Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut [88]
"But he never did?" I said.
"Never," said Murra. "You know what the last thing was he said to me?"
"Nope," I said.
"When I divorced his mother and married Gloria Hilton, the last thing he said was, ’Father, you’re contemptible. I don’t want to hear another word from you as long as I live.’ "
"That’s—that’s strong," I said.
"Friend—" said Murra hoarsely, "that’s mighty strong." He bowed his head. "That was the word he used—contemptible. Young as he was, he sure used the right one."
"Did you finally get in touch with him today?" I said.
"I called the Headmaster of the school, and I told him there was a terrible family emergency, and he had to make John call me right away," said Murra.
"It worked, thank God," he said. "And, even though I am definitely contemptible, he has agreed to come see me tomorrow."
Somewhere else in that conversation, Murra told me to look at the statistics sometime. I promised him I would. "Just statistics in general—or some special statistics?" I asked him.
"Statistics on marriage," he said.
"I’m scared to think of what I’m liable to find," I said.
"You look at the statistics," said Murra, "and you’ll find out that when people get married when they’re only eighteen—the way my first wife and I did—there’s a fifty-fifty chance the thing will blow sky high."
"I was eighteen when I was married," I said.
"You’re still with your first wife?" he said.
"Going on twenty years now," I said.
"Don’t you ever feel like you got gypped out of your bachelor days, your playboy days, your days as a great lover?"
"Well," I said, "in New Hampshire those days generally come between the ages of fourteen and seventeen."
"Let me put it to you this way," he said. "Say you’d been married all these years, fighting about the dumb things married people fight about, being broke and worried most of the time—"
"I’m right with you," I said.
"And say the movies bought a book you’d written, and they hired you to write the screen play, and Gloria Hilton was going to be the star," he said.
"I don’t think I can imagine that," I said.
"All right—" he said, "what’s the biggest thing that could possibly happen to you in your line of work?"
I had to think a while. "I guess it would be if I sold the Conners Hotel on putting Fleetwoods on every window. That must be five hundred windows or more," I said.
"Good!" he said. "You’ve just made the sale. You’ve got real money in your pocket for the first time. You’ve just had a fight with your wife, and you’re thinking mean things about her, feeling sorry for yourself. And the manager of the hotel is Gloria Hilton—Gloria Hilton looking the way she does in the movies."
"I’m listening," I said.
"Say you started putting up those five hundred Fleetwoods," he said, "and say every time you put up another storm window, there was Gloria Hilton smiling at you through the glass, like you were a god or something."
"Is there anything left to drink in the house?" I said.
"Say that went on for three months," he said. "And every night you went home to your wife, some woman you’d known so long she was practically like a sister, and she would crab about some little thing—"
"This is a very warm room, even without storm windows," I said.
"Say Gloria Hilton all of a sudden said to you," he said, " ’Dare to be happy, my poor darling! Oh, darling, we were made for each other! Dare to be happy with me! I go limp when I see you putting up storm windows! I can’t stand to see you so unhappy, to know you belong to some other woman, to know how happy I could make you, if only you belonged to me!’ "
After that, I remember, Murra and I went outdoors to look for thistles. He was going to show me how to grab thistles without getting hurt.
I don’t think we ever found any. I remember pulling up a lot of plants, and throwing them against the house, and laughing a lot. But I don’t think any of the plants were thistles.
Then we lost each other in the great