2024/4/12 16:27 EncoreA Story – Commentary Magazine

MARCH 1959 CULTURE & CIVILIZATION

EncoreA Story
HE'S in that Greek restaurant every night. I thought you knew that," Merta told
her brother. 'What does he do…

by James Purdy

“H e’s in that Greek restaurant every night. I thought you knew that,”
Merta told her brother.

“What does he do in it?” Spence said, wearily attentive.

“I don’t go to Greek restaurants and I don’t spy on him,” she said.

“Then how do you know so certainly he is there every night?”

“How do you know anything? He’s not popular at the college. He says he likes to talk to Spyro,
the restaurant owner’s son, about painting. I don’t know what they do!”

“Well, don’t tell me if you don’t know,” her brother said. He got up and took his hat to go.

“Of course,” she continued, anxiously stepping in front of him to detain his going, “it isn’t so
much that Spyro is all at fault, you know. There are things wrong with Gibbs, too. As I said, he’s
not popular at the college. He wasn’t asked to join a fraternity, you know. And the restaurant has
made up for that, I suppose. It’s always open for him day or night.”

“Maybe you should make your own home more of a place he could bring his friends to,” Spence
said, a kind of cold expressionless tone in his voice.

“You would say that,” she repeated almost without emotion. “I don’t suppose you ever half
considered what it is, I mean this home. It’s not a home. It’s a flat, and I’m a woman without a
husband.”

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“I know, I know, Merta. You’ve done it all alone. Nobody’s lifted a finger but you.” His weariness
itself seemed to collapse when he said this, and he looked at her with genuine feeling.

“I’m not trying to get your pity. I wanted to tell somebody what was going on at Spyro’s is all. I
needed to talk to somebody.”

“I think Spyro’s is the best place he could go,” Spence said.

“And Spyro’s awful father and grandfather!” she cried as though seeing something from far back
of dread and ugliness.

“The Matsoukases?” Spence was surprised at her vehemence.

“Yes, the Matsoukases! With their immense eyes and black beards. Old Mr. Matsoukas, the
grandfather, came here one evening, and tried to get fresh with me.”

“I can hardly believe it,” Spence said.

“You mean I am making it up,” she accused him.

“No, no, I just can’t visualize it.”

“And now,” she returned to the only subject which interested her, “Gibbs is there all the time as
though it was his home.”

“Do you talk to him about it, Merta?”

“I can’t. I can’t tell him and nag him about not going to the Greek restaurant at night. It’s glamor
and life to him, I suppose, and I suppose it is different. A different sort of place. The old man
hasn’t allowed them to put in juke boxes or television or anything, and you know Gibbs likes
anything funny or different, and there isn’t anything funny or different but maybe Spyro’s. None
of the college crowd goes there, and Gibbs feels he’s safe there from their criticism and can drink
his coffee in peace.”

“Well it sounds so dull, drinking coffee in a seedy Greek restaurant, I don’t see why a mother
should worry about her son going there. And call me out of bed to talk about!”

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“Oh Spence,” she said urgently again, “he shouldn’t go there. Don’t you see? He shouldn’t be
there.”

“I don’t see that at all,” Spence said. “And, Merta, I wish you would quit calling me up at this
hour of the night to talk about your son, who is nearly a grown man by now. After all I have my
profession to worry about too. . . .”

She stared at him.

“I had to talk with somebody about Spyro,” she said.

“Oh it’s Spyro then you wanted to talk about,” Spence said, the irritation growing in his manner.

“Spyro,” she said vaguely, as though it were Spence who himself had mentioned him and thus
brought him to mind. “I never cared much for that young man.”

“Why not?” Spence was swift to hold her to anything vague and indirect because he felt that
vagueness and indirectness was her method.

“Well, Spyro does all those paintings and drawings that are so bizarre.”

“Bizarre,” he paused on the word. “They’re nearly good, if you ask me.”

“I don’t like Spyro,” she said.

“Why don’t you invite him here, if your son likes him?” he put the whole matter in her hands.

“When I work in a factory all day long, Spence. . . .”

“You don’t feel like doing anything but working in a factory,” he said irritably.

“I thought my own brother would be a little more understanding,” she said coldly angry.

“I wish you would be of Gibbs,” he told her.

“Oh Spence, please, please.”

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“Please, nothing. You always have a problem, but the problem is you, Merta. You’re old and tired
and complaining, and because you can’t put your finger on what’s wrong you’ve decided that
there’s something wrong with your son because he goes, of all places, to a Greek restaurant and
talks to Spyro who draws rather well and who is now making a portrait of your son.”

“Spence! Don’t tell me that!”

“You dear old fool, Merta,” he said and he put on his hat now, which she looked at, he thought,
rather critically and also with a certain envy.

