“How the fuck should I know? I’m not a genius. You think you know, though. You’re the fucking genius. You think it’s all my fault because we’re broke all the time and living like niggers in a shack in the middle of nowhere, eating goddamned macaroni and cheese out of a goddamned no-name box.” He looks scornfully over at the saucepan on the stove. “You could use a little more imagination, you know. You didn’t show much interest when I brought up getting some shrimp tonight. I could’ve gotten ten or fifteen pounds of shrimp easy, the way they’re running, and we could freeze what we didn’t eat right off, or we could sell some. The catwalks along the bridges are crowded these nights with people using a little imagination.”
“You forgot to get the nets,” she says, “because you saw an old retired baseball player.”
“Well, you didn’t want me to go out shrimping anyhow. All you do is bring me down about things I get excited about. You, you never get excited about anything anymore. All you do is mope around here with a long face.” He crosses to the television set and snaps it off. “I hate that fucking thing!”
“Bob, you can’t hear yourself, or you’d shut up. Can you listen to me for a minute?”
“Gimme a beer.”
Elaine gets up and opens the refrigerator and passes a can of Schlitz over the counter, as if she were a waitress and he a customer. Then she stands at the counter, both hands grasping the edge of it, and says to him, “Now, you listen to me for a few minutes. I know you’re working hard, as hard as anyone can. And I know you’re worried and scared. Like I am. And you’re right, it’s true, this life is shit,” she says, and the word “shit,” because he’s never heard her say it before, sounds to Bob so powerfully derogatory in her mouth that he shudders. To Bob, Elaine has made the term suddenly so strong that he instinctively wants to defend this life, his life, against it. But he’s too late. He has said it himself, and now, with her saying it, he sees the word and his life as one thing, as waste, excrement, offal, as a secret, dirty thing that should be hidden or buried, as a thing to be ashamed of.
His mind is flitting wildly about, a maddened bird in a cage, pursued by a word that repels him but that cannot be denied, and he hears only bits of what Elaine is telling him, for, having no sense of the impact of her use of the word, believing she was merely quoting him, reassuring him, she thought, Elaine goes on to tell him what she knows he does not want to hear. She tells him that their daughter Ruthie is ill, “emotionally disturbed,” the counselor at school said, and that she’s going to have to start getting twice weekly treatment at the mental health clinic in Marathon, which will cost money, not a lot of money, but because they’re poor, more money than they have, which is no money at all, so she, Elaine, has decided to take a job in Islamorada. In fact, she accepted the job this morning, waiting on tables at the Rusty Scupper five nights a week. “I know,” she says rapidly, trying to stave off the explosion, “I know I should’ve talked it out with you first, but it had to be done, Bob, and I just saw the sign this morning when I took the girls to the beach…. No, that’s not true. I asked Horace next door if he knew of any jobs, when he took us up to the beach, and he told me about it, and I just went in and asked about the job and got it offered to me, so I took it. And I know I should’ve told you about Ruthie when the school called, but it was only yesterday, and it seemed so hard a thing to tell you, Bob, because of all you have to worry about, and the way you’ve been lately, kind of distant and lost in your own thoughts and depressed and all. I just wanted to wait till I had a way to pay for it before I told you about it, so it wouldn’t seem so bad.”
“Sonofabitch! There’s not any goddamn thing wrong with Ruthie that some steady discipline wouldn’t cure!” Bob smacks the flat of his hand against the counter, and his face tightens and reddens. “You never tell her to cut out that damned thumb-sucking. You just sit around whispering with her about how rotten everything is, and then I come home, and I have to be the bad guy. You tell that fancy counselor down to the school that? It’s no fucking wonder she’s acting retarded!”
“Emotionally disturbed.”
“Emotionally disturbed, then!” He bats the words back. “I can tell you about ’emotionally disturbed’! I’m ’emotionally disturbed’! I’m goddamned disturbed that you go around my back the way you do. The way you always have, too. And you know what the hell I’m talking about, so don’t give me that look. And now with this job business. Jesus H. Christ! And Horace! Horace, that fat pig, that slimy, woman-sniffing pig. I know what that guy’s interested in, don’t worry. And you do too.”
