he: A Novel(90)

Ben Shipman calls him on the telephone, as Ben Shipman does every day. There is always some small business matter to be discussed, some offer of work to be declined: a script, a television interview, a personal appearance. When there is no business, there is a mutual acquaintance encountered on the street, or a kind mention in a newspaper column in Peoria or Des Moines.

But he has been spending much time lately in contemplation: of Babe, of the errors of his life. It is how he knows that he is dying.

So he asks Ben Shipman the I-told-you-so question.

Why would I have said that? Ben Shipman replies.

Ben Shipman is old, but Ben Shipman is still a lawyer, and is therefore never happier than when answering one question with another.

I knew I’d told you so, Ben Shipman continues, and you knew I’d told you so, so why would I have to tell you that I’d told you so?

– Because I might have learned my lesson.

– What lesson? That you weren’t entitled to try for happiness? That you’d be better off dying alone behind high walls, with a nurse feeding you from a spoon? What lesson is that to teach a man?

– I’d be wealthier.

– But I’d be poorer. You’d prefer to see me out on the street? Don’t be so selfish. If you hadn’t spent all your money on lawyers and alimony, you’d have found another way to rid yourself of it. And it’s only money. You never own money. You hold on to it for a time, you die, it goes to someone else. You give it to someone else, you get something in return, you die. Those are the two options. Where is this coming from, anyway? You have regrets now? You’re too old to have regrets.

They talk some more. Ben Shipman promises to call again tomorrow. Ben Shipman does not need to promise this, but Ben Shipman always does, just as Ben Shipman always calls.

In the past, when he felt this way, he might have gone fishing, or taken a trip to Catalina Island, but he no longer has the strength for such pursuits. Instead he sits by his window, and seeks comfort in the fading light. He smells the sea, and listens to the waves break in time to the beating of his fractured heart.





176


Behind the walls of his fortress, he and Ruth fight and cry, but it is not as it was before. There is a predictability to the cycle, and he is weary of it. He no longer wishes to fuck anyone else – not even Alyce Ardell, even if she would have him – but neither does he particularly wish to fuck Ruth. Within a year of remarrying they are separated again, and he is back in court, this time accused of ‘general cruelty’, whatever that might mean.

I once – Ben Shipman tells him, as they wait for the hearing to begin – represented a man whose wife accused him of general cruelty because this man, her husband, each morning insisted on putting on his right shoe before his left. Her husband kept doing this, she said, even though her husband knew it irritated her. And then her husband would cough. Always the same cough. A little –

And Ben Shipman puts his fist to his mouth and offers a low, polite report, as of one seeking to interrupt a conversation of his betters without appearing presumptuous.

– She pointed out to the judge that no one needs to cough after putting on his shoes, not like that. Maybe once in a while a man might cough after putting on his shoes, because sometimes people just have to cough, whether a shoe is involved or not. She tried to be elsewhere in the house when her husband was putting on his shoes, but then she claimed she’d always be waiting for the cough. Or she’d hear the cough, and would know that her husband had put on his right shoe before his left, even though she wasn’t present to witness the event.

Did she try talking to him about it? he asks.

– Of course she tried, but her husband would tell her that this was just an instance of a man putting on shoes, and a man has to put on shoes or else a man can’t go out to make a living, unless the man is a bum and makes his living by being a bum, which is not much of a living.

– And the coughing?

– Her husband said that a man has to cough, and some men preferred to get their coughing out of the way before they went to work.

– What kind of work did her husband do?

– Her husband was a salesman.

– What did her husband sell?

– Her husband was employed by a pharmaceutical company. Her husband sold cough medicines. Her husband submitted that nobody would buy cough medicines from a salesman who coughed. It stood to reason.

– And how does this help me?

Their case is called. They rise to enter the courtroom.

Because general cruelty is meaningless, says Ben Shipman. General cruelty is the way of the world. It’s specific cruelty that’s the problem.





177


So many things come to an end in 1945, although not necessarily in order of personal importance.

The war ends.

The contract with Fox ends.

And his latest marriage to Ruth ends.

At the ensuing divorce hearing, Ruth testifies about the nature of this man to whom she has three times uttered the words ‘I do’.

When he has something, Ruth tells the court, he doesn’t want it, and when he hasn’t got it, he wants it. But he’s still a swell fellow.

Ben Shipman thinks that this may be the most succinct summation of his client’s character ever offered.

But 1945 also represents a beginning, for he hears a singer in a Russian nightclub.