A Stir of Echoes

"ARE YOU GOING TO TELL FRANK AND Elizabeth about it?" It was almost five on Wednesday; we were in the bedroom. Anne was sitting on the bed brushing Richard's hair, and I was putting on a fresh shirt. In a few minutes we'd be going across the street for dinner.



I slipped the sport shirt over my head, then stood looking at their reflection in the bureau mirror.



"Are you?" she asked.



I shook my head.



"No, why bother?" I said. "Frank would laugh at the whole thing." It was quiet then. I knew what Anne was thinking. I'd been thinking the same thing. I also knew she didn't want to think it. I didn't want to either. It was too important. And, really, we had no right to dwell on it. What did we have for evidence? A shapeless feeling in the dead of night. The flash of an instinct, a brief second during which the yearning to believe in something beyond seemed to have become a realization, an acceptance. That wasn't enough; not enough at all.



I turned and leaned against the edge of the bureau. Anne avoided my eyes.



"Pitty shirt, daddy," Richard said.



"Thank you, baby," I said.



"Welcome," Richard said; and, for a moment, something seemed to pass between us; a sort of understanding. Then he had turned away.



I looked at him and thought how much easier it would be to raise him if I could only believe. All those ever-present dreads would be ameliorated fatal illness, being run down by a car, being killed by any one of the myriad accidents to which a child is so horribly vulnerable. I thought how wonderful it would be if I could believe that he was safe.



For a moment Anne's eyes met mine.



"I do know one thing," I said impulsively. "There's something around us. I don't know what it is but it's something. And it's there, Anne. It's there."



I remember the look she gave me. How, for a moment, she pressed her lips to Richard's white-blond hair.



"It would be so nice," she said, almost to herself, "so nice." Frank let us in.



"Greetings, fellow sufferers," he slurred. His beer-sweet breath fogged over us. "Hobble the hell on in." As we entered the living room, Elizabeth came out of the kitchen. It wasn't hard to tell they'd been fighting. Even if I hadn't sensed the swelling of tension in the air, I could see that Elizabeth had been crying.



"Hello." She came toward us, forcing a smile, not looking at Frank. "Hello, dear," she said to Richard.



Frank caught her around the waist as she came up to us and I saw his white fingers dig into the soft flesh of her stomach.



"This is my wife, Lizzie," he said. "Lizzie, mother of my unborn brat." Elizabeth pulled away with a pained grimace and stooped down before Richard... hate!... The word seemed to flare in my mind the way a bulb does just before it has burned out and gone black.



"You look so handsome, Richard," she said. There was a break in her voice. "That's a pretty suit."



"Never tells me I'm handsome," Frank said.



"Pity?" Richard plucked at the shirt and held the bright material out toward Elizabeth.



"Oh, yes. So pretty."



"Well, sittenzie down, guests," said Frank, "and name your poison-to quote the immortal lines of that world-famous bitch, Elsie Leigh."



"You are in a good mood," I told him.



"What, goddammit, is your pleasure, goddammit?" Frank said.



"Nothing for me," Anne said stiffly. I said a glass of wine if he had some. He named off three. I said sauterne.



"Saw-terne-coming goddamn up." Frank lurched away toward the kitchen with a belch. Elizabeth straightened up, a strained smile on her face.



"He's had a bad day," she said, trying in vain to make it sound amusing. "Don't pay any attention to him."



"Are you sure you want to bother with us, Liz?" Anne asked softly. "We wouldn't mind if-"



"Oh, don't be silly, dear," Elizabeth said and I sensed a wave of taut unhappiness rushing through her. In the kitchen Frank belched again ringingly. "Key of C," he said.



"Oh... before I forget," Elizabeth said, "did I leave a comb at your house the other day?" Anne clucked. "For heaven's sake," she said. "Yes. You did. I've been meaning to bring it back at least a dozen times and I keep forgetting. I'm sorry."



"Oh, that's all right, dear," Elizabeth said. "I just want to know where it is. I'll pick it up sometime."



"saw-terne." Frank came back in the room with a filled glass in his hand.



"I'll get dinner ready," Elizabeth said, starting for the kitchen.



"Let me help you," Anne offered.



