Something Happened by Joseph Heller

  "You're no good." she said. There was no voice. It was more a shaping of the words with her lips and a faint rustle of breath. I was surprised, and I bent forward over the cavity of her mouth that I was no longer able to look at straightly and asked her to repeat what she had said. "You're just no good."

  Those were the last words I think I heard her speak to me. If I live to be a hundred and ninety years old, I will never hear any more from her. If the world lasts three billion more, there will be no others.

  Those are some last words for a dying mother to tell a child, aren't they? Even a grown-up family man with a wife and three children. I felt sorrier for myself when I heard them than I did for her. She was dying anyway.

  But I had to go on.

  I don't know what made me think it was safe to confide in my wife. A long time passed before I did. I was feeling so sad. The world was a rusty tin can. We used to curl ourselves up inside discarded old automobile tires and try to roll down slanting streets. We never could. We made pushmobile scooters out of ball-bearing roller skates. It was easier to walk. Mommy caught me when I fell, kissed the place to make it well.

  I should never have told the bitch. The bitches remember things like that.

  The linings of the brain. (The linings of my brain, they give me such a pain.) The linings of my brain are three in number and called collectively the meninges. They surround it on the outside. The innermost is called the pia mater. It is a delicate, fibrous, and highly vascular membrane (gorged with veins and capillaries, I suppose). I feel pressure against it from inside. Things bubble and shove against it as though they might explode. It reminds me at times of a cheese fondue. The pia mater, reinforced by the two supporting layers, the arachnoid and the dura mater, holds fast against the outward expanding pressure of my brain, pushes back. At times, there is pain. The name pia mater derives from an imperfect translation into Latin of Arabic words that meant (ha, ha) tender mother.

  My boy has stopped talking to me

  My boy has stopped talking to me, and I don't think I can stand it. (He doesn't seem to like me.) He no longer confides in me.

  There are times he rebuffs me and I want to cry. I remember the rebuff and it tears at my heart. Why should he want to stop talking to me? I want to be his best friend. Doesn't he know I probably love him more than anyone else in the world? He used to have dreams, he said, in which the door to our room was closed and he could not get in to see us. Now I have dreams that the door to his room is closed and I cannot get in to see him.

  He goes to bed without even saying good night to me, closing his door.

  My head spins, my emotions reel downward into whirlpools. He no longer comes to me for information as often as he used to, and I have no way of knowing anymore what he's thinking, who his friends are, what games he enjoys most, how much trouble he's having at school and with his homework. I hang on news of Forgione. He acts angry with me. It is impossible to get more from him than he wants to tell without offending him or finding out about him surreptitiously by asking someone else. (I wonder if he feels I'm spying on him.) "I climbed the rope in school today," he announces one evening when he comes home late for dinner after dark, with his eyes shining warmly and his cheeks and lips colored a healthy, handsome crimson with exercise and excitement. "I made it almost all the way up to the top. Dammit. I bet I could have touched the ceiling if I'd only had the nerve to let go and try."

  "Did you touch the ceiling yet?" I ask him.

  "Why do you keep asking me that?" he blurts out at me resentfully, and goes into his room.

  He is moving away from me and I don't want him to. He is shutting me out. I see the doors closed to his and my daughter's rooms and think of the closed doors at the company and am reminded squeamishly of all those closed cupboard and closet doors I had to open each morning and evening back in the apartment in the city with those baited spring traps concealed behind them when we were trying to catch or kill those mice. Those were not the good old days.

  "Remember," I reminisce with my wife, "those mice back in the city? That one time we had them?"

  "They weren't mice," says my wife. "They were roaches."

  "We had those too."

  "We never had mice."

  "And I was afraid I would have to kill one with a magazine?"

  "And you were afraid to kill them. You didn't like to step on them. You didn't like the way they squashed. I had to do it most of the time with one of my house slippers. And neither did I."

  She may be wrong.

