Chapter 50October 29Someone, Somewhere
In some ways these people (I am one) cannot exist without the oxygen of laughter. Dawn Powell, diary entry
The ability to burst out laughing is proof of a fine character. I mistrust those who avoid laughter and refuse its overtures. They are afraid to shake the tree, mindful of the fruits and birds, afraid that someone might notice that nothing comes off their branches. Jean Cocteau, “On Laughter”
ALBERTINE AND I spent the whole day packing, with help from Lou and all his friends and from professionals hired by Artie for the heavy work. By dinnertime all of our worldly goods were en route to a small apartment in Manhattan, to be delivered the next day.
MY BIRTHDAY “CAKE” was a pecan pie with fifty candles. Before I began reading the final installment of Dead Air, I yielded the floor to Lou, who said, “Listen — for the last forty-nine nights I’ve been sending my show in on tapes that Elaine’s been shuttling to the studio — except for one piece of the Catalog of Human Misery a few nights ago that I phoned in from my room here — but tonight, right after Peter’s reading, I’m going to the studio to do this one live, because tonight’s my last show, the sign-off, the gala, the big finish — so tune in, will you? It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Don’t miss it!” Then I read “Someone, Somewhere.”
WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES. On my thirteenth birthday, I made one. I was, at the time, the sole supplier of flying-saucer detectors in Babbington, New York, clam capital of America, my home town; I also ran a broadcasting network from a cave in my back yard; and I had begun spying in a small way, planting an electronic eavesdropping device camouflaged as a flying-saucer detector in the bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Roger Jerrold, a couple who lived down the block from me — or around the corner — in the hope that I might hear Mrs. Jerrold having sex with Mr. Yummy, a man who delivered baked goods and other joys to the housebound wives of Babbington. As it so often does, curiosity led to my mistake. One day, instead of attending to my duties as broadcaster and announcer, I plugged my tape recorder — a birthday gift to myself — into my transmitter and let a tape play over the air while I went prowling into the secrets that my friends Raskol, Marvin, Spike, and Matthew kept in the cave. When I had snooped enough to make myself feel guilty about it, I returned to the transmitter and put my headphones on to see what point I’d reached in my prerecorded palaver. I discovered that, instead of a recording of myself acting the part of Larry Peters, the congenial substitute host of “The Peter Leroy Show,” I had been broadcasting a tape that I had stolen from the Jerrolds, a recording of Mrs. Jerrold and Mr. Yummy that had probably been made in secret by Mr. Jerrold, who may have been a spy — not an amateur like me, but a professional, a soldier in the cold war. The tape was nearly at its end, and Mrs. Jerrold was screaming “Oh, Yummy, Yummy, Yummy!” her voice rising in a crescendo of pleasure. When one is in a cave sitting in front of a radio transmitter broadcasting a signal into an unseen world, it is hard to tell whether anyone at all is out there listening, unless one has a feedback system of some sort that allows one to detect the effects of the signal on the outside world. I had one of those effect-detectors: the electronic eavesdropper that I had installed in the Jerrolds’ bedroom. I bent my ear to the radio that I kept tuned to the eavesdropper, listening for any sound that might suggest that the Jerrolds had heard the tape that I’d been playing. At first, I didn’t hear much, because the eavesdropper wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up sounds beyond the bedroom, but then I heard Mr. Jerrold’s voice, increasing in volume as he came within range: “. . . not a fit mother, you b***h! Junior — get your coat. We’re going to Grandma’s.” Then some banging and thumping — a crash — the ringing of a bell — and then nothing. The persistence and spaciousness of the nothingness led me to conclude that someone had knocked my eavesdropper to the floor and that it was going to require some repairs before it would work again. I shut the transmitter down, came up out of the cave, lowered the stump into place, and walked to the Jerrolds’ house. The car was not in the driveway. I walked up the side of the driveway, at the edge of it, on the grass, so that my footsteps wouldn’t make a sound on the gravel. When I got to the window at the end of the living room, I stood on my toes and peeked inside. I saw Mrs. Jerrold, at the opposite end of the room, sitting on the sofa, in the gray light of the television set. She was smoking a cigarette. I ducked immediately, fearful that she would see me. I went home. I ate my dinner. I helped wash the dishes. I went out for a walk. I returned to the Jerrolds’ house. It was dark downstairs, but there was a light on in the bedroom. I went around to the back door and stood there trying to work up the courage to knock. If there ever was a time when I could knock at the door and say to Mrs. Jerrold, “Let me in, let me in, let me in, I implore,” and hope to be admitted, it seemed to me that this was it, but I didn’t have the nerve, and so I turned away, and put my head down, and put my hands in my pockets, and went home and went to bed. What happened after that I know only at second hand, from the Jerrolds’ neighbor, Mrs. Breed, who got it from the cops. Following a domestic dispute, Mr. Jerrold drove off with his son to visit his parents in Minnesota. Sometime after he left, Mrs. Jerrold locked all the doors and windows in the house, stuffed towels under the doors and up the flue of the living room fireplace, taped the cracks around the windows, taped wrapping paper over the glass, and drew the blinds and curtains. She heaped combustibles in the center of the living room: paper and boxes, scrap wood, rags, wooden tables and chairs, Mr. Jerrold’s clothing, and reels of recording tape. While she was heaping the combustibles, or perhaps after she had finished the work, while she was taking a look at the heap and congratulating herself on a job well done, she drank a pitcher of whiskey sours (“made with good Canadian whiskey,” according to what Mrs. Breed said the police said) and took several sleeping pills. Sometime after finishing her whiskey sours and sleeping pills, or perhaps just before she finished her whiskey sours and sleeping pills, she doused the pile of combustibles with some cleaning fluid and kerosene and set fire to it, and sometime after that she passed out, and sometime after that she died, but the house was not destroyed. Mrs. Jerrold had gone to great lengths to ensure that there would be no drafts, no air to save her from the end that she had designed for herself, but in her agitated state she had forgotten that a fire needs air as much as an unhappy woman does. Neither the police nor Mrs. Breed made any mention of a visitor who stood outside the kitchen door, thought of knocking, did not knock, and left. Mr. Jerrold and Junior never returned to town. The house was put on the market, but it took a long time to sell, because it smelled of smoke and needed work. Was it all my fault? It may have been. The effects of the things we do extend themselves, like a chain or a relay network, reaching farther than we suppose, so all our acts have unforeseen consequences, and I suspect that someone, somewhere, suffers for every mistake I make.
EVERYONE SAT IN SILENCE until Lou said, “I have to admit that I was expecting a happy ending.” Then he looked at his watch and said, “Hey, I’ve got to go.”
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