Jonathan Lethem
The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye
ded
Without Whom
Michael Randel, Richard Parks, Gardner Dozois, the Sycamore Hill Writers’ Conference 1992 and 1994, and Charles Rosen and Christian K. Messenger, inspirers of Dunk.
The book’s title is taken from a description of Fritz Lang’s films in Geoffrey O’Brien’s The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the Twentieth Century.
“The Happy Man” is for Stanley Ellin
— otherwise, for Blake Lethem
THE HAPPY MAN
1
I left her in the bedroom, and went and poured myself a drink. I felt it now; there wasn’t any doubt. But I didn’t want to tell her, not yet. I wanted to stretch it out for as long as I could. It had been so quick, this time.
In the meantime I wanted to see the kid.
I took my drink and went into his room and sat down on the edge of his bed. His night light was on; I could see I’d woken him. Maybe he’d heard me clinking bottles. Maybe he’d heard us making love.
“Dad,” he said.
“Peter.”
“Something the matter?”
Peter was twelve. A good kid, a very good kid. He was just eleven when I died. All computers and stereo, back then. Heavy metal and D and D. Sorcerers, dragons, the flaming pits of Hell, the whole bit. And music to match. After I died and came back he got real serious about things, forgot about the rock music and the imaginary Hells. Gave up his friends, too. I was pretty worried about that, and we had a lot of big talks. But he stayed serious. The one thing he stuck with was the computer, only now he used it to map out real Hell. My Hell.
Instead of answering his question I took another drink. He knew what was the matter.
“You going away?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Tell Mom yet?”
“Nope.”
He scooted up until he was sitting on his pillow. I could see him thinking: It was fast this time, Dad. Is it getting faster? But he didn’t say anything.
“Me and your mother,” I said. “There’s a lot of stuff we didn’t get to, this time.”
Peter nodded.
“Well—” I began, then stopped. What did he understand? More than I guessed, probably. “Take good care of her,” I said.
“Yeah.”
I kissed his forehead. I knew how much he hated the smell of liquor, but he managed not to make a face. Good kid, etc.
Then I went in to see his mother.
It was while we were making love that I’d had the first inkling that the change was coming on, but I’d kept it to myself. There wasn’t any purpose to ruining the mood; besides, I wasn’t sure yet. It wasn’t until afterward that I knew for sure.
But I had to tell her now. Another hour or so and I’d be gone.
I sat on the edge of the bed, just like with Peter. Only in this room it was dark. And she wasn’t awake. I put my hand on her cheek, felt her breath against my palm. She murmured, and kissed my hand. I squeezed her shoulder until she figured out that I wanted her to wake up.
“Maureen,” I said.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?”
I wanted to undress again and get back under the covers. Curl myself around her and fall asleep. Not to say another word. Instead I said: “I’m going back.”
“Going back?” Her voice was suddenly hoarse.
I nodded in the dark, but she got the idea.
“Damn you!”
I didn’t see the slap coming. That didn’t matter, since it wasn’t for show. It rattled my teeth. By the time I recovered she was up against the headboard, curled into herself, sobbing weakly.
It wasn’t usually this bad for her anymore. She’d numbed the part of herself that felt it the most. But it didn’t usually happen this fast, either.
I moved up beside her on the bed, and cradled her head in my hands. Let her cry awhile against my chest. But she wasn’t done yet. When she turned her face up it was still raw and contorted with her pain, tendons standing out on her neck.
“Don’t say it like that,” she gasped out between sobs. “I hate that so much—”
“What?” I tried to say it softly.
“Going back. Like that’s more real to you now, like that’s where you belong, and this is the mistake, the exception—”
I couldn’t think of what to say to stop her.
“Oh, God.” I held her while she cried some more. “Just don’t say it like that, Tom,” she said when she could. “I can’t stand it.”
“I won’t say it like that anymore,” I said flatly.
She calmed somewhat. We sat still there in the dark, my arms around her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, but evenly now. “It’s just so fast. Are you sure—”
“Yeah,” I said.
“We hardly had any time,” she said, sniffling. “I mean, I was just getting the feeling back, you know? When we were making love. It was so good, just now. Wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I just thought it was the beginning of a good period again. I thought you’d be back for a while…”
I stroked her hair, not saying anything.
“Did you know when we were fucking?” she asked.
“No,” I lied. “Not until after.”
“I don’t know if I can take it anymore, Tom. I can’t watch you walk around like a zombie all the time. It’s driving me crazy. Every day I look in your eyes, thinking maybe he’s back, maybe he’s about to come back, and you just stare at me. I try to hold your hand in the bed and then you need to scratch yourself or something and you just pull away without saying anything, like you didn’t even notice. I can’t live like this—”
“I’m sorry,” I said, a little hollowly. I wasn’t unsympathetic. But we’d been through it before. We always ended in the same place. We always would.
And frankly, once I’d absorbed the impact of her rage, the conversation lost its flavor. My thoughts were beginning to drift ahead, to Hell.
“Maybe you should live somewhere else,” she said. “Your body, I mean. When you’re not around. You could sleep down at the station or something.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Oh no,” she said. “I just remembered—”
“What?”
“Your uncle Frank, remember? When does he come?”
“Maybe I’ll be back before he shows up,” I said. It wasn’t likely. I usually spent a week or so in Hell, when I went. Frank was due in four days. “Anyway, he knows about me. There won’t be any problem.”
She sighed. “I just hate having guests when you’re gone—”
“Frank’s not a guest,” I said. “He’s family.”
She changed the subject. “Did you forget the medication? Maybe if you took the medication—”
“I always take it,” I said. “It doesn’t work. It doesn’t keep me here. You can’t take a pill to keep your soul from migrating to Hell.”
“It’s supposed to help, Tom.”
“Well it doesn’t matter, does it? I take it. Why do we have to talk about it?”
Now I’d hurt her a little. We were quiet. I felt her composing herself there, in my arms. Making her peace with my going away. Numbing herself.
The result was that we came a little closer together. I was able to share in her calm. We would be nice to each other from here on in. Things were back to normal.
But at the time, we’d backed away from that perilous, agonized place where to be separated by this, or separated at all, even for a minute, was too much to bear; from that place where all that mattered was our love, and where compromise was fundamentally wrong.