The Broken Bubble Read online

  Turning to the Dodge, he began removing the defective battery cable.

  In the kitchen of the basement apartment in the wooden house on Fillmore, Rachael peeled potatoes at the sink and listened to the radio. She was tired. During the morning, from eight until noon, she had worked at the airline office. The company was a non-entity, four planes in all, but the ace’s who ran it were nice; they kidded her, and they bought her coffee, and now that she was pregnant they had stopped making passes at her.

  Reaching, she took her cigarette from the ashtray on the table. The radio was playing a Stan Getz record. This was the program she listened to each afternoon; this was ‘Club 17.’ But Jim Briskin was not on it. Somebody else was on, and she did not like him; he was not what she wanted to hear.

  Outside, on Fillmore Street, a group of men walked by, noisy and abusive. A car honked. Traffic signals clanged. She felt a hollowness inside her. Where was the easy voice, the presence that had comforted because it had not asked for anything? She had grown up in a hostile, quarreling family. Everybody had demanded something; everybody had slashed at her. Jim Briskin had wanted nothing from her. What now? she wondered. What was there to take his place?

  When the front door opened, she said, “Dinner’s ready.”

  Art closed the door after himself and Ferde Heinke. “Hi,” he said, sniffing the warm smell of food.

  Putting the silverware on the table, Rachael said, “Did you tell him?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She went over to him and kissed him. Her arms, around his neck, were thin and cold and slightly moist from the dishes. Then she returned to the table. She moved slowly, setting out the plates and cups with care. The set of dishes was a present from Art’s great-aunt, one of the few wedding presents they had received.

  Ferde, embarrassed, said to her, “Hey, congratulations about the baby.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Noticing that she was subdued, Art said, “Anything wrong?”

  “I turned on ‘Club 17,’” she said. “Jim Briskin isn’t on it; somebody else is taking his place.”

  “It was in the paper,” Art said. “He’s off for a month because he wouldn’t read a commercial. They suspended him.”

  She turned her swift, hard gaze on him. “Can I see it?”

  “Grimmelman has it,” Art said.

  After a pause Rachael said to Ferde Heinke, “Did you want to stay for dinner?”

  “I have to get home.” He edged toward the door. “My mother’s expecting me to get home by six-thirty.”

  At the icebox, Art poured himself a glass of beer from the quart bottle. “Stick around—” he said. “We can go over the dummies for the magazine.”

  “Why don’t you?” Rachael said. During their four months of marriage, they had not had much company.

  6

  In the early afternoon the telephone rang. Jim Briskin answered it, and a soft little feminine voice said, “Mr. Briskin?”

  “Yes,” he said, not recognizing the voice. He seated himself on the arm of the couch, avoiding the records; they were a stack belonging to KOIF which he planned eventually to return. “Who is this?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Maybe you don’t remember me. I met you down at the station the other day. I’m Art Emmanual’s wife.”

  “Sure I remember you,” he said, glad to hear from her. “I just didn’t recognize you over the phone.”

  “Do you have a second?”

  He said, “That’s one thing I have plenty of. How’ve you been, Rachael?”

  “Pretty good,” she said. “It sure is awful your not being on ‘Club 17.’ Art got the newspaper where it told about you. He didn’t bring it home, but he told me what it said. Are you ever coming back?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I haven’t decided. We’ll see at the end of the month.”

  “That guy, whatever his name is, he’s no good.”

  “What have you been doing?” he asked.

  “Nothing much.” She paused. “I wondered, we both wondered, if you would like to come over for dinner.”

  “I’d like to,” he said, pleased.

  “Would you like to come tonight?” On the phone she had a correct, painstaking manner; her invitation was presented with formality.

  “Fine,” he said. “About what time?”

  “Say seven o’clock. You won’t be disappointed if it isn’t much.”

  “I’m positive it’ll be excellent.”

  “But if it isn’t,” she said, still serious.

  “Then it’ll be nice seeing both of you again.”

  She gave him the address, and he repeated it back. Then she said goodbye, and he hung up the phone.

  Cheered, he shaved and took a shower and put on a clean pair of slacks. The time was two o’clock. He had five hours to fill until dinner with the Emmanuals, the balance of the afternoon and the beginning of evening. Gradually his good spirits left. Time, he thought. It was going to destroy him.

  Getting into his car, he drove out toward the Presidio. But his depression remained. He had got to thinking about Pat. That was fatal. That was the one thing he could not let himself do.

  For half an hour he drove at random, and then he turned in the direction of Fillmore Street.

  The bars and shops were busy and the sight of them restored some sense of optimism in him. He parked his car, locked the doors, and walked along the sidewalk, looking at the numbers.

  The house itself; huge and in disrepair, was set back on its lot between a billboard and a hardware shop. A wire fence ran along the edge of the sidewalk, and in the center was a rusty, ponderous gate. He managed to force the gate open. It groaned as he shut it after him.

  The cement walk led him to the side of the house. Steps descended to a wooden door, a separate basement apartment. He rapped on the door and waited. There was no response. For an interval he rapped, waited, rapped again. They were not at home. His own fault, of course. This was a wild idea, a long shot.

