A Möbius Trip
David squeezed his toy dog to his chest so hard its plastic eye popped off. He knew the fight between Mommy and Daddy would end very soon, like always. He wasn’t five any more. He was almost five and a half. He knew they would soon stop yelling and screaming and stop being angry and then they would hug each other and kiss and walk away to different rooms and Mommy would cry because she was happy, she always said.
“I can’t live in this neighborhood any more,” she said. “Everything’s going up, up, up!” She shook her hands in his face till they blurred, like when you vibrate a pencil between your fingers, but she didn’t hit him, David noted. “We have to get out of this damn St. Mark’s Place, maybe out of Manhattan altogether, back even to Brooklyn where the rents at least are a whole lot cheaper.”
“I know how you feel, Terry,” he said, “but they only raised our rent twelve percent this year, and besides—”
“So what are you waiting for, a note from a lawyer saying ‘Sorry, you rent-controlled chiselers, the party’s over, we’re turning condo, and if you can’t put up $80,000 cash then pack up and ship out’?”
“Stop being an alarmist. You’re cutting into my damn workday,” he shouted.
“Get the blinders off, George! ‘Gentrification,’ they call it. Who would believe that all this rock-and-roll scum that’s drifted into the area and turned it into a worse slum than it was before would attract all the Yuppies and jack up all the prices till you can’t get a lousy cup of coffee anymore for less than—”
“Gimme a break, Terry, will you? I’ve even written about the punk rock plague: ‘PR is for Punk—‘”
“Cut the self-congratulation, George. Your Village Voice article was dandy, and maybe you can gloat over the hate-letters they’ll print in response to it, but I’m just getting sicker by the minute, and while you bat your typewriter in that soundproof, air-conditioned office of yours, I sit thirty feet away and suck in the sweet sound of acid rock blaring at top volume through the windows from a dozen Third-World briefcases in the street down there, not to mention all the junkies and crazies screaming a flood of filth all day—”
“I resent the implication that I’m hiding away from reality! You’ve been out of work for a few months, so all this is getting to you.”
“I’m just seeing the whole picture, George, while you crawl into your quiet cocoon and write.”
“I’ll be damned if you’re gonna put me down for my writing, Terry. This fiction of mine can be more real to me than my so-called life. It’s just as real as your reality.”
“I’m not putting you down.”
“My typewriter pays the rent!”
“Maybe,” she said now, her voice not angry now, “I want it to save my life. Maybe I’m just frustrated and disappointed and scared shitless.”
David stopped squeezing the broken dog. He advanced to the living room doorway and looked at them as they stood near the kitchen window close together with sunlight setting Mommy’s hair on fire and sparking off Daddy’s glasses as he took them off and put his arms around Mommy and she kissed him and they hugged, just as he knew it had to come out now that he was almost six years old.
Now he could have fun watching Daddy again through the little square window in his office door which was just low enough for him to peek through. He hoped it wouldn’t be long before Daddy would disappear again. The most fun was catching him just as he did it—pop!—like that, but he’d seen him actually do it only once. And later he’d be back again. But he’d never seen him actually come back. He’d have to be standing at the window all day long to be that lucky, but Mommy got terribly annoyed when she caught him gawking like that, so he stood there and watched only when she was in the bedroom reading or knitting or was in the kitchen cooking. Daddy didn’t mind his gawking. Never seemed to notice, even. But Mommy’d throw a fit, then try to play with him or read to him or, worse, take a stroll with him along the street that she hated so much because it was good for them both to stretch their legs and get some air. But out in the street she’d grab his hand too hard and tell him to watch out for the broken glass or the garbage and not to gawk at the punk rockers. Sometimes they’d gawk back at him, but not like a clown would. They were painted like clowns, but they didn’t have the red nose, and were lots skinnier, and most of the time didn’t smile at him.
