Heavy Water_ And Other Stories - Martin Amis [87]
Now he was standing in a basement kitchen. Cleve assumed, at any rate, that it must be a kitchen. Cressida had called it “the kitchen.” A kitchen, to Cleve, was an arena for the free play of delectation, enterprise, and wit. Not the rear end of some desperate holding operation, a field hospital of pots, pails, acids, carbolics, and cauldrons of boiling laundry. “This is meat and potatoes,” he whispered. “Meat and potatoes tops.” He couldn’t imagine cooking anything in here. He could imagine having his legs amputated in here. But not cooking … Cressida was in the room across the passage, consulting with another straight broad, her buddy or backup. Cleve waited, listening to the saddest sound he had ever heard. It reminded him of the call of the loons on the river trips he’d gone on, years ago, with Grainge …
And now the baby was there on the kitchen table, being unwrapped as if for his imminent inspection, its hiccupy weeping growing softer, its stained and damp cloth diaper revealing itself beneath the unclasped bodysuit, its arms waving and miming at the bare bulb overhead.
“Would you pass me the powder? And that tub of cream. And that cloth. Not that one. On the faucet. The pink one.”
As he poked warily around among the jars, the pads, the balls of cotton wool, the plastic bottles, the plastic teats, the grime, the biology, Cleve wondered if he had ever suffered so. He could feel self-pity drench his heart: his heart, so deep-encased, so far away.
“Not that one. That one.”
He wondered if he had ever suffered so.
And he wondered what on earth people were going to say.
Twenty-second Street, the apartment, the bedroom: sheets, pillows, a leg here, an arm there. The acidy tang of male love suspended itself in the failing light and alerting air of autumn. Two mustaches stirred and flexed.
The first mustache said, “I mean if it was another man. That I could understand.” This was Irv.
The second mustache said, “That you could fight. You know what you’re dealing with.” This was Orv.
“You know where you stand.”
“You know what’s what.”
“But this …”
“Another man. Okay. It happens. But this …”
“I just feel so unclean.”
“Irv,” said Orv.
“The past. It’s all defiled for me. I feel so …”
“Maybe it’s some kind of midlife thing. A rush of blood. He’ll be back.”
“I could never feel the same about him. Not after this.”
“I saw him in Jefferson Market. He looks two hundred years old. He’s lost his build. He’s even lost his tone.”
“Do you think he was always that way?”
“Cleve? Jesus. Who knows?”
“It’ll get around.”
“You’re damn right it’ll get around. Where’s my Rolodex.”
“Orv,” said Irv.
“You just think of them kissing.”
“Get this. He says it’s not her tits and ass he ‘admires.’ It’s her wrists. It’s her collarbone.”
“That really does sound straight.”
“He’s coming over for his books Saturday morning. That’s right. He’s moving into that … crèche on Bleecker.”
“Oh, wow. Cleve … of all the guys we hang with. Arn. Harv. Grove. Fraze.”
“But Cleve.”
“I mean: Cleve.”
This was Orv.
“I mean: Cleve.”
This was Irv.
Esquire, 1995
WHAT HAPPENED TO ME ON MY HOLIDAY
(for Elias Fawcett, 1978–1996)
A DERBIBLE THING HABBENED do me on my haliday. A harrible thing, and a bermanend thing. Id won’d be the zame, ever again.
Bud virzd I’d bedder zay: don’d banig! I’m nad zuvvering vram brain damage—or vram adenoids. And I gan wride bedder than thiz when I wand do. Bud I don’d wand do. Nad vor now. Led me egsblain.
I am halve English and halve Amerigan. My mum is Amerigan and my dad is English. I go do zgool in London and my bronunziation is English—glear, even vaindly Agzonian, the zame as my dad’s. Amerigans avden zeem zurbrised do hear an eleven-year-old who zbeegs as I zbeeg. Grandaddy Jag, who is Amerigan, admids thad he vinds id unganny. As iv suj an agzend requires grade ganzendration even vram grownubs, led alone jildren. Amerigans zeem to zuzbegd thad the English relags and zbeeg Amerigan behind glozed doors. Shouding oud, on their redurn, “Honey, I’m home!” My other grandvather veld divverendly: English,