Chapter 10
I HAD NO MORE THAN REACHED THE second block when I became violently ill. It was all I could do to duck into an alleyway before throwing up. The whiskey I had drunk seemed to have turned into a bitter substance, and the taste and smell of it as it came up wasn't the taste and odor of whiskey alone, but of something else, something strong and acid-like. I heaved until I thought my stomach, too, was coming up and out of me. My head spun crazily, my eyes watered excessively, and I staggered about in the alley as if I were very drunk, but this passed after a few minutes. I felt light-headed and still sick to my stomach, but I managed after a time, to walk home and enter the house, whereupon I sank down full-length on the sofa and groaned. My stomach burned and ached almost beyond my ability to withstand it, and I got up and went to the kitchen to drink a large glass of cold milk. This didn't ease the pain; it made it worse, and I ran to the bathroom and promptly threw it up in a violent fashion. I stood over the bowl for perhaps ten minutes trying to vomit, but there was nothing else in my stomach to come up.
Finally, I left the bathroom and returned to the sofa and lay down. The front door came open and Abbie burst in.
"Well," she yelled, "where the hell have you been, Mother's boy?"
I just looked at her.
"What's wrong with you? You look awful. Did Mama screw you half to death?"
"Shut up," I growled, but weakly.
"Don't tell me to shut up, damn you. Have you been drinking?"
I looked away from her and realized she was the one I really disliked, not my mother. Why I had ever married her was beyond me.
"I asked you a question. Are you going to answer it?"
"Will you ... please ... leave me alone."
"No, I won't. You're damned right I won't. You went to see your goddamned mother, didn't you, you lousy bastard?"
"Why all the bitching? You know about my mother and me."
"I'm sick and tired of your wanting your mother to screw instead of your wife, that's why I'm angry. Why shouldn't I be angry? What wife would put up with a bum for a husband?"
I sat up and stared at her, though my stomach was giving me a bad time still. "I'm not a bum. You know that, Abbie. I work. I support you. If I have a thing about my mother, I can't help it. I don't really like her. She has some crazy kind of ... hold over me. I don't know what it is. I think I may be getting rid of it. Can't you be patient?"
"No, I'm too patient. I've been too damned patient. I know about your mother. She's no good. She's a bitch. She'll do anything at all to get her boy back for herself. She...."
"My mother is married to your father. Have you forgotten that? What's the matter with him? Isn't he man enough to take care of her?"
"He's all right, my father. It would drive any man crazy to have to live with her. My father's all right, believe me. It's that awful mother of yours that's making him sick."
"Is he sick?"
"Yes, of course he's sick. Why wouldn't he be sick, living with that horrible female?"
"You didn't used to think she was so horrible?"
"Well, I do now, damn her. I'd like to kill her."
I stared at her harder now. "I think you want your father, just as I have my mother. I think that's all that's really wrong with you, but you can't have your father any more, can you? He's turned into a queer."
"Don't you dare speak that way of my father, you louse!"
I made a face. "Piss on your father, Abbie."
Her face turned white. "Why, you dirty bastard! Don't you dare...."
I managed a faint grin. "You don't like hearing the truth about your father, do you? Do you know he's been sucking dicks with your cousin, Alfie? They've been seeing one another right along."
"If he has, your mother drove him to it."
"Nuts. You've found out your father is queer and you're trying to take it out on me and my mother."
She burst into tears and ran to the bedroom and slammed the door. I was sorry for what I'd said, but she'd started the argument, and who told females they could start an argument and have everything their own way? I lay down flat on my back and wondered what it was that had caused me to be so ill. I knew there was nothing psychological about it; at least I thought there wasn't. It had to be a physical sickness. Had there been something wrong with the whiskey I had drunk at my mother's house? It would appear so.
I thought about what I had just said to Abbie, about her being angry because her father had turned into a full-fledged homo and because of this she couldn't have intercourse with him any more. It had been a lucky guess, a guess that she might want her father, and it appeared now that it was a correct guess.
I got up from the sofa after a time and went to the bathroom and tried to heave again. There was nothing in my stomach, of course, so it was imposible to bring anything up but bitter stomach acid. I had a drink of water and returned to the sofa and sat down, holding my head in my hands. Even my head ached.
The bedroom door opened. "Give me a drink, Robert," Abbie said, a change in her tone of voice.
I got the bottle and took it over to her. "Here you are," I said coldly. "Going to get drunk?"
"No," she said. "I want something to settle my nerves, that's all. I'm a nervous wreck."
I said nothing but returned to the sofa, my head buzzing and swimming, and slumped down on it.
