Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth [8]
“Because he eats chazerai.”
“Don’t you dare make fun of me!”
“All right,” I scream, “how did he get colitis?”
“Because he eats chazerai! But it’s not a joke! Because to him a meal is an O Henry bar washed down by a bottle of Pepsi. Because his breakfast consists of, do you know what? The most important meal of the day—not according just to your mother, Alex, but according to the highest nutritionists—and do you know what that child eats?”
“A doughnut.”
“A doughnut is right, Mr. Smart Guy, Mr. Adult. And coffee. Coffee and a doughnut, and on this a thirteen-year-old pisher with half a stomach is supposed to start a day. But you, thank God, have been brought up differently. You don’t have a mother who gallavants all over town like some names I could name, from Barn’s to Hahne’s to Kresge’s all day long. Alex, tell me, so it’s not a mystery, or maybe I’m just stupid—only tell me, what are you trying to do, what are you trying to prove, that you should stuff yourself with such junk when you could come home to a poppyseed cookie and a nice glass of milk? I want the truth from you. I wouldn’t tell your father,” she says, her voice dropping significantly, “but I must have the truth from you.” Pause. Also significant. “Is it just French fries, darling, or is it more? … Tell me, please, what other kind of garbage you’re putting into your mouth so we can get to the bottom of this diarrhea! I want a straight answer from you, Alex. Are you eating hamburgers out? Answer me, please, is that why you flushed the toilet—was there hamburger in it?”
“I told you—I don’t look in the bowl when I flush it! I’m not interested like you are in other people’s poopie!”
“Oh, oh, oh—thirteen years old and the mouth on him! To someone who is asking a question about his health, his welfare!” The utter incomprehensibility of the situation causes her eyes to become heavy with tears. “Alex, why are you getting like this, give me some clue? Tell me please what horrible things we have done to you all our lives that this should be our reward?” I believe the question strikes her as original. I believe she considers the question unanswerable. And worst of all, so do I. What have they done for me all their lives, but sacrifice? Yet that this is precisely the horrible thing is beyond my understanding—and still, Doctor! To this day!
I brace myself now for the whispering. I can spot the whispering coming a mile away. We are about to discuss my father’s headaches.
“Alex, he didn’t have a headache on him today that he could hardly see straight from it?” She checks, is he out of earshot? God forbid he should hear how critical his condition is, he might claim exaggeration. “He’s not going next week for a test for a tumor?”
“He is?”
“‘Bring him in,’ the doctor said, ‘I’m going to give him a test for a tumor.’”
Success. I am crying. There is no good reason for me to be crying, but in this household everybody tries to get a good cry in at least once a day. My father, you must understand—as doubtless you do: blackmailers account for a substantial part of the human community, and, I would imagine, of your clientele—my father has been “going” for this tumor test for nearly as long as I can remember. Why his head aches him all the time is, of course, because he is constipated all the time—why he is constipated is because ownership of his intestinal tract is in the hands of the firm of Worry, Fear & Frustration. It is true that a doctor once said to my mother that he would give her husband a test for a tumor—if that would make her happy, is I believe the way that he worded it; he suggested that it would be cheaper, however, and probably more effective for the man to invest in an enema bag. Yet, that I know all this to be so, does not make it any less heartbreaking to imagine my father’s skull splitting open from a malignancy.
Yes,