"There's nothing to do," Elizabeth said, smiling. The smile faded. Frank was blocking her way. "Frank," she said, pleadingly.



"Lizzie doesn't talk here anymore," he said. "Do you, Lizzie?"



"Frank, let me by." Her voice was strained.



"Oh, she's so mad, so mad." He pawed at her shoulder. "You mad there, Lizzie?"



"I'll help you, Liz," Anne said, getting up and taking Richard's hand. Elizabeth opened her mouth as if to speak, then didn't. I could sense the gratitude and anger mixed in her. Frank stepped aside as Anne came over and the two women and Richard started into the kitchen.



"One pregnant woman," itemized Frank, "one little boy. Two pregnant women." He blew out a whistling breath. "'Tis the season to be jolly." He snickered, "Pretty good, eh?" he asked me.



"Just as funny as it can be," I said.



"You don't think that, you sober bastard" he said. He handed me the glass roughly and some of the wine spilled up over the edge and across my hand. "Ooops," said Frank, "oops, oops." He just about fell down on the arm chair.



"She's mad," he said, "just 'cause I told her to try and lift the refrigerator so we wouldn't have to bother having a kid." Chuckling, he reached for his can of beer. He held it out.



"Here's to un-knocked-up femininity," he toasted. "Long may the hell they wave." He hiccupped and drained the can. Abruptly his face grew flatly sullen. He dropped the empty can on the rug.



"Babies," he said, bitterly, loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. "Who the hell invented them?" If I'd had any intention of telling them about the woman, Frank dispelled it quickly. He kept drinking until dinner was on the table and then kept on all through it, barely touching his food. It got to the point where, when Elizabeth-in a desperate search for diverting conversation-mentioned my strange phone call when Anne had been knocked unconscious, I shrugged and said it had only been a coincidence. I just didn't want to talk about it there.



I thought of the way mediums often describe their entrances into haunted houses-how they sense alien presences in the air. Well, that house was haunted too. I felt it strongly. Haunted by despairs, by the ghosts of a thousand cruel words and acts, by the phantom residue of unresolved angers.



"Babies," Frank kept saying as he stabbed vengefully at his food, "babies. Are they valid? Are they integral? Do they add up? Are they the goddamn sum of their parts? I ask you."



"Frank, you're making it-" Elizabeth started.



"Not you," he interrupted, "I'm not asking you. You're sick in the head about babies. Babies are your mania. You live babies, you breathe babies." He looked at Anne and me. "Lizzie," he said, "is baby happy. Alla time, alla time-'when we gonna make a baby?' 'When we gonna put sperm to egg?' and-"



"Frank..." Elizabeth's fork clinked onto her plate; she covered her eyes with a trembling hand. Richard stared at her, wide-eyed. Anne reached across the table and put her hand on Elizabeth's.



"Take it easy, man," I said. "You trying to give us indigestion or something?"



"Sure," Frank said. "Easy he says. Easy. You try to take it easy when something that isn't even alive yet eats up all your money."



He shook his head dizzily.



"Babies, babies, babies," he chanted. He glanced at me suddenly. "What are you looking at me for?" Superficials were gone. He looked at me as if he hated my guts.



I blinked and lowered my eyes. I hadn't been conscious of staring at him. I'd only been conscious of the twisted, angry wellings in his mind.



"Just looking at an idiot I know," I said.



He hissed in disgust.



"I'm an idiot, all right," he said. "Any guy's an idiot who makes babies."



"Frank, for God's sake! " Elizabeth pushed up from the table shakily and put her plate in the sink.



"Richard," said Frank, "don't make babies. Make girls. Make whoopee. Make trouble. But don't make babies."



The remainder of the meal, dessert and all, was eaten in a tense silence broken only by vain attempts at dinner conversation.



Later, Frank and I went out for a drive. He'd kept on drinking and was getting more and more abusive to Elizabeth so I suggested we go for a ride. I took our car so I could do the driving. I told him I had to get gas for the next day anyway.



"Don't matter," he said, "I'm not going to work anyhow. Why should I?" As we pulled away from the curb Elsie came out of the house in a sun suit and waved to us, then bent over to pick up the hose.



"Fat bitch," Frank snapped. The impression I got from him was not one of anger, though-unless it was angry lust.



