Razing Children

Chapter 16 – Razing Children

“I think we should celebrate the conception of our child,” Giambone blurted out one night while he and Delilah were home together.

She had just bathed and sat perched on her burgundy velvet settee, a cheap Louis XVth knockoff with cabriole legs and the ornamental feet of a mythical beast. She was bunched up in the corner. Around her shoulders was a soft wool comforter crocheted by her mother. She was reading the latest issue of Whole Life Times, an article titled, “Crop Circles: Beyond the Hollywood Hype.” She looked up from her magazine. Giambone was standing in the middle of the living room in shorts and a giddy Hawaiian shirt. For someone who was averse to exercise, Giambone had powerfully built legs. She loved the bulk of his thighs, the sloped, curving mass of his soft calves. Thick dark hair grew along them, tapering at his ankles. His feet were broad, not too large, and clean, the nails of his toes clipped and neat. He was fastidious, even vain, about his physical appearance. She liked the way he looked. His image pleased her. Over his shoulder lay a small towel that he’d just used to dry their dinner plates. In one hand he held a clean and empty wine glass. He stood in the middle of the room waiting for her response, like a boy expecting his mother’s assent to a wild plan for adventure. He seemed both elated and bewildered about becoming a father. He was grinning. His dark brown eyes were open wide. When Giambone had an idea with which he was pleased, he gave it life on his tongue immediately.

Delilah wished that she hadn’t told him she was pregnant. It hurt her to think that he may not be the father. The doubts were growing into a painful source of anxiety. She would tell no one about her confusion – neither Harmon Vizard, the priest/Zen master in Santa Monica, nor her mother. Especially not Giambone. Delilah wanted this child. But she regretted having told him. She’d been capricious in her initial enthusiasm, once she discovered she was pregnant. She was certain that it must be his. She didn’t want to consider that it might be anyone else’s. She wanted a Giambone for her child. If she hadn’t already told him, she would have aborted the pregnancy. It was too late for that. He would never consent to it, and she couldn’t go through with it if he were opposed. Whoever was the father, the child would be a Giambone. That was the entire point.

“What do you mean,” she asked him.

“I mean a bash, a party, for you, and the little guy.”

“A party,” she repeated, looking quizzical, removing her reading glasses and setting aside her magazine.

“Why not? It’ll be an auspicious beginning,” he crooned, “the inauguration of the consummation of our love.”

He bent down before her on one knee and kissed her big toe. Giambone was fond of casting occasions of small virtue in magniloquent flourishes, an affectation that usually made people smile, if only out of embarrassment for him.

She adjusted the comforter around her, wrapping it tightly around her shoulders with her arms pressed against her breasts. She was feeling less than celebratory, but she knew it would seem stingy not to join in his happiness.

“Sure,” she said, pretending at a kind of eagerness. “I guess so. When?”

“What’s wrong? Don’t you think it’s a good idea? Why wouldn’t you want to? Aren’t you happy? Aren’t you happier than you’ve ever been? A party is a great idea. Don’t you think? It’s a party for you, baby. I wanna celebrate you.”

He gestured toward her with both arms outstretched, one hand still holding the glass. She laughed softly. She knew he wanted to celebrate him, his reproductive achievement, the affirmation of his virility, his purpose, his role in creation, which was always in doubt. And she knew he wouldn’t let her say no. But she felt like listening. He was sincere. He entertained her. Maybe he would help her to overcome the doubts, the mild depression she was feeling about making such a huge change in her life with a vital piece of information missing.

“I’m happy,” she said. “Of course I’m happy. But I’m experiencing it more like a quiet inner glow.”

“Quiet inner glow? Baby, didn’t your grandma tell you? Never hide your light under a bushel. This is monumental, baby. How often do you become a mother? Huh? We’ve gotta shout it out, til the neighbors call the cops. Then, when the cops get here, they’re gonna join in because they see everyone’s havin’ so much fun, and because they see it’s righteous merriment at that. We gotta set out a proclamation, baby, that you is the one, the one with the bun, in the oven that is.”

“That’s so sweet, Tony; I like thinking of myself as an oven, and the baby as a little dollop of rising dough. Pass the butter, please. Won’t you have a slice?”

He laughed. “What’s the matter, ‘lilah?

“Nothing’s the matter. Can’t I make a joke? The baby is, like, all of ten cells. I don’t think her feelings will be hurt. There’ll be plenty of time for that once she gets to kindergarten, then middle school, high school, the work place, a marriage of her own, divorce, disease, death, mayhem, carnage, bioterrorism, etc.”

“What have you been reading?”

He thought her cynicism misplaced. They were involved in one of the great and beautiful mysteries.

“Nothing.”

She hated how he always tried to attribute what she said to what she might have read, as though she were a teleprompter.

He set the glass down on an end table and walked over to the sofa and sat down next to her. He picked up the magazine she was reading.

“Crop circles? That’s a bunch of nonsense, but not exactly depressing, unless you dwell on how many people eat this shit up. That’s depressing.”

Giambone had little patience for claims of supernatural phenomena. His stint with the Plutoids had mostly cured him of that. It bothered him that Delilah was susceptible to people’s claims of having witnessed miracles or other mysterious phenomena like mystical vortexes in the Arizona mountains, or instant enlightenment at the touch of an Indian sadhu. Although the most preposterous theories of the mind, especially when related to the unconscious or dream states, were usually given his serious consideration. But extraterrestrials were out of the question. For Giambone, there were two realities, the known measurable world, and the world of God. He refused to define God, but he was sure that He didn’t intrude on the material plane in Oscar winning performances. And green men in spacecrafts never occupied a place in Giambone’s notions of the plausible in creation.

Delilah was impressionable when it came to the spiritual claims of others, especially exotic types, but she wasn’t without humor about it.

