Milkbottle H, page 25
the trouble with Lee is, Barry Handler says with bright childlike casualness as he gives his little beaverdam one last loving pat, is that since Everyman has had his day the only thing Lee can fall back on to proclaim his universality is to call himself
Everyboy.
The table in the cafeteria buckles and spouts with bellycrushed laughter. Even Lee cannot resist an explosive snort that has him simultaneously fart. The exception is Rosa Caby who stares at Lee with carefully composed tears in her eyes so that her makeup will stay composed. She whispers to him in her carefully modulated Russian accent that she doesnt think what Barry has said is very funny and adds in the roaring commotion that wont Lee please, please think about coming to see her at her 16th Street apartment because shes never never had the chance to talk to him without intruders, yes, Lee?
When?
Tomorrow night?
He nods. And Silas Klein takes out his tiny penknife, inserting the point under his blackrimmed nails to slice forth small curling worms of pliant dirt. And in Rosa’s invitation is expunged for Lee the ruthless disservice of Barry’s wit. Barry, alerted, slaps the table and perkily informs Rosa that she is a bitch. She shrugs, quite grandly. Do you understand that, Lee, Barry shrills at him, I lose, goddamn it I lose, and the beaver proceeds to chuckle remorselessly at himself and then confides to Lee that his wife Selma is still in the hospital from an operation in which her fallopian tubes have been tied up to prevent the possibility of another anomalous pregnancy occuring there. Which means no children, Lee says quietly.
No children, Barry confirms. But we can always adopt a dog, cant we?
Or a beaver, Lee adds.
Do you always hit an animal when hes on all fours, Lee? Barry inquires graciously.
That always means one less inhuman, Lee suggests.
What are you so happy about, Red asks her brother Nate as he gleefully enters the livingroom behind the Goldstein delicatessen.
I just got back from the Roosevelt Cemetery, he happily announces to the group at the diningroom table, his brother Herb, gulping at a Coke, looking up at Nate with a short scornful grin as Esther Goldstein stands, hands on hip, in the kitchen entry, Frances, Herb’s brunette rotund wife, behind her, a wet dish in hand, and Solomon Goldstein, whose chin lifts sardonically, follows Nate. Esther grins nervously. Frances giggles in open amusement at her brotherinlaw. Lee gently cradles the telephone receiver, having finished speaking to his mother to explain he wont be back for supper who in turn has informed him that Levi might visit the Goldsteins before he returns home this evening since it is felt by the Emanuels that contact with the Goldsteins in parental form is long overdue.
And? St Red wriggles her volumes up from the chair as she sorts out an apologetic glance to Lee. Thats my very silly brother, her glance informs him of her feeling. My extremely silly brother, my fatuous brother.
What did you say? Nate inquires with momentary crossness at his sister.
I said, Rena shouts, I said you dont have any trouble hearing when you really want to.
Thats a lot of shit and you know it, his crewcut boyface pouts at her. You know my hearing comes and goes.
Fa mach dein pisk, her mother sopranos at Rena, who shrugs. So what were you doing at the cemetery, Esther mollifies her son.
Beaming, Nate resumes his joyous stammering. What was I doing? What was I doing? Very important, let me tell you, but Im so glad I could do it, Im telling you I was in luck, you cant imagine how lucky. You know right next to the plots you and pop have there I managed to buy two more, one for Hannah and one for me, can you imagine how lucky I was? Right on the same hill, mom, Im telling you, overlooking the highway and U.S. Route 1, were right next to you, isnt that great? I never felt so happy and lucky in my life. Listen, Herb, he turns quite seriously to his younger brother, assuming the eldest brother role of father advisor you should start thinking bout getting one for you and Frances, I mean, have you ever thought seriously about it? I think you should because those plots are going fast, but I noticed theres still room for two more, why dont you go out there tomorrow and get it settled, youll feel a lot better let me tell you. Then, beaming joyously once more at his mother and father, stammering excitedly as before, Thats some view let me tell you.
Yeh, some view, Solomon says heavily, turns and goes back into the store. I hear a customer, he explains, dont think Im walking out on you, Nate.
Man there wont be any customers at the Roosevelt Cemetery, pop, Nate chortles at his own humor.
