82
PARTISAN REVIEW
him, like she was doing a jitterbug.
Usually, for a while, they'd circle each other, snarling.
"You two, stop it," Nick and I would say in unison, shocked
to
see
her bouncing around with him, instead of dancing off with us to a safe
corner. "Come on, Dad. Come on, Ma," we'd call.
But then, more often than not, despite our pleas, they'd make con–
tact: a slap, a hold, a roll on the floor. He above her, swearing to battle
till death, she below responding with furious laughter and well-aimed
spit.
Usually, after a couple of rounds, we'd manage to pull them apart.
And they'd glare at each other from opposite sides of our kitchen table,
where the fights generally began, breathing dceply like prize fighters,
Nicky and I, red-eyed referees, standing betwecn them.
Sometimes, after one of these events, he'd leave for a day or two .
"My wife doesn't respect me," he'd call, as he marched out the
door. "An intolerable situation when a man's wife doesn't respect him"
- shocked and wounded evidently by our mother's change in style.
"Leave, big brave hero," she'd call back. "After pummeling a
woman and her children." And then weary from battle, oratory, and
whatever barbiturates she'd managed to charm from neighborhood
pharmacists, she'd sink, physically and rhetorically. "Oh, just get out and
drop dead, you little fuck," she'd say, barely holding her chin up with
two hands .
Sometimes the fights began when we were asleep or should have
been. We'd hear the warm-up, the thumps, then finally the call to help:
"Children, your father is murdering your mother again." And then we'd
go in, and pull them apart.
"Feel better, big hero?" she'd say, which would incite in him a
sashay towards her again, some whimpers from us, from her that wild
defiant laugh or a tossed shoe or book.
"For that, I'm going for the jugular," he would call then, widening
his mouth, as if to bite .
"Oh, try," she'd scream. "Drink blood, hero."
Like junior social workers, Nick and I would spout out sad ineffec–
tual cliches. "You two, try to see things through each other's eyes,"
we'd call to them as they glared at each other in horror and hatred.
"Try not to provoke him, Ma," we'd say.
"Provoke him?" she'd laugh. "He's his own person. Right, big
man?" she'd scream
to
him as if he were rooms away and not inches
above her, mouth agape.
In time, with practice, she became his equal, even superior, in reck–
lessness, vying with him for major billing and center stage. Then what an