“I was hoping for some nude photos of Mel Gibson,” she said, nodding toward the magazine Giambone was holding. “You know, buck naked in a golden field of wheat, nothing on but a pair of cowboy boots and a pitchfork to keep the flies away. But, no,” she sighed. “It really is an article about crop circles. Quite serious, too. You’re right. I think I am depressed.”

 “Do you want a glass of wine.”

Giambone wanted to change the subject. He was uncomfortable with any suggestion that Delilah might fantasize about other men.

“Tony, I’m not supposed to drink. Don’t tempt me.”

“C’mon. One glass is not going to kill you.”

He knew she had been trying to abstain from alcohol, even before she was pregnant. As long as a person could function, if no problem was apparent, he couldn’t understand why anyone would quit drinking.

“Half a glass. No more,” she said.

“You got it.”

He returned from the kitchen with two full glasses of Merlot.

“Who should we invite to the party,” he asked her, as if it had been already agreed. She wasn’t in the mood to object or argue. She took a long sip of her wine.

“I don’t care, Tony. Whomever you want. Your sister, I guess. She did introduce us.”

“Sure. Trinity will come.”

“How about Jack? When am I finally gonna meet this famous brother of yours?”

Giambone became tense.

“I don’t know. He’s pretty busy.”

“Well, you can at least invite him, right? If he can’t come, he can’t come. At least invite him.”

“Yeah. Okay. I doubt he’ll come though. He hates parties.”

“What, a big rock ‘n’ roller like Jack Giambone? Hates parties? That’s hard to believe.”

“That’s all a big stage persona. He’s not really like that. He’s very private. I doubt he’ll come. It would be better if you met him another time, with fewer people around.”

He took a gulp of his wine. He smiled and put his arm around her.

“I can’t believe you’re pregnant, baby. You’re gonna be a mom and I’m gonna be a dad. Too fuckin’ much. It’s wild. We’ll have a big celebration. Let me take care of it. You need your energy for work, and all that extra weight you’ll be carrying around.”

He was trying to define their roles without having to discuss them in detail. He couldn’t admit his fear of toil and labor in the outer world, the world of industry and commerce. That world assailed him. He was lost in it. Yet he was afraid to say so, because he was a man and he believed men were not supposed to admit these things. His father would never say such a thing. His father would swallow his feelings and just get the job done. Giambone didn’t know why he felt this way. Working was unnatural, like standing in Death Valley in July wearing a wet suit crawling with ants.

“Oh, Tony. Jesus. You make it sound like I’m gonna be some kind of whale or something when you put it like that. Don’t say that.”

“Alright. I won’t. But you need to be strong for your work. You gotta conserve your energy. I’ll take care of things around the house. Don’t worry. This party’s for you. It’s in your honor. You just sit back and enjoy.”

He needed her to rely on him some way. He had to make himself indispensable around the house. He needed her protection.

“You could invite Arthur,” she suggested. “It’s probably a good idea to keep up your contacts at Universal. Maybe it’ll put him in a festive mood and he’ll ask you back to work there. You never know.”

 “He knows where to find me,” Giambone answered. “I don’t need to butter him up. He knows I’m a good worker. He wouldn’t come anyway. He’s a homebody. A Mormon. He doesn’t even drink. Some religion, huh?”

“Well, what are you gonna do about work, Tony? You just can’t wait for him to call. What if he doesn’t call?”

She was annoyed that he was so casual about money, about living off hers. How was she going to make a living, she wondered. What were her prospects while she was pregnant? Who would have her? A few freaks into lactating women. She was counting on him and he was resisting. She realized that she hardly knew him. She had made a decision without fully understanding all the variables. Her life was changing radically and she felt unprepared. Yet she would do what she had to, whatever it took – she could do it on her own. She would have the child, even if it meant she had to struggle. She was struggling now.

“What,” he replied. “What’s up with you?”

Her tone agitated him. He raised his voice in defense. Then he thought better of it. He tried to smooth it over.

“Don’t worry. Relax. You have to be careful. You’re pregnant. It’s not good to get upset. Everything’s okay.”

“I don’t see how you can say that. What are we gonna do about money? Unless you have some I’m not aware of, and someone else has been buying your booze and cigarettes. The economy’s not that bad. You could try, you know. Make a few calls. Check the wants ads, or whatever. Why don’t you call your brother Jack? Why doesn’t he get you a job? He must be like a huge corporation just in himself. Why don’t you ask him? You’re sister works for him.”

Her suggestions perturbed Giambone. He was beginning to feel harassed. The mention of his family made him reflexively defensive. He was irritated anytime someone compared him to his siblings, or suggested he do as they had, or that they were the ones to whom he should turn in order to improve his life.

“Yeah, she works for him. Trinity’s different. She gets along with everybody. But I couldn’t. Work for him, that is. There’s no way. Be on his payroll? I’ve done that. I know what that’s like.”

“You worked for him before? When?” He’d never told her that.

“Couple of years ago. I did some landscaping work with his gardening crew at his house in Malibu. Shit. That’s all he could do for me? You know what it’s like doing grunt labor for a brother who lives like a king? What it’s like working with other people who work for Jack and know he’s my brother, and all they do is rib me about it all day, asking me ‘Hey, Tony; you think you’re brother can help me out?  I need some dental work.’ Or, ‘Hey, Tony; how’s your brother get to live so high and mighty and your down here with us peons? What’s up with that?’ No. I ain’t goin’ through that shit again.”

When Delilah heard this, she felt some pity for Giambone. But then it became clear to her that Jack Giambone surely must know his brother better than she. There had to be some reason the only job he could arrange for him was working as a gardener. On the surface it seemed like an action meant to humiliate Giambone. But Delilah thought not. She thought instead that Jack must know his brother’s capabilities. Surely he had tried to give him a job suited to his character and past history. There had to be more to the story. Jack may have been doing Giambone a tremendous favor.

