Something Happened by Joseph Heller
"Will you stop that?"
"You think you're always so smart, don't you?"
"Stop."
"All right. But if you'd only take the trouble to look at her once in a while, and listen to her, you'd see she doesn't hate you. She loves you. You never even show you know."
"Okay."
"You make her feel like a nuisance."
"Okay, I said."
"She doesn't hate you."
"Okay!"
"Okay."
I turn to stare at my daughter searchingly, my face still hard and scornful and belligerent (my defenses are up until I can make certain hers are down). She is standing perfectly still, as though meekly awaiting a verdict. I am awaiting some sign from her. She looks humble and penitent. She is alone. Her downcast eyes are grave and moist, and her ashen lips are pinched together sadly and are twitching, as though, despite all the forces of will she has amassed to hold her poor self together, she is going to collapse into shambles before us and begin crying helplessly, without pride. She is tense. My feelings soften with a sensation of irremediable loss (of something precious gone forever, of someone dear destroyed) as I study her pale, drooping, vulnerable face. I am tense too. I am unable to speak (maybe I do love her), and for a second I am struck with the notion that my wife is right, that perhaps my daughter doesn't hate me and does love me, and perhaps does need to have me know it (and needs to know also, perhaps, that maybe I think well of her). And I begin to feel that maybe I do care very much whether she hates me or not! (I don't want her to!) She must matter to me, I think, for I am nearly overcome with grief and pity by her look of tearful misery (and I want to cry myself), and I want to put my arms out to her shoulders to hold her gently and console her and confess and apologize (even though I have a vivid premonition suddenly that this is all a typical trick, and she will pull away from me in a taunting, jubilant affront as soon as I do reach out to comfort her, leaving me standing there ridiculously with my empty hands outstretched in the air, abashed and infuriated). I decide to risk it anyway--she is so pathetic and forlorn: I know I can survive the rebuff if it comes. Smiling tenderly, stepping toward her repentently, I reach my hands out to take her in my arms, apologize, and hug her gently.
She pulls away from me with a vicious sneer.
And I find myself standing there stupidly with my empty hands in the air, feeling hurt and foolish.
And my wife picks exactly that moment to cry:
"I'm the one she hates! Not you! I'm the one she can't stand!"
And I turn around to gape at her incredulously. (I had forgotten she was even there.)
"Don't you ever hear her?" my wife continues stridently, and runs toward my daughter as though she intends to smack her. My daughter flinches, but holds her ground steadily, glaring insultingly up into my wife's eyes with stubborn defiance, daring her, with a small, cold smile, to do more. "What have I ever done to you?" my wife shouts at her. "What have I ever done to her that she should hate me so much? Look at her! Don't you see the way she's looking at me right now?"
"Christ, yes!" I shout back at my wife. "What the hell do you think I was talking about? Why the hell do you think I kick her out?"
"And you--you're no better!" my wife accuses me.
"You don't care either, do you?"
"Oh, Jesus!" I wail.
"Nobody in this house gives a damn about me," my wife laments. "Nobody ever loved me. Not in my whole life. Not even my own mother. Am I so horrible? What did I ever do to you or anyone else that you should all hate me so much? What makes me so horrible that you should all feel you can treat me this way? Tell me."
"Oh, shit!" I groan disgustedly.
"Don't talk to me that way."
"Must I really spend the rest of my life in rotten conversation like this?"
"What's so rotten about me?"
"Nothing."
"What do I do that's so horrible?"
