Betty Blue

15

At around eleven o’clock we went to the funeral. The sun was beautiful and the sky was blue. We hadn’t seen weather like that in months. The air smelled sweet. I’d slept well; one of the advantages of luxury cars is that you can just about stretch your legs out and the seats are comfortable. I hadn’t been cold. There I was in the sunlight, my eyes half closed, while they lowered the coffin, hulling and puffing. I was meditating on the warmth of the sun on my face, realizing that man and the universe are one. I was realizing these things mostly to make the time pass. I wondered when we were going to eat.

No one seemed to care. We went back to the house without saying a word. I lagged behind. It took a few minutes of walking around in circles above the pianos before someone had the bright idea to open the refrigerator. But she had only been an old woman who lived alone-a poor little thing already half dead, who ate like a bird. We had to make do with a little pork chop, half a can of corn, some plain yogurt already past its expiration date, and some crackers. Eddie was feeling better. He was pale and his forehead was still wrinkled, but he’d recovered his cool-he asked me for the salt in a peaceful voice. Luckily the weather’s nice, he added.

He spent part of the afternoon going through a drawer full of photographs and papers, talking to himself. We watched him and yawned. We turned the TV on, then had to get up I don’t know how many times to change the channel. Finally night fell. I went out to do some shopping with Betty. We took Bongo with us.

It was a terrific little area-trees everywhere, and very few cars in the street. I felt like I hadn’t breathed in centuries. I almost smiled as I walked. When we got back I put a huge casserole in the oven. Eddie had shaved, showered, and combed his hair. After the main dish, we downed six pounds of cheese and an apple pie as big as the table. I cleared, then started on the dishes in the kitchen. The girls wanted to watch this western I’d already seen a hundred times, so it didn’t bother me. I was back in good shape.

While Bongo was finishing up the casserole, I sat down and smoked a cigarette. Aside from the gunshots in the next room, all I could hear was the silence in the street. It felt good-as if we were in the heart of a summer night. Then I rolled up my sleeves and sudsed up the kitchen sink, my cigarette between my teeth.

I was putting the final touches on a floral plate when Eddie came in. I gave him a wink. He stood behind me, his drink in his hand, looking at his feet. I started scrubbing at some burned-on grease.

“Listen,” he began. “I’ve got a proposition for you-the two of you.”

I tensed, my hands under the water, looking straight ahead of me at the tile on the wall-splattering myself.

“Betty and I stay here and take care of the store,” I said.

“How’d you know?”

“Beats me.”

“Well, I’m going to go ask Betty what she thinks about it. Is it okay with you, though?”

“Yeah, it’s okay with me.”

He went back into the other room, nodding his head.

I went back to the dishes. I took two or three deep breaths to get my head back together-to finish the dishes without breaking too many-but I had trouble keeping my mind on what I was doing. I found myself staring at the running water, imagining the serenity that awaited us. From time to time I’d wash a plate. I didn’t want to get delirious over Eddie’s offer. I didn’t want my dreams to get too concrete. I chased them out of my brain. I preferred vagueness, letting the soft feelings wash over me without thinking. It’s a shame that movie music is so trite-I deserved better than that.

As expected, Betty flipped. She was always up for anything new. She was always sure that something somewhere was waiting for us, and whenever I dared to modify her thesis a little-saying that it was OTHER THINGS, ELSEWHERE that awaited us-she’d laugh in my face and skewer me with her eyes, saying, Why’re you always splitting hairs? What difference does it make? I didn’t argue. I just lay down and waited for it to blow over. We spent most of the evening going over everything. We tried to make it as simple as possible. It was easy to see that Eddie was in fact making us a gift of it, even though he made it seem otherwise.

“Anyway, she was all I had left, and for the moment Lisa and I don’t need anything… Now wouldn’t be a good time to sell, and I’m not about to leave my mother’s house to just anybody.”

He was looking at the two of us out of the corner of his eye as if we were his children. I opened his beer for him, laughing, while he explained about selling pianos. All in all, it didn’t seem too mysterious.

“Listen, I’m not worried,” he said.

“Me neither.”

“If anything goes wrong, you know where to find me.”

“We’ll take care of everything, don’t worry.”

“Yeah, you’re at home here.”

“Come by anytime, Eddie.”

He nodded and hugged Betty.

“You two are okay…” he whispered “This is really helping me. It would have been a thorn in my side.”

He had tears in his eyes. There was a short euphoric silence between us, like the cream layer between cookie wafers.

“I only ask one thing of you,” said Eddie.

“Anything…”

“Would you mind bringing her some flowers from time to time?”