“There’s only so much any person can expect from his family,” he went on. “I love my family, but I’ve had plenty of reasons to hate ‘em and throw in the towel. But I keep comin’ back, like a fool who thinks that every slap in the face is a sign of affection. I’m the fool. I wanna believe that we have something. I wanna believe that we can revive the way we used to feel, when we were kids. Sometimes we can, when we all get together. At least I think so. I feel it, that’s for sure. Maybe the others don’t. I’m too sentimental. I’m the most sentimental one in the whole family. Jack don’t really care about no one but himself. He and Trinity are sort of close. And he has this kind of a business-like relationship with my old man. But the rest of us – I’m sure we can go to hell as far as he’s concerned. He thinks all we want from him is his money. Fuck his money. He was always different. Always. Even when we were kids. He always stuck to himself. And he was the one always complaining, crying about one of us or another did something to him. This or that. To tell you the truth, he was kind of a pussy growing up. I know. We shared a room all that time, til’ I left after high school. He used to scream bloody murder whenever I borrowed anything of his. Just stepping over to his side of the bedroom was enough to make him postal. Everything was neat. Everything was always in its place. Even when he started letting his hair grow and playing in those early bands in junior high and getting into metal later on. Always neat and clean. Spending hours looking at himself in the mirror, fuckin’ putting on makeup and shit. The old man hated it but he never said much, cuz Jack was a good student. Even with all his whacky hair band shit in high school, he still got good grades. And took hard classes, too, like trig and calculus and chemistry. If it weren’t for rock ‘n’ roll, he could have done and been good at anything. He looked like the devil, but other than his metal mania, he stayed a good boy, so the old man didn’t ride him as much as he did me or some of the younger ones, when they were getting’ into drugs or piss ant trouble with the cops. Not Jack. He scared old ladies the way he looked, his hair and clothes, but he’d help ‘em cross the street if they asked. But only if they asked him. Otherwise, they didn’t exist, cuz all the time Jack’s eyes were on himself.

“Anyway, he’s my brother but he might as well not be. When I’m with Jack it’s almost like talking to some guy at your 30^th high school reunion, some guy you barely knew back then, had a passing acquaintance with, and you’re making small talk about what you’re doing now. I mean, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not far off. And it’s not because he’s famous he acts that way. That’s the way he’s always been, like you’re acquainted but don’t have too much in common. Trinity is the closest to him, but even she can’t figure him out half the time. He’ll confide in her a little, but for the most part he’s pretty buttoned up. Which is kind of hilarious, seeing how most people in the world are convinced he’s a wild man. It’s all an act. Then again, now that I think about it, maybe it’s not. Maybe his true self is the face he presents to the world, and the man he is around his family is the false self, the fabricated self. Shit. Who knows with that guy. I just don’t want to work for him. That much I know. Might as well go to the Manpower agency if I want a job gardening, or hang out with the Mexicans in the Home Depot parking lot on Sunset. There ain’t no perks being the brother of Jack Giambone. He’s like any other capitalist who controls a payroll. Extended family don’t mean shit to him. It’s all business. Jack is a businessman to the core. If family meant something to him, he’d have one of his own. But he don’t. Money is his life. He keeps family with money.”

Delilah suddenly understood that she’d made a huge mistake. She’d heard the name Giambone and she lunged. She was fond of him. Maybe she even loved him. But she knew that he would never offer her anything substantial. His brother seemed beyond reach. Still, she wanted the baby. She would keep the baby. It would be hers. This would be her consolation. Whatever happened between her and Giambone, she would not be alone. At a certain place within her, she reviled him for his ineptitude, his incorrigible resistance to some kind of real accomplishment. She blamed him for her disappointment, for the frustration of the happiness he had promised, although she knew he had never promised anything. She hated him for this as well. For having merely come along at a time when she was more ready than ever before to make a change, to turn from the dogged sordidness of her life, the disparity between the way in which she took money from the world and the kind of unblemished person she visualized herself to be when she meditated on ideal forms. Now he had either impregnated or infected her. The newborn child would bear the truth. Delilah felt she was fundamentally good, that virtue was something she valued, and that it was the world that sullied her, made her deviate from the perfect still beauty of a thing freshly emerged, like crocuses in the spring, or like an infant, like that child she would soon release into an inconstant world. She had miscalculated with Giambone. She saw him continuing to founder, and she wondered whether, by staying with him, he would take her down, too. Her attraction to the man was consistent with her past actions. Or it was a delayed product of a life she had set in motion years before. By her own reckoning, she’d invited another obstacle into her life. It was charming, handsome and perilously feckless, with an affinity for chaos she couldn’t fully measure but whose influence had already profoundly changed her life.

She was most likely pregnant by him. Looking at Giambone now, she couldn’t understand how she had let it happen, for he was not the same man she saw a minute ago. He sat next to her looking depleted, as though having spoken of his brother was a debilitating assault upon his spirits, even his physical constitution. The skin on his face was pale and it sagged around his jaw line and neck. His head hung forward, letting the ink black hair hang down, carelessly framing his wire-rimmed glasses. His eyes stared at a point on the floor while one hand rubbed the day’s growth of stubble on his chin. He reminded her of a man who has gone to the police to report that he was robbed, only to find himself arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. It is a man who discovers no justice to be meted out; that, by a cruel disembowelment, even his outrage has been excised. He is no longer able to be angry at his fate, which is a troubled passivity in the face of his weakness. It is true that he has reached an understanding of himself, but it is one-dimensional. He knows that to rail against anything is only to decry his emptiness, a void that mirrors the hollowness of the world he’s created. He has this one possession, his own self-consciousness, the ability to see himself in stasis, without recourse, without power. When he looks at the world he sees his own reflection staring back. He bears a loneliness that can’t even induce the mild comfort of tears from his own eyes, so none are shed. Nothing lives in him, save the pinched-mouth, mute witness to an infinite procession of symbols that he cannot interpret to any good effect.

“I don’t understand that kind of behavior,” said Delilah. “Why does he treat you like that? How can he be so cold to his own family?”