  He started back up the steps, keenly disappointed. What now? he wondered.

  On the broad main steps of the building, the steps leading to the front porch, three teenage boys sprawled. They had watched him without comment as he rapped on the Emmanuals’ basement door. Now he noticed them for the first time. All three wore jeans and heavy boots and black leather jackets. Their faces were expressionless.

  “Are they out?” he asked.

  Finally one of the boys inclined his head.

  “You know where they went?”

  No response. The faces remained blank.

  “You know when they’ll be back?”

  Still no response. He started down the cement path to the sidewalk. As he was closing the gate after him, one of the boys said, “Try Dodo’s.”

  “What’s that?” he said.

  After a pause, another of the boys said, “Dodo’s Drive-In.”

  “Down Fillmore,” the first boy said. The third said nothing; he had a beaked, hostile face, and on his right cheek, by his mouth, was a crescent-shaped scar. “Couple blocks,” the first boy said.

  “Thanks,” he said. They continued to gaze after him as he walked off.

  Parked in the lot at the drive-in, its front facing the glass doors of the building, was a prewar Plymouth. Inside were four or five kids, and one of them was a girl. He walked cautiously up beside the car. They were eating hamburgers and drinking malts from white cartons. The girl was Rachael.

  At first neither she nor Art recognized him.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said, “hello.” That was all she said. All five kids seemed subdued. They concentrated on their food.

  “Is this where you hang out?” he said clumsily.

  They nodded, dividing the nod among them. There was just the one nod for all five of them.

  Art said, “She’s not f-f-feeling too good.”

  “Anything serious?” he said.
<
br />   “N-n-no.”

  Another boy said, “She’s feeling blue.”

  “Yeah,” Art said. “She’s been feeling blue all d-d-day. She didn’t go to w-w-work.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said, concerned and knowing no way to show it. All five of them seemed blue; they munched and passed the malts back and forth. Once Art bent to brush bits of fried potato from his pants. Another car, similar to theirs, drove up on the far side of the drive-in building. Kids stepped from it and walked indoors to order food.

  “Would anything cheer her up?” Jim asked.

  They held a conference. One of the boys said, “Maybe you could drive her to this lady’s.”

  “Her teacher,” Art said, “she had in h-h-high school.”

  “Sure,” he said, wanting to help.

  The door of the Plymouth presently opened. Rachael stepped out, walked to the trash dispenser with an empty carton, and then returned. Her cheeks were hollow and darkened, and she moved slowly. “Come on,” she said to her husband.

  “Okay,” Art said. “But I’m not going in. I don’t w-w-want to see her.”

  To Jim, Rachael said, “Where’s your car?”

  “Down the street,” he said. “I can go get it.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’d like to walk. I feel like walking.”

  “What teacher is this?” he asked, as the three of them trudged along Fillmore, past the shops and bars.

  “My home economics teacher,” Rachael said. “Sometimes I talk to her about different things.” She kicked a bottle cap along the pavement until it rolled into the gutter. “I’m sorry I’m like this,” she said, her head down.

  Art patted her. “It’s not your f-f-fault.” To Jim he explained, “It’s my fault; she’s afraid because I’m m-m-mixed up with these guys and she don’t like them. But I’m through with them; I r-r-really am.”

  “I don’t mind your being with them,” Rachael said. “I’m just worried that—” She broke off.

  “She thinks they’re going to d-d-do something,” Art said. “Hey,” he said to his wife, tugging her until she bumped against him. “No more for me, you hear? Last time was the last.”

  Ahead of them was Jim’s car. He unlocked the door and held it open for them.

  Wonderingly, Rachael said, “It must cost a lot to have a car like this.”

  “Not worth it,” he said. They were starting into the back and he said, “We can all fit in front.”

  When they were in, he closed the doors and backed out into traffic. As he drove, Rachael and Art put their heads together in an almost wordless discussion.

  Art said, “Hey, now she don’t want to go there.” To his wife he said, “Then where do you w-w-want to go?”

  Rachael said, “Remember when we used to go swimming all the time?”

  “Y-y-you cant go swimming.”

  “I know,” she said, “but remember we used to go out to the pool at Fleishhacker Zoo? Maybe we could go out there and just sit. It ought to be nice out there.”

  Making a left turn, he drove in the direction of Fleishhacker Zoo.

  “This is sure n-n-nice of you,” Art said.

  “I’m glad to,” he said, and he meant it.

  “Did you ever go out there?” Rachael asked.

  “Whenever I could. I used to walk around the Park.”

  “That’s over farther,” Rachael said. “It’s nice there too.” Now she seemed less despondent. She sat up straighter and began to look through the window at the cam and houses. The bright July sunlight shone from the pavement.

  “Everything okay with the baby?” Jim said.

  “Yes,” Rachael said.

  He said, “I guess you don’t have to worry about the Army.”