And I find myself wondering once again just what in the mystifying hell an able, well-read, fairly intelligent, sensitive, personable, successful minor organization executive like myself, sound in health (if not in tooth), provocative in wit, still virile and still attractive to many susceptible ladies my own age and much younger, is doing engaged seriously in such a low, directionless argument with two such people (children) as them, my shallow, melancholy, slightly inebriated, self-pitying wife (I often try to figure out what it was I ever saw in her so long ago that made me think I loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, except her good and willing ass, which is still not so bad and now even more willing. All in all, in fact, in the long run, I think I enjoy fucking my wife more than I do any of the others, although most of the ones I have gone with a second time or more have been pretty good, too, and full of very surprising surprises, for a while. Jane in the Art Department will be a headache--I sense that already; she is gullible and unsophisticated and she likes to talk; her skin will be so clear and smooth it will almost hum to my touch, but she is still too young and pleasant, or simple-minded, to make much sense to me now. Some girls laugh a bit too loudly at just about everything amusing I say and drive me batty, between erections, once I recognize they laugh so readily and talk too much. That will be young, sweet, pleasant Jane. I know her already. But I also know I will grab for it lecherously at the next company party or sooner; and that I don't think I will want her to keep on working there with me after I do: she is a present I intend to give myself for Christmas this year, or earlier, and I am already in the process of wrapping her up) and my depressing, self-centered, self-pitying daughter, when I would much rather be concentrating on something else, on those two speeches I want to begin outlining (I like to get started on important things well in advance, on a long convention speech in case I am moved up into Kagle's job by then and am nominally in charge of the whole affair, and on my customary, unexciting, three-minute speech about the plans and activities of my department in case I am not moved up into Kagle's job and am still working for Green, who probably won't let me give it this time, either. I hate Green and will never forgive him or forget him for what he did to me at the convention by not letting me speak. I really don't want Andy Kagle's job--I never did want to do that kind of work or have power over so many people--but I will be heartbroken now if they don't give it to me: I will feel betrayed and disgraced, and I will want to slink away alone into someplace dark and weep and never come out. I am too weak to refuse it, and too vain to be indifferent to the honor. I don't even really need the extra money) and on the list of changes I will want to recommend when I am promoted into Kagle's job. (I will want to show Arthur Baron and Horace White that I am ready. There are people in nearly all our offices I will want to be rid of. I wish I could be rid of Green now, although I don't know who could replace him.) "Tell me," my wife repeats shrilly. "What do I do?"
"You give me," I answer, "a pain in the ass. Both of you!" I add emphatically, with a long, warning look at my daughter to let her know unmistakably that I am including her also this time in my ire, and to deprive her of that pasty, crafty glee she customarily evinces whenever I turn abusive to my wife.
"Don't yell at me," my wife snaps.
"I wasn't yelling," I explain. "I was speaking emphatically."
"I can yell too, you know."
"You are."
"And don't say things like that to me, not in front of the children. Ever again. I don't care how you talk to me when we're alone."
"Like what?"
"What you said."
"Then stop being one."
"You're so clever."
"I know."
"It's no wonder they use such filthy language, when they listen to you. It's no wonder they talk to me the way they do."
"Oh, stop."
"I'm not going to let you talk to me with such disrespect," my wife goes on vehemently. "Not anymore. Not even when we're alone. I'm not going to put up with it. Do you hear me?"
"Fuck off now," I tell her quietly. "Both of you."
My wife is stung. Tears spurt into her eyes. (I am sorry immediately. I feel small and shameful already for having said that.) "I could kill you for that," she tells me softly.
"Then kill me," I taunt.
"I wish there was someplace I could go."
"I'll find one."
"I wish I had money of my own."
"I'll give it to you."
"That's some way," my daughter observes softly in a petulant tone, "for a father to talk to a fifteen-year-old child."
"Go--" I begin (and pause to conceal a smile, for her reproof is humorous and ingratiating, and I am tempted to laugh and congratulate her) "--away to boarding school."
"I wish I could."
"You can."
"You stop me."
"Not anymore. And that's some way," I exclaim, "for a fifteen-year-old child to talk to her father."
"I didn't--"
"Yes, you--"
"I only started--"
"--and you know it. I get--you know something, kid? I bet you'll never guess in a million years what I get from all these frank and honest discussions of yours that you insist on having with me."
"Headaches."
