Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust [18]
As soon as she had gobbled up her salad, he brought her a large red apple. She ate the fruit more slowly, nibbling daintily, her smallest finger curled away from the rest of her hand. When she had finished it, she went back to the living room and Homer followed her.
Harry still lay as they had left him, stretched out on the sofa. The heavy noon-day sun hit directly on his face, beating down on him like a club. He hardly felt its blows, however. He was busy with the stabbing pain in his chest. He was so busy with himself that he had even stopped trying to plan how to get money out of the big dope.
Homer drew the window curtain to shade his face.
Harry didn’t even notice. He was thinking about death. Faye bent over him. He saw, from under his partially closed eyelids, that she expected him to make a reassuring gesture. He refused. He examined the tragic expression that she had assumed and didn’t like it. In a serious moment like this, her ham sorrow was insulting.
“Speak to me, Daddy,” she begged.
She was baiting him without being aware of it.
“What the hell is this,” he snarled, “a Tom show?”
His sudden fury scared her and she straightened up with a jerk. He didn’t want to laugh, but a short bark escaped before he could stop it. He waited anxiously to see what would happen. When it didn’t hurt he laughed again. He kept on, timidly at first, then with growing assurance. He laughed with his eyes closed and the sweat pouring down his brow. Faye knew only one way to stop him and that was to do something he hated as much as she hated his laughter. She began to sing.
“Jeepers Creepers! Where’d ya get those peepers?…”
She trucked, jerking her buttocks and shaking her head from side to side.
Homer was amazed. He felt that the scene he was witnessing had been rehearsed. He was right. Their bitterest quarrels often took this form; he laughing, she singing.
“Jeepers Creepers! Where’d ya get those eyes? Gosh, all git up! How’d they get so lit up? Gosh all git…”
When Harry stopped, she stopped and flung herself into a chair. But Harry was only gathering strength for a final effort. He began again. This new laugh was not critical; it was horrible. When she was a child, he used to punish her with it. It was his masterpiece. There was a director who always called on him to give it when he was shooting a scene in an insane asylum or a haunted castle.
It began with a sharp, metallic crackle, like burning sticks, then gradually increased in volume until it became a rapid bark, then fell away again to an obscene chuckle. After a slight pause, it climbed until it was the nicker of a horse, then still higher to become a machinelike screech.
Faye listened helplessly with her head cocked on one side. Suddenly, she too laughed, not willingly, but fighting the sound.
“You bastard!” she yelled.
She leaped to the couch, grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to shake him quiet.
He kept laughing.
Homer moved as though he meant to pull her away, but he lost courage and was afraid to touch her. She was so naked under her skimpy dress.
“Miss Greener,” he pleaded, making his big hands dance at the end of his arms. “Please, please…”
Harry couldn’t stop laughing now. He pressed his belly with his hands, but the noise poured out of him. It had begun to hurt again.
Swinging her hand as though it held a hammer, she brought her fist down hard on his mouth. She hit him only once. He relaxed and was quiet.
“I had to do it,” she said to Homer when he took her arm and led her away.
He guided her to a chair in the kitchen and shut the door. She continued to sob for a long time. He stood behind her chair, helplessly, watching the rhythmical heave of her shoulders. Several times his hands moved forward to comfort her, but he succeeded in curbing them.
When she was through crying, he handed her a napkin and she dried her face. The cloth was badly stained by her rouge and mascara.
“I’ve spoilt it,” she said, keeping her face averted. “I’m very sorry.”
“It was dirty,” Homer said.
She took a compact from her pocket and looked at herself in its tiny mirror.