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  “Shouldn’t keep things in containers, Marsha, especially half eaten.”

  “But I don’t eat all of it, Thaddeus.”

  “Then someone should eat with you.”

  “But who, Thaddeus? Now that Jo moved out?”

  “Oh, I could stop by every now and then.”

  “Would you, Thaddeus? That would be nice.”

  She made spaghetti that night; I remember it well. Noodles thick, clumped. “Looks like rice pudding, Marsha.”

  “Eat it,” she said, “it’s good.”

  “My ma wants you to come over again sometime, Marsha.”

  “Fine. Hey, Thaddeus?”

  “Huh?”

  “What do you do?”

  “What do you mean what do I do?”

  “All day. When I’m at my classes. What do you do?”

  “Lots of stuff, Marsha. What do you do?”

  “I asked you first, Thaddeus.”

  “Oh, I do the usual things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I read.”

  “What?”

  “Newspapers, novels, and dictionaries when I can’t get crosswords.”

  “Do you ever think? I mean, about your future?”

  “Sure, Marsha. Who doesn’t think?”

  “Lots of people, Thaddeus. What do you think?”

  “About? Just things.”

  “What things?”

  “Just things. And I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter.”

  “What doesn’t matter?”

  “Whether I think about things or not. Things just happen.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Dead serious.”

  “But don’t you want to change things?”

  “Some things, sure, if I could.”

  “You could.”

  “That’s a dream.”

  “It’s a fact.”

  “Things change in their own time, no sooner and no quicker.”

  Was that you, Marsha?

  I thought I heard someone at the door. Must have a look. No, nothing. Must be the wind. Who opened that window?

  It’s raining again, my dear reader. Marsha will be soaked. Soaked to the bone. Oh. Damn. Wait.

  Marsha, come very close to the page because this is your pencil now that I’m using, your story pencil, the patient pencil having read every old magazine in the waiting room and then breaking its point in frustration and drunkenness, even getting me sick. I cleaned up the mess, don’t worry. And I brushed my teeth. Couldn’t have a nasty mouth for you when you get here. I used your brush, Marsha. May I bring mine over? I know we need to talk first but we don’t have to tell anyone and besides, who says we’d have to live here? Let’s find our own apartment, somewhere away from this place, just the two of us. I could sign the lease and maybe I’d even think about getting a job. I can hear you saying that I’m being unrealistic but what is realistic if you don’t try new things? I’d get a job. I would. Did I ever tell you my father worked since he was seven? That’s a fact, he did. The Great Depression, his father out of work. He had a regular hustle at the train station. He’d go up to the biggest trunk and try to lift it, always smiling, giving them his laugh, a young laugh then, and they’d usually smile and let him take their little bags. Went over very big with the ladies. Lots of tips. Never told anyone. Embarrassed. Not him or me, but my mother when she told me. After he died. Marsha, did I ever outright tell you that my father died? Oh I make jokes about him, I joke about everything, nothing is sacred, but I’m serious now. He was drinking that night. The night his bus crashed. Or so they claim. That’s why there’s no insurance. Said it was his fault. And someday you’ll die, and I’ll die. And then what? So why not have today? Why not, Marsha? Soon enough it’ll be all over and then poof, you’re gone, good-bye, catch you later, hello maggots. I overlook the frightening part. The knowing it. That’s the thing. I wish I didn’t know it and didn’t think about it so damn much. That’s one of the reasons why I like you, really, because you fill your life with so much busy, so that you forget. My way is the opposite. I do nothing and I think about it all the time. I play games. Though a good laugh doesn’t hurt, in fact it’s good, but games are still games. I wish sometimes I could admit this to you, Marsha. Marsha, you are really a very tender and nice and very decent— That’s the word, you’re a decent person, Marsha. And now after I’ve broken into your room and sit here waiting for you I agree with everything you and my mother have said about me, that I’m a bum and someday I’m going to wake up and be forced to wake up and oh

  I guess I must have been asleep.

  Good evening. What time is it? Marsha?

