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This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

OEDIPUS IN RED
AND OTHER STORIES

presented by
Timothy E. Kelley

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

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OEDIPUS IN RED

AND OTHER STORIES

BY
Timothy Ernest Kelley

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English

1989

5679/03

ABSTRACT

OEDIPUS IN RED
AND OTHER STORIES

BY
Timothy Ernest Kelley

Although each of these stories is intended to be an
individual experience, independent of the rest, the collection
is bound together by a few common themes: the erosion of human
relationships; loneliness in a world full of others; and the
struggle to discover a truer standard by which to live. The
stories all turn on moments of recognition or understanding,
sometimes conscious and sometimes not. A good deal of the
important action takes place within the characters, but the
stories should be read as if those characters were close

friends, rather than subjects of a psychological study.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Professor William Penn, of the M.S.U.
English department, and Professor Herbert Garelick, of the
M.S.U. Philosophy department, for their encouragement,

guidance and inspiration.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

OEDIPUS IN RED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l

A HAIRCUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

THE PORTRAIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

SEVINSKI'S SECOND MOVEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

PAWN TO QUEEN FOUR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

TREES AND CHILDREN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

THE TRO LL 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 9 3

GREAT BUILDINGS AND HIGH PLACES . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

ii

OEDIPUS IN RED

At noon on Saturday Alex Nash motored the little fishing
boat up to the dock below the cabin. The sun had become too
bright for fishing the rockbeds in the shallows of the bay.
He secured the ropes to the pilings and ascended the flight
of split log steps to the cabin, leaning his pole against the
railing when he reached the top. His wife, dressed in Bermuda
shorts and the old flannel shirt she used as a robe, sat at
the desk under the front window, hunched over the typewriter.

"Jesus, Miriam," he said, coming through the door, "do
you have to do that?"

"I'm just trying to get caught up."

"You're always caught up."

"Staying up half of Sunday night to get a lecture ready
for Monday morning is not caught up."

"I mean you're always caught-up. ‘We're only here for the
weekend. Can't you put that stuff away for long enough to
enjoy it?"

"I was enjoying the quiet."

2

He took a beer from the refrigerator. "The whole reason
for coming here is to get away from work."

"That's your reason. I don't know why I come here."

"Well, nobody forces you."

"I didn't mean it that way. I just meant I don't come
here to get away from work." She shut off the typewriter and
stacked the loose pages into a pile on the desktop. "You were
out fishing, anyway. What was I supposed to be doing?"

"I don't know," said Alex» He was staring out at the bay
through the window above the sink. A flock of gulls circled
above the end of a dock down the beach.

"Don't pout," said Miriam. She rose from the desk. The
sleeve of the flannel shirt brushed his back as she passed to
the refrigerator. "You want a sandwich?"

"I was thinking about driving up to the point for a
swim." He watched the near collision of two gulls as they
tried to land in the same spot on the water.

"I'll go with you." She made two sandwiches and they sat
at the kitchen table to eat. The weekend trip had been his
idea. They hadn't spent much time together since she had
begun teaching, and they had already argued once the night
before, when he saw her loading the typewriter into the car.

"How was the fishing?"

"I didn't try very hard."

Miriam smiled. It was an old story. He would go out for
hours at a time, and almost never come back with anything.

He had explained to her years ago that the fish know whether

3
you are really trying or not, and that he rarely tried as hard
as he should.
When they had finished their lunch he followed her to the
bedroom and stood leaning against the door, watching as she

undressed and pulled on her swimsuit.

It was a ten minute drive to the public beach at the end
of the peninsula. Alex Nash thought about the changes that
had taken place in the bay area since he was a child, the
changes that had taken place even since they had bought the
cabin fifteen years ago. The cherry orchards still rolled
over the hills of the peninsula, but what had once been open
shoreline was now an undulating row of tight little lots with
modern looking summer homes; the area had taken on the
atmosphere of a summer suburb. He wondered if his son, now
in his second year of college, had enjoyed this place the way
he had as a boy.

Miriam gazed out over the orchards at the east arm of the
bay. She was thinking about Greek.tragedy, the subject of the
coming week's lectures, and.considering Sophocles as the topic
of the doctoral dissertation she would have to begin work on
soon. She had left the University of Michigan in her second
year, two months pregnant, to marry Alex. He was working as
a highway department draftsman, and taking night classes to
become an engineer. She didn't return to college until their
son, Jason, entered high school, but now had a Master's

degree, and was teaching at a junior college while she

prepared to begin her Ph.D.

"The beach shouldn't be too crowded," said Alex. "the
water will still be a bit chilly."

"The water will be near freezing." For Miriam the bay
was almost unbearable until near August, though the two of
them had always been among the few who began swimming in June.
She tolerated the temperature; Alex seemed to overcome it, to
actually enjoy it.

When they arrived there were a few people on towels
scattered along the beach, but none in the water except for
a paunchy, dark haired man about their age and a boy of
fourteen or fifteen, who had waded in, shivering, to push a
small cabin cruiser off its submerged trailer. Two teenaged
girls whispered and giggled on the front deck of the boat as
Alex stripped off his shirt and shoes and bounded across the
sand, a blue snorkel dangling from his neck. He smiled and
waved at them; said hello to the man in the water; Miriam sat
down on the beach blanket and watched as he approached the
shoreline.

He turned, knee-deep in the bay, to look back at her.

"You coming in?"

"How's the water?"

"Couldn't be better. Bath water."

"I bet. You go ahead. I might come in in a while."

"Suit yourself." At the top the water was really not
bad, but as he waded deeper he could feel the temperature

dropping; IAt waist-deep he shoved the snorkel into his mouth,

5
stretched his arms out over his head, and plunged forward
through the jade colored surface of the bay. He swam out and
down, the cold reaching a new intensity with each foot he
descended. When he came up again he was in about eight feet
of’waterx His upper body was no longer uncomfortable, but.his
feet, kicking slowly below, were numb. He waved at his wife.

"Perfect," he shouted, his voice quavering from the cold.
"Couldn't be better."

She laughed. He waved again, then ducked his head back
beneath the surface and swam, breathing through the snorkel,
toward the old shipping dock at the other end of the beach.
Moving slowly between the wood pilings of the dock he spotted
a couple of large fish that he guessed to be trout, though he
couldn't get close enough to be sure. When he came up for a
rest he heard the planks of the dilapidated.boardwalk creaking
over his head, and looked up through a gap in the boards to
see a young woman making her way out to the end of the dock.
With the afternoon sun overhead her hair looked almost as
yellow as her suit. He started to shout when he realized she
was going to jump, not sure if she was aware of the rocks in
the water, much closer to the surface than they had been years
ago when the dock.was used by ships, but she dove out high and
long, entering the water just beyond.the dark blue line of the
drop-off. She swam back in under the dock and came up next
to him. The top of her swimsuit seemed to wave like a yellow
banner beneath the rippled surface. Her skin was oiled and

tan, but there was a trace of blue around her lips.

6

"Still pretty cold," she said. "I thought I heard some
one yell as I was diving."

"I thought you were going to hit the rocks," said Alex.
"Nice dive."

"Thanks. This isn't the best place for snorkeling. Not
much to see."

"I'm just getting a little exercise."

"You don't look like you need it."

A spindly young man in flowered trunks and a sport shirt
walked out onto the dock above them and lay down, hanging his
head over the side to look at them.

"Are you all right down there?"

"You're going to fall in," said the girl. "I'm fine,
just freezing."

"Well, come out and get a towel."

"I'm on my way."

The young man watched them for another minute, and then
stood up and returned to the beach.

"There's an old shipwreck on the other side of the
point," said the girl, "about halfway between here and the
lighthouse. I snorkeled to it a couple of years ago. The
water's come up a little since then, but I think you could
still reach it without tanks."

