Day Twenty-Two (Sunday, July 18, 1971)

I felt deranged when I finally woke. What do they say?—all X’s and O’s. I lay helpless, breathing, letting reality pull me up. The sheets were on the floor. Dried blood streaked across the pillow. My head smarted and felt twice its size. I sat on the edge of the mattress, ruminating. My only article of clothing, my watch, said 11 a.m. Betty was in the kitchen talking to Ralph, who was outside tending the bonsai trees. Otto was no doubt up.

Quietly, I slipped on a pair of shorts and tiptoed to the bathroom.

Alakazam! The rug was clean; the tile sparkling; the white ceramic of the bathtub gleaming. Some kind of deodorizer replaced the bad smell.

I passed a mirror. My face was a twisted swell of colors and streaks. The skin above my right eye was puffed out two inches. The black skin below the eye looked indented. I looked like a Martian. My lower lip was fat, blistery, and cracked. If I strained, I could see out. The white of my eye was more red than white. There was a nasty cut on the brunt of my chin, embedded beneath the hairs of my beard. I felt like a monster. I had buttery deposits in the corner of my eyes; the left side of my face was corrugated with sheet and pillow marks. Betty caught sight of me as I made my way through the kitchen doorway. “You had a night to remember, didn’t you? Take a seat at that table, if you can find it. Do you feel up to breakfast?”

Astonished, I sat. Didn’t anything bother my aunt? Her manner was so even. She went down her supply of breakfast foods, trying to find what I could eat. I painfully objected; Betty insisted I needed something in my stomach.

“We wondered where you went to so late. We watched the late movie then went to bed. Your friend came into our bedroom this morning and the first thing he said was, ‘Roger was beaten up last night.’ He told us everything.”

My mother—had she been here—would have paced the floor endlessly with one hand covering her mouth and the other draped across her stomach, unable to function, let alone help. My father would have kicked my ass.

Pragmatically, Betty placed a bowl of Cheerios in front of me. After one mouthful I quit.

“I saw the bathroom this morning and knew something was wrong. My cooking isn’t bad enough to barf it up in the middle of the night.” She lit a Parliament and looked out the doorway. “Here comes Ralph.”

Ralph trudged through the back door, wearing a sun visor, old shorts, scuffed-up shoes, and gloves, carrying a garden trowel. “There’s the fighter.” He smiled big. “Tell me—win, lose, or draw?”

I tried to return the smile. Ow. I pushed the bowl of cereal away.

“Ralph, don’t make him laugh now. Look at his face for me, will you? I think we have to send him to the doctor.”

Ralph set his implements on the counter and made an examination. He checked my teeth, gums, jaw—everything that was sore. His eyes were roving and intensive. “How do you feel, Rocky Marciano? Woozy? I haven’t seen a shiner like that in a coon’s age. And your lip must’ve been cut by one of your teeth when that guy belted you, because it’s a single gash and goes pretty deep. Isn’t that what you’d think, Betty?”

“Don’t ask me,” Betty said bluntly. “I haven’t been in a fist fight in thirty-five years.”

“I’m awfully sorry about the bathroom.”

Betty snapped her fingers. “That bathroom is all spic-n-span. You worry about yourself.”

I put my elbow in the Cheerios and spilled the bowl all over the table.

The three of us talked it over; the verdict was to hold off going to the doctor for at least a day. It was Sunday, after all, and I wasn’t quite bad enough to go to the emergency room.

“From what Georgy Otto told me, that Duffy sounds like a mean son-of-a-gun,” Ralph said.

“You mean son-of-a-bitch, Ralph. Look what he did to my nephew!”

“Where is Otto?” I asked.

“He went out,” Betty said. “Now don’t you be worrying about that trip, for heaven’s sake. It can wait. I’m not putting you out on any road to hitchhike with your face looking like that. You stay here and repair yourself.”

I confined myself to the inside all day. The San Francisco Giants split a doubleheader with the Atlanta Braves on color TV. I took three naps. I kept a wet towel handy to pat my bloody lip. I tried about fifteen times to get a phone call through to Amy, dialing all three numbers from the inside of my belt. The girl just wasn’t around. I settled for writing a long letter. That was my only happiness. All parts of me hurt.