BATTERED HEAD
He bangs his head against something when he’s exercising. He sees light, feels blood, goes into the bathroom — all this was done in the dark, just a little moonlight — turns on the light there and sees the cut. “How could I have been so stupid?” he thinks. “Unfamiliar house; we were here last summer for a month but our first night in it this one; why didn’t I turn on the lights?” He was exercising in the dining room, which has the stairway in it, and his daughter was sleeping or falling asleep upstairs with her door open because she was afraid to sleep with it closed and he didn’t want the light to wake her. He already has a paper towel to the cut, looks at it and at the cut in the mirror, still bleeding, presses harder, thinks he should get an ice pack on it to keep down the swelling, goes into the dining room to get to the kitchen but stops to see what he banged his head on. Stands on the spot where he thinks he was exercising. Must have been one of those two spindles or stems or whatever they are — just the top poles of the back of the dinner table chair on his left, that he hit his head on. The exercise was where he puts his hands on his hips — no, clasps them behind his neck and touches his left knee with his left elbow and then his right knee with his right elbow and does that ten times. It’s the first of a series of exercises he devised for himself years ago and has been doing every morning or late evening or sometimes at his office in the afternoon, if he has about ten minutes and the door’s closed and he hasn’t done it that morning and prefers getting it over with rather than doing it that night. He was only doing the first movement of the exercise when he banged his head. The cut seems dry, and he takes off the towel. Still bleeding, and now hurts, and he folds the towel over, presses a clean part to his head and goes to the bathroom for last year’s aspirins. This year’s he hasn’t unpacked yet.
Next morning his daughter says “Where’d you get that?” and he says “If I told you I got it exercising last night, you’d say I must have been drunk.” “Huh?” and he says “What I’m saying is I did get it exercising — doing this, which I won’t be able to do for a while with this head,” and shows her. “Oh Jesus, that hurt, and it’s still bleeding, I see, and I wasn’t drunk when I got it, sweetie. I was just unfamiliar with the terrain — this room, so what I thought was air was a chair, no po-tree intended.” She says “Well it looks ugly and you should put a Band-Aid on it,” and he thinks “She’ll be ashamed of it if I take her to camp as is, and she’ll be right.”
At camp the counselor he leaves her with says “What happened there?” pointing to the Band-Aid and Mercurochrome stain around it, and he says “If I told you I banged up my head exercising, you’d say,” but because his daughter’s there he should change the line, “that I’m either drunk saying that or was drunk when I got it. But I’m not, wasn’t not — either, neither. I got it in the most paradoxical way possible — like jogging, I mean dying of a heart attack jogging, you know what I mean?” and she nods, and he thinks she doesn’t know or has stopped listening. He should know whom he’s talking to, not go over or under or try to ram through their heads. And maybe his head’s been affected by the blow worse than he knows.
Says good-by to his daughter, kisses her lips, says he’ll be here 3:30 promptly or even a quarter hour before, “since all the campers do the last fifteen minutes is hang around in the sun waiting to be picked up. We’ll stop at the Hillside View Diner for a snack on the way home. You’ll have fun here, meet lots of girls. Don’t forget to take sailing, if you want, as your main morning activity for the month. I want her to,” he says to the counselor, “because I want her to teach me everything she learns.” “And we’ll try to teach her everything we know.” His daughter never says a word. Didn’t want to come. Said yesterday during the drive up “I’m not going to camp, just so you know.” Said it a few days ago, weeks ago, in February when he was filling out the application: “You say your money’s so hard-earned? Well I don’t care if you waste it and I won’t be guilty if you don’t get a refund.” She pulls her head away when he tries kissing the top. He says “Well, good-by, my dearie,” and walks to the car, turns around when he gets to it. She’s staring sadly at him, shoulders folded in, face saying “How can you leave me here?” Her glasses make her look even sadder. He knows the feeling. Painfully shy — they said it about him, he says it about her, but she’s even more that way than he was. The counselor sees her staring, puts her arm around her and walks her over to a group of girls, all with eyeglasses, and introduces her. They each say hello to her and resume their hand-slapping counting game. The counselor has a volleyball-size ball under her arm, throws it to one of the girls; the girl catches it, looks around what to do with it and the counselor says “Toss it to Debbie — the new girl.” “Here, Debbie, catch.” Deborah shakes her head, steps back, looks at him. “Play, play,” he mouths, and puts his hands up as if catching the ball, then throwing it forward and then from under his legs. She looks away, at no one now. Doesn’t like to play ball. Thinks she’s an awful athlete and clumsy runner. Likes reading books. Has always been tops in school. Likes to paint, draw, sculpt in clay, write stories and plays, make things. She has one good friend in the city; they don’t even see each other that much. She’s too shy to ask her over; waits till the friend asks if she can come over. He loves it when she’s having fun with another kid, running around with her, laughing, confiding, sitting on the same couch reading, being wild, playing games, but it’s so rare. What have we done to her? What’s he done, he means, since he wanted and got custody of her.
Leaves, works at home, couple of times his head aches and he takes aspirins and rests on the bed, every so often thinks he’s doing the wrong thing by forcing her to go to camp, “but then I want to work during the day so what am I supposed to do?” Intends getting back at 3:15 but wants to finish a page he worked on all day, so doesn’t get there till quarter of, and the roads were clear all the way. “Sorry I’m late; traffic; one Maine driver after the other in front of me. How was it?” “My lunch was almost boiling. You left it in the sun.” “Sweetheart, I left your bag in the shade behind a rock but the sun’s direction must have changed. Put it where you want next time. And sailing?” “We didn’t go out. Water was too choppy. Instead we played these rough games. Like red rover, which you can break your arm doing and which I think lots of them wanted to do, yours and their own. I sat out after a minute. I’m not going to make any friends or have a good time here. They all know one another from school and around. I’m the only one from the city.” “There must be more. Have you checked?” “No, but I’ve heard. I’m not going to camp tomorrow.” “You have to give it a try. I told you: after a week or so, if you still have some major grievances about it, we’ll have a serious discussion about your continuing it.” She sulks in the car. A counselor said good-by. A girl waved to her when they drove off. “Who was that girl who waved before?” he says. “She seemed to like you, and all the counselors too.” “I don’t know. She didn’t swim either, so we sat next to each other at the lake.” “Why didn’t you swim?” “I felt cold. And there are bloodsuckers in the water.” “Don’t worry about those. Chances are one in a thousand one will get on you, and if it does, little touch with a cigarette or sprinkle of salt and it falls off dead.” “Last summer a boy got one on his leg and it bled down to the ground.” “That’s the water mixing with the blood, making it seem like much more. But that girl before. Just by the way she waved, I’d say she wanted to be your friend.” “You can’t tell by one look. And she only talked about stupid TV shows you’d never let me watch and what a fun time next week’s Pirate’s Day is going to be. She’s like most of them here and last year. They’re nice but we don’t like the same things.” “Give them a chance. She might have brought up those shows just to—” But she’s turned away, doesn’t want to hear anything he says.