  My memory does get faulty of late, merges indistinguishably with imagination, and I must make efforts to shake them apart. I remember waking up as a child, howling from a dream my bed was crawling with roaches and I continued to see them scurrying away into invisibility all over the room for minutes after the lights blazed on and I was wide awake. It was my brother who had come to console me (who once threw a lump of coal at me), and he sat with me tenderly until I was able to stop quailing. Now I have no big brother. One of my children--I forget which one--had a bad dream years ago about snapping fishes swimming in the bed, and I remembered instantly I had suffered those too.

  "There were fishes in my bed," I sobbed, shivering. "Swimming around on the blankets."

  "They aren't there now," my brother comforted me patiently. "Keep looking and you'll see."

  "They weren't there before," I exclaimed, still sobbing. "But I saw them anyway."

  I see things that aren't there. I used to lie awake listening to people coming to steal me away. I was afraid of the dark. I heard drugged moaning and sobbing from a different part of the apartment when I crept from my room, it stopped. When I returned to my room it started again and continued at irregular intervals until I was stolen away into sleep. My boy used to be afraid of the dark but isn't anymore. (I'm not sure I didn't like him better when he was. I think I was happier with him when he needed me more.) He'll stay out now after dark, sometimes until I worry, and won't tell us where he's been or with whom unless we ask. I don't want him to shut me out.

  "In open school week this year," I begin to scheme with my wife, "I'm going to try to sneak away to speak to Forgione and the principal and find out all I can about him."

  "He doesn't want you to come this year. And he doesn't want me to stay more than an hour."

  "Why didn't he tell me?"

  "He told me."

  And my daughter stole the car with one of her friends by telling my wife I'd given them permission to take it and alibiing to me that my wife had misunderstood. She started to cry when we trapped her between us. She said we were always picking on her. She said I was nicer to my boy than I was to her. She said she couldn't wait to graduate from high school and go to college, just to get away from us. She said she could tell we didn't want her living there.

  "If you'd buy me my own car," she said through ber sniffles, "I wouldn't have to tell lies to get one."

  I suppose I'll have to, sooner or later (for my sake more than hers). She'll wear me down. I'm glad the price of gasoline is going up so that poor working people won't have any and there'll be more than enough for people like my daughter and me.

  "At least she's not seeing that boy anymore," my wife says. "And she doesn't take drugs."

  "You think I believe her?"

  "She drives with her friends. She's home early. She doesn't go out as much on weekends anymore. Haven't you noticed?" She lowers her head in dismay, hesitating sadly. "I wish she would. She has nothing to do."

  I feel locked inside a hopeless struggle. Forecasts are coming true. I am better off these days at the office. I feel safer, even when at home (I don't feel safe at home. I feel things are going inexorably out of control. Things are not out of control at the company), if I can concentrate all my attention on the office, where the tasks are discernible, the obligations all cut and dried. I know what I must do: for the time being, I must be cordial and close to everyone here, even those who are disposable, and cool and distant to everyone under me in all
the out-of-town offices. No one must feel secure. Everyone must be kept in suspense about new decisions that might emerge from meetings behind closed doors in which I am now a participant. (I am a kingmaker.) Plans for the convention are moving ahead efficiently because no one entrusted with executing any of them feels secure. I am regarded with envy, hope, fear, ambition, suspicion, and disappointment. My small secretary congratulates me and hopes I will take her with me. I won't. I tell her she is too valuable where she is. I'll have better safeguards with Kagle's girl, who's more persuasive at lying and more adroit at covering things up. In my former department, I have Schwoll the wise guy and Holloway the weak guy, a new, bright young fellow who isn't going to stay and an elderly plodder who isn't going to go, along with three other underlings who do what they're told to industriously enough, and I leave them all behind with pleasure on moving day. My new, temporary office is a windowless one across from Kagle's. Kagle's been told by Arthur Baron and Horace White that he'll be allowed to remain in his spacious executive office for as long as he stays. (He hasn't been told how short a time he'll be allowed to stay.) Green will' have to replace me. I wonder with who (whom). I haven't decided yet how to handle Green. (He isn't as afraid of me yet as I feel he should be.) "Have you anyone in mind you can recommend to take your place?" he asks me pleasantly enough on moving day, but with a taint in his manner that puts me on guard. "I'd like someone better than you," he adds with breezy malice the moment I nod.