Yeh, his father agrees, curiously commiserative toward his son, and goes out.
How can you talk to your father that way, Esther demands, irritation with Nate sneering across her love for the firstborn.
Oh mom Im kidding Im kidding dont you know when Im kidding? But arent you happy mom that Hannah and mell be there with you and pop? I mean with that view and all? Phew, thats a load off my mind, he turns to Lee.
Im glad its a load off your mind, my son, Esther drily observes.
Some load, Rena shakes her head at Frances.
Ah what do you know, youre just a little shit of a kid sister, Nate tells Rena. You got to excuse us, Lee, he turns charmingly to him, you know how a family is. Shes a good kid at heart, Rena is, but shes still wet behind the kotex.
Ah why dont you quit that kind of talk, Herb bawls at him. Shes your sister.
You dont have to get angry, Herb, Nate shifts towards his mother.
Well I dont like to hear it, see?
Frances is a little frightened. I want to see you in the kitchen, Herb, thats the fifth Coke youve had today.
Why dont you shut up, Frances, Ill drink as many as I like. How many goddamn pleasures have I got?
Thats a nice thing to say, Frances blushes, her lower lids fattening with tears.
Jesuschrist cant you take it? Herb yells at her.
Stop yelling at your wife, Esther rebukes him severely. Youre lucky you got a wife like Frances, a dumb one like you.
Frances starts in agony toward Herb, Mother, mother, you dont have to
Ah my mother dont know what shes talkin, Herb growls, Im gone in to help pop.
A stunned kind of sigh hangs a hush over Lee Youre such a smart one his cousin Donna Zion rumples her brother Russ’ hair as he lies with his head in her lap on the Zion porch on Roosevelt Boulevard FAH MACH DEIN PISK Bella, her mother, snarls at her.
one thousand nineteen hundred and thirtyfour one thousand nineteen hundred and thirtyfive one thousand nineteen hundred and thirtysix times Norma counts steadily the number of full revolutions the hoop has made around the hips of the little girl on the Will Rogers beach in California.
Perhaps the female of the species has at last chanced on an unchanging fashion, Lee ventures from his fawning drowse at the bottom of the sun, but only because of the specific relationship of that blind little boy to her, the blind boy who, connecting with his hands his known father and his father’s unknown mistress, springs forever up and down as a spindle through the female hoop. Now the little girl finds it quite impossible to take her eyes from the blind boy; she gives him, since she discovers a permanent fashion, her sight, for all she requires is the fashion; and since she has the eyes of everyone on the beach, why should she need her own at all? Did you know, Norma, that essentially youre a scientist? You quite patiently count the number of turns, a quite scientific trait. Its a wonder to me that more women dont fancy going into science. I predict that in the far future, once women are thoroughy emancipated from childbearing, they will make up the bulk of scientists, and become science’s greatest figures. Then art will become the special province of the male. Very logical, very just, Lee nods sagely to himself, his chin furrowing the cool undersand. Creative and noncreative human expression sexually and therefore perfectly divided. It is quite right that the female, having divested herself of the procreative, should evolve into the noncreative, science; while the male, always bored at bottom with counting and measuring, should evolve wholly into the creative, art. Then, you see, as individuals, the male and female will cease to be at each other’s throats; only their expressions will bloody each other and thereby interfecundate. Who knows but what art and science may not one day be one, the equations of physics, for example, put down in colors and in composition on canvas; or a poem revolving before the eye in a nuclear pattern, such rhymes as there might be constituted of positive and negative endings. But I suppose, he sighs, that such will come about only when Aristophanes’ fantasy, courtesy of Plato, is resatisfied when male and female are one and the same
one thousand nineteen hundred and fortysix one thousand nine that sounds more like your own hundred and forty private fan seven tasy Norma drily observes.