“That’s a nice hat,” she forced herself to say at last.

“Well a doctor can’t look like a nobody,” he said, and then winced at his own words.

“What you should do, Merta,” he hurried on with another speech, “is get some sort of hobby,
become a lady bowler, get on the old women’s curling team, or meet up with some gent your own
age. And let your son go his own way.”

“You are comforting,” Merta said, pretending to find humor in his words.

_____________

“Was that Spence leaving just now?” Gibbs said putting down some books.

Merta held her face up to be kissed by him, which he did in a manner resembling someone
surreptitiously spitting out a seed.

“And how was Spyro tonight?” she said in a booming encouraging voice whose suddenness and
loudness perhaps surprised even her.

He looked at her much as he had when as a small boy she had suddenly burst into the front
room and asked him what he was being so very still for.

“Spyro is doing a portrait of me,” he told her.

“A portrait,” Merta said, trying hard to keep the disapproval out of her voice.

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“That’s what it is,” Gibbs said, sitting down at the far end of the room and taking out his
harmonica.

She closed her eyes in displeasure, but said nothing as he played “How High the Moon.” He
always played, it seemed, when she wanted to talk to him.

“Would you like Spyro to come to visit us some day?” she said.

“Visit us?”

“Pay a call,” she smiled, closing her eyes.

“What would he pay us a call for?” he wondered. Seeing her pained hurt look, he expanded: “I
mean what would he get to see here.”

“Oh me,” she replied laughing. “I’m so beautiful.”

“Spyro thinks you don’t like him,” Gibbs said, and while she was saying Tommyrot! Gibbs went
on: “In fact, he thinks everybody in this town dislikes him.”

“They are the only Greeks, it’s true,” Merta said.

“And we’re such a front family in town, of course!” he said with sudden fire.

“Well, your Uncle Spence is somebody,” she began, white, and her mouth gaping a little, but
Gibbs started to play on the harmonica again, cutting her off.

She tried to control her feelings tonight partly because she had such a splitting headache.

“Would you like a dish of strawberry jello?” Merta said above the sound of the harmonica
playing.

“What?” he cried.

“Some strawberry jello,” she repeated, a little embarrassment now in her voice.

“What would I want that for?” he asked, putting down the harmonica with impatience.

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“I suddenly got hungry for some, and went out there and made it. It’s set by now and ready to
eat.”

There was such a look of total defeat on her old gray face that Gibbs said he would have some.

“I’ve some fresh coffee too,” she said, a touch of sophistication in her voice, as if coffee here were
unusual and exotic also.

“I’ve had my coffee,” he said. “Just the jello, thank you.”

“Does Spyro always serve you coffee?” she said, her bitterness returning now against her will as
they stood in the kitchen.

“I don’t know,” he said belligerently.

“But I thought you saw him every evening,” she feigned sweet casualness.

“I never notice what he serves,” Spence said loudly and indifferently.

“Would you like a large dish or a small dish of jello?” she said heavily.

“Small, for Christ’s sake,” he told her.

“Gibbs!” she cried. Then, catching herself, she said, “Small it will be, dear.”

“What have you got to say that you can’t bring it out!” he suddenly turned on her, and taking the
dish of jello from her hand he put it down with a bang on the oilcloth covering of the tiny
kitchen table.

“Gibbs, let’s not have any trouble. Mother has a terrible headache tonight.”

“Well, why don’t you go to bed then,” he said in his stentorian voice.

“Perhaps I will,” she said weakly. She sat down and began eating right out of the jello bowl. She
ate nearly all the rubbery stiff red imitation strawberry jello and drank in hurried gulps the
coffee loaded with condensed milk.

_____________

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“Spence gave me hell all evening,” she said eating. “He thinks I would be happier if I found a
fellow!”

She laughed but her laughter brought no response from Gibbs.

“I know I have nothing to offer anybody. Let’s face it.”

“Why do you have to say let’s face it ?” Gibbs snapped at her.

“Is there something wrong grammatically with it?” she wondered taking her spoon out of her
mouth.

“Every dumb son of a bitch in the world is always saying let’s face it.”

“And your own language is quite refined,” she countered.

“Yes, let’s face it, it is,” he said, a bit weakly, and he took out the harmonica from his pocket,
looked at it, and put it down noiselessly on the oilcloth.

“I’ve always wanted to do right by you, Gibbs. Since you was a little boy, I have tried. But no
father around, and all. . . .”

“Mom, we’ve been over this ten thousand times. Can’t we just forget I didn’t have an old man,
and you worked like a team of dogs to make up for everything.”

“Yes, let’s do. Let’s forget it all. For heaven’s sake, I’m eating all this jello,” she said gaily.

“Yes, I noticed,” he said.