  "You'll have to pay him much more," I joke.

  "I'll be happy to," he scores. "He'll be worth it."

  Green is not afraid of me at all yet, and I may have to handle him, for a while, by groveling.

  "What about Kagle?" he inquires sweetly. "Do you think he'd be good enough to take your place?"

  "He wouldn't want to. I'm afraid he'd interpret it as a big step down."

  "Not from where you're planning to put him."

  "Special projects?"

  "For you?"

  "Of course."

  "After working for you he'd interpret it as a big step up."

  "Jack," I entreat him in a conciliatory tone, "you're supposed to be afraid of me now. At least a little."

  "You knew about this when I was threatening you last time. Didn't you?"

  "It had to be quiet."

  "And you were afraid of me anyway."

  "I wasn't afraid."

  "My judgment may be bad but my eye isn't. I couldn't be that wrong about you."

  "You had the whammy on me then."

  "There was all that sweat. And you're afraid of me now. Right now."

  I grin submissively. "You've got the whammy on me still."

  "And you always will be."

  "I'm not sure about that. I won't have to go to meetings with you alone. I can criticize you to others. I can kill your projects and reject your work."

  "Would you?"

  "I'd rather not. I'd rather have your help. Just don't make a fool of me."

  "It will be hard to resist, with someone like you."

  "I know. You're tempted right now. Fly into somebody else's face if you want to be squashed. Try Lester Black. He'll do it quickly enough."

  Green is not able to keep the flush of anger from climbing into his cheeks. "If I did," he retorts hotly, "I'd probably find you in the way, anointing his cheeks."

  And for a moment, I am the one with superior poise. "You're starting," I chide gently.

  "It's hard not to."

  "Now you're starting again."

  "It gets harder. How will you treat me?"

  "With deference. Better than Kagle did. With fear--I don't want to fight with you yet, not this year. I'll be very nice to you with everyone, if you don't make me look ridiculous for being so."

  "You'll be nice? That's a humiliation for me right there."

  "That's a part I'll enjoy," I agree affably. "I'm smiling now because I know it's true. Not because I'm enjoying it yet. Jack, there's been a big change. I don't work for you anymore. You have to be afraid of me now," I remind him. "You know that."

  "I'm afraid I can't be."

  And Green still has the whammy on me! I can stomp all over him, spit in his eye, beat him down into nervous collapse, send him, clutching his bowels, into a hospital bed with his spastic colitis; I am younger, stronger, bigger, and in better health than he is and can punch him in the jaw as easily as Johnny Brown can give me my punch in the jaw--and he still has the whammy on me. I am still afraid of him and perspiring copiously under the arms again. No wonder I am more and more prey to weird visions and experiences. (Some tickle my fancy. Some do not.) The day before yesterday, I walked into a luncheonette for a rare roast beef sandwich on a seeded roll and thought I found my barber working behind the counter.

  "What are you doing in a luncheonette?" I asked.

  "I'm not your barber," he answered.

  I was afraid I was losing my mind.

  A week ago I looked out a taxi window and saw Jack Green begging in the street in the rain, dressed in a long wet overcoat and ragged shoes. He was a head taller, thinner, pale, and gaunt. It wasn't him. But that's what I saw.

  I was afraid I was losing my wits.

  Yesterday I looked out the window of a bus and thought I saw Charlie Chaplin strolling along the avenue and believed I knew him. It wasn't Charlie Chaplin and I didn't know him.