  Not here yet. And close to twelve. Oh Lord, what a mess. What a head. A tempest must have struck this room; there are sheets of paper all over. A broken whiskey bottle in the corner. Beer cans. Beans. And, what’s this?

  Dried up on the rug.

  It was the rain that woke me. Beating so hard against the window that I dreamed I couldn’t breathe. And the wind—The wind was howling.

  My sweet pounding head.

  Oh, Marsha—

  There was a woman who lay against a tree, and the tree was on a beach, and the beach was near some rocks and vases of flowers, large vases of paper flowers. They covered my father, the flowers, and I asked why he was covered. My father. He shouted hey, son, come out. And I cried here I am, and I climbed out then from beneath the bed, and I looked at their angry shoes and faces, and the bulb hanging down from the ceiling swung back and forth, shining. His badge, 17381, glistened in the coffin. My mother was crying. Thaddeus, come out, she cried. Marsha is out alone in the rain. She lay in the sand with her top off, and when I first touched her she shivered, as if she were very cold. She was afraid, she said. I was afraid when they picked me up and had me kiss him. And his lips. His mustache was frozen white when he walked in through the big front door shouting Merry Christmas, and waiting for me under the bright tree— Was Marsha, and I touched her, and she was liquid. And hot was his coffee steaming in his big red chair pulling down my trousers in front of my mother to spank me, and I screamed. My mother held her face. And when she turned, Karl held her. My father hit me, saying huff, huff, huff.

  She said stop, not now, oh not now, not like this, Thaddeus, here on the beach, no, please, not now,

  pick him up, there, that’s it, he needs to give a kiss, there, he’s your father, a good man, give a kiss

  to your Uncle Karl, Thaddeus, he is a very good man.

  On his badge was a teardrop, my mother’s, it shone, I touched it

  was wet

  like her mouth, warm, dark, hot, secret.

  A secret? That’s stealing! Oh you take him, you beat him, you teach him, it’s goddamn wrong

  to do it here, Thaddeus, please?

  On his badge was my mother’s tear. It shone. And with my finger I touched it. It was wet. The badge was cold. His face was cold. His lips were closed. He did not smile. I wanted him to say Thaddeus. His eyes were closed. I wanted him to wink. I wanted him to smile at me. Hear his laugh. Give me a sip of his cup. Steaming.

  Always were her pots. In the kitchen. Our kitchen. After he left it was others’. My uncle’s. Strange people. She smiled. Too friendly. Always tired. It wasn’t fair. She was too nice. I became embarrassed. She was not my mother. So I pretended.

  I am a rough tough mean cool walking slow and thinking fast.

  “Good morning, Marsha. My, you look lovely today.”

  “Shhh. Hello, Thaddeus. You frightened me.”

  “Surprised to see me?”

  “You know I have a test. I thought I asked you to leave me alone today.”

  “On a nice day like this? I couldn’t let you stay here in the library.”

  “Shhh, Thaddeus. Anyway, today it’s supposed to rain.”

  “What do they know? The sun will shine, take my word.”

  “Thanks for the weather report. Now, please, may I study?”

  “I wrote the
story I promised you, Marsha.”

  “You did? You really did? Great, let me see it.”

  “You’re looking at it.”

  “What?”

  “It’s here, Marsha, inside my head.”

  “That’s not funny, Thaddeus.”

  “You think I should have put it on paper, huh?”

  “Please leave me alone so I can study for my test.”

  “Marsha, hey, you’ve got time. Let’s talk first.”

  “You say you’ll do things, Thaddeus, but then you never do them.”

  “I’ll write the story, Marsha.”

  “Then go write it. Don’t sit here telling me about it.”

  “O.K., I’ll write you a story.”

  “Fine.”

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, what?”

  “Why so quiet all of a sudden?”

  “We’re getting nowhere, Thaddeus.”

  “Well, do you want to go down to the Loop this weekend?”

  “That’s just it.”

  “It was just a joke.”

  “Everything to you is just a joke.”

