The Conklins
Gerda Cohen
rlicadas clatter, a metallic cascade V./among the dense, moist greenery of maples. Nothing to do, this humid Sunday by Long Island Sound, except be happy. Thirteen television channels blip out the same hysteric plea: 'Join us! Stay with us! Don't switch off for Jesus' sake even if you are atheist Democrat. Just wait for today's weather.' No plain prediction here, but peppered with injunctions to enjoy the sun, fear the humidity, tremble at approaching 'highs', desperately be happy in 'beach heat', have a good day. .. the dread duty of hedonism already weighs upon us, like the heavy moist Sunday smell of power-driven mowers. Fortunately, there is one unplea- sant job which must be done. The Con- klins' cat must be fed. The Conklins have gone to Hawaii for the week and, although we sneer at them, their cat must be fed twice daily because we are 'good neighbours'.
Of course, the Conklins are Republican, Jay and Beverlee from Illinois; Jay is presi- dent of some monster corporation, Beverlee plays bridge, and never do we actually meet. 'The minute Jay gets back, you'll see him chugging over the lawn on his tractor. It's got headlamps so he can mow nights. Jay is kinda nice.' As for Beverlee, how can she fill her day? How can she play bridge and not recycle her cans and grind up her trash and not feel permanantly guilty? This question haunts us, the people who recycle our cans and vote Democrat and hate Reagan. Why don't the goddam Conklins feel guilty? 'They have got to be made outa plastic, or they would feel terribly guilty.'
A flat, humid breeze from the Sound barely wags the huge flag hanging outside their treble-size garage. Stars and stripes dangle above an American eagle carrying some unidentifiable object in its talons. Most garages round here display the stars and stripes, often with eagle: 'It's optional, no political significance'. As we approach the Conklins' driveway, their garage door rises silent and automatic at the touch of a remote-control button. Each home has a personalised button to thwart burglars. A piercing alarm goes off the second we enter, until a four-figure code has been pressed. 'Burglars wait till the wives go out for an hour's tennis.'
Crime is always one step ahead, boredom just around the corner, waiting to twist the anxiety •tighter. Merely entering the Con- klins' replica Colonial clapboard gives one a clutch of unease, lest a thief has outwitted the alarm system or the cat has died of heat exhaustion. But no — a huge Persian flops out to meet us, miaowing with loneliness. Poor Muffy, kept forever indoors, his paw scratching at the hot glazed wall barring him from steamy maple vistas and mown lawn. 'Has Muffy been altered?"Stire, he's been altered. I'll say that for Bev Conklin: she's socially responsible in some things.'
Round here, cats are never spayed: they get 'altered' instead. Toms without a collar are liable to be taken to the Humane Socie- ty and gassed. Muffy has been declawed to prevent him scratching the nightmare-blue suite of neo-Tudor needlepoint stitched by 'I know you're helping mankind with your experiments, but must you keep trophies?' Bev Conklin in Illinois. 'She worked five years on that suite; hideous, dontya think?' We stand around, gloating at the sheer hideosity of it all, the fake fur carpeting, acres of hot whitish acrylic fur on the bathroom floors and the fur lavatory covers and the whitish acrylic poodles splayed out on each dimity quilt. How dare the Con- klins enjoy it? This mute question defies answer.
Meanwhile, the cat must be coaxed into chewing his breakfast pellets: 'cheese flavour coated with the special taste of milk cats love'. Real milk might give your pet kidney trouble, so might even the pasteuris- ed homogenised liquid which passes for real milk, so concerned pet-owners buy syn- thetic milk-flavour pellets. Likewise with pussy's dinner: this is canned veal slices in chemical veal gravy, which avoids the troublesome business of feeling guilty about not being a vegetarian. 'D'ya know, Bev Conklin says she doesn't care about veal, or about blacks? She just doesn't want to know about blacks.' Secretly we envy the crass Reaganites their inexplicable, stupid contentment, and their vulgar sunken bath like a king-size bidet.
As we leave, overcome with heat or disgust, the Persian howls piteously and paws the glass. He has not touched his pellets despite the list of vital chemicals on the packet. 'My, it's unbelievable,' we call to Debra in her shattering blue pool, 'the Conklins have the most unbelievable drapes you ever saw. Like dead, you know, like no one actually breathes in there.' Debra is do- ing her Master's in sociology, at some remote up-state college. Fat, fiftyish, with married children and ample money, she must justify her existence. Driven, she files her mauve toenails and tells us, 'I'm driven; paranoid; we all got paranoia and can't do nothing to stop it.'
Her mauve toenails thrash the water. 'Just two credits, I got to get two credits, and I'm through till fall.' It must be some quantifiable credit that can be fed in- to a computer, or it doesn't count. Women here are force-fed on anxiety: paranoid about failure, about Reds, vitamin D defi- ciency, sweat odours, leg hair, armpits, 'making it to college' or just 'making it'. Anxieties which only the over-fed can af- ford permeate their impossibly blue dream pools. If a child commits a spelling mistake, he must be dyslexic.
'The only people who aren't concerned are the Conklins,' Debra screamed slowly, `goddam shit Conklins. They're gonna vote in Reagan another term, I know it.' Cicadas rattle in the steamy foliage, and the telephone shrills. 'Police, would you believe it? The Conklins' burglar alarm won't stop ringing.' Can we go back and fix it? 'Oh Jesus, that has to be the cat. Muffy. He steps onto that pressure sensitive point by the silver cabinet. Burglars took 32,000 dollars' worth of silver so the Conklins put pressure sensitives all over the house.' Police in blue shirts and bulging with guns are there right now. We just sit, perspiring, guilty.
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