  “Oh, they could take him,” Rachael said. “Art, I mean. In fact they sent him a notice and he went down. And they classified him 1A. But he has a kidney condition…he can’t eat a lot of foods, a lot of sweet stuff. And he didn’t tell them; he forgot. So they were going to draft him, and he even had the notice that tells when to report. So I called them up. And I had to go down and talk to them. And then they didn’t want him. So I mean they could take him…but I don’t think they will.”

  “You don’t want to go,” Jim said. It was obvious enough.

  Art said, “If they want me, sure I’ll g-g-go. But I mean, there’s no war or nothing.”

  Rachael said, “They get everybody sooner or later. I think they want to have something so they can get you when they want you. Like in an emergency or something. They have everybody in a classification.”

  “Not women,” Art said.

  The sun was warm on the trees and gravel paths and on the water of the pool. On the rim of the pool teenagers sunned themselves in trunks and bathing suits. One or two beach umbrellas had been erected.

  Rachael seated herself on the low steps overlooking the pool. In the company of the two kids, Jim began to feel old and overly tall. And yet, he thought, their situation was not so different from his. They, were not so far apart in their problems.

  “Let’s walk,” Rachael said. “It’s so dull here.”

  The three of them walked from the pool, in the direction of the Zoo itself. At a wire cage Rachael halted, and when he and Art looked back they saw her in contemplation.

  “What is it?” Jim asked, returning.

  She said, “I made the puma growl.”

  The puma rested on an artificial tree branch in his cage. His muzzle was massive, more like a dog’s than a cat’s. His whiskers were short, stiff bristles. He did not deign to notice anyone.

  “He needs a shave,” Jim said.

  Rachael said, “Growl at him and he growls back.”

  They went on, plodding listlessly.

  Suddenly Rachael said, “What’s there to do?”

  He was at a loss to answer. “Lots of things.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “There isn’t anything to do. I don’t mean just now, either.”

  “Pretty soon you’ll have plenty to do. When the baby comes.”

  But even to him that did not seem enough. He wanted to give a better answer than that.

  “For a man,” he said, “a job is the most important thing. And I don’t see anything wrong with that. It’s something to focus yourself on. You get better at it, whatever it is. You learn more. You become more skilled. And you can expand that…it can be more than just a job.”

  Rachael said, “I thought that was important, what you did. Not reading that commercial.”

  “It wasn’t,” he said. “I was just tired. Fed up. Troubles with Pat.”

  “That was the day we saw you,” Rachael said. “Did it have anything to do with us?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Did we upset you?”

  “Yes,” he said, “you made me feel strange.”

  “Then your job wasn’t the most important thing to you…you were willing to give it up for something else.”

  He said, “Why did you give me that roll?”

  “Because I liked you. I wanted to give you something so you’d know. You did a lot for us, with the program. We always listened. You were somebody we could trust. When you said something, it was true. Was that why you wouldn’t read the commercial? Was there something in it that wasn’t true? Sometimes they’re so one-sided: they just say what’s good about the product. Did you feel if you read it people would think you believed it, and you knew you didn’t believe it, you knew it wasn’t true? When I heard what you had done, I thought that was probably the reason. Because if you didn’t believe it, I knew you wouldn’t read it. You never told us anything that wasn’t true. If you had, if you lied to us, we wouldn’t have listened.”

  “You shouldn’t expect that much from some guy sitting at a microphone,” Jim said. “Some disc jock with a bunch of pop tunes to play and three hours to kill.”

  “All right,” she said, “who should we listen to, then? They used to tell us stuff in assembly…we read the s
ame stuff in magazines and they say it in churches. There’s always a bunch of old ladies, like the PTA; they’re always telling us what to do. But I figured that out a long time ago. It’s what they want; It’s what would be nicest for them. Wouldn’t it be nice if we just curled up and died? If we never asked for anything, wanted anything—never bothered them. They have all this stuff that explains why they’re right. But you know, they’re always talking about dropping hydrogen bombs on the enemy. I hope when the war comes the bombs get dropped on them, too.”

  “You mean us,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “Them. What do you mean, us? What do we have for them to bomb?”

  “Your lives,” he said.

  “I don’t care. What difference does it make? What do we have to look forward to?” She plodded along, past the animals in their cages. “I read in a book about frontier women. They churned butter and they made their own clothes.”

  “Would you like that?”

  Ponderously, she said, “Who does that anymore?”

  She had a point.

  “You know,” she said, “I know a girl, a Jewish girl. And she went to Israel. And she worked on a farm. And she was out there in the desert…she carried a gun while she worked. And they all ate together, and everything they owned belonged to all of them, and they didn’t get any money, they were part of this—” She hesitated. “I don’t know the name. It’s a Jewish word. Sort of a community settlement. And before that, she used to live like us, sitting around doing nothing, wasting her time with nothing to do. Like we all used to walk down to the show together on Saturday night, me and her and a bunch of girlfriends, and just sit there in the show, and usually it was a love picture—you know?—where they finally get together in the end, the good guy and the good girl, and you see him kissing her and everything’s wonderful. And they have this place up sort of in the country, with a lot of furniture and one of those big windows.”

  “Picture window,” he said.

  “And two new cars. And the furniture is sort of blond and modern.”