  “Hey, relax. Why so angry?”

  “We’re finished, Thaddeus.”

  “No.”

  “We are, Thaddeus. Face it. We’ve come to the end of the line.”

  Oh, Marsha—

  Once upon a time there was a boy whose name was Thaddeus, who lived in an apartment in a house with his mother and father, and then with his mother, and finally with his mother and his uncle, who bought a restaurant where they moved into the back room, and who changed things, knocking down more than one wall, and who did not marry the boy’s mother, and who did not love the boy nor the father, who tended the restaurant’s bar, and who in the back room slurred the father’s name, who called him a drunk and said he was weak, and who fucked the mother.

  While she tended the steaming kettles, changing from the wife of the father and the mother to the stranger.

  So the boy learned change as well, because like the father he was weak, and because he could not kill them, so he began to kill himself.

  He was the son of the father.

  Whom he hated, because he died and left him, him and the mother, alone and without money and without love, because the father was drunk and weak.

  So the boy became a lie.

  Until he made the acquaintance of a girl who carried fat books and who read them and tried to understand them, and with them life, as did the boy, but the girl seemed not to be bothered by the weaknesses in her flesh, and he tried then to defeat her, but he couldn’t do it, because she was strong.

  And she taught him strength. And he grew.

  How he grew:

  He wrote a story. It had a boy in it who got drunk and who masturbated and who vomited and who slept and who dreamed and who cried. It had a girl in it who was not afraid of dying. In the beginning the boy pretended to be somebody he really wasn’t. Then he woke up and discovered that he was a baby. He stole change from his mother’s register and his father’s heavy CTA bags. He ate lima beans and walked through a refrigerator.

  He found a dime that was really a mirror. He found a pencil that painted his dreams.

  He wrote a story:

  Once upon a time there was a boy who liked a girl. It was spring. The boy met the girl outside a building at the university. He said hello. The girl said hello. Her arms were full of fat, heavy books.

  The girl hadn’t been expecting to see the boy. When he said hello she was surprised. They walked about a block together, the boy with a smile on his face, one hand in his pocket, whistling; the girl with a frown on her brow, her arms full of her serious books, out of breath. In his other hand the boy held a paper bag. The girl asked the boy if he could help her carry some of her books. She said they were very heavy.

  The boy laughed. The girl stopped walking.

  The boy said he couldn’t carry the girl’s books. But he had a present in the paper bag that might make some of their weight go away. The girl said who is that present for? The boy said it’s for a special person I know who really needs it. The girl said really. Her frown grew deeper. She put her books down on the curb.

  The boy said yes, then whistled.

  The girl said who?

  The boy said you.

  The girl said oh, and then oh they’re candles.

  They were special candles, Marsha, and they made the books much lighter, and the girl was very happy.

  Then the boy carried his fair share of books.

  And Marsha, I wish I had candles like that here to give you. And, of all things, I wish I could give back to my father his laugh.

  My father used to laugh, and with his red face and mustache he carried a good laugh, a loud laugh, a really funny laugh inside of him, and he would bring it out sometimes. He would start to smile: at first only the waxed tips of his mustache would quiver, and then his mouth would open and everybody could see it coming, and when you saw the white of his teeth you knew it was in his chest, and it would pick up momentum and speed and grace.

  And then his mouth would open fully, and if you were standing just right you could see the back of his throat, see his tonsils quivering and beginning to thunder and shake, and his hands would move quickly to his stomach, and then out it would come in a big, fantastic rush.

  And I don’t care what it was he was laughing about, his laugh made it funny, even old jokes on the radio or when my mother would tell him that something bad happened or when she would nag him

  he would laugh.

  And I loved him for that. And sometimes I think that just before he died he realized his death was coming, and I wish that after he did everything he could possibly do to prevent the bus from crashing he had one last fraction of a second in which to smile.

  And I wish that his laugh began to build up inside of him, and I wish that it quickly spilled out as his body spilled out through the windshield, and once I read somewhere

  that sound and light and radio waves and things like that just keep on going and going and going out into space where if somebody was up there with a radio or an ear he could be listening right now to the dinosaurs.