But that hoop the little girl revolves is our publicly private fantasy, and the blind boy jumping is our privately public fantasy, do you know that, Lee lunges up to a crouch and shades his eye at the ascending and descending traffic on the Coast Highway on the Roosevelt Boulevard because he must rack his stare away from the Kotex Girl, as he characterizes her, his cousin Donna Zion who sits her legs astraddle the footstool on the Emanuel porch its so damn hot she says, the white narrow wad curving longitudinally at her crotch in plain view of the fourteenyearold boy, her graygreen eyes drooping their iris lips all the way down to her derisive mouth whose spittle ticks dim glimmers all the way down to her mount hair thumbing its little cilia noses derisively at the boy, the graygreen flesh of her inner thighs putrescently browned by Lee’s irises and blackening as his pupils widen to accustom himself to Donna’s graygreen dark, its cheesy stink spiculing through the boy’s heart, you cant have me anyway her cunt grins at him because you cant talk because your mouth is taped together by Kotex; besides, youre too too young, youd dirty up my Kotex, and I want my period to remain pure she scratches at her pubic with a flash of nail but permits Lee’s fingers to linger in his fantasy christ its hot she complains to her aunt Rachel Emanuel whom she visits periodically for consultation with respect to her little triangular amatory problem.
East and west, west and east the cars burrow through the chatter of the early afternoon sun on the black bareassed macadam of the Boulevard’s two outer lanes, the one on the north side, furthest from the Emanuel house, carrying westbound traffic, and the south side, closest the Emanuel’s, carrying the eastbound; to Trenton and New York; and to Pittsburg and Chicago; while the two center lanes, adjacent to each other but separated from the outer lanes by broad green paralleling lawns measuredly bearing broadbeamed maple and chestnut, directionally conform. On this windless day the leafage is ponderous and cannot in its chlorophyllic course throw back the sunlight in carbonated disarray; the greenery must perforce invisibly stagger under the burden of the bright as it cumbrously, creeping along through its own dark flue, drags in its sustenance, managing only to refuse, repulsing, the glimmering remains of light. Above, from the section of the city known as Logan, the black neon of CHRIST NEVER FAILS atop the churchspire slowly revolves in the yellowblue sky. Here in the high shot scintillance of the summer day time seems to be calmly and gerentologically fought—forever young time stuporously battled by hoary perception, perception some fantastically storied monster paleolithically scaled and scarred by innumerable blinders fastened to it by the dying living who can hardly draw a muted breath before the struggle, ended, renews while the wind waits at the far distance of the heat, its maned skull in a tiny unseen whirlpool at the edge of the earth.
Roy Lindauer, realestate agent, eminently dependable executive assistant to HUBERT SONNENFELD, OF HUBERT SONNENFELD AND COMPANY, Philadelphia’s real property tycoon, conveyancer of trussed titles and bethicketed deeds, of physical assets and wooden tracts, of brothelled office building and sluggard slum, Master at Mortgages of the first and the second and the third descending powers, Assiduous Assassin at Amortizations, President At Large of the American Board of Realtors, Consultant at International Parleys For Spatial Physics in that questions germane to the settling of titles to the void untold parsecs toward the furthest constellations must be thrashed out to the ethereal satisfaction of all nations concerned, the training of RealEstate Astronauts, Cosmic Surveyors (deference shall accordingly be paid George Washington, Father Astrosurveyor) and the Like—Roy Lindauer, it is clear, to whom is funnelled the trying details of Interconstellative Realty not to mention the lesser but nonetheless multitudinous trivia of the metropolitan buying and selling of the good or putrefying (Donna Zion? ) earth, leasing and renting of valuable corner properties and mere middleoftheblock old homesteads, bears the weight of the worlds upon his somewhat slurring shoulders. The man is no risk for a marriageable girl. He is fortytwo years of age, is Roy Lindauer. The boy to whom Donna gives birth is, facially, an approximate reproduction of Roy; the dental structure is such that the thin underlip, curving out from the keen indentation in the already receding and pointed chin, reminds one of the mouth formation, exceptionally protrusive, of a certain African tribe, except that the Caucasian variation has evinced a grim paucity of flesh; a long pointed nose lofts the faintly bulging graygreen eye trophies to the wide forehead shield that discourses back to the kinky zigzags of sandy hair; but the tongue, in Roy Lindauer himself when in familial relationship a patient, yielding though somewhat querulous instrument, the tongue in the child is Donna’s as she slumps, slinks, slogs, slushes (be it summer or winter, spring or autumn), slings, slivers, slangs, stoops, stutters, strangles down the brick pathway along the calfhigh hedge to the sidewalk dutifully followed by Roy in doublebreasted suit and, oddly enough, in a doublebreasted skull of which the eyes are four buttons and the top of which flies off in opposite directions by virtue of two kinky wings. The more he follows, the more his shoulders slip down to join the species of the broadhipped male. He bears the faint patina of astonishment and a box of candy, Whitman’s Sampler
Is there any place youd specially like to go for a drive Donna?