She came close to me. "What happened to you, Robert? You look ill."
"Been throwing up," I said.
"Is something wrong?"
"Obviously."
"Are you ill, Robert?" she persisted.
I became sarcastic. "Of course not, dear. I throw up now in the evenings instead of watching television."
"Don't be nasty."
I laughed. "Look who's talking about being nasty." I stopped laughing immediately, for my stomach started to rebel again.
"What on earth is wrong with you? I never saw you this way before. You look terrible."
"I don't know. I'm just sick to my stomach."
"Did your ... no ... I won't say it."
"You started to say did my mother make me sick. The answer is no. My mother and I got along quite well."
"You really love your mother, don't you, Robert?"
"Hell no. I don't love anybody. People give me a pain, all of them."
She pushed her blonde hair away from her face and eyed me strangely. "Do I, Robert?"
"Afraid so."
"You don't love me any more?"
"How can I love anyone who acts the way you do?"
"How do I act, Robert?"
"Unreasonable."
"I don't mean to be unreasonable."
"Well, you are."
"Robert, let's not fight. Let's go to bed and make love."
I made a face. "No thanks, I'm already sick."
"Am I really that repulsive to you now, Robert?" Her face was ashen.
Again I was sorry I said what I did. "No, Abbie. It's just that I feel like hell. Something I ate, maybe."
"Maybe," she said slowly, "it was the whiskey you drank at your mother's."
"I've drunk whiskey at home before and it never made me sick."
"Did you say at home? Is that your home, where your mother lives? I thought your home was here with me."
"Don't make a big thing out of that, please. I don't feel like fighting."
"You seem to be doing quite a bit of it."
"Look, I'm sick to my stomach. Will you leave me alone?"
"You've been poisoned, Robert," she said firmly. "I know you have."
I stared at her. "W-What?"
"You've been poisoned. What's more, I think your mother has been poisoning my father regularly. I think she's killing him by inches. She wants to get rid of him so she can have ... well, you know what I mean."
I stood up now and glared at her. "What the hell are you talking about?"
She knocked her blonde hair out of her eyes again. "It's just a feeling I have. I think your mother would like to get rid of me, too. Both me and my father. Then she could have her son and lover back with her all the time."
"Nuts. That's nonsense."
"Is it? I doubt it."
"What makes you think such a thing?"
"Because my father is growing more and more ill by the day."
"If you think she's poisoning your father, why don't you go to the police?"
"Because I can't. If I did that, she'd tell them he was a ... homosexual."
"So what about it? He is, you know."
She started to cry again but stopped it almost immediately. "What's happened to everybody, Robert? You, me. your mother, my father. What's going on with us?"
"The whole thing is a goddamned awful mess," I said and meant it.
"I agree with you. Everything is all fouled up and it's all your mother's fault."
"I wouldn't say that. I'd say it was mostly your father's fault. What woman wants to be married to a fag?"
She changed the entire context of our conversation then. "Robert," she said, "have you thought any more about answering that ad in the paper, the one about the exciting couple wanting to meet another couple?"
"No," I said shortly.
"Maybe it might be good for both of us."
"Forget it. I'm not interested in anything at the moment. I'm too damned sick."
"I think we ought to try it, Robert. If we don't, who knows what's going to happen to us? As it is, we're drifting further and further apart every day."
"Big deal," I growled.
"Don't you care about saving our marriage?"
"How would screwing two other people help our marriage?"
"I don't know, but I've heard that it's helped other couples."
"Who said so?"
"Lots of people say so. I've heard it many times."
"Nuts."
"It might be good for you, Robert. At least, it would be better than going over to your mother's house and screwing her."
"I don't intend going there again."
She sighed. "You say that now because you're upset, but I wonder if you really mean it."
"I mean it. The hell with her."
"Is it the hell with me, too. Is that your attitude now?"
"I wish you'd leave me alone. I've told you over and over that I'm sick."
"I don't care if you are, Robert. I've got hot pants something awful. I can't stand it any longer. I'm burning up and my husband won't do anything about it."
"Take the car and go out to that Sexualis joint. You'll find some guy there who'll be more than willing to lay you."
"That's a fine way to talk to your own wife."
"It's the way I happen to feel."
"Are you sure that's the way you feel."
"You're damned right I'm sure. Now leave me alone."
"All right, Robert. I'll leave you alone, but let me tell you what I'm going to do right now."
"All right, tell me and then shut up."
She drew herself up and glared at me fiercely. "I'm going over next door and get Hu Chou and ... suck off his Chinese cock. How do you like that, you son of a bitch?"