"Really?" Alex remembered hearing as a child about a
tugboat that had gone down outside the harborx His father had
once pointed out the area to him when they were fishing.

"Hey," called the young man on the beach, "are you coming

in or not?"

"Lighten.up," said the girl. "I'm.coming, already." She.
let her legs float to the surface and backstroked slowly
around Alex and out from under the dock, her breasts pointing
like marker buoys at the sky, water slipping away from her
oiled legs as she frog-kicked herself into motion.

"See ya 'round."

Miriam watched the arc of the girl's dive, the slight
disturbance she created on the surface as she pierced the
water. She watched her swim back in, and smiled when she came
up next to Alex. He had a way of attracting people, not just
women, though perhaps especially women. Wherever he went he
could not be alone for long. She lay back on the blanket and
closed her eyes before the girl swam away. Within a few
minutes the heat of the June sun sedated her to near sleep,
and she found herself again thinking of Attic tragedy,
wondering how much difference it would have made if the
original actors had worn bright colors instead of the white
she had always imagined: Oedipus in red, Jocasta in royal
blue.

She opened her eyes again when Alex sat down next to her
on the blanket. A large crayfish dangled from between his
thumb and forefinger over her face. One drop of water hit her
on the chin before she could roll out from under it.

"Look what I found."

"Great," she said, brushing sand from.her arm” "What are

you going to do with it?"

"They're supposed to be good to smoke." He held the tail
in front of his lips. "Which end do you light?"

"Put it back in the water."

"I found him in an old shoe at the bottom. He pinched
my toe when I stuck my foot in it."

"Why did you stick your foot in it?"

"Because it was a shoe."

"Put it back in the water."

He walked down to the water and set the crayfish on the
wet sand of the shoreline. When he returned to the blanket
Miriam stood up.

"Bathwater, huh?"

"Almost too warm." He sat down, stretching his arms and
shoulders.

She waded into the bay until the water reached.her chest,
and then tipped forward and swam out across the surface. She
ducked under once, and descended until she reached a level of
cold that created a sharp pain above her eyebrows.
Resurfacing quickly, she caught a breath of air and tread
water until the pain subsided. Then, floating on her back and

paddling her feet slowly, she returned to shore.

That evening they had dinner at the Bower's Harbor Inn.
Alex had made reservations before they came up. He had taken
Miriam there for the first time a few months after Jason was

born. The luxury of dinner at the inn was more than they

9
could realistically afford in those early years, but he had
been so excited she could not make herself raise any
objections. They had eaten there at least once every year
since, usually on special occasions. It was no longer an
extravagance. After twenty years as a state engineer Alex was
being paid very well, and she could survive now, if she had
to, on what she was making alone. But even now, as she
watched him sit down across the table from her, she thought
she detected a trace of the determined smile he had worn that
first night, and remembered a strange moment at which she had
felt suddenly closer to him. Their first year had not been
an easy one, and she knew how hard he had tried to make
everything nice for her, to make her feel that everything
would always be nice. But there was a moment at which she saw
the apprehension behind his smile. It was like watching him
walk into the bay, pretending the cold didn't bother him, and
catching that one twinge in his expression that gave away the
charade, and a barrier seemed to suddenly break down between
them. She had experienced such a feeling only a few times in
the two decades they had been together, and although it was
a sad kind of feeling she remembered those moments as the only
times in her life that she knew she was not alone. It had
felt as if, for an instant, they were thinking as one, both
recognizing the ultimate strangeness behind all of their
worries and hopes. Their satisfactions, their happiness, they
enjoyed privately, but they had truly shared those few rare

moments.

10

When they returned to the cabin Alex started a fire. He
had to open a window to the cool breeze from the bay to keep
the room from getting too hot. They sat on the rug in front
of the fireplace, leaning against an old sofa they had bought
shortly after they were married. It had been re-upholstered
once, recovered a second time, and finally moved to the cabin
when they were able to buy a new one. Its upkeep no longer
a necessity, it had begun again to show the erosion of the
years.

"I miss Jason."

Alex was opening a bottle of wine they had left behind
the previous fall. He set it on the floor and slid closer to
her, slipping an arm around her shoulder.

"He'll be home in a couple weeks."

"No, I mean I miss him up here. I haven't gotten used
to being here without him again."

"It is awful quiet." Alex squeezed her arm, smiling.
"He'll still come up in the summer."

He reached for the wine bottle and poured two glasses.
He, too, missed the times they had enjoyed with their son at
the cabin, but at the moment he missed even more the times he
and Miriam had spent there before Jason began making the
trips, the times of touring the local wineries, of staying up
all night and making love on the floor in front of the
fireplace.

They sat for a long time in silence, drinking the wine

11
and watching the fire. When the bottle was half empty Alex
pushed it aside and leaned over to kiss his wife, running a
hand up the side of her ribs, and then cupping it over a
breast.

"Not here," she said. "Let's get in bed."

Early in the morning Alex loaded the spare tank of gas
into the boat and backed it away from the dock. Instead of
trolling the rockbeds he headed north, along the line of the
drop-off. It took twenty minutes to get to the lighthouse at
the end of the peninsula. From there he cruised slowly,
watching the shoreline as he wound around the series of
indistinct inlets along the west edge of the harbor point.
After a few minutes he saw the old wooden lifeboat, now half
buried in the sand on the shore. Putting along the edge of
the dark water he couldn't spot any sign of the sunken tug.
He anchored the boat and put on his snorkel, mask and fins.
At the edge of the drop-off he could stand on his toes and
keep his head out of the water. He swam along the edge,
diving as deep as he could safely go down the slope, and
coming back up to stand on the sand shelf of the shallow,
where he could rest without having to tread water. On his
fourth dive he saw a dark area on the bottom, about twenty
feet out from the drop-off, but didn't have enough air to
reach it. After a long rest he went down again. When he
reached the bottom his skin ached from the cold. He came

close enough to make out the black shape of the tug before he

12

was forced to go straight up for air, without time to make it
back to the shallow. Treading water, he caught his breath,
and then made a couple of attempts at going straight down, but
could not get any closer. Finally exhausted, he swam slowly
back to the boat, thinking that he could bring scuba gear out
later in the summer. A young couple in a speedboat passed in
the deep water. The woman wore a yellow bathing suit, and he
had to watch them for a moment to be sure she was not the girl
he had seen beneath the dock.

Just a few minutes after he had started back the engine
sputtered twice and then quit. His efforts to reach the
sunken tugboat had left him tired, and the six gallons of gas
in the spare tank seemed heavier as he lifted it over the seat
than it had when he loaded it into the boat. As he began to
prime the line from the new tank it popped away from the
motor, squirting gas over his hand and forearm. He had not
snapped the connection tight.

"God damn it," he shouted across the bay. He was
sweating as he secured the line, as much from frustration as
from the heat of the mid-day sun, and after priming it again
he dove back into the cold water to rinse the gasoline and

perspiration from himself before starting the motor.

Miriam had spent the first few hours of the morning
finishing' her' preparations for ‘the ‘week's lectures, and
sorting through notes for her dissertation. Just before noon

the telephone rang; She was delighted to hear her son's voice

13
when she picked it up.

"Just thought I'd see how you guys were doing."

"Oh, Jason," she said, "we miss you so much."

"Yeah, sure. You've probably been renting my room."

"I mean it," she said, a little annoyed at suddenly
realizing how much he sounded like his father on the phone.

"I know, Mom. I miss you, too. Listen, I know I should
have told you this before, but I've been seeing this girl for
a while now, and we're thinking about getting an apartment for
the summer." He paused for a moment, and then added: "She's
really something. I want to bring her home to meet you when
I come."

