Читаем Gould полностью

They drove to Washington State to visit her folks. Another of his old cars, this one a station wagon he bought for a hundred dollars and had to keep filling up with oil, backseat down, she and Brons sleeping most of the way on a double-bed mattress. “Where’d you ever find that goof?” he overheard her father say to Evangeline. They were in the kitchen, he was upstairs in the guest room just for him — her parents had given them separate rooms — and heard it through the floor. “The nose, the jug ears, the beefy lips and he’s half bald; he’ll be hairless as an egg in five years, and he looks like a bath is an on-and-off thing with him, or maybe that’s because his clothes are so old and unkempt and the half-assed way he shaves. Not at all attractive. If I was a girl and had to face that face every day, I’d puke,” and she said “Some people would disagree with you.” “Who? He’s also got no personality or bite. He’s all brains, I’ll give you that, but of the useless kind — clever remarks and bon mots and facts and dates no one else cares a zig for. He’s a full-fledged dud as far as I can tell; nothing compared to the men you used to date here and even the shitheel you married,” and she said “Gould and I knew you wouldn’t like him that much, which is why I didn’t ask. Let’s say I don’t want to discuss it and it’d be too futile to defend his good qualities to you. I only wanted you two to meet, even if just once — Mom already has — and for Brons and I to see you both again, and I couldn’t afford the plane,” and her father said “You should have told me. If I knew what you were bringing, I would have come up with the fare gladly if you had left him behind.” “Is he fey?” he overheard her father ask her mother from the same room. “She leads such a crazy life in California, who can say what she goes after these days. The new kick down there might be to try and get a homo to do it to you, and they’re supposed to be plenty sensitive, aren’t they? So maybe that’s it too: they know a woman’s needs and aren’t demanding and rough,” and her mother said “He’s good to our grandson and that’s something. And they seem to get along together, and she says they have a good time in bed — don’t you breathe a word of this to anyone — so it can’t be that fey silliness you say. And when I stayed with them he was all over her house doing nice things for her, besides being attentive and considerate to me: getting her coffee, even heating up the milk for it because she liked it in the morning café au lait. Cooking good dinners from scratch and working hard at his own job but tending a lot to Bronson too.” “That’s all she probably thinks of,” her father said, “—sex, and hooking up with another man who’s worth a million, which this dud will never have. It won’t last, that’s my prediction, but if it does then she’s more lost than I thought,” and her mother said “I hope you’re right, because I also know — remember, not a word of this! — that there’ll be no tears from her once he’s gone, not even the onion kind.” Evangeline introduced him to her cousins and friends still living in the area. Friendly but uninformed people, he thought, and unsophisticated and dull and a couple of them fairly dumb and with not a single funny thing said by any of them and not one interested in anything he was. “I fart on art,” one guy said and she laughed and the guy said “Should I make one, to emphasize my point?” and lifted his leg and this really cracked her up and later Gould said “How could you laugh so hard at that idiotic art-fart remark?” and she said “Because it was hysterically funny, why else? — I’m no phony. Not only what was said and the way he combined those words to make a rhyme and then with his leg like he was about to lay one, but also because I knew how it’d annoy you. They’re great fun, my old chums. Fun and real people, earthy, homey, plain-speaking, unheld-back and direct, and you can’t tolerate anyone who doesn’t babble on about high culture and character and ethics and farty art and all that and who also isn’t a gasbag and cryptic nitpicker to go with it. I’m sorry, but to me this is humor. What you pass off for it is intellectual chitty chatchat told to tickle and riddle,” and he said “God, what am I doing with you? And stuck in this nowhere land no less,” and she said “That’s what I’ve been asking myself too. If you want, Brons and I can stay a few extra days and take the plane back and you can set out early tomorrow morning,” and he said “Yeah, I heard, your big daddy will come up with the fare and there won’t even be any onion tears from you when I’m finally gone. Won’t he be glad to see me go, but I’ll be ecstatic. Your mother, I’ll admit, I like a lot and have from the first time I met her; a real mensch,” and she said “Oh, aren’t you nice; she’ll be so happy to hear what you said, and the particular word you used.”