“Family? Family for Jack has never meant anything more than a springboard to his single-minded desire for rock ‘n’ roll glory and riches. He’s never had any real attachment to any of us. I think he sees us as a kind of amusing throwback to a bygone era. He looks at us like you might look at a picture of yourself taken in the seventies wearing bell-bottoms and a headband. It’s funny, but you don’t really recognize that person. You don’t really remember why you were so passionate about bell-bottoms, headbands or Abba. Jack’s family is a curiosity to him, nothing more. He finds it ironic that a creature like himself could have ever spent time with the conventional likes of us, with our Midwestern values and provincial outlooks. I think he sees it as a big joke simply played for his own amusement, as though the rest of us don’t really have any substance or reality, other than to serve as reminders of that huge joke that life played on him. And, in a sense, he’s right. What have any of us really done? Except for my father, none of us has done anything outstanding in life. Half the family are drunks or addicted to one goddamn thing or another. The most significant thing that’s ever happened to any of us is Jack’s stardom. That’s the central event in all our lives. The thing that has influenced us the most. He could care less about us, and all we care about is our relationship to him. It’s pathetic. The source of our self-esteem is the fact that we’re closely related to a pop star. Even though we’ve done nothing ourselves, even in the face of our huge failures, if we care to admit them, we can always pretend that we’re something better because our brother is a household name. I mean, if he’s famous and millions of people pay to see him and hear him, then we, too, must be worthy of regard, right? Because, you know, I shared a bedroom with the guy when he was just a weird kid. And we have the same parents. And we used to fight at the dinner table over who got the last pork chop. If he came from the same place as we did, and now he’s special, well, we must be special, too, right? It’s fuckin’ sick. And, as hard as we try, we can’t escape believing that. Whenever we come close to persuading ourselves that our lives are a total catastrophe, up we haul Jack’s image and fame to remind us that we’re not that fucked up cuz our brother, yes, OUR brother, is a huge star. What does he got that we don’t, besides money? We could have become famous just as easily as he did. He’s no smarter than us. And we think back to all the times when we were growing up, and the times Jack cried, or pissed his pants, or was lousy at baseball, or lost all the time at Monopoly, and our lives are vindicated, because we know that his stardom is a fluke. If a kid like our brother Jack became famous, shit, anyone can. It’s pure luck. He’s no better, no more talented, no smarter than I am, or Trinity, or any of my brothers and sisters. He just got lucky. That’s all. So we’re twisted. On the one hand we use him to make us feel better, when we think we are, like, total fuck ups. And then we use him again to assure ourselves that he’s no better than we are. And we, all of us, are hooked on that kind of schizoid thought process. We use Jack like a drug, we use him to blot out the truth. If we didn’t have Jack in our heads, we’d be just another sorry lot of human beings, American style. With Jack at the ready, we can pretend otherwise.”

Delilah was disturbed by what Giambone told her. She didn’t trust his explanation. She didn’t want to accept his version of things.

“I thought you were like this tight family and all. That’s the impression I got from you, and even in the papers, you know like you’re this great big Italian Catholic family that sticks together. It’s like you’re describing some other family. I mean, would Trinity tell me the same thing as you if I asked her?”

“I doubt it. She’s the sanest of all of us. And she’s too forgiving of our faults. That’s her fault. She believes in the redemption of the family. And maybe I do, too. But that’s why she’s married. That’s why she has kids of her own. She still sees the possibilities in family. I think the family’s doomed, yet I’m convinced that if I had my own, not the one I came from but the one I create, that all will be well; that by the power of love all my doubts in life will vanish; will be sapped of their strength, of their hold over me. I believe that, but I really shouldn’t. I wanted to believe that about my family, my brothers and sisters, my father and stepmother. All my life I keep returning to them, looking for some kind of consolation, some dependability that comes from familiar ways. Each time I’m ultimately disappointed. Yet I never give up trying. Jack, he gave up long ago, if he ever really cared. And he was smart to do it, too, because the family is, in the long run, a colossal disappointment. And I think this must be true for everyone. No one who depends on the family will ever say it, though; but it’s finished. The politicians, the automakers, the greeting card companies, the churches, none of them will admit that the end of the family is here. None of them can cope with a world where they may not be needed. They don’t want to go there. So the propaganda continues. It greases the economy. But why be afraid of a dying institution? Something else will come along to take its place. Some new hybrid. There will still be people to rule, people who want to drive cars. Politicians and priests say the family provides stability, without the family society would disintegrate, chaos will reign. If you ask me, chaos reigns in most families, so what’s the difference? How many stable families do you know of? Permissive democracies are always teetering on chaos, that’s the nature of them. Get used to it. What do they think? The Victorian era will see a rebirth? With gene splicing, gay parents, transsexual couples…. What? Are we somehow supposed to believe that society can’t weather all of this? When people say family, I don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about anymore. When a politician invokes family on the campaign trail, which one is he talking about? It’s all fucked up. Some of it’s good, some of it’s bad. You got the middle class family where the father works and the mother stays at home in the nice house, and then come to find the father’s molesting his daughter. You got the lesbian family who plays golf, votes Republican, never raise its voices and goes to church regularly, Unitarian to be sure, but still, they believe in some kind of God. Which one is the better family? The family is always going to mirror society, not the other way around. These politicians think they can legislate the way people evolve, the way society evolves. They got it ass backwards. Family is what it is. I’m tired of all the hype.  You take what you can get from them and give back what you think they deserve. Just like any relationship. And just like any relationship there are gonna be stress points. Some people will exert pressure on those points because they can’t help it, or because they’re sick fucks and they like to see other people suffer. There are plenty of freaks out there who torture their family members because it gives them pleasure. It’s the only place in their lives where they can exercise any power, in the pejorative sense of the word.”

“What about your family,” said Delilah. She felt evil now herself, wanting to take some kind of revenge on Giambone for finally demonstrating to her that he would frustrate her designs.