"That's wonderful," said Miriam, after a pause of her
own. "This is pretty serious?"

"I don't know. Well, yeah, I guess it is."

"That's great, honey. I can't wait to meet her."

"Good, We'll see you in a couple weeks. 80, how are you
guys doing?"

"We're fine."

She walked down to the dock when she heard the boat.

"You've been out a long time. Why are you all wet?"

"I did some snorkeling." He tossed the ropes to her and
she tied the boat to the pilings. He ran a chain through one
of the oarlocks and padlocked it to the dock.

"We're all packed. I thought we could stop in Traverse
City for lunch on the way back."

"What's the hurry?"

14

"I thought we could get home early enough to relax a
little. What's the matter?"

"Nothing." He locked the motor to the boat, disconnected
the gas tank and hoisted it to the dock.

"Jason called. He's bringing a girl home."

"Hmm," said Alex. He stepped out of the boat, oars and
fishing pole wedged under one arm, lifted the tank with his
free hand, and walked past her to the stairs.

"They want to get an apartment."

He stopped at the foot of the stairs and turned to look
at her. After a moment he smiled, and then turned again and
started up the steps. Miriam wondered if she would ever feel

this close to him again.

A HAIRCUT

The Tonsorial Palace had a large window at the front, but
as the glass was tinted a barely translucent coffee brown the
inside of the shop received the benefit of almost no natural
light. Marsha was surprised, walking in out of the sunshine,
to discover a rather scant employment of artificial light as
well. A small brass desk lamp stood next to an antique cash
register on the oak counter just inside‘theidoor, illuminating
a little oval section of the countertop around an appointment
book. Just beyond the end of the counter a small group of
stairs led down to the main level, where a row of overhead
bulbs, unadornedq provided what hardly seemed sufficient light
for the three barber chairs, and merely cast a faint yellow
glow across the rest of the room. Against a corner opposite
the work area a pink ceramic lamp lit the end table on which
it stood, and just enough of an old but well preserved sofa
to allow one person the use of the magazines strewn across the
tabletop.

Marsha had to close her eyes for a few seconds to help

them adjust to the sudden lack of light before descending the

15

16

stairs. Although the decor of the place was not really
palatial by any' means, it did, perhaps because of the
strangely low lighting, have:an.agreeable sort of timelessness
about it. The heavy oak railings that ran up the sides of the
staircase and separated the two levels of the shop, finished
only by age and clear varnish to match the counter and back
bar, though more charming than regal, did possess a certain
stateliness. A smattering of antiques around the waiting
area, including a small steel safe and a six foot wooden
barber pole, added to the sense of rustic refinement. It was
the kind of atmosphere, she thought, that Roger had been
striving unsuccessfully for in his den, that relaxed and
removed atmosphere of a private library. She wondered for a
moment if it was just the lighting, but decided it was not.
There was a rigidity and a lack of imagination in Roger's
thinking that rendered.him.incapable:of'the relaxed creativity
behind that kind of mood. It was a mood that didn't suit him,
anyway. She was sure the den would produce more narcissistic
musing than creative activity.

She had chosen the Tonsorial Palace not because it had
been recommended, not even because their Yellow Pages ad
seemed any more professional than the rest, but because she
liked the name. The only qualification she cared about was
that it had not been recommended to her by any of Roger's
friends. She would have her hair done for their party, but
she would not have it done at a shop they patronized.

Although she loved Roger, or at least thought she did, as she

17
had begun to wonder about the feelings she had developed for
him over the past few months, she preferred to avoid any
unnecessary contact with the circle of friends to which he had
introduced her.

She had been planning to have her hair cut for some time,
but Roger had insulted her so deeply a few days earlier that
she almost decided not to have it done before the party; When
she kissed him good-bye as he was leaving her apartment one
morning his hands slipped from her shoulders to run through
her hair and he stepped back to look at her.

"We have a party to go to at the Morrison's Friday
night," he announced. She had known about the party for two
weeks, and wondered what made him think she would forget. It
was several minutes after he had left that she realized he had
been examining her, that the reminder had been a hint that she
should make herself look acceptable. At the last party they
went to two of the women had suggested that she see their
hairdressers.

She didn't think.he intended to insult her. In fact, she
doubted that he even realized he had, but that only made it
worse in her mind. She considered not having it cut at all,
she considered not going to the party, but in the end she
decided to do both, and never mentioned to Roger how badly he
had hurt her; She did not wish to jeopardize the relationship
she had with him over a petty matter. Three months ago he had
thrown a sheet over a lonely and boring period of her life,

offering her new experiences-~a skiing trip, a weekend in New

18
York, dinner at real restaurants--but most importantly he
offered a steady companionship she had not known since moving
away from her parents three years ago. For this she would
overlook the insult, and would even have her hair done for the
party she would just as soon not attend.

Two of the three chairs were empty. Behind the first a
tall dark haired woman stooped to slide something into a
cupboard below the back bar, exposing the black garter belts
that supported her fishnet stockings. .At the third chair, the
only one in use, a redheaded woman waved.a blow drier over the
head of a mature looking high school girl, swinging a plastic
brush through her hair with the flamboyant motions of an
amateur concert conductor.

"So," said the redhead, "who my choo be?"

"I'm Marsha."

"Aha," said the redhead. You want her." She pointed to
the tall woman, who was now standing straight and turning away
from the back bar. "Dat's Di."

Marsha remembered the name Diane from talking to her on
the phone. "I might be a little early," she said, glancing
at two people sitting on the sofa in the waiting area, a girl
who looked no more than a couple of years older than the one
in the barber chair, and a man in perhaps his late twenties.
The girl sat at the end near the lamp, a magazine opened
across her lap. She had thick straw colored hair that stood
straight at the top, trimmed into a sort of dome shape. The

man, in the shadowy area at the other end of the sofa, wore

19

a lavender T-shirt, tight blue jeans, and a pair of black
zipper boots with pointed toes, quite noticeable because of
the way he crossed his legs at the knees, letting one foot bob
in the air in front of him to the beat of the fast, Neo-
Beatles style rock and roll that flowed from the speakers
hanging near the ceiling above their heads. His hair also
stood straight at the top, but very short, almost like a crew
cut. In the back it tapered into a tail that faded from the
dark brown on top to a bleached white tip where it met the
collar of his T-shirt.

"No," said Diane. "You're right on time. She's waiting
for Cheryl," she nodded at the girl on the sofa, "and Reggie
over there just seems to like hanging out around here for some
reason."

"The reason is," said Cheryl, pulling the apron off the
high school girl, "that Reggie don't have to work when he
hangs out here."

"You can just hop right up," said Diane, tapping the back
of the chair to get Marsha's attention.

As Cheryl escorted the high school girl to the cash
register, the man on the sofa began to talk about her as if
she had already left.

"Now she's all set for the school dance," he said, "for
a little kiss and tell. And she'll be the envy of all her
little girlfriends."

"That's enough, Reggie," said Diane.

The girl had not looked back.at him, and didn't slow down

20
to hear the last of what he was saying. Marsha looked in the
mirror to see the impish grin, the grin that was half sneer,
on the man's face. The reflection of his eyes met hers for
a second in the mirror, and she suddenly felt that the sneer
was directed at her as well.

"So," said Diane, "what do we want to do with it?"

"I don't know...," began Marsha.

"Another of those. They just never know what they want,
do they?"

Marsha tried to ignore the voice from.the sofa, "I guess
something a little different. Maybe something like that."
She pointed hastily to a photograph taped to the top of the
mirror. She had just noticed it. "But maybe just a little
shorter on top."

"Okay," said Diane. "I can do that."

"I can do that," mimicked Cheryl, coming back down the
stairs. She whistled like a traffic cop at the girl on the
sofa and thumbed her into the low chair that sat in the corner
of the work area in front of the sink.