"You guessed!" I declare, hoping that I will be able to make her laugh. "I get piercing headaches," I continue (pompously, after I fail, for I feel myself inflating grandly, and crossly, with a delicious thrill of outrage. I am nearly ecstatic with grievance, and I forge ahead vigorously in joyous pursuit of revenge). "Yes, I get piercing headaches from all those brain tumors and cerebral hemorrhages you keep giving me. And stabbing chest pains from all the heart attacks you keep telling me you wouldn't feel so unhappy about if I got. I would feel unhappy if I got one! In fact, I'm starting to feel pretty damned miserable from having to listen to both of you tell me all the time how miserable you feel." My wife and daughter are silent now and cowering submissively (and a flood of self-righteous gratification begins to permeate and sweeten my throbbing sense of injury. I feel so sorry for myself it is almost unbearably delicious. I also feel mighty: I feel potent and articulate, and part of me wishes that Green or someone else I yearn to impress, like Jane, or Horace White, or perhaps some terribly rich and famous beauty with marvelous tits and glossy hair, were in a position to witness me so fluent and dominating). "I'm sick," I remark misleadingly in a falling voice, just to puzzle them further a moment. "Yes, by now I am sick and tired of having both of you people come barging in here, into my study, whenever you feel like it, just to tell me what a lousy husband and father you think I am."
"You were reading a magazine," my wife remarks.
"You too?" I jeer.
"We're going."
"This is my study," I remind her caustically (and desperately) in a surly, rising voice, as she turns to leave. "Isn't it? And now that I think of it, just what the hell are both of you doing in here right now--in my study--when I've got so many important things I want to get done?"
"Which is more important?" my wife makes the mistake of asking. "Your own wife and daughter, or those other important things?"
"Please get out," I answer. "That's the kind of question I never want to be asked again the rest of my life."
"All right. We'll go."
"So go."
"Come on."
"No, stay!" I blurt out suddenly at both of them.
"We're going."
"You stay!" I demand.
"Aren't we?"
(All at once, it is of obsessive importance to me--more important to me now than anything else in the whole world--that they stay, and that I be the one who is driven out. Out of my study. My eyes fill with tears; I don't know why; they are tears not of anger but of injured pride. It's a tantrum, and I am obliged to give myself up to it unresistingly.) "I'll go!" I cry, as both of them stare at me in bafflement. I stride toward the door with tears of martyred grief. "And stop sneaking these extra chairs in," I add, with what sounds like a sniffle.
"What?"
"You know what I mean. And all of you always take all my pencils and never bring them back."
"What are you talking about?"
"Whenever you redecorate. This God-damned house. You dump chairs in here. As though I won't notice."
My wife is bewildered. And I am pleased. (I am enjoying my fit exquisitely. I am still a little boy. I am a deserted little boy I know who will never grow older and never change, who goes away and then comes back. He is badly bruised and very lonely. He is thin. He makes me sad whenever I remember him. He is still alive, yet out of my control. This is as much as he ever became. He never goes far and always comes back. I can't help him. Between us now there is a cavernous void. He is always nearby.) And when I whirl away again exultantly to storm out, leaving my silent wife and daughter standing there, in my study, at such a grave moral disadvantage, I see my son watching in the doorway. And I stamp on him before I can stop.
"Ow!" he wails.
"Oh!" I gasp.
He has been waiting there stealthily, taking everything in.
"It's okay!" he assures me breathlessly.
Clutching his foot, hopping lamely on the other, he shrinks away from me against the doorjamb, as though I had stepped on him on purpose, and intend to step on him again.
"Did I hurt you?" I demand.
"It's okay."
"But did I hurt you? I'm sorry."
"It's okay! I mean it. It doesn't hurt!"
"I didn't mean to step on you. Then why are you rubbing your ankle?"
"Because you hurt me a little bit. Before. But it's okay now. I mean it. Really, it's okay." (He is supplicating anxiously for me to believe he is okay, pleading with me to stop pulverizing him beneath the crushing weight of my overwhelming solicitude. "Leave me alone--please!" is what I realize he is actually screaming at me fiercely, and it slashes me to the heart to acknowledge that. I take a small step back.) "See?" he asks timorously, and demonstrates.