“My family?” He seemed jolted by her question, suddenly exposed to the light by it.

“Yeah. What about them? Who does the torturing in your family?”

He thought for a moment, then laughed slyly. “I suppose we all do. We take turns. Isn’t that how it usually goes?”

“Why are you so bitter?”

“Bitter? I sound bitter?”

“Yes, like you’re carrying around some great wound inside you, and anything that displeases you in life pushes like a finger into your deep hidden wound. What happened to you?”

She threw her questions out to him as a challenge, as though she had gained a superior position to him by uncovering a secret he owned. She wanted to hurt him. She resented him for coming into her life. She was ready to blame him severely because she had made another poor choice. 

Giambone was flustered, embarrassed by Delilah’s aggressive question. It was a question he might have tried to answer if there’d been no strain of accusation. She seemed like a sadistic therapist, or a prosecutorial nun from his childhood, one who was more interested in ascertaining his damnable qualities than displaying the merciful substance of her theological creed. For him confession was a therapeutic reflex rather than a search for a reprieve from fathomless doom. Giambone had an entire arsenal of explanations for the way his life had gone. He loved nothing more than a loquacious explication of his measure of woe. But he preferred a sympathetic audience, one that would not press him too hard on the details or challenge the basis of his theories, or especially come out and tell him he was full of guano.

“I don’t like your tone,” he answered.

“Don’t throw it back on me; answer the question.”

Winning the argument, defeating him became the objective for her. If, in the process, she could make him admit that he was emotionally handicapped, that would be a bonus.

He grew defensive.

“My wounds are no greater than anyone else’s. Yours, for example. My life may not be filled with all kinds of stellar achievements, but neither is yours. I mean, if you want to open it up to psychoanalysis, as you seem to, then what would cause you to shake your ass for money in a room full of perverts, or, I might add, knowingly pass herpes on to a man you profess to love? Don’t you think that’s a bit twisted? Why don’t we talk about your wounds?”

“You are such a bastard, do you know that? I knew it wouldn’t be long before you threw that in my face. I’m a fool for thinking you were different. I don’t need to explain nothin’ to you. And I will never confide in you again. And don’t blame me for your fuckin’ herpes, either. How do you know you didn’t give it to me?”

She got up from the couch and walked to the table where he had set down the bottle of wine. She filled her glass and swallowed a mouthful.

“You shouldn’t drink, you know. You’re pregnant. You don’t want to hurt the baby.”

He was looking for any behavior that was worth his condescension. He was angry, really, that she had never apologized for the kind of life she had lived before she met him. He might have forgiven her, too, for infecting him with the virus, if she’d asked him. Nevertheless, he couldn’t be sure he could ever stop resenting her, or reminding her about it when he was angry. She, on the other hand, was happy that she had done something to cause him pain.

“It’s my goddamn baby,” she shouted at him, taking another drink of wine to provoke him further. “I’ll fucking drink as much as I want.”

“This is great. I want to have a party to celebrate getting pregnant, and you respond by acting out a TV drama.”

“It’s Hollywood, isn’t it?”

“Right, people can’t even have a serious discussion in this shit hole without looking in the mirror to see how they’re doing. What, you think he’s here?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Mr. De Mille. You think he’s here? Come out, Mr. De Mille. She’s ready for her close up. Get right up in her face, Mr. De Mille, and note how expertly she transmutes the choleric juices that run in her veins, distills them with such perfection ‘til her eyes catch fire, her nostrils flare, and that glossy mouth of hers breathes forth the most heinous, vile imprecations. She’s a classic Mr. De Mille. She does Stanislavsky proud. Brava.”

“You’re an ass. Look who’s acting now. You think you’re clever?”

“I think what my muse grants me to think. I used to think you were my muse. Now I come to find you’re my very own Harpy. Squak, squak, squak!”

Delilah cringed. Giambone began darting around the room, flapping his arms like a bird, making high-pitched noises. He collapsed in the center of the floor and began laughing.

            “You’re a pitiful case, Tony. You’d happily play the fool just to deflect any serious analysis of your extremely ill mind.”

She filled her glass with wine and returned to the couch and picked up her magazine. It was a gesture of final judgment, in which she meant to say it was useless to cavort in any way with someone who was so debilitated.

            Giambone stopped laughing and sat up.

            “What is it exactly you’re dying to find out,” he shouted. “What is it that you need to know to make you feel more superior to me than you already do? Your pose of immaculate motives and origins is just that – a contrivance to protect you from any responsibility in this relationship. Are you gonna tell me that you would feel more sympathetic and loving toward me to learn, say, that my stepmother used to climb in my bed with me when I was 12 years old and that I didn’t resist? Does knowing that make anything better between us? Or that I used to keep a fifth of whiskey hidden in the park next to my high school? Every morning I used to suck on that bottle ‘til I filled my belly full of it before first period government class. Or that I used to fantasize killing my father because he was fucking my stepmother the night after she fucked me? That I actually used to plot out ways to poison him, or cut the brake lines in his car so he’d fly through an intersection and kill himself and who knows how many others in a huge, beautiful explosion of gasoline, metal and flesh? Or that I was so twisted about sex that I was convinced I was going to hell, and I wouldn’t touch myself for years. I fantasized about my stepmother and was eaten up inside by it. Whenever I thought about her I strapped myself on the thighs, or took ice from the freezer and put it on my balls. Is this what you want to hear, Delilah? How fucked up I am. What? You need proof?”

            She continued leafing through the Whole Life Times.

            “Sounds like a normal American childhood,” she said yawning. “What do you want from me?”

            “Cunt. Fuckin’ cunt,” he screamed.

“What, you don’t get enough already? Do I remind you of your stepmother? Is that the attraction?”

“Why are you suddenly so nasty? What have I done to provoke this kind of abuse? Where’s all this coming from, Delilah?”

