Part 6 (2/2)
The Old Man knew knew. He had been fearing it since the very first day. The bathroom door slammed open. He rushed out, dripping, carrying a bar of Lifebuoy, eyes rolling wildly.
”What broke!? What happened?! WHAT BROKE!!?” WHAT BROKE!!?”
”...the lamp.” A soft, phony voice, feigning heartbreak.
For an instant the air vibrated with tension. A vast magnetic charge, a static blast of human electricity made the air sing. My kid brother stopped in mid-whimper. I took the last bite, the last bite of salami, knowing that this would be my last happy bite of salami forever.
The Old Man rushed through the dining room. He fell heavily over a footstool, sending a shower of spray and profanity toward the ceiling.
”Where is it? WHERE IS IT!?” WHERE IS IT!?”
There it was, the shattered kneecap under the coffee table, the cracked, well-turned ankle under the radio; the calf-that voluptuous poem of feminine pulchritude-split open like a rotten watermelon, its entrails of insulated wire hanging out limply over the rug. That lovely lingerie shade, stove in, had rolled under the library table.
”Where's my glue? My glue! OH, MY LAMP OH, MY LAMP!”
My mother stood silently for a moment and then said: ”I...don't know what happened. I was just dusting and...ah....”
The Old Man leaped up from the floor, his towel gone, in stark nakedness. He bellowed: ”YOU ALWAYS WERE JEALOUS OF THAT LAMP!”
”Jealous? Of a plastic leg?” plastic leg?”
Her scorn ripped out like a hot knife slicing through soft oleomargarine. He faced her.
”You were jealous 'cause I WON WON!”
”That's ridiculous. Jealous! Jealous of what? That was the ugliest lamp I ever saw!”
Now it was out, irretrievably. The Old Man turned and walked to the window. He looked out silently at the soft gathering gloom of Spring. Suddenly he turned and in a flat, iron voice: ”Get the glue.”
”We're out out of glue,” my mother said. of glue,” my mother said.
My father always was a superb user of profanity, but now he came out with just one word, a real Father word, bitter and hard.
”DAMMIT!”
Without another word he stalked into the bedroom; slammed the door, emerged wearing a sweats.h.i.+rt, pants and shoes, and his straw hat, and out he went. The door of the Oldsmobile slammed shut out in the driveway.
”K-runch. Cras.h.!.+”-a tinkle of gla.s.s. He had broken the window of the one thing he loved, the car that every day he polished and honed. He slammed it in Reverse.
RRRRAAAWWWWWRRRRR!.
We heard the fender drag along the side of the garage. He never paused.
RRRRAAAWWWWWRRROOOOMMMM!.
And he's gone. We are alone. Quietly my mother started picking up the pieces, something she did all her life. I am hiding under the porch swing. My kid brother is now down in the coal bin.
It seemed seconds later: BBBRRRRRAAAAAWWWRRRRR...eeeeeeeeeh!
Up the driveway he charged in a shower of cinders and burning rubber. You could always tell the mood of the Old Man by the way he came up that driveway. Tonight there was no question.
A heavy thunder of feet roared up the back steps, the kitchen door slammed. He's carrying three cans of glue. Iron glue. The kind that garage mechanics used for gaskets and for gluing back together exploded locomotives. His voice is now quiet.
”Don't touch it. Don't touch that lamp!” Don't touch that lamp!”
He spread a newspaper out over the kitchen floor and carefully, tenderly laid out the shattered fleshy remains. He is on all fours now, and the work began. Painfully, hopelessly he tried to glue together the silk-stockinged, life-size symbol of his great victory.
Time and again it looked almost successful, but then he would remove his hand carefully....BOING!...the kneecap kept springing up and sailing across the kitchen. The ankle didn't fit. The glue hardened into black lumps and the Old Man was purple with frustration. He tried to fix the leg for about two hours, stacking books on it. A Sears Roebuck catalog held the instep. The family Bible pressed down on the thigh. But it wasn't working.
To this day I can still see my father, wearing a straw hat, swearing under his breath, walking around a shattered plastic lady's leg, a Freudian image to make Edward Albee's best efforts pale into insignificance.
Finally he scooped it all up. Without a word he took it out the back door and into the ashbin. He sat down quietly at the kitchen table. My mother is now back at her lifelong station, hanging over the sink. The sink is making the Sink noise. Our sink forever made long, gurgling sighs, especially in the evening, a kind of sucking, gargling, choking retch.
Aaaagggghhhh-and then a short, hissing wheeze and silence until the next attack. Sometimes at three o'clock in the morning I'd lie in my bed and listen to the sink-Aaaaaggggghhhh.
Once in a while it would go: gaaaaagggghhhh...PTUI!-and up would come a wad of Mrs. Kissel's potato peelings from next door. She, no doubt, got our coffee grounds. Life was real.
My mother is hanging over her sink, swabbing eternally with her Brillo pad. If mothers had a coat of arms in the Midwest, it would consist of crossed Plumbers' Helpers rampant on a field of golden Brillo pads.
The Old Man is sitting at the kitchen table. It was white enamel with little chipped black marks all around the edge. They must have been made that way, delivered with those flaws. A table that smelled like dishrags and coffee grounds and kids urping. A kitchen-table smell, permanent and universal, that defied all cleaning and disinfectant-the smell of Life itself.
In dead silence my father sat and read his paper. The battle had moved into the Trench Warfare or Great Freeze stage. And continued for three full days. For three days my father spoke not. For three days my mother spoke likewise. There was only the sink to keep us kids company. And, of course, each other, clinging together in the chilly subterranean icy air of a great battle. Occasionally I would try.
”Hey Ma, ah...you know what Flick is doing...uh....”
Her silent back hunched over the sink. Or: ”Hey Dad, Flick says that....”
”WHADDAYA WANT?”
Three long days.
Sunday was sunny and almost like a day in Midsummer. Breakfast, usually a holiday thing on Sundays, had gone by in stony silence. So had dinner. My father was sitting in the living room with the sun streaming in un.o.bstructed through the front window, making a long, flat, golden pattern on the dusty Oriental rug. He was reading Andy Gump at the time. My mother was struggling over a frayed elbow in one of my sweaters. Suddenly he looked up and said: ”You know....”
Here it comes! My mother straightened up and waited.
”You know, I like the room this way.”
There was a long, rich moment. These were the first words spoken in seventy-two hours.
She looked down again at her darning, and in a soft voice: ”Uh...you know, I'm sorry I broke it.”
”Well...” he grew expansive, ”It was...it was really pretty jazzy.”
”No,” she answered, ”I thought it was very pretty!” pretty!”
”Nah. It was too pink for this room. We should get some kind of bra.s.s lamp for that window.”
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