They left during the night. I drank a last beer and Betty walked around the living room, squinting. It made me want to laugh.

“I see the couch in the other corner,” she declared. “What do you think…?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Well, let’s try it…”

We hadn’t been alone in the house for five minutes. I could still hear Eddie wishing us good luck and shutting the car door.

I wondered if she was kidding.

“Now? You want to start with that now?”

She looked at me, surprised. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“Why not? It’s not late…”

“No, but I think it could wait till tomorrow…”

“You’re no fun. It’ll only take a minute.”

The thing dated from the war. It weighed at least three tons. We had to roll up the rug and inch our way across the room-the wheels were stuck, and it was late for that sort of work. But you do certain things without putting up a stink when you live with a girl who’s worth the trouble. That’s what I told myself as I was moving the buffet table, which was then also in the wrong place. I complained, for show, but inside I was having a good time. Even if all I really wanted was to go to bed, I could certainly move a little furniture for her-in truth I’d have moved mountains for her if I’d known how to go about it. Sometimes I wondered if I did enough for her, and sometimes I was afraid I didn’t-it’s not always easy to be the man you ought to be. You’ve got to understand that women are a little strange. They can be as annoying as anything when they set their minds to it. Still, I often wondered if I did enough for her. I thought about it mostly at the end of the evening, when I’d gone to bed first, lying there watching as she took her creams and lotions from the bathroom shelf. Anyway, being what you ought to be in life is not something that just happens to you-you have to work at it.

We had both worked up a sweat. When all was said and done, I have to admit, I felt pretty weak in the knees-perhaps I hadn’t really gotten all my strength back. I sat on the couch and looked around me with an air of exaggerated smugness.

“Now this is something else again,” I said.

She sat down next to me, her knees tricked under her chin, biting her lip.

“Yeah… I’m not sure… Maybe we should try a few different-”

“Different, my ass,” I said.

She took my hand, yawning.

“I’m beat, too. No, I was just saying…”

A little while later we were in the bedroom. I was about to take the covers off the bed, when she stopped me.

“No, I can’t do this…” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

She was staring at the bed in a very odd way. It’s true that from time to time she would go off into the ozone like that. Her attitude intrigued me-I hardly recognized her. I didn’t worry about it, though: girls have always intrigued me, generally speaking, and after a while you get used to it. I’ve decided that you can never completely understand them-you’ve just got to resign yourself to it. I’ve observed them out of the corner of my eye. After a while they all start doing weird things-incomprehensible and dazzling. It leaves you standing there as if you’ve come upon a fallen bridge; all you can do is throw a few wistful stones into the void and go back where you came from.

Naturally she didn’t answer me. I looked at her face and wondered where she’d gone. I decided to push it.

“You can’t do what?” I asked.

“Sleep there. I can’t sleep there.”

“Listen, it’s the only bed in the house. It might not be a barrel of laughs, but… think about it. It’s ridiculous.”

She backed up toward the door, shaking her head.

“No, I can’t. For the love of God don’t force me…”

I sat down on the corner of the bed. She turned and left. Outside the window, I saw two or three stars-it must have cleared up outside. I went back out into the living room. She was jiggling one of the armrests on the couch. She stopped for a minute and smiled at me.

“We’ll just unfold this thing here. It’ll be fine for now…”

I didn’t say anything. I grabbed the other armrest and shook it like a plum tree until it came off in my hand. The couch obviously hadn’t been unfolded in twenty years. She seemed to be having trouble with her side, so I went to give her a hand.

“Go try and find some sheets,” I said. “I’ll take care of this.”

The armrest gave me a hell of a time. I had to use the leg of a chair as a lever to get it off. I heard Betty opening the creaky closets. I had no idea how to work the couch. I lay down on the floor to look underneath. There were these huge springs sticking out in all directions like sharp-edged scrap iron. It looked dangerous to me-like some kind of enormous meat-grinder, just waiting to take your hand off. I spotted a large pedal over to one side. I stood up. I cleared a space around the couch. I held on to the backrest and pushed my foot down on the pedal.

Nothing happened. The thing didn’t move an inch. I kicked it all over and jumped up and down on it with all my weight, but nothing helped-I couldn’t get the goddamn bed to open. I broke out in a sweat. Betty showed up with the sheets.

“What… can’t do it?” she said.

“No shit. I don’t think this thing ever worked in its life. I’d have to really do a job on it. There’s not even any tools around here. Listen, just for tonight… it won’t kill us-it isn’t like she died from something contagious, you know. What do you say?”

She acted like she didn’t hear me. She made an innocent face and motioned toward the kitchen with her chin.