It was a question asked in a doleful manner, and as a diplomatic white flag. He was trying a strategy, seeking to make her feel that he would be understanding should she want to take the blame for being unreasonable; that if she were prepared to apologize to him he might accept some slight responsibility for what was happening, however much he blamed her. It wasn’t that Giambone was incapable of fighting or even provoking a fight; but he instinctually sought a position that placed him in the most sympathetic light. Winning favor from others through appeals to their pity was his first course, only abandoned for the stuff of hard blows when he could prevail in no other way. In either case, he aimed to elicit a judgment that allowed him to persist in his usual way of being, a vindication of his customary modus operandi – to successfully elude culpability for most of his actions, presenting himself as someone who was acted upon rather than the agent who engineered them.

“I’m tired of endin’ up with losers,” she answered him.

“So, I’m a loser, is that it? What have I done differently in the time you’ve known me. I’ve never tried to pretend I’m anything more than what I am. I’ve never tried to deceive you. I’ve been honest since day one.”

“Tony, I don’t believe you know what’s real and what’s imaginary in your head. You say you like hard work; that you’re not afraid to work. Yet any time there’s an opportunity to actually do some, you find an excuse. Either the people are morons, or the work is beneath you, or it doesn’t pay enough. I mean, I don’t think I have to remind you, but I am pregnant. We need another income. I can’t do it alone. I thought I’d chosen an able-bodied man as the father of my child. That’s where you’re deceptive. You project this capable, savvy, urban sophisticate to the outside world, to me; but when it comes down to it, you’re a little boy with a big dick. You can sure put that to work, for all of three minutes; after that you’re clueless. And you’re drinking doesn’t make me any more comfortable with the prospects. It’s not what I want for my child.”

            Delilah set her wine glass on the table next to her, for fear of being implicated in her own accusation. A lifetime of anger welled up inside her; virtually anyone could be responsible for her feelings. Giambone was the present catalyst. If she were forced to analyze it with a cooler head, her system of personal belief would have assigned him the role of messenger, a predetermined sentinel whose mission, through means of sexual attraction, was to enlighten her through conflict and struggle. Her personal metaphysical paradigm put her at the center of universal action, as Giambone’s did him. They both saw their lives as mythical undertakings – highly symbolic and destined for happy endings, but only after having slayed innumerable demons and dragons sent up by the unconscious to thwart their quest for the Holy Grail. 

            “What do you mean ‘your child,’” he demanded.

He stood up from where he sat in the middle of the floor. His normally dusty complexion turned more yellow with the infusion of blood to his face. He was suddenly irate again, like a nomad confronting danger, his very survival being challenged, and prepared to defend himself through violence. And it was true that Giambone linked his survival to the birth of a son. He was staking everything he could on the idea that it was the one thing that would keep him whole, keep him from fragmentation and dissolution.

            “Fine. Our child,” she conceded. “But don’t think that I won’t fight to keep it for myself if you don’t do something to contribute more than you do now. A meal cooked here and there and a good fuck now and again won’t cut it forever.”

            The more she spoke, the more certain she was that he was inadequate. Her mind was concentrated by her spleen, helping to put him in relief, at a distance, where she could assess his flaws. The look on his face of surprise and injury only inflamed her more. She hated all his limitations. They weren’t even human. And he became physically ugly to her once she’d extracted the full meaning of his character and applied them to his body. The thought that she had ever let him between her legs repulsed her.

            “What are you talkin’ about? Are you fuckin’ crazy,” he stammered, not sure what had happened, what he was hearing, how it had altered so quickly against him, who moments ago had felt so free, so loving, and seemingly loved.

His ability to reason was arrested. He felt short of breath. He was torn by one impulse to strike her and another to run away, to remove himself from all conflict. As much as he created conflict, he hated it. The only way to resolve a conflict was to persuade and out-argue his adversary. Anyone who opposed him on any point was an adversary. Delilah was his enemy now. He looked at her and saw an antagonist, an evil presence, and he wanted to take out her eyes. Because his world was shifting, refracting. He was having trouble gathering all its strands. They evaded his grasp like so many minnows in a pool. Each element of his life, every consideration was like a great burden hung upon him, demanding his energy, draining his strength. He had to answer each one but was unsure where to begin. They encroached upon him, filling his head, until he had to take refuge in some kind of obliteration of his conscious mind, through sex or spirits, some substance that would muffle the insistent voices in his head that were ordering him to act and resolve. There were too many, squeezing him from his head to his guts. He wanted to wrap his arms around himself for protection; to place his head between his legs for cover; to harden himself into an armored ball like an insect under siege. He wished that the contingencies of life, all the rushing, swirling problems that needed to be solved by him might be shut out. He said to himself over and over that he was too weak to answer them; that all he really wanted was a simple life. He didn’t need much. He didn’t ask for much. He was born in the wrong place. He only wanted a little food and a dry place to lay himself down at night, and someone who could love him like that, someone who was kind and who didn’t remind him about how much he hadn’t done. It was too much. The world seemed a hostile and impersonal place filled with organisms outfitted only for their own survival. No one in America recognized his kind, the ones who should not be asked to participate in the struggle; ones to whom a reprieve should be given, a place to sit outside the melee and given few obligations and expectations. How these people should be selected, he didn’t know; but he was one of them. And now Delilah was threatening him, threatening his peace. He thought he had found peace, finally, with her, the place where he could stop moving, cease devising and planning and just be, just let life be placid and good to him for once; the place where he could be happy, where it was finally quiet and serene; where he could exult in his senses, his sensory appreciation of beauty without constant struggle. And now the person in whom he’d vested his hope for the surcease of struggle was challenging him to take on more, and he thought he would go crazy, thought he would bust open and spill out and just break down from the strain. He was weak. He admitted he was weak. He pretended he was strong, because that’s what people in this country expected. No one wanted to be reminded of frailty, of his own weaknesses that were so fiercely hidden from view. America was strong. The people in it were strong. They were productive at all times. They were busy. He must be busy.