Reggie slid to the other end of the sofa. Again he
caught Marsha looking at him in the mirror, and flashed her
a sarcastic smile before beginning to riffle through the
magazines on the table. In the glow of the ceramic lamp he
looked even stranger than she had thought him at first“ There
was a venomous incongruity about his presence.

Roger was openly critical of homosexuals. She was more

tolerant, at least in theory. She had never spent any length

21

of time in the presence of anyone she knew to be gay, but she
knew that life could be very lonely, and believed everyone
should be granted the right to whatever kind of companionship
he chose. "Being gay has become so chic," she had once heard
Roger say, "that they act as if they have the run of things."
At the time she had thought that only in Roger's sect of
society could anything be considered chic. For most of the
world, the part of the world in which she had always lived,
things became fashionable, popular, or stylish, but chic was
a concept she felt was reserved for the class of people to
whom Roger had introduced her. In the world she knew the
closest one could come to being chic was a kind of fashionable
brazenness. This seemed to be a part of what the man on the
sofa was trying to accomplish, and although she had to admit
that she found his superior attitude rather offensive, she did
not find it any more offensive than those of most of the
people in Roger's clique. If only, she thought, people would
realize ‘that. attitudes--superior, inferior, good, bad. or
horrid--were all very common, they might be more careful in
adopting them.

It wasn't the man's assumed superiority, however, that
bothered her the most. She felt threatened by him, and was
sure that he wanted her to feel threatened” In the brightness
of the street she might have given him a second glance, just
out of curiosity, the way one might glance a second time at
a brightly colored billboard. Here in this strange shop she

had to endure his prolonged presence, a presence which seemed

22
somehow more justified here than her own.

"What kind of shampoo do you wash this with?" asked
Diane, who had wetted her hair with a spray bottle, and was
now running both a comb and the fingers of one hand through
it.

Marsha could not help but feel a bit insulted by the word
"this." It was her hair, and the question made it sound as
if she had walked in with a dead cocker spaniel on her head.

"Pretty much whatever's on sale," she said.

"It looks like it," said Diane.

Reggie laughed at the other side of the room, and Marsha
fought the urge to look at him again.

"You should try the stuff we have here," said Diane.
"The first bottle is kind of expensive, but we refill them
pretty cheap, and it's a lot better for your hair than
anything you can get in a store." Marsha had the feeling the
woman knew she had insulted her, and was trying to tone it
down a bit.

It was at least a direct and honest insult, and seemed
to be offered more as a suggestion than a declaration of
disapproval. The insults she suffered from Roger, and from
his friends, bothered her much more. They were never open,
rarely even directly stated, trite and poorly hidden
implications of disapproval.

The first party he had taken her to had been at the
Morrison's. He had introduced her to all his friends by name

only, and when asked about her said simply that she was "with

23
only, and when asked about her said simply that she was "with
one of his company's clients," leaving her to explain that she
was a secretary at an architectural firm for which he did
consulting work. Until meeting him and his friends she had
always been very proud of her job, and of her ability to
support herself, but they made her feel as if it would be
better to not work at all than to have such a menial position.

Elaine Morrison did not work, and though they did have
two children her primary activities seemed to revolve around
making herself glamorous and throwing parties” 'They were real
cocktail parties, a type that Marsha had never experienced
before, the conversation light and witty, and never personal
unless the person being spoken about had left the room. She
had returned from refilling her drink to catch Elaine and a
circle of women talking more about her than they had to her
when she had been with them.

"How did he come up with her?" she heard one of them ask.

"I don't know," said Elaine, smiling. "She really
doesn't seem like the type he'd go for." She hushed the rest
of the group when she noticed that Marsha had returned to the
room.

Marsha wandered uncomfortably through the room until she
found Roger. He was engaged in a conversation having
something to with business with Allen Morrison and two other
associates. She stood next to him for a few minutes, sipping
her drink and trying to hide her discomfort, until one of the

men asked her opinion about something that had just been said.

24
She had not really been paying attention, as she understood
little of what they were talking about, anyway.

"I just type the stuff up," she said. "I don't know
anything about it."

The man laughed kindly, condescendingly, but her remark
brought.a pained expression to Roger's face. By the time they
left the party she felt as if she had to work very hard to be
worthy of him, and he didn't do or say anything to make her
feel differently.

He was usually different when they were alone, more
understanding and ‘much less preoccupied. with their
differences, except in those instances, like the one earlier
in the week, in which he thought about her in contrast to his
circle of friends.

She thought there was too much hair coming off the top
from the very start, but didn't say anything. Since she could
rarely explain.to a barber or stylist exactly what she wanted,
she generally tried to refrain from back seat driving. The
redhead had turned on another small light above the sink, and
was pulling wet locks of straw colored hair through holes in
a plastic cap to prepare them for streaking.

"I'm bored," announced the man on the sofa. "Shall we
have a reading of 'Forum?'"

"I don't think we're that bored," said Diane. Reggie
looked a bit disappointed, but began reading aloud, anyway.

Marsha had never looked inside the cover of a Penthouse

magazine, and although she knew something about the subject

25
matter, she was shocked by the graphic nature of the letter
he had selected. She wondered if it could be an actual
account.

"I tink dat's about enough," said the redhead when he
came to the end of the first entry.

"Okay," he said, with a hint of feigned dejection, "but
I really think these things are great reading." He smiled
again at Marsha in the mirror, and went on with his reading
in silence.

Marsha thought about sex with Roger. That was good,
quiet, and although he didn't seem to make any overt efforts
to contribute to her satisfaction, he generally delayed his
own for long' enough, for' her' to achieve. it ‘without any
conscious assistance from him. He had at least shown no signs
of unhappiness with her in bed.

The bobbing of the pointed.boot, reflected in the mirror,
brought her partially out of her train of thought, and she
found herself wondering for a moment what it would be like for
two men. The pair that came to mind were Roger and the man
on the sofa, but she blocked the thought completeLy. The
image was too repulsive, too absurd to consider.

She was sure now that she was losing too much hair from
both the top and sides. She double checked the photograph on
the mirror. Perhaps she should have asked to have it longer,
rather than shorter on the top, but the hair in the picture
looked much longer than what she thought she was going to end

up with. She glanced in the mirror at the girl in the low

26
chair. The dye going into her yellow hair was a deep purple.
Marsha wondered if this was perhaps not the right place for
her to have come at all. She was grateful when Diane tapped
the back of her head and said, "Look down."

Looking down, she saw a series of pictures taped across
the front of the back bar that she had not noticed before.
Mostly clipped from magazines, but.with a few snapshots thrown
in, they displayed some of the strangest hairstyles she had
ever seen. School letters and colors were cut and dyed into
a few of them. One, from a magazine, featured.a man in a crew
cut with raised edges and little pockets cut into it to make
it resemble a pool table. The center of the flat top was dyed
green, and a ndniature cue stick and two little balls lay
across.ita The caption beneath the picture read "Pool Crazy."
The word "pool," thought Marsha, seemed quite unnecessary.

When she was told she could look up again her hair was
dry enough on top to get a reasonable estimation of the
length” Her only positive thought was that there were no pool
balls or purple streaks. The top had no bangs, and not even
enough length to part. The sides were virtually nonexistent.
It reminded her of something she had seen on MTV, though she
couldn't remember who wore it. She didn't think it was a
woman. She wanted to complain, but was so upset she was
afraid she would burst into tears if she opened her mouth.
It was too late now, anyway.

