said. “Here.” I fumbled in my pants pocket. “Doctor gave me a list of, I don’t know, places you can call.”
“Places,” she said.
“Places you could get her into treatment,” I said.
I held aloft the piece of paper, let it drop, and shot it across the tabletop at her with the flick of a fingertip. It came to rest against a plate smeared with dried egg yolk. Fucking thing had sat there since breakfast, and now it was getting on toward breakfast again.
Martha picked up the piece of paper and stared at it, then put it down. “Basically,” she said, “what Clarissa needs is for the last ten or fifteen years not to have happened.”
“So you just throw up your hands, right?”
“So what do you propose? Hand the problem back to the experts so you don’t have to deal with it?”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Why is this my problem?”
“I meant anybody,” she said. “So one doesn’t have to deal with it, all right? But actually, yes: you, Peter. Because I actually was stupid enough to think you could’ve been some help. God, from her father to you … I’m the one who ought to be locked up.”
I got to my feet. “Believe I’ll put up on the couch for tonight,” I said. “Fascinating as this all is.”
“Uh uh,” she said. “No. I believe you’ll put up in your own house tonight. I don’t want you here. You’re welcome to call a taxi if you’re not able to drive yourself. But I want you gone.”
“I am fully well able,” I said, “to drive myself.” I was man enough, barely, not to plead that an LSD-maddened teenager might be waiting at my house. Behind the door with a knife, say, to cut out my heart to see how it worked. I raised the peanut butter jar, said “Here’s how,” drained the last half inch of gin and wiped my hand across my mouth. “ ‘Wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh,’ ” I said. “ ‘The something something something something. The words revolve—’ I don’t know, goes on from there.” I raised an Uncle Fred forefinger. “ ‘Some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.’ ”
“And I can really do without the ironies,” she said. “Whatever they’re supposed to mean.”
“You, maybe,” I said. “But as for me.”
I put on my coat and felt around in the right-hand pocket for keys. Good: two bunches; one car keys, one house keys. You could tell the house keys by feel. They were the ones with Powerful Pete on the key ring, unless that was the car keys. Probably not your finest hour, getting yourself kicked out of here before you were able to talk your son out of killing himself.
“Just remember,” I said, hand on the doorknob. “If anything happens to me”—I was thinking Manson murder, but she probably thought I just meant a car wreck—“you’re going to have some pret-ty tall explaining to do to old Danny.”
“I’ll risk it,” she said.
“Famous last words,” I said. Meaning from my point of view.
6
Late as it was, the lights were still on when I pulled into the driveway behind what’s-his-name’s Cadillac. Dustin. And I noticed for the first time—God knows how long it had been there—that the FOR SALE sign had been replaced by a similar sign reading SOLD. A sign, in other words, not to benefit me but to bring in new business. I was giving the fuckers free advertising! I tugged and wrestled it out of the frozen ground, took it onto the breezeway and threw it clattering on the cement floor, a warning to all exploiters. And incidentally to put young Dustin on notice, just in case he was thinking of trying to Manson-murder me, that I was coming in angry and dangerous. The kitchen door was still unlocked. I walked in and took off my coat—the little bastard certainly hadn’t stinted himself on the heat that I was paying for—tossed it on the kitchen table and called “Anybody home?” But he had the tv going. “Is this the place?” a tv voice was saying.
“Of course it’s the place.” James Stewart, boy, you could tell that braying voice. So Dustin had his movie on.
The other voice said, “Well, this house ain’t been lived in for twenty years.”
I went into the living room. Dustin was on the sofa, lying on his side facing the blaring tv. Bert pulled his police car up beside Ernie’s cab. “What’s up, Ernie?” he said. I watched them watch James Stewart approach the ruined house.
“I don’t know,” said Ernie, “but we better keep an eye on this guy. He’s bats.” Bert was Ward Bond, who ended up on Wagon Train.
“Hey Dustin?” I said. Dead to the world, boy.
“Mary! Mary! “James Stewart called. “Tommy! Pete! Jamie! Zuzu! Where are you?”
I didn’t want him finally rousing himself to get up and go into the bedroom and finding me there. Thought I’d better make sure, too, that he wasn’t just lying there bug-eyed and catatonic.
“They’re not here, George,” said Henry Travers. “You have no children.”
I touched his shoulder. “Dustin?”
“Where are you?” said James Stewart. “What have you done with them?”
Dustin didn’t move.
“All right, put up your hands.” I looked back at the screen. Ward Bond had pulled a gun on James Stewart. I didn’t want to miss the scene that was coming up right after this, where his mother is all hard-faced and doesn’t recognize him.
I gripped Dustin’s shoulder lightly, just fingertips, and shook. Flesh felt loose, strangely heavy.
“Bert!” James Stewart brayed. “Thank heaven you’re here.” Then I looked down and saw the stilled trickle of what looked like bright red paint, down across his cheek to the corner of his half-open mouth. It came from a hole in his temple too small to stick a pencil into.
“Stand back,” said Ward Bond.
This was probably a practical joke, right?
“Bert,” said James Stewart, “what’s happened to this house? Where’s Mary? Where’s my kids?”
Then I saw the little pistol on the floor, right beneath the hand drooping over the edge of the sofa: instantly knew it was Martha’s, instantly imagined Danny slipping it to him for protection, instantly saw Danny led away to jail. (It was a 22, but of course not Martha’s; they ended up pressing some kind of charges against the kid who’d sold it to him.) I put the back of my hand up to his nose and mouth, as a flirting lady would to a courtly gentleman. No breath coming out. Then I touched the hand. Never in my life touched anything like that flesh, boy. Soft and cold.