We drove in silence a while. Frank had rolled down the window on his side all the way and his head lolled out of it, the cold night wind whipping his dark hair. I kept my eyes straight ahead, heading toward the ocean. Once in a while Frank muttered something but I paid no attention. I kept thinking about life going on, every little realism driving one farther from any thinking about the other things. Once we'd seen a hypnotist on television. He had a young woman in a trance and she was very calmly giving him facts and figures about her former life in Nuremburg in the 1830s. At first I'd been glued to the chair, absolutely spellbound. The woman talked fluent German even though she was American for four generations back; she described buildings and people; she gave dates, addresses, names.



Then, as I watched, the little realities began to impinge. I felt the bump in the chair cushion I was sitting on. My head itched. I was thirsty and I took a sip of Coca-Cola from the glass on the magazine-strewn coffee table in front of me. I heard the rustle of Anne's clothes as she shifted her weight beside me on the sofa. I became aware of the smallness of the television tube in relation to the room. I heard an airplane pass overhead and noted the books in the bookcase. And this woman went on talking and talking and gradually this incredible thing became ordinary and dull. I sank back against the sofa back and watched without too much interest. I even changed to another channel before it was over. It was the same way now. Feeling the hard seat under me, the steering wheel in my hands, the sound of the Ford's engine in my ears, seeing, from the corner of my eye, Frank sitting there glumly, seeing the lights flashing by-it was all too real; too matter-of-fact. Everything else seemed unacceptable. The woman was, once again, a dream. And all the rest-even to the sensing of Frank's and Elizabeth's thoughts seemed imaginative fancy. Something to be explained away.



After driving about twenty minutes we stopped at a bar in Redondo Beach and sat in a back booth, drinking beer. Frank drained three glasses quickly before dawdling over the fourth. He rubbed the ice-sweated bottom of the glass over the smooth table top and stared at it.



"What's the use?" he said, without looking at me.



"Use of what?" I asked.



"Use of everything," he said. "Marriage and kids and all the rest of it." His cheeks puffed out with held breath, then he expelled it noisily. "I suppose you want a baby," he said.



"Sure."



"You would." He drank a little beer.



"I take it you don't," I said.



"You take it right, buddy boy," he said bitterly. "Sometimes I'd like to kick her right in the goddamn belly just so she'd... uh-" He squeezed the glass in his hand as if he wanted to splinter it. "What good is a baby to me?" he asked. "What the hell do I want with one?"



"They're pretty nice," I said.



He fell back against the booth wall. "Sure," he said, "sure. So's a little money in the bank. So's a little security."



"They don't eat money, Frank," I said, "just a little mush and milk."



"They eat money," he said, "just like wives eat money. Just like houses and furniture and goddamn curtains."



"Man, you sound like a frustrated bachelor," I told him.



"A frustrated husband," he said. "I wish to hell I was a bachelor. Them, buddy, was the goddamn days."



"They were all right," I said, "but I'll take these."



"You can have 'em," he growled. He blew out disgusted breath again and played with his glass. "Isn't bad enough," he muttered, "I have to practically beg her for some when she's normal. Now she's got a whole goddamn bag full of tricks she uses to kick me out of bed."



I guess I laughed. "Is that what's bothering you?" I asked. I didn't feel very telepathic at that moment. It caught me by surprise.



"You bet your goddamn life it bothers me," Frank said. "She has the sex drive of a goddamn butterfly. Even when she's normal. Now..."



"Frank," I said, "believe me, pregnancy is not abnormal."



"The hell it isn't," he said. "It's a waste of flesh." He leaned forward and his face was hard and intent.



"Well, buddy boy," he said, "I'm not taking it lying down." He snickered. "To use the vernacular." He looked around in the way men do to indicate that their next remarks are going to be shattering revelations.



"There's a little redheaded job at the plant," he said.



I was surprised again.



"Oh, she knows about it," he said. "Old Lizzie knows all about it. What the hell else can she expect, though? A man needs it. That's all. And I need a lot of it. It's a matter of simple arithmetic." He went on telling me about the little "job"-redheaded, petite, tight-sweatered and sheathed with hugging slacks. She brought papers to the accounting department and dropped them off there.



"I don't get much eating done at lunchtime," Frank said, winking.