67: Flushed and giggly . . .
Little Follies, “The Static of the Spheres,” Chapter 4 begins
4
FLUSHED AND GIGGLY, Eliza and I returned to the living room after my bath and settled ourselves in front of the new radio. I was wearing a white terrycloth robe. Eliza tousled my hair and hugged my shoulders. Mr. Beaker looked up from his lists, acknowledged us with a smile, and went back to work.
Eliza turned the radio on, and she began twisting the dial, exploring for signals. For much of the time while she explored, she was between stations, and the living room was full of the noises that lie between stations on a radio dial, noises that are drowned out when we come upon a strong signal. Some of those noises come from within the receiver itself, produced by the operation of the receiver’s circuits, noises from within the machine. Other noises come from outside the receiver. The sources of some of those are local, familiar, homely. These may, for example, be produced by the ignition systems of passing Studebakers or by the motor in a refrigerator or by a toaster. The sources of others, however, are distant, exotic, intriguing. These may, for example, be produced by stations too far away for a clear signal to reach us, stations calling from God knows where, with voices as weak as that of a boy calling against the wind. Or they may originate in electrical discharges from the sun, from other stars, other galaxies: the pervasive and indecipherable, eternal and inestimable noise, the static of the spheres.
While Eliza and I are curled up on the floor twiddling the dial, searching for a signal, let me pause for a moment to plant in your mind the notion that our senses, like radio receivers, pick up lots of noise, and that in our perception of events the truth is sometimes nearly buried by static. Let me suggest, too, that in remembering the things that have happened to us, the people who have spoken to us, the things that they have said, we introduce new static, and that as time goes by we may even find, as I did with the whine from my little Philco, that the noise has become stronger than the signal.
“Oh, I know what we can do,” cried Eliza suddenly. “We can follow the new year as it approaches us, and then follow it across the country.”
“Calm down, you two,” said Mr. Beaker. He stood up from his work and stretched. He chuckled indulgently. “You seem quite worked up. Look at you. You’re flushed and giggly.”
Eliza looked at me and reddened a little more. So did I. We giggled again. Mr. Beaker walked over beside us and rumpled Eliza’s hair. He took another log from the wood box and drew back the mesh curtain that hung in front of the fire.
“Peter,” said Mr. Beaker. His back was toward us. He was working at the fire, using tongs to rearrange the logs. There was, it seemed to me, something stern, something menacing in his voice.
“Yes?” I answered. The word leaped from me like a small frightened animal. My heart began to beat quickly, and my voice seemed to tremble. I threw a wild look at Eliza. She made a motion with both hands, as if pushing against a plump, resilient pillow of air, and I could tell at once that she meant, “Slow down. Calm down.” I cleared my throat, and asked again, in a steadier voice, “Yes?”
Mr. Beaker spun around to look at me. The fire blazed suddenly, and the room filled with its heat. Perspiration formed on my forehead and upper lip. “Is something wrong with you, Peter?” he asked. “You sound odd. You almost sound frightened.”
I smiled at him. The smile was meant to be that smile of amused incredulity that we adults have learned to affect when we are caught doing something that we shouldn’t. For some reason, we continue to expect that smile to work for us, even though, as soon as we see it on anyone else, we say to ourselves, “This guy is as guilty as sin.” I thought that I had shaped it pretty well, but Mr. Beaker’s look remained one of concern, and when I look at this scene now in my mind’s eye, the smile on my face, the trembling lips, the blinking eyes look as if they belong on a plucky fellow with a noose around his neck.
Mr. Beaker reached toward me suddenly. I raised my hands to ward off the blow that I thought was coming. He reached between my hands and felt my forehead.
“I think he’s running a fever,” he said to Eliza.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “He’s still warm from his bath. The whole room was—steamy—very steamy—in there.” She took Mr. Beaker’s hand and held it against her own forehead. “See?” she asked. “I’m a little overheated myself.”
Mr. Beaker smiled and caressed Eliza’s forehead. He leaned forward and kissed the top of her head.
“I was thinking, Peter,” he said, turning to me, “that you ought to do as I am doing. You should decide what you would like to accomplish in the coming year and then, as the year turns, make some small start toward accomplishing it.”
“Maybe he already has,” said Eliza. She looked steadily at me for a moment. The fire was yellow and bright. It flared again, and the heat rushed over me. I thought that there was a good chance that I would either faint or throw up if I didn’t do something—move around a bit, take some deep breaths. I stood up quickly, as if inspired by Mr. Beaker’s suggestion.
“That’s right!” I cried. “You know what I want? I want—” I had spoken too quickly. I had a few ideas about what I wanted—vague ideas, certainly, but ideas just the same—but of the ones that came to mind, none were things that I could announce, or confess, to Mr. Beaker. I certainly could not have said to him, “I want Eliza,” and if somehow I had found it possible to say that, I would not have known how to say to him why I wanted Eliza or exactly what for. My mind hissed and crackled, much like a radio between stations. Now and then a strong, but inexpressible, desire came through as I looked wildly around the room, and at last, to my relief, something came through strong and clear: Gumma’s radio. “—I want a radio like this,” I said.
[I’ll be taking a break from posting from August 16 through August 20 while I prepare the launch of the Personal History podcast—every episode, read to you, by me. So, the continuation of this chapter will appear on Monday, August 23, 2021. In the meantime, I’ll keep you posted on the progress of the podcast launch. — Eric Kraft]
You can listen to this episode on the Personal History podcast.
In Topical Guide 67, Mark Dorset considers Signal and Noise; and Memory: Sources of Inaccuracy from this episode.
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At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?” and “Life on the Bolotomy,” the first three novellas in Little Follies.