Diane wetted it again with the spray bottle, and began

drying it with a brush and blow drier. When she was finished

27

it stood straight and smooth on top, and the back, she saw in
a hand mirror held up behind her, was in a tail like that of
the man on the sofa, but a few inches longer. Nothing, she
realized, was considered wild anymore, but her taste had not
changed as much as the overall taste of the time, and to her
this was far too much. She could almost hear Elaine and the
others talking about it at the upcoming party. It was a
disaster. Still, she could not summon the voice to register
any outright complaint.

"Well," she said, meekly, "it's different."

"You don't like it?"

"Oh, honey," said a voice from the sofa before Marsha
could respond, "it's you. It really is."

"If you don't like it..." began Diane.

Marsha didn't hear her. She stood up out of the chair
and turned to face the man on the sofa. "Thank you," she
said. "Your opinion means so much to me."

Diane, the redhead, and the purple stripe all stared at
her for a moment, and then at Reggie.

"I mean it," he said, ignoring Marsha's angry, sarcastic
tone. "I think it'll be all the rage. You'll be a real trend
setter. All your friends..."

"You don't know anything about me or my friends," said
Marsha, unwilling to give up the last word. "You don't know
anything that gives you the right to judge me or anyone else.
Being different is not the same as being better."

"Ooh," said Reggie, in mock fear, but with a very real

28
sense of surprise.

"Fiften dollars?" Marsha asked Diane, who was struggling
to get the apron untied from the back of her neck.

"Yes," said Diane. "But if you're not happy with it..."

"No," said Marsha, "I'm not happy with it. It's not at
all what I had in mind, but I guess I should have explained
myself better."

"I think it looks very nice," said the redhead. "You
have a prety face, and that style shows it off a lot more than
what you had before."

Marsha would not allow herself to be flattered out of her
anger. She found correct change in her purse, so that she
wouldn't have to stop at the cash register, handed it to
Diane, and walked out without saying anything more, and
without turning to look again at the sofa.

She squinted‘walking back into the sunlight. After a
moment she thought about Roger. He would be appalled at the
haircut. It wasn't the kind of look that would fit in at the
Morrison's party; She wondered what she should tell him. 'The
hell with the Morrisons, she decided, after a moment. The
hell with Roger. She would tell him she loved it. She would
tell him it was exactly what she had wanted. The image of
Roger and the man in the Tonsorial Palace sneaked back into
her mind. This time she laughed, imagining the look on

Roger's face if he could see it.

THE PORTRAIT

The driveway of the Gentillozzi estate was a semi-circle
of white concrete, bordered on both sides, except for a gap
of about forty yards where it came closest to the front doors
of the house, by rows of manicured hedges. Peter Ryan
hesitated before driving in, afraid his car would leave a
blemish of oil, and was relieved to find a turn~off that led
around a rose garden to a large white garage behind and to the
right of the house. He parked next to the garage, out of the
way of the three overhead doors. An elderly man in light
colored coveralls straightened up in the garden and waved, a
small spade in his hand, as he saw Peter beginning his walk
to the front of the estate. Peter returned the wave, and
noticed that the man kept watching him, rather than returning
to his work. When he neared the rose garden the man stepped
out onto the drive.

"You must be the painter."

"I'm an artist," said Peter; "I have an appointment with
Mr. Gentillozzi."

"I know. Mrs. G. told me about it. He wants you to

29

30
paint her picture. VVery excited about it." He continued to
stare at Peter even after he stopped talking.

"The roses are beautiful," said Peter, looking past him
into the garden.

The man laughed. "Not responsible for that. Just keep
'em healthy and they do the rest. The rest of the place gets
high technology, but the roses are Mrs. G.'s, and all she
wants is for me to trim 'em a little and keep the weeds out."

"High technology?"

"Notice that smell?"

"Peter sniffed the air, and did notice a slightly starchy
smell. "Fertilizer?"

"Dye." The old man smiled. "See how much greener the
lawn looks than any of the others around here?" He waved with
his spade to direct Peter's attention. "Green dye. Mixes
with water and the grass drinks it up right through the roots.
Fed it in two weeks ago. Smell still hasn't gone away."

"I'll be darned." Peter looked toward the house. "I'd
better get up there. I don't have the job yet."

"Nice talking to you," said the gardener.

Peter thought about green dye, examining the lawn and
hedges, as he walked up the drive to the house. .After ringing
the chime he stepped back to look.at two junipers that flanked
the sides of the front porch, their branches and twigs pruned
bare to the tips, where the growth was trimmed into perfect,
bright green orbs.

After'a moment the doors were opened by a dark complected

31
man in his middle forties, wearing a dark grey suit and a
white shirt, open at the collar.

"Mr. Ryan?"

"Yes," said Peter, "I..."

"I am Victor Gentillozzi," said the man in the doorway.
He stepped to one side. "Please come in."

He glanced at a grandfather clock in the entryway as
Peter stepped into the house. "You're right on time. I
thought artists were always late."

"I hope I don't seem unprofessional," said Peter.

"On the contrary. I appreciate punctuality. There are
some things we must discuss, so if you will join me for a few
minutes in my study..." He turned to lead the way.

The study was a large room, about half again as long as
wide. The side walls were hidden by well filled bookcases.
At the far end stood an oak library desk, the items on its top
in perfect array, above which hung a Monet watercolor.

Victor Gentillozzi seated himself in a: leather chair
behind the desk, and motioned Peter into the one across from
him.

"Obviously," he said, "I can afford to be rather
selective. I had no intention at first of settling for local
talent for this piece, but I have spoken to people in several
galleries, and have been told that you are a very capable
young man."

"Really?"

"The money is not a real concern. What I want is the

32

very best." He took a carved bone pipe from a matching stand
on the desk and packed it with tobacco. "My wife is not an
unattractive woman." He lit the pipe and puffed at it,
settling back into the chair. "She has some very nice
features. She is not, however,... How shall I say it? She
is not a beauty queen. I would like for you to paint her in
such a manner that her better features are maximized, and the
less attractive ones diminished."

"Mr. Gentillozzi," said Peter, "an artist always strives
to capture the beauty in his subject, but I can only paint
what I see."

"This painting will hang at the first landing of the
stairs in the front hall of my home. It will be not only the
first impression guests will get of my wife, but also of my
estate and the life I have built for myself here. It must,
of course, be a portrait of her. It must seem, to her and to
everyone who sees it, to be a perfect likeness, but it must
display an ideal beauty that will require all your talent and
your most scrupulous attention."

Peter hesitated for a moment, trying to balance his
financial need against an uncomfortable feeling he was
beginning to develop about this painting. "My rate for a
portrait of this type is two thousand dollars."

"That is fine," said Victor Gentillozzi, "but please,
don't look so concerned. I am sure I have made it sound like
much more of a task than it will actually be. My wife, as

I've said, is not an unattractive woman." He rose from the

33
chair, clicking the bone pipe neatly back into its joint in
the stand. "I assume you are ready to start immediately?"

"I would like to do some sketches today."

"Fine." He showed Peter to the drawing room in which he
wanted the portrait done, and then back to the front hall,
stopping to point out the important wall at the first landing
of the stairs.

On the way to his car Peter was flagged into the rose
garden by the gardener's spade. With him was a woman with
light brown.hair, dressed in loose blue jeans and an oversized
green sweatshirt. When Peter reached them she introduced
herself as Ellen Gentillozzi. The apprehensions he had
developed during his conversation with her husband evaporated.
She was a beautiful woman.

"How did it go? asked the gardener.

"Just fine," said Peter, still looking at Ellen
Gentillozzi. "Are you ready to sit for some sketches?"

"It'll take me a few minutes. I thought my husband would
keep you longer. He thinks I'm preparing myself right now."
She excused herself and returned to the house.

The gardener watched her for a moment, and then returned
to digging weeds out of the rows of rose bushes with the
little spade. Peter retrieved his materials and equipment
from the car. Victor Gentillozzi, on his way to the garage,
met him as he approached the main drive.