“I think there’s a toolbox under the sink,” she said. “I think I remember seeing one…”

I walked to the table. I finished off a can of beer, one hand on my hip. I aimed it at Betty:

“Do you know what you’re asking me to do? You know what time it is? Do you really think I’m going to start puttering around with that thing NOW??”

She came over to me with a smile and the sheets. She put her arms around me.

“I know you’re tired,” she said softly. “Just go sit down somewhere and let me take care of it. I’ll handle everything, okay?”

She didn’t give me time to tell her that the wise thing to do was to give the couch a rest for the night. I stood there in the middle of the living room with a stack of sheets in my hand, while she poked around under the kitchen sink.

A few moments later I realized I’d have to help. I got up with a sigh and bent down to the floor, picking up a black hammerhead that had just missed my ear by two inches. Then I went and took the handle out of Betty’s hand.

“All right. Let me do this. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Hey, it isn’t my fault that thing came off. I didn’t do anything…”

“I didn’t say you did. It’s just that I don’t want to go looking for a hospital in the middle of the night, without a car, in a strange place, exhausted, because one of us is bleeding to death. Just stand aside, please…”

I started with a chisel in a few places that seemed strategic, but it turned out I didn’t completely understand the subtleties of the mechanism-I couldn’t quite figure out where certain springs came from, or went to. Betty suggested we turn the couch upside down.

“No,” I snarled.

It wouldn`t give. A trickle of sweat ran down my back. What I really wanted to do was smash the whole thing to pieces, but Betty was watching. There was no way I was going to let myself be beaten by a damn Hide-A-Bed. I got back on the floor and looked underneath. I followed the iron rods with my fingers. Suddenly I felt something strange. I stood up scowling and threw off the cushions to see what it was.

“Maybe you better go wake the people next door,” I said. “I’m going to need a blowtorch.”

“Is it really that complicated…?”

“No, it isn’t complicated. They’ve just soldered ten inches of this thing together, that’s all…”

In the end we spread a few cushions on the floor. We put together a sort of bed that reminded me of giant ravioli covered with a striped sauce. Betty gave me a sidelong glance to see what I thought. What I thought was that we were going to have trouble sleeping on it, but if it made her happy-if this is what it took-it was okay by me. I was starting to feel at home there, and it was kind of fun to have to spend our first night sleeping on the floor. It was ridiculous, but there was a certain kind of cheap poetry about it, the kind you find in supermarkets. It reminded me of when I was sixteen-hanging out at surprise parties, content with only one pillow and half a girl. I could see how far I’d come: now I had a bunch of pillows, and there was Betty undressing in front of me. All around us the town was asleep. I took a minute to smoke one last cigarette by the window. A few cars passed by without a sound. The sky was perfectly clear.

“It seems like everybody just got their motors tuned up,” I said.

“Who do you mean?”

“I like this place. I bet it’s going to be nice out tomorrow. You won’t believe this, but I’m dead.”

The next morning, I woke up before her. I got out of bed without making a sound and went out to buy croissants. The weather was so nice I could hardly believe my eyes. I did some shopping. I came home casually with a bag under my arm and stopped on the way to pick up the mail that they’d slid under the door at the store. Nothing but fliers and coupons. As I leaned over to get it, I noticed the layer of dust on the showroom window-I made a mental note of it.

I walked straight into the kitchen, unloaded the things onto the table, and got down to work. It was the coffee grinder that woke her. She came in, yawning in the doorway.

“The guy who sells milk is an albino,” I said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Imagine an albino in a white coat with a bottle of milk in each hand.”

“It makes my blood run cold.”

“Me too. Exactly.”

While the water was heating for the coffee, I got undressed in a hurry. We started off along the wall, then circled over toward the cushions. The water evaporated in the meantime. This is how we burned our first saucepan. I ran into the kitchen, she into the bathroom.

Around ten o’clock we put the cups away and got the crumbs off the table. The house faced south-we had good light. I scratched my head and looked at Betty.

“Okay,” I said. “Where do we start?”

It was the end of the afternoon before I sat down in a chair again. A horrible bleach smell hovered in the house, so thick that I wondered if it would be dangerous to light a cigarette. The light ebbed, slowly. It had been a beautiful day, but we hadn’t even put our noses outside. We had stalked the smell of death to the farthest corners-through the closets, along the walls, under the plates-with special attention to the toilet seat. Never could I have imagined that kind of cleaning. There was no trace left of the old woman-not a single hair, not one piece of lint, no trace of a glance left hanging amid the curtains, not even the shadow of a breath; everything was wiped away. I felt like we’d killed her a second time.

