Stories in an Almost Classical Mode by Harold Brodkey Page A

the sun making you dizzy, and sand fleas making your legs twitch. She said, “I don’t think I like that. No, it’s nasty.” She looked uneasy. He said he hadn’t meant anything, a beach was a force of nature—he’d only meant to compare her to a force of nature.
    She was most peaceful when he was tired, half asleep (although in his pride he did not like admitting to her that he was tired). Then, sometimes, she’d touch him or smile in a warm way. It excited and exhilarated her when the three of them—Sukie, Robin, and Marcus—went out together in Robin’s car. Bars wouldn’t serve Sukie; in the car, Robin, Marcus, and Sukie passed a pint of bourbon back and forth. They drove on back roads, safe from observation in their world inside the car. They often went at ninety, the automobile swaying, with only the loosest connection to the road, the earth, to fixed locations. The air inside the car was dry and warmed by the heater and chilled by cold leaking in at the windows, and faintly visible with their breaths, and sweetish with the smell of whiskey. Sukie’s excitement affected Marcus as if she were a flag.
    She cried, “A ciggy-boo, I must have a ciggy-boo. Did you remember my Sen-Sen?” She said, “That school’s a tomb!”
    Robin said, “ ‘The grave’s a fine and private place, / But none, I think, do there embrace.’ ”
    Sukie said, “I love you, Marco.”
    Outside the car, moonlight lay tremulously on the thin fields. Marcus said, “The world is coming to an end tonight.”
    Sukie said, “Don’t be gloomy. Let yourself go on the Happiness Swings.” Happiness Swings were the opposite of Bad Weeks. “It’s a Bad Week,” Sukie sometimes said.
    Marcus said, “I am on it.”
    But Sukie said, “No, you’re not.” She turned to Robin. “Isn’t Marcus difficult? He scares me.”
    Robin agreed. Marcus was awesome.
    Marcus didn’t see it. Robin’s tongue was more cutting than his—Robin said Gamma Foster had a face like the Bible. Sukie and Robin were less sentimental, less eager to please, too, than he was. “Do I seem to you abnormal? Maybe what bothers you is that I’m Jewish.”
    “But you’re not all Jewish,” Robin said.
    Sukie said, “It isn’t being Jewish that makes you so difficult.”
    Marcus was accustomed to women approving of him most when he was happy. “Oh, God, I’m happy!” he exclaimed. “You just don’t know. I used to think when I was a kid nothing would ever happen.”
    “All kids think that,” Robin said, one arm on Sukie’s shoulder.
    Sukie said, “I did. Do you want to hear a joke? Knock, knock. Who’s there? Abie. Abie who? A.B.C.” She giggled and leaned her head on Marcus’s shoulder, then on Robin’s.
    They stopped and walked barefoot in the snowy field, shouting and laughing. Marcus threw himself down on the snow and stretched his arms out and said, “I am ready for Easter.” Sukie circled, turned round and around in the field, her shadow hopping behind her, then in front of her. Marcus said, “She’s dancing with crows.”
    Robin went for a walk while Marcus and Sukie lay in the car, their breaths feathery, their eyes shining in the dark. Robin returned, and then they drove to the door of Sukie’s school. The girl Marcus held was muffled in a coat, was warm, and smelled faintly of gardenia soap. “Oh, Pony, I have to go back to the tomb. I love you.”
    Robin said, “Wait, Suke! Better have some Sen-Sen.”
    Sukie said, “Oops, stupid me!” Smiling secretively, she put her arms around Robin’s neck and Robin kissed her ear.
    On the way back to Boston, Marcus said, “I don’t like the way you kiss Sukie. I’d like to smash your teeth in.”
    “Look, Pony. She happens to be my cousin. I—”
    “Shut up! Shut the hell up!” After a minute or so, Marcus said, “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Redbreast. You know I’m crazy. I’m so much in love, you know.” He sat slouched in his seat, tired, nervous, in an agony of