He puts his foot to the floor and tests it gingerly, proving to me he is able to stand without holding on. I see a minute bruise on the surface of his skin, a negligible, white scrape left by the edge of my shoe, a tiny laceration of the dermatological tissue covering the ankle, no injury of any seriousness. (He is probably the only person in the world for whom I would do almost anything I could to shield from all torment and harm. Yet I fail continually; I can't seem to help him, I do seem to harm him. Things happen to him over which I have no power and of which I am often not even aware until the process has been completed and the damage to him done. In my dreams sometimes he is in mortal danger, and I cannot move quickly enough to save him. My thighs weigh tons. My feet are anchored. He perishes, but the tragedy, in my dreams, is always mine. In real life, he is suffering already from secret tortures he is reluctant to divulge, and from so many others he is unable to comprehend and describe. He is afraid of war and crime. Anyone in uniform intimidates him. He is afraid of stealing: he is afraid to steal anything and afraid of having things stolen from him.) He seems out of breath and waxen with fright as he stands below me now watching me stand there watching him (the delicate oval pods beneath his eyes are a pathological blue), and he is trembling in such violent consternation as he waits for me to do something that it seems he must certainly shake himself into broken little pieces if I don't reach out instantly to hold him together. (I don't reach out. I have that sinking, intuitive feeling again that if I do put my hand out toward him, he will think I am going to hit him and fall back from me in dread. I don't know why he feels so often that I am going to hit him when I never do; I never have; I don't know why both he and my daughter believe I used to beat them a great deal when they were smaller, when I don't believe I ever struck either one of them at all. My boy can hurt me in so many ways he doesn't suspect and against which I have no strength to defend myself. Or maybe he does suspect. And does do it with motive. When I think of him, I think of me.) And I know why he is quaking now, squirming awkwardly and plucking nervously and obliviously at the small bulge of penis inside his pan
"Then what are you looking so unhappy about?" I want to know timidly. "If it doesn't hurt."
"Your yelling."
"I'm not yelling."
"You were yelling. Before."
"I'm not yelling now. I wasn't even yelling at you," I argue with comic fervor, trying to appease him. I want to make him smile too. (I can't stand to see him upset, particularly when I am the cause. I smother furious impulses against him when he fails to be as fully content with life and me as I would like him to be.) "Was I?"
"No," he replies without hesitation, twisting in one place again (as though he would like to wrest his feet free from the floor and fly away) and patting his knees spasmodically with fluttering palms. "But you're going to yell at me," he guesses cagily, with a gleam of insight in his eyes. "Aren't you?"
"No, no, no, no," I assure him. "I'm not going to yell at you."
"You will. I know you will."
"I won't. Why should I yell at you?"
"You see? I told you."
"I'm not."
"You're yelling already."
"I'm not yelling!"
"Ain't he yelling?"
"I don't think he knows what he's doing."
"That's good," I compliment my wife acidly. "That will cool things down."
"You know you're impossible?" she answers. "Whenever you get this way."
"I'm possible."
"He's possible," my daughter intones ruefully.
"Are you going to yell at me now?" my boy asks.
"I'm not going to yell at you at all," I tell him. "I was speaking loudly only to be emphatic," I explain to him almost in a whisper, forcing myself to smile and imposing on my words a scrupulous and conciliatory calm. I squat to my heels directly in front of him, bringing my face almost to a level with his own, and look instructively into his eyes. He lets me take his hands. Tissues inside his hands, I feel, are beating and lurching like little fishes. (Everybody in my family trembles at home but me, even though I don't want them to. I brood and sulk and moan a good deal and wish I were someplace else. I tremble elsewhere. At the office. In my sleep. Alone at airports waiting for planes. In unfamiliar hotel rooms in cities I don't like, unless I drink myself sodden and have some girl or woman I can stand who is able to spend most of the night with me. I don't like being alone at night and always leave a small light on when I have to be. Being dead tired doesn't help; in fact, exhaustion is worse, for I don't sleep any sounder and my defenses are low and laggard. Repulsive thoughts swarm over them and invade my mind like streams of lice or other small, beetle-brown, biting insects or animals, and I am slow to choke them off and force them back down where they came from. There is this animal, I sometimes imagine, that creeps up on paws in the night when my eyes are closed and eats at my face--but that's another childish story. My dreams are demoralizing. I won't reveal them. I have castration fears. I have castration dreams. I had a dream once of my mother with black mussels growing on her legs, and now I know what it meant.) "Please don't be afraid of me," I urge him tenderly, almost begging. "I'm not going to do anything to hurt you or scare you. Now or ever."