Something Happened

"You must be very disappointed in me?"

"Why?"

"I'll bet you are. You and Mommy both."

"Why should we be?"

"I know she is. I'm not good at anything."

"Like what? Neither am I."

"I've got a greasy scalp and skin. And pimples. I'm not pretty."

"Yes, you are."

"I'm too tall and fat."

"For what?"

"I'm not even sure I want to be. I don't know what I'd do even if I was good at anything."

"Like what?"

"Like art. I can't paint or sculpt. I'm not very smart. I'm not good at music. I don't study ballet."

"I don't study ballet either."

"It's not fu

"I'm not trying to be." (I was trying to be.) "We're not good at those things either."

"I'm not even rich."

"That's my fault, not yours."

"At least that would be something. I could be proud of that. Are we ever going to be? I mean really rich, like Jean's father, or Grace."

"No. Unless you do it."

"I can't do anything. Should I be ashamed?"

"Of what?"

"Because we're poor."

"We aren't poor."

"Of you."

"At least you're frank."

"Should I be?"

"What would you expect me to say?"

"The truth."

"Of me? I hope not. Being ashamed is something you either are or aren't, not something you do because you should or shouldn't. I do well enough. Jean is ashamed of her father because he's mean and stupid, and thinks I'm better. Isn't she? So is Grace. I think Grace likes me a lot more than she does her father."

"I'm never going to be anything."

"Everybody is something."

"You know what I mean."

"Like what?"

"Famous."

"Few of us are."

"I don't blame you. I don't blame you for being disappointed in me."

"We're not. Do you think we'd be disappointed in you just because you aren't good at anything?"

"Then you never even expected anything of me, did you?" she accuses, with a sudden surge of emotion that catches me by surprise.

"Now you're not being fair!" I insist.

"It's not fu

"Honey, I —»

But she is gone, disappearing intransigently with a look of mournful loathing as I put my arms out to comfort her (and I am left again by myself in my study with my empty hands outstretched in the air, reaching out toward nothing that is there).

There is something I have done to her (or am doing to her now) for which she refuses to forgive me, and I don't know what that something is (or even if it is to her I am doing it. I know she acts angry and hurt when I am drunk or even a little high. She does not like it either when I flirt with her friends). I try to remember when it began, this mordant, stultifying sorrow into which she sneaks away to bury herself so often. I know it was nothing that happened this year, for she was not much different last year, and it was nothing that happened last year for she was not much different then than the year before. (She is not much different at fifteen from what she was at twelve and not much different at twelve from what she was at nine.) Almost as far back as I can recall, in fact, she has always been pretty much the same person she is now, only smaller. And yet, there must have been a break somewhere, an end and a starting point, a critical interval in her development of some breadth and duration that I ca

(Freud or not, I have never been able to figure out how I really did feel about my mother, whether I liked her or not, or even felt either way about her at all. I think I felt nothing. I had the same feeling, or absence of feeling most of the time, toward the other members of my family and my best friend, with whom I am not on very friendly terms anymore. We grew tired of each other, and I am relieved. He needed money; I couldn't give it generously more than once. I have never been sure I ever really cared for anyone in this whole world but myself and my little boy. But I still do have these grief-filled dreams about my mother. There's a part of me I can't find that is co

I had no happy childhood, if I recall correctly, and neither did my wife (who prefers to recollect incorrectly, when I let her), and my boy, at nine, though he laughs a lot and is intent on making many good jokes, is ru