I heard Betty scrubbing in the bedroom. She hadn’t stopped for one second. She’d held her sandwich in one hand and done the windows with the other. The look on her face reminded me of Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?-the part where she’s on her third day of Hell. But she-Betty, I mean- had found what she was looking for. I thought so, anyway. The bad part was that while she was scrubbing, ideas poured into her head like a torrential rain. Once in a while she talked to herself. I tiptoed closer to her. It was enough to give you the willies, what she said.

What really got me, though, was what happened after I’d hauled the mattress downstairs. I’d worked up quite a sweat with it in the hall, turning it every which way for a long time before I realized that it was hooked on the light fixture in the ceiling. I had laid it down next to the garbage cans on the street, then gone back up to clean a few more things-whip the old mop around a little more. When I allowed myself to sit down after all that, I did it with no shame. I’d had it up to here by then, frankly. Betty had to know about it right away, it couldn’t wait. She’d asked me to call and I told her, What the hell difference does it make, why call now, and she said, Why wait…?

So I took the phone and turned it toward me. The house shined like a new penny. I called Eddie.

“Hi, it’s us!… Just get back?”

“Yeah. Everything okay down there?”

“We’re doing a major cleanup. We’ve moved the furniture around a little…”

“Fine. Great. Tomorrow I’m going to put all your stuff on a train…”

“Thanks, great. Listen… Betty and I were wondering if we could do a little painting in the kitchen… one of these days, I mean…”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Great, That’s good news. Actually, we’ll probably get on it pretty soon. Right away, even…”

“I don’t mind at all.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what I thought. Listen, while I’m at it, I wanted to talk to you about the wallpaper in the hall. You know, the sort of flowered…”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Nothing. Just that maybe someday if it turned out that we could sort of replace it with something a little brighter. You don’t see something in a blue there? What do you think of blue…?”

“I don’t know. What about you? What do you think?”

“It’s a lot calmer.”

“Look, do whatever you want. I can’t see any problem.”

“Okay, cool. I’m not going to bug you about all this, you see, I just wanted your okay, you know what I mean…”

“Don’t sweat it.”

“Yeah, good.”

“Okay…”

“Wait. I forgot to ask you something else…”

“Hmm?”

“Well, it’s Betty. She wants to break through a wall or two.”

“…”

“You there? You know how it is when she gets an idea into her head. Listen, it’s no big deal-just a couple of little walls, not big walls. It’s not like a big job or anything, not what you think. Just puttering, you know…”

“Right, puttering. That’s not puttering anymore. Breaking down walls, that’s a notch above puttering. You guys make me laugh…”

“Listen, Eddie, you know me. I wouldn’t bother you with all this if it wasn’t important. You know how it is, Eddie. You know how a grain of sand can change the whole world. Imagine that this wall is like a barrier between us and a sunny glade. Wouldn’t it be like slapping life in the face to let ourselves be beaten by a silly little barrier? Wouldn’t that really worry you, to miss out just because of some stupid little bricks? Eddie, don’t you see that life is full of terrifying symbols?”

“Okay. Do it. But go easy…”

“Never fear. I’m not crazy.”

When I hung up Betty was looking at me with a Buddha smile. I believe I detected in her eye a spark that dated back to prehistoric times-to the days when guys sweated and groaned to prepare a shelter for their mate standing there smiling in the shadows. In some strange way it was nice to think I was obeying an instinct that went back to the dawn of time. I felt I was doing something good-contributing my drop of water to the great river of humanity. Plus, a little puttering never hurt anybody. You’d have a hell of a time these days not running across a sale somewhere in the electric drill and saw department. It allows you to lift your head up a little-feel good about things like shelves. The real secret lies in not blowing every fuse in the house.

“Okay, you happy now?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Hungry?”

We ate, watching a horror movie-some dudes who came out of their graves and went running around in the night screaming. Toward the end, I started yawning-nodding off for two or three seconds-and each time I opened my eyes the nightmare was still going on. They’d found this old lady in a deserted street and were eating her leg. They had gold-plated eyes. They were watching me peel my banana. We waited until every one of them had been roasted with a flamethrower, then went to bed.

We carried the cushions into the bedroom and I swore that the first thing I’d do tomorrow was go buy a mattress-I swore on my mother’s head. We made the bed in silence. We were wiped out. Not one speck of dust showed as the sheets came down like parachutes, stirring the air in the room. We would be able to sleep on our pillows without risk of inhaling a germ.

Early the next morning I heard somebody drumming on the door. I thought I was dreaming. I saw the pale glow of dawn floating timidly behind the window, and the face on the alarm clock was still lit. I had to get up. It gave me a stomachache, but I got used to it. I made sure not to wake Betty and went down stairs.