"I understand you met my wife. What do you think?"

"About your wife?"

34

"About the portrait. Don't you get some kind of initial
feeling about the subject?"

"I think it will go well," said Peter. "She's a lovely
woman."

"Well, at any rate, I am sure you'll please me. Why
don't you go ahead and get set up. She shouldn't be long."
He looked out at the old man squatting in the garden. "Isn't
there some kind of chemical for that?"

"Mrs. Gentillozzi didn't want any chemicals," said the
gardener.

"It seems like a waste of time."

"Doesn't take that much," said the gardener.

The drawing room, elegantly decorated in Victorian style,
was unoccupied when Peter returned to the house. He set up
his lights, laid out a large sketchbook on his easel, focusing
on a burgundy colored love seat beneath a window at the side
of the room, and had begun sharpening his pencils when Ellen
Gentillozzi entered. She was now wearing a dark blue gown of
satin and lace, and more make-up than Peter thought necessary.

"What do you think of this?" she asked, spreading her
arms and turning to display the dress. "It was Victor's
choice."

"If you like it," said Peter, "I think you should wear
it." She was standing at the center of the room and did not
move. "I thought we would start with you on the love seat,

right at the center of the window. Just make yourself

3S
comfortable."

As he began the drawing he was not noticing the same
beauty that had reassured him when he met her in the garden.
Her face seemed fuller than he remembered. Although she was
not of a Madison Avenue build, she was not at all plump, not
even at all overweight, yet her cheekline was not as distinct
as he had first thought. Her eyes, too were different. They
were the same blue-grey color, but they no longer seemed to
possess the energy he had found so attractive before. After
the first sketch he adjusted the lights. After the second he
moved her to an armchair that stood against a wall adjacent
to the love seat. As he worked he spoke quietly to her,
trying to relax her into beauty, telling her of the kind of
paintings he had done, of the kind he would like to do. She
told him that she had been Mrs. Victor Gentillozzi for just
under two years. Her laugh seemed a little nervous when she
added that he had probably saved her "from becoming an old
maid."

"I wouldn't think you would have been in any jeopardy of
that," said Peter, thinking more of the woman he had met
outside than the one he was struggling now to depict in a
manner that would satisfy her husband's demands.

As he began his fourth sketch he asked her about the rose
garden. "The gardener tells me you take an active interest."

She smiled. "I'll never get used to having all these
rooms, but I think I have gotten used to having a rose

garden."

36

"It is beautiful."

When he finished the fourth sketch he announced that they
were through for the day. Ellen Gentillozzi watched him as
he examined the day's work.

"How did we do?" she asked, a little nervous, as if she
was hoping she had gained his approval.

"We did fine," said Peter. "I think we can start the

real work tomorrow."

In his apartment that evening he examined the sketches
again over two tumblers of bourbon. They were all, in his
judgment, accurate likenesses, but.heldecided finally that the
last one he had done was the most generous portrayal of his
subject. Before going to bed he secured a piece of canvas to
a stretcher frame and transferred the sketch, making some
barely perceptible adjustments in the lines of the face.

The following morning Victor Gentillozzi admitted him to
the house, and escorted him to the drawing room before going
to see how his wife was "coming along." Peter began setting
out the materials he would need for the day. After a few
minutes he heard Victor Gentillozzi come down the stairs and
leave the house.

When Ellen Gentillozzi appeared in the drawing room,
apologizing for making him wait, Peter director her to the
armchair. He looked at the sketch on the canvas before him,
comparing it to the subject across the room. She seemed even

lees attractive than she had in the sitting of the previous

37

day, and the changes he had made in the sketch were more
evident than he had thought, although the likeness was still
acceptable. As he began to apply the first colors to the
canvas he thought about the conversation in her husband's den,
and about subtle touches that would accent features he could
no longer discern in the woman's face. Her nervousness of the
first session seemed to have dissipated, but it had been
replaced by a mood no more conducive to his task. She seemed
sullen and withdrawn, and spoke only in direct response to his
questions.

By the end of the afternoon he had applied a great deal
of paint, but accomplished.very littleu It seemed as if every
stroke required another stroke to correct. Ellen
Gentillozzi's eyes displayed more distrust than curiosity as
she watched him staring at the canvas, and he wondered for a
moment if she was aware of the disappointment he was feeling,
of the difficulty of the task her husband had assigned him.
He covered the canvas carefully with a cloth before leaving

the house.

For the next two days he worked in the same manner,
painting what he saw, and then adding and subtracting as he
thought best, redefining proportions. Her mood seemed to grow
more morose each day. Each day he found it more difficult to
recognize any beauty in his subject. The painting was
becoming more a work of imagination than a portrait, and he

was not longer sure that he was producing any kind of likeness

38
of the woman. How can you do this to me? he wanted to asked
her. How could you seem so beautiful at first, and then turn
into this? He could feel the money slipping from his grasp.

At noon on Friday, the fifth day of his work on the
portrait, he stopped. He could no longer use the woman in the
chair as a reference. She bore no resemblance to the face in
the painting. For the past two hours he had worked at
improving the likeness, but what he had created was neither
an accurate portrayal nor an image of the ideal beauty he had
tried to create for Victor Gentillozzi.

"Are you finished?" she asked, as he began packing up his
materials.

"There is still some detail work, background, minor
things. I'm going to take it with me."

"Will there be another sitting?"

"Possibly," said Peter. "I'll be back Monday."

He did not intend to do any more work on the portrait,
and was not sure that he intended to return on Monday. There
didn't seem to be anything more he could do. His imagination
was unable to provide the beauty he could no longer find in
his subject. He took the canvas with him because he didn't
want Ellen or her husband to see it.

As he was sliding it into the back seat of his car the
gardener came out of the garage.

"Finished?"

"For the week," said Peter.

"Good," said the gardener. "Give Mrs. G. a chance to get

39
out and enjoy her garden." He walked onto the lawn next to
the drive, looking down at the grass. "See that?"

"Green dye?"

"Green dead," said the gardener. "Put that stuff on
almost three weeks ago. Grass hasn't grown an inch since.
I usually have to mow it every week." He gazed around the

grounds and then took.a deep breath. "Smell hasn't gone away,
either.

Peter sniffed the air. If anything, it seemed to have
grown stronger. "I'll be darned." He said good-bye to the

old man, climbed into his car, and drove out of the estate.

Sipping bourbon, brooding, he sat in his apartment for
over an hour, staring miserably at the disaster the week's
work had produced. He could never take it back to Victor
Gentillozzi, and didn't deserve to be paid for it. It was an
impossible undertaking. He felt as if Ellen had cheated him,
as if she had been intentionally unattractive make his job
impossible.

When he finally arose he removed the painting from the
easel and set out his sketch book. After examining the four
sketches of Ellen Gentillozzi, he settled again on the last,
transferred it, unaltered, to a new canvas, and began work.
Sleeping only a few hours a night, he worked throughout the
weekend, filling in the sketch from memory, the memory of the
Ellen Gentillozzi with whom he had spent the past week in the

drawing room, as he could no longer summon any memory of the

4o
woman he thought he had met in the garden. By early Monday
morning the new painting was finished, true to his sketch and
to his memory, an excellent likeness, but not the portrait
Victor Gentillozzi wanted to hang in his stairway. Still,
Peter was pleased. It was an accurate and artistic
representation of the woman who had presented herself to him

for the work.

He arrived at the estate at about nine-thirty. Driving
up to the garage, he saw Ellen Gentillozzi, wearing the blue
gown she had worn for all the sittings, the gardener at her
side, walking through the rose garden. He took the painting
and an easel from the back of his car and set them up at the
edge of the garden. The gardener turned at the other end and
hurried back to meet him. Peter heard the front door of the
house close, and looked up to see Victor Gentillozzi coming
down the drive.