“How are you, Giambone,” they asked.

“Oh, I’m busy. How are you?”

“Busy, too,” they replied.

So much shit was getting done at every hour. It was America. He was an American. He was fuckin’ busy. But he was weak. And the weak people found diversions; that is, all the people in America found diversions to assuage the burden of perpetual busy-ness. So he walked into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of whiskey and he drank it down and he found his senses return, found that the world was something that could be reasoned with. And with the image before him growing still, this picture of reality settling down to where it could be understood, he returned to the living room where Delilah sat so he might resume what he had begun; to make her understand where she was wrong; to advocate his position. In this he felt most positive. And his anger returned. She was threatening his survival, and she could not see the innocence and love that was the largest stratum of his heart. She was lacerating his heart and he must address with her this most fundamental blow to his dignity.

            But she wouldn’t let him. She was not about to let him. She knew that he had drunk the whiskey and this only made her more firm in her resolve to confront his new-found strength. She wanted to destroy anything that wished to vanquish her, whether it be by love or reason. She hated any assault in whatever form made upon her, whether by a bold clash or the inveigling of affection. She trusted neither and saw the world made up of men for whom all was a transaction, everything reduced to a calculus of gain. She understood it because she had agreed to their terms. Now she possessed a life inside her, one thing she could control, and she would not let them wrest that, too, from her. And here he was, one of their hapless agents, jockeying for a position to take up residence in her soul, begging for her to pardon his instinct for survival at any cost, even if it meant losing whatever was important to her. Another man asking to be placated, as if she had anything more to give to the world, the world of men and their needs.

            “Let me guess,” she said as he walked back in the room, “now that you’ve drunk your courage you’ve got more to say.”

            “I know what I’m doing,” he told her, feeling defiant, as though she were invested with the authority to judge him. “I’m fine.”

            “You’re nothin’ but a mess, and I’m guessin’ that’s all you’ve ever been.”

            “I suppose you’re an expert on failed men; you’ve got a practiced eye when it comes to pickin’ ‘em out?

            “I’ve seen my share.”

            “I bet you have. Your life is one long road littered with the carcasses of worthless men. All of ‘em rotten and each one attracted to you. They must’ve seen something in you they recognized, something familiar.”

 “Someone who won’t be played for a sucker, that’s all.”

“I’m the one who’s been suckered.”

“Wrong. Don’t try that cry-baby shit with me, Tony. You know exactly what’s up. A life time of getting’ by. There’s never been a free ride you turned down, especially if it came with a woman who could mother you. That ain’t happenin’ with me, Tony. I’m not your mother. I’m not gonna fuck you and feed you and tend to your sores. Sorry you missed your chance with the real thing, but it ain’t my job to clean up someone else’s mess. I’m lookin for a partner, an equal. I’m lookin’ for a man.”

“I see. I don’t measure up to your high expectations? You’re not lookin’ for a man. If you were, you’d see one standin’ right in front of you. No. You’re lookin’ for a caretaker, a steady source of revenue, an annuity with a dick. You wouldn’t know a real man if you saw one. How could you, with a father who cheated on your mother from day one? You grew up hearin’ your mother blast your father for his infidelity. I don’t blame you, baby. You’re fucked up. Just like I am. I admit it. Your definition of a man comes from your father who only saw your mother as a home-cooked meal and a tax deduction. I don’t blame you for it. That’s the picture you took with you into the world. That’s what you knew. It was familiar, and any man who fit the description you took home to bed, thinkin’ it was love when it was nothin’ but a replay of your childhood drama…”

“You don’t…”

“Don’t interrupt me, please! I’m not finished.”

“Fine. Finish what you’ve got to say.”

“What I was sayin’ was, that’s not  me. I’m offerin’ you something else. I’m offering you real love, and companionship.”

He tried to rid his voice of resentment when he said it. He went on.

“I’m not looking for sympathy. Everybody’s got a story. You heard mine. It’s not fair play to take those facts and then conclude, because of them, that I’m using you to play out my childhood drama. It’s just not fair and it ain’t true.”