I opened the door, shivering in the early morning cold. There was this guy standing there, an old guy with a two-day beard, looking at me and smiling. He wore a cap.

“Hey there, I hope I’m not bothering you,” he said. “But are you the one who put that mattress there, by the garbage cans?”

I spotted a garbage truck rolling along slowly behind him, a yellow light revolving on top. I made the connection.

“Well, yeah. Something wrong?”

“We don’t handle them things. Don’t even want to know about them.”

“So, what am I supposed to do with it? Cut it into pieces and swallow it? Take one a day…?”

“Don’t know. It is your mattress, ain’t it?”

The street was empty and silent. The day seemed to be stretching like a cat come down from an easy chair. The old man lit a cigarette butt in the golden light.

“I realize it’s a pain,” he said. “I can put myself in your shoes. Nothing more annoying than getting rid of a mattress. But after what happened to Bobby, we don’t mess with them anymore. Plus, it was one just like that, gray with stripes. I can still see old Bobby trying to push it into the compactor. Bang-took his arm straight off. Get the picture…?”

He brought me up short. My eyes were still half glued shut from sleeping. Who was Bobby, anyway? That’s what I was going to ask him, when the guy behind the steering wheel started yelling from the other side of the street.

“Hey, what’s going on? He giving you a hard time?”

“That’s him-Bobby,” the old man said.

Bobby kept it up in the truck. He had his head out the window, making little puffs of steam.

“That guy giving us a pain in the ass over the mattress?” he yelled.

“Cool down, Bobby,” said the old man.

I was cold. I noticed that I was barefoot. There were even a few layers of fog here and there, floating in the early-morning air. My brain was going in slow motion. Bobby decided to open the door of the truck and get out, whining. I shivered. He wore a bulky sweater with the sleeves rolled up. One of his arms sent off light reflections-it ended in a giant hook. It was one of those cheap artificial limbs made out of chrome-totally reimbursed by health insurance, fitted like a shock absorber. I was startled. The old man was looking at the end of his cigarette. He crossed his legs.

Bobby came toward us, rolling his eyes, his mouth twisted into a frown. For a second I thought I was back in front of the TV, watching a scene from the horror movie, only now it was in 3-D. Bobby looked totally nuts. He stopped when he got to the mattress. I saw him clearly-there was a lamp post just over his head, as if put there on purpose. The tears on his cheeks looked like tattooed lightning bolts. I couldn’t hear too well, but I think he was talking to the mattress-whimpering. The old man took a last drag on his cigarette and spit it out, looking into the sky.

“We ain’t come across one in a long time,” he told me.

The cry that Bobby let out pierced my ear like a javelin. I watched him lift the mattress with his one good hand, as if he were grabbing someone by the neck. He stared into its eyes, as if he were holding in front of him the person who had ruined his whole life. He drove his arm into the thing. The hook came out the other side, sprinkling little pieces of stuffing onto the sidewalk. The revolving light gave me the feeling of a giant spider weaving its web all around us.

The old man crushed his cigarette butt, Bobby tore the prosthesis out of the mattress, sobbing. The poor guy tottered on his legs but didn’t go down. Day was breaking. He let out another shriek. This time he aimed a little lower-around stomach level and his moving arm went through it like a howitzer. The mattress bent over in half. Without missing a beat, Bobby freed himself, then went for the head. The cloth must have been brittle-it cracked open with the sound of a pig getting its throat slit.

While Bobby continued to let loose on the mattress, reducing it to bits, the old man looked away. The sidewalk was deserted, with one foot in the night and one finger in daylight. I had the feeling we were waiting for something.

“Okay. That ought to do it,” said the old man. “You want to give me a hand…?”

Bobby was completely exhausted. His hair was plastered against his forehead, as if he’d dunked his head in a tub of water. He let us guide him back to the truck. We sat him down behind the steering wheel. He asked me for a cigarette. I offered him the pack. They were filtered.

He started shaking his dull head.

“Hey, those are faggot cigarettes!”

“Right.”

I could see that he didn’t even remember what had happened. Just to be sure, I glanced over at the mattress. These kinds of people sometimes make you doubt what’s real and what isn’t, and that’s hard enough to deal with under normal circumstances there’s no reason to make things difficult on purpose. By now my feet were completely frozen. The old man tossed a full garbage can into the compactor and I went inside quietly to put some shoes on. Betty was still sleeping. I heard them start down the street and asked myself why I had bothered to put my shoes on, when it was only seven o’clock in the morning. I had nothing special to do and was still pretty sleepy.