They still sleep together, but he finds it very difficult to make love anymore. She says “I want a child desperately. It’s the only way I’ll become relatively sane again myself. I love you and don’t want to lose you, but would you consent to a divorce so I can possibly meet someone else and try to have a child or adopt a child as a single parent?” “I think that’s fair,” he says. “I know I could never have another kid. I’d be so protective I’d squeeze the life out of it, send it to a shrink by the time it was five and maybe, because of my terrible parenting, turn it into a violent kid who hurts other children and maybe even kills them.”
They divorce, he moves out of the apartment so she can have it, moves in with his sister in another part of the country. She looks after him, gets him his food, cleans his room and clothes, doesn’t complain. “Who do I have but you?” she says, since her husband divorced her soon after they lost their only child to disease. “Oh my God, I forgot that,” he says. “It must be just as bad for you as it is for me. What am I saying? It is; I know; I should have been taking care of you then in some way, but I didn’t.” “You gave me lots of sympathy, and I was married at the time, so that was enough. Now, what is it? — ten years later — I can take care of myself just fine.”
Eventually he gets out — it takes a couple of years — gets a job as a salesman in a department store, still thinks of Lynn a number of times every day, and sometimes so much he has to quit work for the day and go home, drinks too much lots of nights to blot her out of his head, pays half the rent and upkeep of his sister’s place, learns that his wife remarried and adopted two children, sends her kids gifts every year for their birthdays and Christmas, never goes out with women, makes no friends, every now and then does have lunch in the employee cafeteria with a few of the same coworkers, goes through life like this, feels lucky he can get through every day without cracking up and that he’s able to make even a marginal living. His sister does well at work, has many interests, several boyfriends, sometimes stays out all night with them, goes to parties, takes vacations, knows lots of women she calls buddies. He tells her “That’s the way it ought to be, I guess.”
THE VICTOR
Way it happened. The chairperson of the committee is called up to the stage podium by the head of the American Fiction Foundation. Rob is sitting at one of the many tables, holding his wife’s hand. He leans closer to her and says in her ear “I know I’m not going to win.” “Wait and see,” she whispers; “you never know. Though you’re not expecting it, are you?” “Nah, I know who they’re going to give it to; at least not to me. Because when it comes down to it at the end, the establishment, right? Onwards and always. But why’d you say ‘you never know’?” “Shh, she’s talking.” A couple of people at the table — his editor and publisher — are smiling at him; then the editor starts grinning. He smiles back and looks at the opened program on his lap. They know something? They smile because they know he’s won but were told not to say anything, or because he’s lost and they don’t want to reveal it with a serious expression. But why her almost ecstatic grin? Maybe she has a problem faking a smile around so many people, or she’s the only one at the table who knows he’s won and she can’t keep her exhilaration in. He looks around at several other tables. A few people are looking at him, but no smiles, nothing serious, just with interest, as if “How does a person appear at such a time in his life? And if he wins, I want to see his immediate reaction, since he is the one sitting closest and facing me, and if he loses, well that too.”
The chairperson’s going on about the “distinguished history of this prestigious award,” mentions several recent winners and the book titles, “all of which, I’m told, are still in print, no doubt because of their high quality but I’m sure also because of the recognition the prize gives,” the healthy state of American fiction today, based on her judging experience the past half-year, “so if anyone tells you of the present or possible demise of written fiction in this country, you send him or her to me,” and finally “the long arduous job of the five judges, all working fiction writers themselves, in choosing this year’s winner. We each read the more than three hundred entries in book form or galleys. Or, to be vulnerably honest, only segments of some of them — after all, we’re only humans and writers with just so much human and writing time — to come up with the five finalists, and met today in this hotel to make our decision: Lemuel Pond. The winner of the American Fiction Award is Lemuel Pond for his novel Eyeball, published by Sklosby Press, edited by—”
Lights go to Pond’s table; he slaps his head with both hands as if he can’t believe it. Rob looks at his wife — she’s already looking sympathetically at him and squeezes his hand — then at the editor and publisher. They’re smiling at him, or trying to, the publisher sticking up his fist and jiggling it, whatever that’s supposed to mean; the editor now wiping her eyes with a table napkin. “Fuck them,” Rob mouths to his wife. She puts her finger over her lips. Pond gets up, most people in the ballroom are applauding, a few whistling and shouting, and starts walking around the tables to the stage, people patting him and grabbing his hand, and one man kissing it as he goes. “That jerk didn’t deserve it,” Rob says to his wife over the noise, “that’s all I’ll say. It’s a piece of shit, what he wrote, so of course you have to expect they’ll reward it, the gutless judges, the toadying foundation, the scummy big stiffs of the publishing world here, our little guys excluded.” She puts her mouth to his ear. “Don’t say any more, really; someone will hear. And especially not to any reporters if they ask, or anyone tonight. Give it a day. I’m sorry, darling. You should have got it, and it’s what you’re saying, but it’s over, so go along with it or you’ll regret it.” “Not so much me,” he says, moving his head away, “but really almost any one of the other three. But he’s an amateur. Albeit, a first-class one, which accounts, doesn’t it? for all the newspapers and highfalutin magazines that slavered over it in reviews, the biggest hype job of them all by a writer from the same smelly Sklosby stable. ‘Oh! Can’t he much! Can’t he perfectly! One of our precious traditional own. Oh! Oh!’” “Enough. Really, enough. People have to be looking, and they eat up this stuff.”
“Okay.” He reaches for his wine glass; it’s empty. “Fancy dinner, right? With white for the ap and red for the main, and the waiters refilling your glass second you set it down. But when you truly need a drink, they’re not around. Maybe it’s the first sign of being the loser.” He grabs her glass, which is full. “Mind?” “No, drink away, though don’t get loaded. This thing’s not going to do that to you, is it? We have to drive back tomorrow.” “And if I’d won?” “Then you’d be entitled, I guess, to fall on your face or to at least get high. But I’d probably still ask you to be moderate, if only to get us a cab back to the hotel, and they’d probably want you to hang around tomorrow for interviews.”
“Listen,” he says, drinking, “I’m not disappointed, no matter what I might sound like. Because how could I be, for I told you days ago, didn’t I? — weeks. Pond, first and fabmost, with his high-powered backing and their thousand and one contacts, not to mention his handsome renegotiated advance. If they’d given the award to me and my little publisher and unhotshot editor and no agent or to speak of advance, half this joint would be empty next year. For the biggies pay for the event and the foundation and want returns for their own and on what they put in and certainly no threatening precedents, so they wouldn’t take it nicely if the nobody from nowhere won. But the victor’s speechmaking, so we gotta show our proper respects,” and he turns, smiles at his still smiling-tearful editor, who’s maybe still tearful because she sees how disappointed he is. He waves to her. “Don’t worry, I’m in great shape,” raises his shoulders and gestures with his hands and face “So what else did we expect?” and she nods and they both face the stage.