Oh shut up, Roy, Donna twistslumps at the cardoor, the lisp as ever low in her speech, the control gripped in the nasal passages, her flowered dress bouqueted at the breasts, those of considerable substance though possessed of a natural yet piquant sag, a kind of feverish fertility at large loose ends.
Did you hear my question Donna, Roy pipes higher, a moiety of pique in the register.
What question was that, she pejoratives, she hauls away, she dumps into the gutter, the heel of her shoe gouging at the soft summerearth, her hand pulling down the waist of her dress, her thin stinging nasality of tone pinching her blond highcheekboned face, making the underlids shrug painfully. Her darkly undulant blond hair sidles away from the fine forehead sweep. Her florid hips trouble the buttocks as she shifts her weight incessantly. Out of her eyecorners she petulantly twitchnotes the gray mottlings on Roy’s sideburns. She cannot directly meet his gaze; she cannot even take him in from head to foot, though she quite well is aware of the rodent quality of his fingers and toes, having witnessed him in his swimsuit on the Atlantic City beach, those members in cryptic contrast to the paunch on his belly, the paunch on his thighs and the paunch on the calves of his legs, not to mention his fatty teats evoking the image of her father’s, fatty but in their pendulous droop thin at the bottom, even as his underlip. Her stomach is quite tranquil. Nothing of Donna’s insides chum; she has managed to extrude her nausea; her surfaces roil, capsize, turn green in the lavender bluegreen twilight; she is vomitously sick in the swerve of her neck, extensive skin areas enormously enlarging their pores shallowly to stir the flickers of bile playing about her exteriors; she is sick at her fingers, at her nostrils, at her scalp. When she marries Roy Lindauer and goes to bed with the man she is sick on top of her throat; her ecstasy at the mouth of her vagina is a vomitous stench; as she writhes beneath him, the palms of her hands wipe at the sheets as their lines discharge greenish sweat; she grunts high in her nostrils as the man bursts in her his swollen scab, her gums foul with the insucked scum of her lips; her rumps fart copiously as her cunt nags at his penis, and a thin black stool trickles from her anus as she grinds the scant and petulant sperm out of Roy Lindauer you dirty bastard Ill fuck the realestate all out of you she nasals at him in the dark, Ill deed your prick to the Society For the Advancement of Victorian Needlework, Ill lease your testicles for ninetynine years as circling satellites to Mother Donna, Ill scavenge your scrotum till you walk in a wobble like a castrated ape the nun Donnanadine screeches at him, her bignose crawling like a boaconstrictor along her lips while she waits for Roy Lindauer to catch up with her at the cardoor; but though she stands for a moment perfectly still he perfectly illustrates the syllogism in the grimming summerdusk, the Boulevard traffic discoursing east and west, west and east, by never quite reaching Donna Zion though he constantly approaches her, for he himself regards it an inexorable law that he must never establish realestate contact with her for all her dire predictions; suck her succulent earth he must, and does, but comparable to a hovering, widehipped insect over her fruitfulness, buzzing with a yielding, tolerant, temperate, faintly querulous buzz, for he sucks her by a curious extension on the end of his penis, and that is his long sharppointed nose he blows into her vagina, in an admixture of snot and sperm, and this it is that causes her curses, her frantic hipshoves at him, the mean malediction of his nose that he passes triumphantly on to his son, Donna wild in her ecstatic nausea, she can never have enough of that extension while Roy victoriously waves his white handkerchief that, now, she sees protruding from his back pocket as he approaches her, the handkerchief she wants to snatch from him and tear into jagged strips, this the only part of Roy Lindauer she can stare at, so he walks around to the other side of the car, plumps himself in and releases the opposite door for Donna who buffets her body in to the seat, smiling meanly straight ahead of her through the windshield as she hears his mild womanish voice