“But I want to do for you,” she told him suddenly again with passion, forgetting everything but
her one feeling now, and she put out her hand to him. “You’re all I have, Gibbs.”

He stared at her. She was weeping.

“I’ve never been able to do anything for you,” she said. “I know I’m not someone you want to
bring your friends home to see.”

“Mom, for Christ’s sake,” he said.

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“Don’t swear,” she said. “I may not know grammar or English, but I’m not profane and I never
taught you to be. So there,” she said, and she brought out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes,
making them, he saw, even older and more worn with the rubbing.

“Mom,” he said, picking up the harmonica again, “I don’t have any friends.”

“No?” she said laughing a little. Then understanding his remark more clearly as her weeping
calmed itself, she said, commanding again, “What do you mean now by that?”

“Just what I said, Mom. I don’t have any friends. Except maybe Spyro.”

“Oh that Greek boy. We would come back to him.”

“How could I have friends, do you think. After all. . . . ”

“Don’t you go to college like everybody else,” she said hurriedly. “Aren’t we making the attempt,
Gibbs?”

“Don’t get so excited. I don’t care because I don’t have any friends. I wasn’t accusing you of
anything.”

“You go to college and you ought to have friends,” she said. “Isn’t that right?”

“Look, for Christ’s sake, just going to college doesn’t bring you friends. Especially a guy like me
with. . . .”

“What’s wrong with you,” she said. “You’re handsome. You’re a beautiful boy.”

“Mom, Je-sus.”

“No wonder that Greek is painting you. You’re a fine-looking boy.”

“Oh it isn’t that way at all,” he said, bored. “Spyro has to paint somebody.”

“I don’t know why you don’t have friends,” she said. “You have everything. Good looks,
intelligence, and you can speak and act refined when you want to. . . .”

“You have to be rich at that college. And your parents have to be. . . .”

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“Is that all then?” she said, suddenly very white and facing him.

“Mom, I didn’t mean anything about you. I didn’t say any of this to make you feel. . . .”

“Be quiet,” she said. “Don’t talk.”

“Maybe we should talk about it, Mom.”

“I can’t help what happened. What was was, the past is the past. Whatever wrong I may have
done, the circumstances of your birth, Gibbs. . . .”

“Mom, please, this isn’t about you at all.”

“I’ve stood by you, Gibbs,” she hurried on as if testifying before a deaf judge. “You can never deny
that.” She stared at him as though she had lost her reason.

“I’d like to have seen those rich women with their fat manicured husbands do what I’ve done,”
she said now as though powerless to stop, words coming out of her mouth that she usually kept
and nursed for her long nights of sleeplessness and hate.

She stood up quickly as if to leave the room.

“With no husband or father to boot in this house! I’d like to see them do what I did. God damn
them,” she said.

_____________

Gibbs waited there, pale now as she was, and somehow much smaller before her wrath.

“God damn everybody!” she cried. “God damn everybody.”

She sat down and began weeping furiously.

“I can’t help it if you don’t have friends,” she told him, quieting herself with a last supreme effort.
“I can’t help it at all.”

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“Mom,” he said. He wanted to weep too, but there was something too rocklike, too bitter and
immovable inside him to let the tears come loose. Often at night as he lay in his bed knowing
that Merta was lying in the next room sleepless, he had wanted to get up and go to her and let
them both weep together, but he could not.

“Is there anything I could do to change things here at home for you?” she said suddenly wiping
away the tears, and tensing her breast to keep more of the torrent from gathering inside herself.
“Anything at all I can do, I will,” she said.

“Mom,” he said, and he got up and as he did so the harmonica fell to the linoleum floor.

“You dropped your little . . . toy,” she said tightening her mouth.

“It’s not a toy,” he began. “This is,” he began again. “You see, this is the kind the professionals
play on the stage . . . and everywhere.”

“I see,” she said, struggling to keep the storm within her quiet, the storm that now if it broke
might sweep everything within her away, might rage and rage until only dying itself could stop
it.

“Play something on it, Gibbs darling,” she said.

He wanted to ask her if she was all right.

“Play, play,” she said desperately.

“What do you want me to play, Mom?” he said, deathly pale.

“Just play any number you like,” she suggested.

He began then to play “How High the Moon” but his lips trembled too much.

“Keep playing,” she said beating her hands with the heavy veins and the fingers without rings or
embellishment.

He looked at her hands as his lips struggled to keep themselves on the tiny worn openings of the
harmonica which he had described as the instrument of the professionals.

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“What a funny tune,” she said. “I never listened to it right before. What did you say they called
it?”

“Mom,” he said. “Please!”

He stretched out his hand.

“Don’t now, don’t,” she commanded. “Just play. Keep playing.”

_____________

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