"Very impressive." The gardener crowded Peter's side to
get a closer look at the painting.

Ellen Gentillozzi was moving slowly toward them down the
center path of the garden when her husband reached them.

"What are you doing out here?" asked Victor. "Is it
finished?"

"It's finished." Peter was staring at Ellen Gentillozzi.
It was her, the woman he had met here a week ago. She was
radiant, and he suddenly doubted that his work had captured

her well enough to meet her husband's approval.

41

"Pretty good." The gardener smiled, walking back out to
meet her in the garden.

"My god," said Victor Gentillozzi, staring at the
portrait, "it's beautiful.

Peter looked. The face in the portrait was not the one
he remembered painting, but the face of the woman in the
garden, the woman he had met the first time he came to the
estate. He looked up at her again to see that the gardener,
still smiling, had taken her hand, and that she seemed even
more beautiful than she had a moment before. Looking back at
the painting, he found it still a perfect likeness.

Victor Gentillozzi looked from the painting to his wife,

his expression puzzled. "It's remarkable."

SEVINSKI'S SECOND MOVEMENT

On the kitchen table of his little two bedroom home lay
three items that would make this day more interesting and.more
important than any previous day in the life of Leonard
Sevinski. In a large manilla envelope addressed to the editor
of the Toxicology Journal waited a seventeen page report
entitled "The Effects of Selenium on Methylmercury
Neurotoxicity in Laboratory Rats." It was an item that
Leonard believed to be of great importance, though even he
realized it would not be terribly interesting to anyone other
than a scientist, except in its overall conclusion. Its
conclusion was that selenium reduced the neurotoxic effects
of'methylmercury in rats: that is, it neutralized the mercury,
saving the rats from metallic deposits that would otherwise
have destroyed their nervous systems. Even Leonard did not
give a damn about saving rats from mercury poisoning. It had,
in fact, been necessary to wipe out a huge number of them by
that very method during the course of the research. If

selenium worked in the same manner, however, in fish and in

42

43

human beings, it might one day neutralize an environmental
disaster in the Great Lakes. The paper was the result of a
year of laboratory research with a team of graduate students.
Leonard, in his senior year, had been the only undergraduate,
yet he had found himself carrying the bulk of the load. It
had now been a year since the research had been finished. He
had virtually written the whole report, had received several
rejections, made several revisions, and was now sure, with a
few final changes, it was going to be published.

On top of the report, in,a smaller envelope, was a letter
Leonard had written to his ex-wife in the middle of the
previous night, a sort of love letter, an interesting item,
to be sure, but one that seemed important only to Leonard, and
would come to seem less so even to him. Three days earlier,
a little over a year after she had left him to run off with
an ex-high school football star, a kid with a gorilla's body
and a less developed brain, she had come back to him looking
for a reconciliation. Her leaving might have been the
ultimate insult of his life, an insult from which he thought
he had never fully recovered. Nonetheless, he had found
himself, for a reason he didn't understand, happy to see her
again. He had been cordial to her. They went out for dinner
and then came back to his house to talk and drink. But in the
end, just as he had told himself a trillion times he would,
he coolly, almost coldly, turned down her request and showed
her to the door when it was time for bed. He had to admit,

though, that turning her away had not been as easy as he would

44

have liked, and after three restless nights he had broken
down. Waking startled from a dream in which she had made a
guest appearance as heroine, a dream that was beyond his
conscious understanding, but that had left him with a pleasant
feeling' of resurrection, he. had. rushed. to Ihis desk. and
scribbled off the letter; a passionate bleating of forgiveness
and apology. In the dream a soldier stood outside a foxhole,
looking down at another soldier lying at the bottom. Beneath
the helmet of the one in the hole was a bare dried out skull,
but as the other reached down to pull it out the corpse came
to life and the skull was transformed into a living face. It
was his face. He looked up from the foxhole at his rescuer
and saw his wife.

"Kathy," he called. But it was no longer her. The
soldier was now a man with a familiar face that he did not
recognize.

"I have brought you back," said the man, "because she
wanted me to." He pointed, and Leonard again saw Kathy.

"Does this mean...?"

"It means nothing," said the man. "It means she wanted
me to bring you back. I brought you back. That's all."

Then he was gone. Then she was gone. Then Leonard was
awake and writing the letter. He realized suddenly that she
had brought him back to life. In the year since she had left
him he had neglected old relationships and established no new
ones. Losing her had made him afraid of life, afraid of

closeness, of dependency, and. of himself. Even as he

45
awkwardly, determinedly, asked her to leave, he had felt more
alive and more important than he had since she left him” When
he was finished with the writing he put the letter in the
envelope and sealed it, as if to protect it from
reconsideration, and returned to bed.

Next to the two envelopes on the table was a paperback
copy of Ulysses, an item unarguably of both interest and
importance. Leonard had read a lot when he was a teenager,
but when he entered college he devoted himself to science and
statistics. Only after Kathy left him did he begin reading
literature again, diminishing the presence of her absence by
focusing his time and attention on novels he had always meant
to read. Although he found Joyce rather confusing, and
although it seemed like it was taking him forever to wade
through the single day in which the narrative of Ulysses takes
place, he was fascinated by the book, and had been carrying
it with him even to work, where he would pore over a sentence
or passage he had found confusing, interesting or amusing
whenever he had a break. For the past two days, however, his
mind had been busy with thoughts about Kathy, and though the
book was always at hand he had opened it only a couple of
times, and found himself unable to concentrate on reading.

At noon, early in the day for Leonard, and for most
afternoon shift workers, Ulysses and the two envelopes were
waiting on the kitchen table to be carried out of the house.
Leonard was in the bathroom conducting a rather unsatisfying

movement of his bowels. He had only recently been switched

46

to the afternoon shift, and the change in eating and sleeping
habits, coupled with stress over the publication of the report
and Kathy's return, had had an unpleasant effect on his
digestive sync. Now adagio, now prestissimo, he rarely knew
what to expect. Today he had looked forward to a grand
crescendo with a flatulent chordal finale, but found that
after a brief, discordant intro he was at a loss to strike up
a note.

His posterior, however, true to its purpose and slow to
admit defeat, maintained its ground for close to ten minutes,
while his upper quarters were locked into a cycle of thoughts
concerning the upcoming reunion, Kathy had once made him feel
so good, so wanted, so normal. He had lived since early
adolescence with a secret fear that he was not normal, that
he was somehow falling short of what he was supposed to be.
The way he thought, the way he talked and acted, seemed to him
so different from the way others thought and talked and acted
that he was afraid he would be found out, exposed as an
abnormal, a misfit, or even a lunatic if he let anyone get too
close. When he began seeing Kathy her approval of him had
been so immediate and unconditional it carried him through
their awkward.beginning and allayed his fear of exposureu She
had made it seem okay to be Leonard Sevinski. But in the
second and final year of their marriage it began to seem less
okay. She grew bored with him, and he began to feel that he
had. been right about himself, that there was something

different about him, something wrong with him. When she left

47

he was convinced it was due to his failure not only as a
husband but as a man. His fear and insecurity engulfed him
again and he felt suddenly that he had been alone all along.

But now she was back. Now she was admitting that it was
she that had been wrong, that he was worthy and desirable.
It had taken him three nights to realize it, but for the first
time in over a year he felt that he, not his mind or
abilities, but he, was worth something again. He had ushered
her out of the house three nights ago because he was afraid,
but he now realized that he had nothing to be afraid of, that
her return proved that he didn't need to hide. The memory of
the pain and humiliation with which she had left him a year
ago crept into his mind a couple of times as he sat there,
rekindling the anger and resentment that had colored all his
thoughts about her until last night, but each time the dream
reinserted itself and the relief and happiness with which he
awoke from it melted the bad memories and overshadowed his
reservations. She had once made him feel more alive than he
had ever felt without her, and she had now done it again. He
couldn't help but feel that he would be a fool to let her go.

