"IT'S CALLED A MONITOR LIZARD," Y told X years later at a cocktail party celebrating the publication of Y's first collection of stories. "Dead now — couldn't take the climate. African, you know. Largest of the land lizards."
"I thought the Komodo was the biggest," said X, trying to put the best face on things.
"Well, you know," Y said, and turned to greet another ardent bearer of admirations, leaving X to doubt even the little he dared to claim.
THAT STORY ENDS HERE. But this one goes on for a bit.
In this story, the end has different versions.
In one version, the delivery was a manuscript, and the person making the delivery was Y's typist — who is, of course, X's wife, and who arrives in time to see the cleaning woman gathering up the clothes anticipated by the man who is standing on the bed. In another version, we have Y inscribing a copy of his book for presentation to his old, valued, indispensable teacher, X.
Y writes: Things always work out for the best. With affection and appreciation, your grateful student and collaborator.
And then there is the date — and the city.
And the author's name.
SOPHISTICATION
THE MAN WHO STOOD, who stood on sidewalks, who stood facing streets, who stood with his back against store windows or against the walls of buildings, never asked for money, never begged, never put his hand out. But you knew that's what he was doing — asking, begging, even though he made no gesture in your direction, even though all he did was fix you with his eyes if you let him do it, and, as you passed, made that sound. It was doobee doobee doobee—or it was dabba dabba dabba. It was always the same, just the one or the other, but you never tarried long enough for you to hear if there was more to it.
He was wearing high-heeled shoes the first time I saw him. They were women's shoes, or they were women's backless high-heeled slippers. I don't remember which. Yes, I think they were bedroom slippers — pale blue, furred, little high-heeled slippers.
I saw him the first week I moved here. I always saw him after that — it did not matter what the weather was. He was here in every kind of weather, backed up against a wall or against a store window—doobee doobee doobee or dabba dabba dabba.
He worked my neighborhood.
He did what he did in my neighborhood.
I gave him a dime the first week. He took it. If he was not begging, then he was taking money. But I never gave him anything after the one time.
I was angry about giving him that dime. I felt it marked me as a sucker. I don't think I would have felt that had the man not shown up again the next day, the next week, every day of every week of all the weeks after that.
Every time after that first time I always passed him by—doobee doobee doobee or dabba dabba dabba, oh so very softly — angry that the man was there, a witness to the fool I was.
That dime should have saved his life, gotten his back off public construction, sent him away to another neighborhood, changed his song.
But he's gone now. He hasn't shown up for weeks.
It's a relief. I feel better about living here now — but it's not on account of that dime, not on account of the shame that I gave it and shame that I never gave another one after giving it.
It's terror his absence relieves me of.
It's the worst fear I ever had.
IT WAS WHEN the snows came this winter that I got very afraid of the man.
I want you to know how, I want you to hear how, the man made me so afraid.
I'd gone to get my son home from a playmate's house after dark. It wasn't that many blocks there and therefore not any more back. But the snow was at its worst and there was no one on the streets, not all of the way there and almost not all of the way back.
We were just a block from home, my boy and I, and the man was on that block, standing on the corner, his back to the wall of something. There was no way for anybody to get home without passing him. So I got my boy tight by the hand and took him out into the street to do it.
The man just stood there — no gesture, no hand reached out. He didn't get me with his eyes because I wouldn't let him do it. But there was no not hearing the man crooning doobee doobee doobee or crooning dabba dabba dabba—just always a whisper and never not loud.
A car came skidding along the street. My boy and I were moving up it now and the car was moving down it, skidding, sort of careening, a reckless driver playing with the calculus of skating his machine in the snow.
I have such a childish imagination.
I thought: "He'll hit us, that driver." I thought: "My son will be hurt." I thought: "There will be no one to help me, no one but the man I always passed."
I saw myself kneeling over my son. I saw myself begging the man for him to help.
I heard him answering—doobee doobee doobee.
Or dabba dabba dabba.
But this can't happen now, can it? — not now that I have had the thought.
TWO FAMILIES
THERE IS NO STORY in the sentences I will write, no program to make matters come out. If matters do come out, then it is a resolution they accomplish all by themselves. No help is needed from me, nor is any solicited from you. All I am going to do — as briefly as fair play will allow — is give evidence. Everything else, if there is anything else, will take care of itself. In my opinion, it already has.
This concerns two families.
Families are families, and in this way are alike. But in every other respect, the two families that I have in mind, and all other families, have nothing in common. Of course, I issue this disclaimer mindful that its issuance disables it or anyhow makes of it a folly.
I cannot help what cannot be helped. It is what squats malignantly between writer and reader. But I have nevertheless done what I can to warn you away from speculations that will uncover nothing at all — though the caution will doubtless inspire the effort.
I want to answer this last, but I am out of time.
IN ONE FAMILY, there was a divorce. In the other, there was not. There was, however, in the latter case, a murder — whereas in the former, there was an attempt at one.
Let us begin again.
In one family, one spouse planned to murder the other. When the endangered spouse discovered the plan, he fled. He fled from one coast to the other and got a divorce. But up until that flight, he had stayed put. He said he had stayed put for the children. It was a good reason. There was proof of this when the children showed up damaged. They were very damaged. It will seem excessive to say it, but it is what both spouses themselves said.
"The light in them will go out."
When the spouses said this, they must have had in mind the radiance of children. But who knows?
I was never a parent.
THERE WERE TWO CHILDREN in each of these families. As regards the amplitude, or the relative fall-off therefrom, of the light in the second set of children, the evidence isn't all available for the recording of it yet.
But here is some that is. It is the declaration of the spouse that worried about the light.
This is what he said:
"My boy came to me, the younger one. The older one already knows. I never told him, of course. But he figured it out. Now the younger one has too. I love the older one more. I can admit that — it is all right if I do. Loving the younger one less makes it harder, however — harder about what he said when he came to me. He said: