“How did the Sparine work?” she said finally.
“Fine,” he said.
“You were able to take it before you went in? I’m glad you had it. They’re very good, especially for something like this that overtaxes you.” Then, rallying, she said, “I don’t see how you can leave me. What would happen to you? This is the worst possible time. You’ve undergone a dreadful traumatic situation these last couple of weeks. We both have. And this divorce business, this having to go into court, was the ultimate.” Now she was attentive; her voice became quiet, and her expression changed to a tough acuteness. Taking hold of his arm she steered him toward the house. “You haven’t had anything to eat, have you?”
“No,” he said. He held back, refusing to let her budge him.
“You’re really furious at me, aren’t you?” she said finally. “This is the most hostile you’ve been toward me.”
“That’s right,” he said.
“I suppose the hostility must have been there all the time, buried in your subconscious. Doctor Andrews says it’s better to say things like this if you feel them than not to.” She did not sound angry; she sounded resigned. “I don’t blame you,” she said, eying him, standing very close to him and gazing up into his face with her head cocked on one side, her hands behind her back. Perspiration, from the heat of the day, shone on her throat; he saw it as it appeared and evaporated and reappeared. It pulsed there. “Can’t we talk about it further?” she said. Instead of becoming childish she had become deeply rational. “A decision this serious should be discussed. Come inside and sit down and have lunch. Anyhow, where are you going to go? If someone has to go, good god, this is your house — you can’t let us stay here if you feel about me the way you do. We’ll go to a motel. I mean, that’s no problem.”
To that, he said nothing.
Fay said, “If you leave me you won’t have a god damn thing. Maybe there are character traits in me that should be changed — that’s why I go to Doctor Andrews, isn’t it? And if there’re things wrong with me, can’t you tell me the right way to act? Can’t you put me in my place? I want you to tell me what to do. Do you think I respect a man who I can push around?”
“Then let me go,” he said.
“I think you’re nuts to go,” Fay said.
“Maybe so,” he said. Turning around, he walked away.
From behind him, Fay said in a firm voice, “I promised the girls that we’d take them down to Fairyland this afternoon.”
He could scarcely believe his ears. “What?” he said. “What the hell is ‘fairyland’?”
“Down in Oakland,” she said, facing him with composure. “They heard all about it on Popeye. They want to see King Fuddle’s castle. I told them when you got back we’d go.”
“I never said that,” he said. “You never told me.”
“Well,” she said, “I know how you don’t like to be bothered.”
“God damn you,” he said. “Committing me.”
“It’ll only take a couple of hours. An hour ride from here.”
“More like two,” he said.
“You should never break a promise to a child,” she said. “Anyhow, if you’re going to walk out on us and leave us, you should want to do something so they’ll remember you. Do you want them to have a last impression of you not giving a damn about their interests?”
He said, “It doesn’t matter what last impression they have of me, because you’ll manage to tell them something about me that’ll make me look so weak and awful –”
“They’re listening,” she said.
On the porch, the two girls had appeared. They had their cake on a big plate. “Look!” Bonnie called down. Both girls beamed at him.
“Nice,” he said.
“Well,” Fay said. “Is this too much to ask of you? Then you can walk out on us.”
The girls, obviously paying no attention to what either adult was saying, called down, “What kind of icing do you want? Mommy said to wait and ask you.”
He said to them, “You want to go to Fairyland?”
At that, they both came racing down the steps; the cake was put aside on the railing, abandoned.
“Okay,” he said, above the clamor. “We’ll go. But let’s get started.”
Fay stood watching, her arms folded. “I’ll go get a coat,” she said. To the girls, she said, “You both get your coats.”
The girls scampered back into the house.
To Fay he said nothing. He got into the car, behind the wheel. She did not join him; she waited for the girls. As she waited she got her cigarettes from the spot at which she had left them, lit up, and did a little more digging.
The howling of the children made him weary. Everywhere kids raced and screamed, in and out of the bright, newly-painted storybook buildings that made up the Oakland Park Department’s idea of Fairyland. He had parked quite far from it, not being sure exactly where it was, and the walk alone had worn him out.
Bonnie and Elsie appeared at the bottom of a slide, waved at him and Fay, and scurried to join the other children at the stairs leading back up.
“It’s nice here,” Fay said.
In the center of Fairyland, Little Bo Peep’s lambs were being fed from a bottle. A middle-aged woman’s voice, amplified by loudspeakers, told the children all to come running to see.
“Isn’t that funny,” Fay said. “We come all the way down here to see lambs being fed. I wonder why they feed them from bottles. I guess they think it’s cuter.”
After the girls had finished with the slide they wandered on. Now they had found the wishing well and were fooling with it; he only vaguely noticed them.
Fay said, “I wonder which is Fuddle’s castle.”
He didn’t answer.
“This is tiring,” she said. “I guess you already had enough for one day.”
Presently they arrived at the refreshment stand. The children had orange drink and hot dogs. Just beyond that they saw the ticket window and station house of the little train. Its narrow track ran into and out of Fairyland, passing among the trees beyond. On their way to Fairyland from the car they had noticed the track; in fact they had followed it to the main gate of Fairyland, which of course was on the opposite side from them. They had had to walk all around it.
As they had tramped along, looking in vain for the gate, Fay had said to him, “You know, you’re a schlimozl.”
“What’s that?” both girls had demanded.
Fay said, “A schlimozl is a person who always gets up to the ticket window at the ballpark just as the last bleacher seat is sold. And he doesn’t have enough money with him to buy a reserved seat.”
“That’s me,” he said.
To the girls, Fay explained, “You see, he parked on the opposite side from the entrance, and we had to walk all around. Now, if I had been driving I would have parked and we would have gotten out, and there we would have been. Right at the entrance. But a schlimozl always has bad luck. It’s an instinct with him.”
Yes, he thought. It’s true about me. There is a bad luck that gets me into things that I don’t want to be in, and then it keeps me there. It holds me there. And nothing that I do can get me out.
“It’s just my luck,” Fay said, “to marry a schlimozl. Maybe our luck will balance out, though.”
Now, he stood with her and the children, lined up to buy tickets for the little train. His legs ached and he wondered if he could live through it, the waiting in line for tickets and then, after getting tickets, the waiting for the train to return and take on passengers. At this moment the train was off somewhere in the park, out of sight. A whole raft of children, who had already gotten tickets, waited eagerly on the platform beyond the ticket window.
“It’ll take at least half an hour,” he said to Fay. “Is it worth it?”
Fay said, “This is the main event. Isn’t this what we saw them all doing? They have to ride on it.”
So he waited.
Alter a long time he was able to reach the ticket window and buy tickets for the four of them. Then he and Fay and the girls pushed on to the platform. By now the train had returned; children and their parents were spilling out of it, and the conductor was pointing the way out. A new load ran to the cars and began to board. The cars were small and irregularly-shaped. The occupants’ heads were forced almost to bump, as if by entering the car they became ancients nodding and dozing.