My Search for Warren Harding by Robert Plunket

Author:Robert Plunket
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811234702
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2023-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

12

I don’t know what I thought her reaction was going to be.

Actually I did. I pictured it going one of two ways:

— She gets very excited, realizes she’s famous in her own pathetic little way, starts making plans to go on Donahue, and generally makes a fool out of herself (this because I knew Jonica).

OR

— She has a nervous breakdown; the knowledge of her family’s tawdry background pushes her over the edge on which she has been teetering since about age two. Now she can never, never be a “normal person” (this because I knew myself).

Let me try to explain what I mean. I may have rejected many of the values of the Pittsburgh haute bourgeoisie of which I am a product, but I still have certain standards I cling to. I don’t regret, for instance, that everyone in my family has seen fit to get married before they reproduce themselves or that their choice of partners are people who are attractive, well educated, and not likely to be made fun of at the country club. Not that I would be caught dead at the country club. But still and all. My sister’s unfortunate first marriage to an Italian who designed stickpins which he sold himself from a makeshift table in front of the J. C. Penney Building on Sixth Avenue was a horrible experience for the whole family. “Susie’s solution for now,” my mother kept stoically referring to it. After about six months, she finally came to her senses and is now married to a wheeler-dealer in Cleveland who owns six Fotomats and is also an attorney. This left me to inherit the title of family ne’er-do-well. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Pittsburgh. I think I’m too emotional or too driven or too something for that grey city on the banks of the Monongahela. “The Medea of Mt. Lebanon” Pam once called me.

So it was with a great deal of trepidation that I began my confession. Was I playing with fire? Was I making a big mistake? Maybe I should consult first with Pam’s psychiatrist, Dr. Munsterberger, via long distance. He was a well-known comforter of neurotic females. But once I started, I couldn’t stop. It all came pouring out.

As many times as I’d played the scenario for this moment over in my mind, nothing prepared me for what really happened.

Jonica, quite simply, couldn’t have cared less.

I laid out the whole story — practically the whole story anyway — and what does she do?

She looks at me with those big cow eyes and says, “Elliot, you hurt me.”

At first I thought she meant I had inflicted psychic pain. Then she looked down at the wrist I had twisted.

“You hurt me. No matter what you think about another person you should never hurt them. Even Vernon never hurt me. Physically.”

Now, I knew she had been listening. Her eyes had been open during the whole story. She had even nodded at several points.

I got up and walked over to the window.

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