I ran to the kitchen for the phone. Though I might as well have walked. Might as well have let a year go by.
“Look,” said Ward Bond, “now why don’t you be a good kid and we’ll take you in to a doctor. Everything’s going to be all right.”
I jabbed the O. Somebody better know what to do.
VI
1
The people here are getting sick of my bullshit.
What is this document you’re writing? they want to know. Just a simple list, we told you: you write down the people you’ve harmed and what you did to them, period. Then you get started making your amends; that’s how the program works. But up to now they haven’t really been able to nail me. I’m still trying to sort this stuff out, I tell them. You know, what I did to people: is it really just this straightforward deal where, pow, you do something shitty and, thud, somebody feels shitty? I mean, take Judith. Please. (Little joke.) On the one hand, this is someone who actually died because, bottom line, I made her miserable, right? But then there’s all this stuff about how people are responsible for their own feelings—I mean, I’m responsible for my own feelings, right?—so therefore did I really make her miserable? They have a name for this kind of talk: the Retreat Into Confusion. Getting befuddled, they say, is one more strategy for avoiding the real issue. No, I tell them, it’s just the opposite. What I’m after, I tell them, is a little clarity here, about what happens in this world: is that not a real issue? They say writing all this stuff down is only a strategy to gain time. (Or lose time, if you want to think of it that way.) And that makes them feel smart, to think they’ve really got old Jernigan’s number. Which isn’t to say they haven’t. You have to bear with me a little on this, I tell them; I’ve got my own way of doing things. Right, they say, that’s what got you here.
Though of course I almost didn’t get here, which is a story outside this story really. More Uncle Fred’s story than mine, anyway: he was the one who called the police; I was only the mumbling thing carried out of his trailer. (I do remember at some point looking down at the bandaged hand and thinking the shape of it looked wrong. But that must’ve been later, in the hospital.) I gather from what Uncle Fred tells me that the hospital and this place have eaten up all the money from selling Heritage Circle and then some. I’d thought a couple of times about health insurance after I got shit-canned, but. At any rate, Uncle Fred says I’m not to worry about any of that now. He says that handling all this stuff has only taken him a couple of vacation days; I know that has to be bullshit. And he says it was really Danny who saved my life: by calling him when he did, to say I was headed for New Hampshire in bad shape. He’s the one you ought to be thanking, Uncle Fred says, not me. I tell him, Fuck it, let’s talk about fucking sports, man. How about those Islanders? How about the Pittsburgh fucking Penguins? But he’s lost his sense of irony or something.
All I remember of that story is what was supposed to be the end.
As the first stars came out over Studebaker Hill, I left the trailer and trudged back up to my car, taking the same roundabout way so as not to defile the open snow. I drove to the state store a couple of towns over—at New Hampshire prices, I had enough money left for a whole quart—and when I got back, I kept going on past the camp and parked by the frozen pond a mile farther up the road. I took the rubber hose out of the trunk, paid it out into the gas tank until it hit bottom, knelt and sucked until I got gasoline in the mouth, and then laid the end of the hose down so it would keep pissing into the snow. In fact, I thought about swallowing that mouthful of gasoline, but I didn’t know enough about what would happen. Staggering around in the snow, blind and puking, that was no way to go out. So I spat, then picked up handfuls of snow and sloshed them around in my mouth. The walk back to the camp was mostly downhill, but it still takes it out of you to walk in that kind of cold. Only one car passed by, and I saw the lights coming from far enough away so that I had time to crash through the snowbank and hide behind a tree. From the place where you left the plowed road and went down to the trailer I broke new trail, even deeper in the woods and farther from the open field. I could have saved energy by walking in my old footprints, but that wasn’t the idea. The idea was to get there on something like my last legs. Inside, in the dark, I didn’t bother with the stove anymore. I lit a match long enough to locate what blankets there were, blew it out, pulled the blankets over me and got going on that bottle. One of the last things I remember is getting up to go outside and piss, and being pleased to find I couldn’t walk straight. I’d been doubting that the gin was taking hold the way it should, half inclined to blame the bargain price. But now I was lurching in the heroic style, stumbling into one wall, bouncing off it and hitting something else, probably a different wall. I couldn’t really feel the impact. When I finally did get to the door I no longer saw the sense of all this hoo-ha and figured Fuck it, might as well just let ’er go in your pants. It felt warm (though only briefly) and oh such release.
2
But. As I say. Whole other story.
My immediate response to the Dustin business wasn’t to get pants-pissing drunk. Quite the reverse. I decided to consider it a sign, just as I had back when Danny was two and I woke up on somebody’s floor among marble obelisks, and it turned out to be the studio of a man who hadn’t had a drink in twenty years. But that was a self-generated sign, or so I assume: I must have wanted, deep down, to get to a place where I could be saved. Dustin’s killing himself was a sign from outside. I mean, it wasn’t anything I’d done. It told me I’d been making a loveless hell here, and that to stop drinking was only one of a bunch of things I had to do. Why wasn’t I using my gifts, such as they were, to serve others? Okay, you’re not a doctor. But you could damn well work in a soup kitchen. Or volunteer in a nursing home. Go to some hospital and hold unwanted babies before they died of not being held. Simply physically held: you could do it with an IQ of twenty. If you were lucky enough to be able-bodied, you dropped your self-absorbed bullshit and you went out and got any job you could get to keep yourself alive so you could help those who weren’t able-bodied. I mean, anybody knows this.
