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PARTISAN REVIEW
closet was, most clearly, to be paid for doing nothing at all-for be–
ing me. Someone- a psychiatrist my mother consulted? - must have
suggested that what I needed was to feel singled out, special, loved.
Although this undoubtedly was what Lily, Rachel, Benjamin, Eric,
and Arthur needed, too, it was I who had begun to exhibit certain
bothersome clues to a state of inner distress, small resistances in my
natural functioning.
Interestingly enough, it wasn't Lily-whom I would have ex–
pected to complain about my special treatment - but Eric who was
most resentful. "But she's not
doing
anything!" I could hear him say to
my mother somewhere in the house when my father's key turned in
the lock. "I could do the same thing even better!"
There wasn't much my mother could argue back under the cir–
cumstances, but once in a while I would hear her reply soothingly,
"It's a girl's job," as though
that
had anything to do with anything.
I'm not sure why this odd ritual came to an end, but I think
Eric's protests helped hasten its demise; it had been created to make
me feel less overlooked, not to point up another child's similar sense
of bereavement. While it lasted, though, I felt assuaged by the pre–
tense that I worked, of an evening, at the "21" Club and that my
father was a passing gentleman whose tip came about logically, as
my due. Buy me, sell me-why, it made sense! The whole exchange
took a matter of seconds, but it felt wonderfully clear-cut, without
the web of emotion I generally spun around both my parents - that
hopelessly entangling skein of anger and need and pain.
I had heard about the "21" Club to begin with from my father.
His on-the-town anecdotes were one of the things I liked about him,
the snatches of songs he remembered from what I took to be his
bon
vivant
days at "21," the Stork Club, and the Latin Quarter. "Sam,
You Made the Pants Too Long" was his favorite tune; he would
break into it when he was in an especially relaxed mood - on a Fri–
day night without any guests-sing a raucous line or two, and then
fade out. "That's all I remember," he would say, smiling broadly
while looking around the table, as though he had just belted out a
show-stopping number and was now expecting a storm of applause.
"What can you do?" he say. "My memory's not so good anymore. I
work too hard supporting all you kids." And then he'd try it once
again, braying the music, hamming up the chorus, his voice strong
but not particularly lilting. There were other songs he liked - "Get
Me to the Church on Time," which he tried to do like Stanley Hollo-