  My memory may be starting to fail me. I have trouble with names now and with keeping in correct order the digits of telephone numbers that have long been familiar to me. Pairs of digits from other telephone numbers push their way in. After all these years, I am not always certain anymore whether the seven-seven belongs in the first segment of Penny's phone number and the eight-seven in the latter or vice versa. I don't know every time if Red Parker's phone number is two-eight-o-two or two-o-eight-two. I do know Penny is pregnant again--not by me. I have given her money for the abortion. She will insist on paying me back when she's saved enough from the money she receives monthly from her parents in Wilmington. It used to be that every cocktail waitress I ran into had one divorce and two children who lived outside the city with the girl's mother. Now they've had two abortions. College students and young models, secretaries, stewardesses, and acting students have had one. Graduate students may have two, depending on their field of study. Jane is gone, along with the entire Art Department. (It was unprofitable.) "Call me," I asked her. "As soon as you're settled. Or even before."

  She did. When she called, I said I was busy and would call her back. I haven't. Sometimes when I'm asleep, I try to wake up and can't. Sleep has me in its grip, and that is my dream.

  I am trying to get my affairs in order. I have written a list.

  "Listen," I say to my wife one day in a quietly decisive manner. "We're going to have to sit down together soon and do some serious thinking about Derek. We're not going to be able to keep him forever, you know."

  "I don't want to talk about it."

  Neither do I.

  I think I'm in terrible trouble. I think I've committed a crime. The victims have always been children.

  "Are you angry with me?" I inquire of my boy with an appraising smile, in a voice I keep as bland as possible.

  "No. I'm not angry."

  A flicker of some kind has crossed his face. My question is disturbing him. I'm almost afraid to go on.

  "You don't talk to me much anymore."

  "I talk." He shrugs. "I'm talking now." He wiggles with unease, a downcast mood darkening his features. He will not look at me.

  "Not as much as you used to. You're always in your room."

  He shrugs again. "I like it there."

  "You don't like me to ask you questions, do you?"

  "Sometimes."

  "What do you do in there?"

  "Read. Watch television. I do my homework. Think."

  "Alone?"

  "I like it."

  "You didn't use to."

  "Now I do."

  "Are you always able to do all of your h
omework without me?"

  "Not always."

  "What do you do?"

  "It's all right if it's wrong."

  "Wouldn't it be better, though, if it were always correct?"

  "The teachers don't care. Can I go now?"

  "Where?"

  He smiles apologetically, anticipating the humor of his reply. "To my room."

  "Sure," I consent genially, with a heartiness that is false. "I just wanted to make sure you weren't angry with me."

  "You stay in your room a lot," he pauses near the staircase to argue over his shoulder defensively. "Mommy stays in her room. You don't think there's something wrong with me, do you?"

  "But I always let you come into mine."

  Oh, God--here he is, a sensitive, candid, alert little boy, no larger now, it seems, than he was as a toddler; and I am quarreling with him, near tears (and with a lump in my throat), as though I were a rejected suitor, fencing with him selfishly as I would with my wife or my daughter.

  How shall I die? Let me count the ways. (No, I won't.) I've been through that juvenile exercise before and won't waste time. None is good. I'm unable to eradicate from my mind the image of that vigorous, prosperous, large, handsome man who fell dead in the lobby of my office building a few weeks ago as we were nearly abreast of each other. I saw him clearly as he fell forward. Even as he was doubling over and crumpling he looked the epitome of radiant and robust indestructibility until his face hit the floor with a soggy whack and blood from the impact shot out of his mouth. I continued walking past him without a hitch in my stride. I made believe I didn't see. When I got back from lunch, he wasn't there. He had been taken away. I was disappointed. Someone had distorted reality for the sake of neatness. (I have things organized very neatly now upstairs.) I still catch myself looking for him in the spot where he fell. I still remember him falling. This morning on my way to work I saw an unconscious derelict lying on the steps of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, staining the stone platforms with a fluid that could have been urine or whiskey. Policemen were there and had the situation in hand. They didn't need my help.

  It's a good thing they didn't.

  Woe, woe, alas, and alack. My wife is unhappy too again. We have arrived at a reasonable understanding: it isn't all my fault and there's not much I can do to improve things (even though I still won't tell her I love her and she refuses pointedly to ask). She makes no difference to anyone.