  I wish that someday somebody up there would hear my father’s laugh at death and then laugh along with it so loudly himself that the two laughs would drown out the rain and the crashing and the thud of his body and the snap of his neck and back.

  And may that sound—that person’s laugh combined with my father’s—go out further flying into all and each and every direction, and may somebody someday hear that

  and laugh.

  And on and on, Marsha. On and on and on

  until that sound bounces off the empty head of God.

  And then everything—Marsha, I want everything—I want everything in creation to laugh. Like my father. With him. And that would be Heaven, and that would be Grace, and that would be Good.

  Can you imagine that, Marsha?

  Oh Marsha, that’s why I’m not serious, though I am but I try not to show it, it’s too dull, it gets in the way of laughing, it brings me down and there is only so much time and already gone are so many of my years.

  It’s good that I’m this way, Marsha.

  And if you could hear me right now, I’m laughing.

  Marsha, tears are running down my face and I’m laughing

  because I think I hear

  yes, it is you

  I can hear

  yes, I know I hear your key

  laughing its way inside the door.

  The Daughter and the Tradesman

  I

  She lay in her bed, pretending.

  She knew she wouldn’t be bothered if they thought she was still asleep. Their sounds were harsh and sudden: one of the aluminum chairs scraped against the kitchen floor; the heavy frying pan slammed the top of the stove. Soon she would smell coffee. Bobbi knew their routine well. She tried to sleep through it each Saturday morning. If the girl listened carefully now she would hear the clanking
plates her mother was carrying in from the cold pantry and the tin sound of the cheap radio her stepfather played in the bathroom. Sometimes he sang while he shaved. Or tried to sing. Then he would begin clearing his throat and his nose. Each time he spat into the sink was like a slap. The refrigerator door banged open, then closed. There was the clash of the silverware drawer. Her stepfather spat again. It was disgusting.

  She would be foolish to expect better, Bobbi thought, hiding down beneath her sheet, because her stepfather was a disgusting man. Unlike her father, who was dead now. Her stepfather was common: he chewed his food with an open mouth; his fingers were short and thick and always filthy from the dingy little shop where he repaired broken radios and clocks that ran too slowly and rusting toasters that were too tired to pop up. He boasted regularly that he could fix anything. The house was littered with things he claimed he’d fixed, things abandoned by their original owners, things with retaped wires, soldered cracks.

  She turned her face to the wall. She wouldn’t end up like her mother, a middle-aged woman whose flesh sagged from her body and whose teeth were made of plastic. Was that what false teeth were made from? Bobbi thought. She ran her tongue along her own teeth. Her mother’s mistake was that she’d married again; she’d settled for a second-rate, common man. Bobbi shivered. If there was one thing she had learned, she thought, it was that she must never settle for anything less than the absolute best. She believed her father had understood this. He had been born in Europe and was a gentleman. He was a Lithuanian. He came from the aristocracy. He had the best of blood. And that blood ran in her veins too.

  Beneath the thin sheet Bobbi stretched her body. It was young and lithe. Her Baltic ancestry had given her fair skin and hair that was light brown, and her features were slight and rounded. She was proud of herself and her body. She was fifteen, and she knew that when she wanted to she could be beautiful.

  That would be her escape. Bobbi had a boyfriend, a boy named Tom, a good and reasonable boy from Granville Avenue far up on the North Side, a much better section of the city. Tom was straight and dark and tall. And he didn’t go to Lake View, the public school where she went, where the swarthy Uptown greasers and the dumb bucktoothed hillbillies and the Mexicans and all the Puerto Ricans went. Tom went to Holy Cross College Prep, out in the suburbs, and he was in the upper fifth of his senior class and co-captain of the boxing team. He was the nicest boy Bobbi had ever known. It made her feel so important and so proud to wear his ring on a chain around her neck to Lake View; she could ignore all the vile city boys—she could look down on them—and all the girls she knew were jealous of her.