“Can’t you hear me? This is a freak connection. Hello?”
“…and Patty’s grandstanding that time: ‘He can lie beside me.’ All right, I know she said it to get him off our backs, but statements like that only encourage him. These damned phone calls. I tell you, he’s a sick man. I tell you? He tells you. How much longer do you think he can continue to function? I mean it. He expects to stay in Riverdale and have the family care for him. Do you realize what that would mean? The man’s a bore with his love and loyalty. And not just Riverdale. You won’t escape. It’ll be Ben Flesh, the traveling invalid, Ben Flesh…”
“Hello?”
“…shlepping his roadshow symptoms around the Finsberg bases like King Lear. A month or so in Riverdale. Then we parcel-post him to Noël in San Antonio. Dying on the circuit, only instead of doing his Grand Rounds on his own time and at his silly franchises it’ll be at our places, we’ll be his franchises, and don’t kid yourself, it’ll end up being at our expense, too. The man has no head for figures.”
“No,” Ben said involuntarily, “I have a head for figures. Hello?”
“Well, I won’t have him,” Kitty’s voice said. “And I’ve spoken to Lorenz and Gertrude and Cole. I’ve spoken to Moss, Maxene, Oscar, Irving, and poor Jerome.”
“Poor Jerome? Why ‘poor’ Jerome? What’s wrong? Kitty? Gus-Ira? Hello?”
“…feel the same. So I’m calling to tell you, Gus-Ira, I won’t have him, no one will. And my thinking is, there ought to be a solid front on this thing. We’ve got to get it together, we’ve got to be prepared. Ben will take any advantage. Okay, when we were kids it was different, he even filled a need, I suppose, but now we’ve got our own families. I won’t have him, Noël won’t, none of the girls, none of the boys I’ve spoken to. So the next time he calls, try to give him some inkling. No one wants to be actually rude to the old man, no one wa—”
Her voice broke off in the middle of the word. It was as if there had been a sudden power failure, or, rather, as if the lights in one part of the house, the living room, say, had suddenly gone out while the lights in the dining room continued to burn, for Flesh could still hear the crepitation of connection. Perhaps she was catching her breath, he thought, perhaps she was biting her tongue. Water is thicker than godblood? Than godblood?
“No,” Ben Flesh said into the phone, “you’ve got me wrong, Kitty. A man organizes his life around necessities, principles. Only some people, me, for example, are born without goals. There are a handful of us without obsession. In all the world. Only a handful. I live without obsession, without drive, a personal insanity even, why, that’s terrible. The loneliest thing imaginable. Yet I’ve had to live that way, live this, this — sane life, deprived of all the warrants of personality. To team up with the available. Living this franchised life under the logo of others. And do it, these past years, under impossible burdens of discomfort. Have some feelings, Kitty, have a little pity, Gus-Ira. What, you think I like these random patterns? I’m irregular as the badly toilet-trained. The strange, the personal have been spared me. Nothing happens but disease. Nothing…”
“Hello,” Gus-Ira said jovially, “this is Gus-Ira Finsberg. I’m sorry that I’m not in to take your call. This is a recording. If you’ll wait for the little electronic beep and leave your name, number, and message, my Phone-Mate 270 will record you for two minutes and I’ll get back to you just as soon as I return.” There was a pause. Ben heard the beep.
“It’s me, Gus,” he said, “it’s Ben. Your Phone-Mate 270 is fucked up. Probably you put the reels in backward. You were never mechanically inclined, Gus-Ira. Even as a little boy. Goodbye.”
Gus-Ira called.
“Ben,” he said gloomily, “oh, Ben.”
“It’s all right,” Ben said, “don’t feel bad. Kitty’s a bed wetter. I consider the source. Don’t fret, Gus,” he said. “Only tell me, level, do you feel that way? Kitty’s—”
“Kitty’s dead, Ben,” Gus-Ira said.
“What?”
“She died. She’s dead.”
“When? How? What are you…”
“She bought it, Ben. She chafed to death.”
“She…?”
“All those years of wetting herself. C5H4N4O3.”
“Is this a code? Gus-Ira? Is this a freak connection?”
“C5H4N4O3. It’s uric acid. The basic component of gout, of kidney stones. The salts of piss, Ben. She’d been thrashing them into her thighs for a lifetime. In effect, she’d driven kidney stones into her capillaries and flesh. They blocked the blood. Uremia, too. Uremic poisoning. Her body choked on her pee. She chafed to death.”
“She died of pee-pee?”
“That’s about it, Ben.”
“Of sissy? Of number one?”
“Yes,” Gus-Ira said, “tragic.”
“Death by tinkle?”
“We were shocked.”
“I don’t know what to…”
“We never thought. We were shocked.”
“Gus-Ira, I’m so sorry. If there’s anything….”
“We knew it would happen, we just never thought — it just never occurred to us that — She used to read in bed. We’d tell her, we’d plead with her, ‘Kitty darling, get yourself grounded. Suppose you dozed off, suppose you’re lashing about and your bedlamp falls over. If the wire is worn, if there’s a hairline crack in the insulation’ ”
“In the insulation?”
“She could have been electrocuted in her urine, Ben.”
“Jesus.”
“So we always anticipated, we just never thought she’d chafe herself to death. You never know.”
“I don’t,” Ben Flesh said, “I can’t — Listen, is Kitty in Riverdale?”
“They’re shipping her body to LaGuardia. I’m flying in today. I’ve been out of town. I’m out of town now. They had to call me in Cleveland. When I heard, I asked if anyone had gotten in touch with you. Helen didn’t know. There’s a lot of confusion. When something like this happens…I figured I’d take a chance. I hate having to break news like this, but you had to know.”
“Yes,” Ben said, “thanks, thank you for calling. I’ll, I’ll get up to Riverdale. I’ll see you this evening.”
They said goodbye.
So he hadn’t heard. He’d been out of town and hadn’t heard Kitty’s bitter message about him on the Phone-Mate. He felt Gus-Ira was an ally and was immediately ashamed that he could feel such cheap relief when poor Kitty lay dead. Poor Kitty. What he’d said was now true and he did consider the source. She had been chafed; even as she’d complained of Ben to Gus-Ira, she had spoken out of her chafed, worn, cricket irritability, a woman rubbed a lifetime the wrong way. Poor Kitty. And then he thought of something else she’d said on Gus-Ira’s device. “Poor Jerome,” she’d said. He’d forgotten about the tests. He called Jerome and got Wilma, his godcousin’s wife, a girl he’d met only once. The woman was crying. He felt bad that he had not been closer to his godcousins’ families. “I’m sorry,” Ben said when he had explained who he was, “I just heard about it. I appreciate how torn up you must be. How’s Jerome taking it, Wilma?”
“Who is this?” she shrieked. “Who is this son of a bitch?”
“It’s Ben,” he said. “I told you. We met once when I was coming through Fort Worth. I took you and Jerome to dinner.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” she demanded fiercely. “The man’s dead and you ask how he’s taking it? What kind of a son of a bitch…?”