Anyway, I didn’t mean to burden you with all this detail. The point is that I don’t want you to spend your money on telegrams. We’re neighbors. As you say in your telegram, we live a few doors down the hall from each other. Actually, it made me very upset to see that wire. My hands shook so when it was delivered that I couldn’t even open it. I thought something had happened to Jerry. We’re estranged, but the man is still my husband. When you’ve lived with someone for almost twenty years you don’t forget him just like that. Also — I’ll be very candid — there was something too importunate about sending me that wire. What would have been perfectly acceptable in a letter seemed, frankly, “overzealous”—this is the best word I can think of — set down in a telegram. (Perhaps this is what McLuhan means when he says that “the medium is the message.”) Maybe I share some of the responsibility for this. I think I’ve left you with certain faulty impressions, and I really believe I ought to undo these if we are to become friends. We simply have to set out on a footing of mutual understanding and respect. It’s no accident that my first reaction, my instinctive reaction, to your wire (after I saw that it was not bad news about Jerry), had to do with the importunity I have already spoken of.
If you will forgive my opening up a subject which I know must be a very sore one with you — if you will permit me, this is, to probe areas which your normal filial affections and recent harrowing loss must certainly have left tender — I will be even franker. Perhaps you are wondering why I say my “instinctive” reaction…
Yes. He was wondering that. That’s what he was wondering. Then it was normal to so wonder. Then how was he mad? He wiped the tears from his eyes. When would they stop? He has lost a pound of tears so far. When would he begin to weep blood, when vision itself, weeping light till none was left to weep, then weeping dimness, then darkness? Then what? Calcium, marrow, all the chemicals of his body, all the juices of his glands. Then how was one mad who could parse sequence like a scholar at the blackboard? Weeping hair, skin, bone, gut, shit, nails and all, weeping his life and, when there was no more left, weeping death and even time.
…and here I will have to make certain “confessions” which I have not offered earlier — out of fear and jealousy and my own sense, however misguided, of protecting you, I suppose.
Yes. Protect me, he thought, weeping.
I never lost your father’s key, and it is not altogether true that I never used it. I did use it—once—the night of Dad’s death. Phil had begun to call me on the telephone at all hours. Sometimes my daughter would answer. She knew his voice, though he was so nervous about what he considered our “relationship” that if I wasn’t home he would try to disguise it or pretend that he’d gotten a wrong number, representing himself to her as a merchant or salesman or some such nonsense. But Sheila is no dummy. She knew his voice and began to suspect things between us that simply weren’t true, a relationship as fictitious as Phil’s voices. He made her very uncomfortable, and I warned him that if this continued I would have to seek other outlets. It wasn’t the neighbors I cared about — I had weathered their gossip and scorn when Jerry left me — but my daughter’s opinions did matter. That was all. The mother of a child from a broken home taking up with a man almost old enough to be her grandfather! That wasn’t the case, it was never the case, but from the peculiar ways Phil behaved she had, I suppose, every reason to suspect it was. I told him in letters that his behavior must change. (Letters I did not read to you that day.) But despite my entreaties it didn’t. He tried openly to hold my hand at the swimming pool. If I went into the water Phil went in too, cavorting, swimming between my legs, coming up behind me and diving down and raising me to his shoulders, touching me beneath the water where he thought it would not be noticed, challenging me to races and giving me headstarts so that he could catch up to me and make rough body contact, dunking me, pulling off my bathing cap and teasing — all masquerading as play but clearly the sublimated physical activity of a youth a third his age. It got so bad that I couldn’t go into the water, or I’d use my red guest band to swim at other pools. I couldn’t elude him. He followed me.
I liked Phil. All this was only toward the end. Even then, when he was calm we got along beautifully. He was a fabulous conversationalist. But he became less and less calm. I decided that I had to return his key. (Which, thank God, Sheila never knew I had.) To return it in a letter, however, seemed too cold and cruel. After all, we would still be neighbors and have to live on the same floor. To pass it to him at the pool was out of the question. I thought someone would see me, or that he might make a scene. I knew that the only way was to bring it to him, and that’s what I did that night — the night he died.
Sheila was watching TV in her room, and I told her I was going out for a while. I made up some excuse — I don’t even remember what it was. I came down the hall and rang Dad’s bell. There was no answer, though I could hear music playing inside the apartment from Phil’s new stereo, the Beatles, I think. I pressed the doorbell twice more, and when there was still no answer I let myself in with the key.
Your father was in his shorts on the couch. They were these skimpy silky bikini things and I would have left at once, but not after I saw his face. He looked awful. I asked what was the matter and he said he was a little uncomfortable. Naturally I forgot about the key; I must have slipped it back into my purse. I went over to him and he asked me if I would turn off the phonograph. He said he was very tired. I did what he asked and returned to him. He was sweating terribly, his face was pale, and it was clear to me that he was very ill. But even then he misunderstood why I was there. He tried to smile. “Evelyn,” he said, “this wasn’t how I expected it would be. I’m sorry it turned out like this, kid.” I told him I thought we’d better call a doctor, but he said no, he thought it might be only a little indigestion and that he was already beginning to feel a little better.
Marshall, he was — hard. I told him he’d better just lie still and that I’d try to get some help, and that’s when he became aroused. I was very frightened, but to tell you the truth I was more afraid of what could happen to him if I struggled with him than of anything that might happen to me. I held him up, and all the time he was kissing and touching me, and to calm him I said we’d better go into the bedroom. I wanted to get him to lie down, you see. I helped him into the bedroom and that’s when he asked to make love to me. I told him it was crazy, that we had to wait until he was better. I didn’t want to upset him. I promised that if he let me call the doctor I’d wait with him in bed until the doctor came. He agreed, and I called the number he gave me and got the answering service. I told the girl it was an emergency, and she said she’d get the doctor at once.