Something Happened

"For God sakes, what do you want from me of all people, Jesus Christ?" I roar at her. "They're my children, too. Do you really expect me to feel sorry for you?"

"I need someone to talk to. I wasn't asking you to feel sorry for me. Can't I even say how I feel?"

"Call your sister. You know damn well I can't stand crying anymore." I don't want to hear how she feels. I don't want to have to talk to anyone about Derek. I don't want to have to hear anyone talk about his own troubles. (I find it harder and harder to feel sorry for anyone but myself.) "I can't help you with this. I don't know how. I didn't order it this way and I don't know what to do, either."

And I saw it happening before anyone. Someone cursed us. I am ashes and stale air inside when it comes to him, have the fortitude and fiber of dried mushrooms and wet fallen leaves. I am cold. I could have prophesied. When pediatricians said he was slow, I saw he was clumsy. His knees and feet and fingers seemed angled slightly out of kilter. I discerned he could not seem to hold his head up straight for long. I had a feeling of disaster about him even before he was born (but I had that anxious feeling about the others too). I expected a Mongoloid. I would have settled readily beforehand for a harelip or cleft palate and trusted to surgery — with all three — although I can't visualize either my boy or my daughter wading through life even this far with any kind of serious birth defect. They've had trouble enough without it. I can't see how my wife really expects me to feel sorry for her when I have so many good reasons for feeling sorry for myself. Among them, her.

I want to get free of her before her health fails. I see an ailing wife in my future. There are eloquent foreru

"Dad, how can you even think of leaving her, when she's feeling so bad?" they'll say to me in reproof.

"But how can I ever leave her, when she never feels better?"

They'll get away from it all quickly enough (the self-centered fuckers).

"I don't feel well," my wife wakes up whimpering some mornings in a little girl's voice (when she feels someone wants something from her).

As if I care.

("I was watching you sleep," a girl will tell you while she's still in love with you. "You were snoring."

When she's not in love with you, it's revolting, and she will not want to see you again unless she's lonely or needs your money.)

My wife snores now sometimes, and occasionally her breath is bad in the morning. But, so is mine, and so do I, so we are already in a headlong race toward decrepitude. The children join in with sniveling complaints of their own.

My daughter gets sore throats and stomach pains. My boy pleads tiredness and nausea and will sleep past noon some days if we let him. I use headaches. So does my wife. I've got chest pains I can draw upon, for everybody has great respect for a heart attack, and a liver up my sleeve I can play in a clutch. My wife can counter with cancer scares, and it's even-Stephen down to the wire in the shadow of the valley of Blue Cross major medical benefits. Wouldn't it be a laugh if my wife died of chest pains and I was the one who got cancer? When my wife is depressed and my daughter drops i

"Do it," I'd advise, if she were someone else's.

"Okay. I will."

It might do wonders for her morale, if she didn't expect too much. It's also time she struck back. Wouldn't it be fu

"Hey, wait a minute, buddy. Buddy, wait a minute. Was she always this way?"

"I don't know. All of this takes time to mature and emerge. You'll have to ask some reliable, revolutionary, evolutionary, psychological historian, an experienced botanist of the psyche. Was I this way?"

"You made me this way."

"You made me make you."

"You made me make you make me. Why can't I talk to you?"

"Call your sister."

"I need a sympathetic ear."

"You drink too much."

"You make me."

"Call your sister and complain to her."

"I hate my sister. You know it."

"She has a sympathetic ear."

"You bastard," she blurts out. "You just can't wait to get away from me, can you? I know what you're thinking. I can tell by the way you look."

More and more often lately, I find myself looking her over critically evenings for stains and bite marks of illicit sexuality. I feel cheated when I don't find any.

"What'd you do today?" I'm the one who's likely to ask.

"Nothing."

"Shopping."

"Went to the beauty parlor."

"Saw my sister."

"Saw some friends. Why?"

"Just curious."

"What'd you do?"