Something Happened

And I'd discover once more that I'd still not been able to cope with him at all. I'll bet I'm probably one of the very few people in the entire world who know (not knows) that livid means blue and lurid means pale. A lot of good that knowledge has done me. (Green may be one of the others who know, and it's done him even less.) My boy's complexion is pale again, and his eyes are blue and deep. I wish I could look all the way inside them to see what is going on in his mind.

"Why are you staring at me?" he asks uncomfortably.

"I'm not staring."

"You were."

"I'm sorry. I was thinking." He intends to remain silent. "And if you asked me what I was thinking about, do you know what I'd say?"

"What?" he asks, to oblige me.

"I was thinking about when you were going to ask me why I was staring at you."

He grins with a small noise of appreciation as a token of acknowledgment, and goes into his room, closing the door.

I don't want him to go. My memory's failing, my bladder is weak, my arches are falling, my tonsils and adenoids are gone, and my jawbone is rotting, and now my little boy wants to cast me away and leave me behind for reasons he won't give me. What else will I have? My job? When I am fifty-five, I will have nothing more to look forward to than Arthur Baron's job and reaching sixty-five. When I am sixty-five, I will have nothing more to look forward to than reaching seventy-five, or dying before then. And when I am seventy-five, I will have nothing more to look forward to than dying before eighty-five, or geriatric care in a nursing home. I will have to take enemas. (Will I have to be dressed in double-layer, waterproof undershorts designed especially for incontinent gentlemen?) I will be incontinent. I don't want to live longer than eighty-five, and I don't want to die sooner than a hundred and eighty-six.

Oh, my father — why have you done this to me?

I want him back.

I want my little boy back too.

I don't want to lose him.

I do.

"Something happened!" a youth in his early teens calls excitedly to a friend and goes ru

A crowd is collecting at the shopping center. A car has gone out of control and mounted the sidewalk. A plate glass window has been smashed. My boy is lying on the ground. (He has not been decapitated.) He is screaming in agony and horror, with legs and arms twisted brokenly and streams of blood spurting from holes in his face and head and pouring down over one hand from inside a sleeve. He spies me with a start and extends an arm. He is panic-stricken. So am I.

"Daddy!"

He is dying. A terror, a pallid, pathetic shock more dreadful than any I have ever been able to imagine, has leaped into his face I can't stand it. He can't stand it. He hugs me. He looks beggingly at me for help. His screams are piercing. I can't bear to see him suffering such agony and fright. I have to do something. I hug his face deeper into the crook of my shoulder. I hug him tightly with both my arms. I squeeze.

"Death," says the doctor, "was due to asphyxiation. The boy was smothered. He had superficial lacerations of the scalp and face, a braised hip, a deep cut on his arm. That was all. Even his spleen was intact."

The nurses and policemen are all very considerate to me as I weep. They wait in respectful silence.

"Would you like to be alone?" one murmurs.

I'm afraid to be alone. I would rather have them all there with me now, to see me weeping in such crushing grief and shame. I cry a long time. When I feel I am able to speak, finally, I lift my eyes slowly a little bit and say: "Don't tell my wife."

Nobody knows what I've done

Nobody knows what I've done. Everybody is impressed with how bravely I've been able to move into Kagle's position and carry on with the work of organizing the convention. No one understands that carrying on bravely was the easiest thing to do.

I get to make my speech, finally. It is a solid success (and nobody cares. Nobody, I learn, remembers shortly afterward what it was even about. I had entertained the hope that one of the officials, in commending me, would suggest that mimeographed copies be made and distributed by Public Relations to executives in other divisions of the company, trade publications, and Chambers of Commerce. None do). My speech, at Arthur Baron's suggestion, was kept short. I spoke for exactly three minutes. Kagle, who opened the convention, introduced me lavishly in a speech lasting fifteen. Green spoke for twenty-seven minutes, arrogating to himself the entire time I had budgeted for his department, and was glittering and boring.

"I enjoyed your speech, Jack," I complimented him.

"Would you like a copy?" he responded. "I've had it mimeographed."

"I was going to ask."

"Be sure you credit me if you ever quote any of it. I'm thinking of having it published."

His eyes are hunting behind me already for bigger game. (I am still not important enough for him — this year.) He deserts me for Horace White, who jettisons him by moving to Lester Black, who is listening attentively to baleful muttermgs about me from Joh

Systematically, I am putting my affairs in order. I tick them off my list.

I have told my wife I love her.

We have decided to keep Derek longer (he may get better. They may be wrong. They're finding new things out every day) and have found a nurse for him who may work out (the first two replacements wouldn't stay, and this one has body odor).

I have given my daughter a car of her own. Her spirits seem to be picking up. (I bought my wife a new convertible she likes, sent her shopping for the new house we need. It's not a career, but it will have to be furnished. My wife won't take a vacation without me. We are now a three-car family.) My daughter promises she will pass her high school courses this year and tells us she wants to go to college. She says she's stopped telling lies. (She may be telling the truth.)

I have retired Ed Phelps and fired Red Parker. (Red Parker doesn't know that yet. He mails warmest greetings from St. Thomas every time he flies down there with some other female whack.) I get call reports every Friday now, and they are accurate.

"Well, at least there's one good thing," Brown conceded to me grudgingly when we got back to the office. "We can stop wasting time on these stupid call reports."

I made myself ready for the worst, stood up, and confronted him squarely. "No, you can't. I'll want them all on my desk by the close of business every Friday."

"You're a pisser."

"And I don't want you to say I'm a pisser."

Our eyes locked. There was hatred between us. I saw his large fists clench and was trembling inside. I thought he was going to give me my punch in the jaw right then — until I suddenly realized the blood was draining from his face too, faster, probably, than from mine. He was afraid also. He was dissolving: sick little tremors were playing like maggots around his mouth and sinewy jaw. All his truculent bravery was vanishing, and I saw him slipping away from me someplace from which I knew I would never see him return.

"Joh

"Okay," he mumbled, looking down.

But he was already gone, transubstantiating himself like witchcraft into someone obsequious, cringing to hold on to a job he would no longer be able to do. I have had him transferred to another division of the company and replaced by an Italian graduate from a business school who wants to make good, and who is afraid of me.