She was angry. She didn’t like it when anyone brought up her past and then explained to her why she did things to displease them, as if they understood her motives. Her motives were under ownership by her. They weren’t up for discussion. No one knew her. She dared them to try. She would refuse all inquiries. Her past was like her spiritual quest and growth, it was personal, deeply private, a place she barely understood herself. It angered her whenever anyone presumed to know the contents of that cloistered realm. And she preferred to look forward, never back. But the mention of her father took her by surprise, and as she remembered him, the kind of man he’d been, both to her and her mother, a wave of sorrow rose up in her, a kind of pity for the child she once was, and she suddenly felt the need to cry. She held back the tears. But she no longer felt the urge to attack Giambone. He was a disappointment but not a threat. Exhaustion came over her, an old fatigue that she felt she’d been fighting for a lifetime. She wished more than anything to sleep and to get past the pregnancy; to give birth and hold the new life in her arms and feed the infant from her breast. She was sure this would erase the past and salve the old wounds, giving her renewed energy for the next, long, chapter in her life, a life in which she would become a different person. She would be reborn with the birth of her child, a new life where the mistakes of the past could be transmuted into a stock of wisdom. She must make the way clear before her and her child. She and the child would officiate over the last rites of the lifeless remains of her old self, which had to be sloughed off like a serpent’s obsolete skin. With the child she could begin again. She would be a mother; a woman with a new identity and a new purpose. And the world would receive her without conditions because it recognized that she had immersed herself fully into the ongoing cycle of birth, death and rebirth. The cycle of the ages would have entered and passed through her like a vessel hallowed by time and the great tide of life. She had let herself become overwrought, let her evaluation of Giambone incite her to anger. It was a real life event that she should have mastered, an opportunity to exercise the spiritual discipline she’d been trying to perfect, and she had failed. She had descended into invective and calumny. It was only her physical exhaustion that caused her to detach from him. She had failed. How many hours, how much money, how many lectures and workshops had she attended trying to become a better person? The moment she was challenged with a real life event, she fell flat on her face and resorted to the old way of being, the old Delilah, who had no presence of mind, no thoughtfulness. She’d only reacted, like most humans. She didn’t want to be like most humans. She wanted to transcend the basic human condition of struggle, violent struggle. She wanted peace. She tried to visualize a peaceful environment, just the way she’d been shown at the weekly workshops she attended at the California Institute of the Transactional Science of Collective Humanity. A blood orange moon, full and enormous rose from the sea into a blue violet sky. The waters were calm. They breathed like a great, gentle beast, a living organism, a heaving giver of life, water of awesome magnitude filling the trenches, canyons, gorges and valleys of an unseen world, the belly of the earth. Into this great watery plain, this expanse of life, expiator of sins (not sins, really, because she didn’t believe in sin), a limitless font of reformation, of recombinant human fusion…into this great ocean she was carried on a soft mat of palm reeds, her head shorn of its hair, her body naked and glistening with a warm mixture of vitamin E and mineral oil, lightly scented, her body sprinkled over with the petals of wisteria and honeysuckle and primrose…and from the shore of pure soft sands she was conveyed into receptive waters by four strong young men with brown shimmering skin and the taut muscular bodies of warriors, or Chippendale dancers, but with long dark hair and eyes of glittering onyx, long feminine eyelashes and lips the color of cocoa brown. With each rhythmic step their thighs flexed and girded like a fullback’s, and their round sculpted buttocks tightened in synchronous measure as they lowered her into the sea, immersing her, slipping her from her reed bed like Cleopatra into the buoyant waters off the coast of Alexandria, letting her drift out toward the glowing moon. She reached up her arms to embrace the stars. The liquid medium of her passage was accompanied by an exuberant pod of dolphins making perfect arcing leaps and dives over her supine body. They encircled her like a garland of petals around a velvet sunflower center, weaving their great lithe bodies around and beneath her, guiding and protecting her journey to the horizon. She called them closer to her with her thoughts until their glossy blue skin pressed against hers, and one by one they passed over her, and she could feel their slick cool flesh pressing against her breasts, and their sensitive and probing bottlenoses prying apart her thighs, and then their blubbery uncoiled members penetrating her charitable vulva, depositing their briny essence into her generous womb. And she was filled with their life, and it mingled with hers until she expanded like blood on the tight fibers of cotton, like the swirling arms of a million galaxies emanating from the center of the universe, flinging from itself torrid spits and bolts of genetic plasma. And in one great heave and sigh, she expelled the contents of her womb, and from between the safe harbor of her fleshy thighs spilled a swarm of jewels and shimmering schools of ruddy-colored graceful amphibians, fin-backed creatures spraying out from her like rays from a nimbus, their forward thrusts propelling her headlong into the flesh of the moon, where she melted her consciousness into its, and she rose into the heavens in splendor, instilled there with the eternal, with the cosmic godhead.

Giambone saw that he’d gotten through to her. Delilah grew quiet and introspective. She had raised the blanket again from the sofa and pulled the corners of it tightly around her shoulders, until only her head poked from an opening at the top, making her seem as though she were emerging from a woolen husk. Giambone felt vindicated. Delilah understood the injustice of her attacks on him, understood that they were unwarranted. Her silence was not the silence of a smug combatant, one who recognizes the futility of argument with an adversary, but who nonetheless holds to her position. Giambone saw none of that in her face, the expression of which had grown blank, nearly somnolent. She looked chastened, as far as he could read her. He was satisfied that he need say no more on the subject. He felt a spirit of forgiveness come over him. His heart grew out to her. He decided that she was under stress and that she had expressed an irrational side that was customary for women who were pregnant. He made a vow to himself that he would do his best to make allowances for the mood swings that would surely follow as she adjusted to all the physiological changes of her pregnancy. He would be patient. This feeling of magnanimity that swept over him put him in a paternal way, as though it were his job to be the bigger of the two of them; that his wisdom would steer the way over the months ahead, as she was beset by the vicissitudes of her pregnancy, a capriciousness that made a woman more like a child. This made him soften and feel strong at the same time, like a benevolent father who must occasionally take a deep breath in his ongoing struggle to instruct his children in how to get along in the world, teaching them the lessons in maturity that he has achieved.

And yet to a certain degree Giambone felt sheepish that he had been allowed to win so easily. Or that Delilah had surrendered so swiftly, as though he had been too hard on her. His victory came with some guilt at the spoils. He wasn’t using her, he thought. He loved her. She was going to be the mother of his child. He believed that she would grow accustomed to the fact that he was an unconventional soul, and while not exactly productive or ambitious in the usual way that people defined those terms, he was useful and he had lots of love to give, and she needed love. Of that he was sure. His drinking would never be a problem. He’d always drunk but it never impaired his ability to function. She would see this eventually and trust that it would never grow to be an obstacle. Her fears were heightened by emotions that her pregnancy brought on.

But she had said some mean things. And he guessed that he had as well, but only in defense of his integrity. The exchange between them was unsettling. It raised some doubts about what he was doing, made him anxious about how stable a woman she was, or what spiteful things she may say in the future. Just when he was feeling like he had figured his life out and was ready to settle down and into it for good, there came this kind of irrationality to upset him and make him nervous about the future. His uneasiness made him thirsty, so he went into the kitchen and poured himself a couple of fingers of whiskey and returned to the living room. Delilah didn’t look up when he walked in. She continued to stare vacantly at the floor with her chin and mouth submerged beneath the top lip of the blanket she kept wrapped around her. She didn’t resist when Giambone sat next to her and, holding his drink, put an arm around her and pulled her close.

“Don’t you worry, baby,” he said, “everything’s great. We’ll have a nice big party and celebrate the future. I’ll take care of everything.”