Coming out of the bathroom he saw the articles on the
table and remembered that his paper was going in for
publication. He smiled for a moment, and then frowned at an
intruder. Could Kathy have come back knowing that he was
about to be published, that he might soon be able to make a
living as a biochemist rather than as an unskilled warehouse

laborer? He put the thought quickly out of his mind. She

48
couldn't possibly be aware of the status of the report, and
even if she were she would have to know that the publication
was not going to make him wealthy. He would probably take a
pay cut to get a job in laboratory research. The change would
bring him a satisfaction he had awaited for years, but would
certainly not make him the object of a fortune hunt. He
glanced out the window at the Michigan February as he pulled
his coat on, then, slipping the envelopes into the pages of

the book, cradled them all under his arm and left the house.

A few minutes before one o'clock Ulysses, the two
envelopes sandwiched between pages 372 and 373, (365 and 366
by the pagination of the original American edition, to which
so many scholarly notes refer), landed on the end of the bar
at the Mariner Tavern. Leonard had become somewhat of a
regular there lately, stopping in before work a few times a
week.

"Hello, love," said a silver haired woman so old he
imagined he could see dust on her face, caked thick in the
crevices around her eyes and at the corners of her ancient
smile. "What'll it be? Heineken?" .

"Make it a Pauli, Alberta," said Leonard.

"Dark?"

"Right."

"Glass?"

"Please."

When she returned with the beer and glass she glanced at

49
the stack.of paper in front of him. "Toxicology Journal," she
said. "What are you sending them?"

Leonard looked down.at the bar and saw the address on the
large envelope protruding from the book. "It's a study on the
effect of selenium on mercury poisoning."

"Oh, really?" she said. She had the tone of a
grandmother trying to sound interested in a child's project,
but Leonard was not annoyed. He liked the old woman, and
didn't care much for discussing the details of the project
with people outside of the field, anyway.

He ordered an olive burger, more out of a sense of duty
to his stomach than hunger. As Alberta went into the kitchen
to place his order a waitress came in from the back room of
the bar. She was about Leonard's height, and probably a
couple of years younger, with almost blonde hair, chopped
short at the sides with the currently stylish tail at the
back. Leonard had said hello to her several times, without
ever actually meeting her, though he knew her name was Jodi.
She smiled and waved to him from the other end of the bar.

"Hiya," said Leonard.

When Alberta returned Jodi got two bottles of Miller and
a dollar's worth of quarters and returned to the back room.

"She's a nice girl," said Alberta.

"She seems nice," said Leonard.

He wondered how Kathy would react to his change of heart.
There was always the chance, he thought, that it was too late,

but that possibility seemed rather remote. Even as he was

50
walking her to the door three nights earlier, even as they
were saying their cool, dispassionate good-byes, she had
maintained her air of knowing self-confidence.

And he too, at least as he saw it now, had had the
feeling that he just wasn't going to get away with it, that
he could not have missed her so much, that she could not have
hurt him so badly, if he didn't love her, if he didn't need
her. He could no longer understand how he had been able to
let her get out of the house the other night. She was
radiant, at least in his eyes, and she was in top form. A
small girl, she had virtually no breasts, but Leonard had
never been big on breasts, anyway. Sharp as his mind was, he
had never been terribly imaginative, and could never think of
anything to do with them. It was her face, though, that
really moved him, a beautiful smile--perfect teeth and small,
friendly lips--and blue eyes that were actually closer to
grey. Intriguing eyes.

But by far the most remarkable feature of the woman was
her tongue. It was an instrument of many delightful talents,
to be sure, but the one which had attracted Leonard first was
its gift of oratory. She had never taken well to education,
and was not at all smart in the bookish sense in which he was
smart, but she had always shown a brilliance in analyzing
everyday situations and a love of irony that made her openness
somewhat unsettling to a good many people. But Leonard had
never been put off by her wit. Even when it was aimed at him

he usually enjoyed it, though nothing was sacred to her.

51

"You don't have any girlfriends?" she had asked him three
nights before, in a tone that indicated she thought she
already knew the answer.

"No," he said. "No friends at all, really."

"So, what do you do?" she asked. "Jack-off?"

"I've been celibate," said Leonard.

"Hah!" she said. "I know that's a lie. You were always
such a sexual fucker."

He laughed, partly at her terminology and partly at
himself. She was, of course, right. He had, in fact, been
celibate for a few months after she left. He was, after all,
genuinely hurt and genuinely afraid of being hurt again. He
then tried masturbation for a while, but between lingering
adolescent feelings of guilt and an inability to find himself
terribly interesting, he had lost interest in the manual
method rather quickly. During the past summer he had rented
three hookers, his only sexual activity in an otherwise warm
and pleasant season. But here, too, guilt bothered him, as
did fear--fear of being found out as much as fear of disease.
Finally, with his ego a bit inflated by the last of the
prostitutes he'd seen, a pretty young woman who had really
earned her money by telling him how good, how "really good,"
he was over and over again, and by kissing him everywhere and
thanking him at the end, he decided to get himself back into
circulation. So he began trolling the bars, starting out low,
looking for women with minor imperfections-—slight weight

problems, bad teeth, bowed legs, what have you--women who

52

would be grateful. But once again he was pursued by his
conscience after these encounters. He was pursued also by.
some of the women, which bothered him more than the guilt.
The women toward whom he was really attracted, the ones he
would have been proud to know and to be seen with, he was
afraid of. They were the ones who could hurt him.
Inevitably, he became frustrated.again, retired from the pick-
up clubs, and had once again been celibate for the past few
months.

Over the course of his year alone his major sources of
enjoyment, his major sources of relief, had been his research
and his reading. The selenium project had been in progress
when Kathy was still with him, but after she left he began to
devote almost all his free time to it. As the study wound
toward its conclusions, and could no longer occupy all his
time, he began reading, and fell asleep late most nights with
a book in bed beside him.

All of his activities through that year, he now realized,
had been distractions, safe distractions from thinking about
Kathy. ‘When he told her, "It could never work again," he knew
that he meant his pride would not allow him to admit that it
probably would work again. And as they stood at the door,
although he tried his damnedest to muster a no-hard-feelings
smile, they both knew that it was probably the second most
difficult moment in his life.

There is still room for love, he thought to himself as

he waited for his burger. She has shown you that there is

53

still room for love in your life. It was the meaning of the
dream. The dead lover in him, the admitter of need, the risk
taker, had been revitalized by the reappearance of this woman,
this girl. She was, in fact, still only a girl. Although
Leonard often felt like he was a million years old, like he
had grown right out of all the joys of youth, they were both
still very young. .And today he was beginning to feel, for the
first time in a painfully long time, that it was good to be
young.

Halfway through his olive burger Leonard was joined at
the bar by a tall man, at least five or six inches taller than
he was, and perhaps as many years his senior. Although the
entire bar was open, the man chose the stool right next to
his. Leonard tried not to look at him, keeping his face in
his burger. He disliked talking to strangers, especially in
bars, and hated the kind of conversation he was sure was about
to be initiated. He had never understood why so many people
were unable to drink quietly alone, why they couldn't leave
him alone and mind their own damned business.

Alberta, who was at the other end of the bar, sneaking
spoonfuls of chili from a bowl she had stashed under the
counter, came over, dabbing a napkin at her wrinkled lips, to
take the stranger's order.

"Seven and Seven," he said. "I just started a voluntary
lay-off today. I'm celebrating."

Leonard knew without looking up that this was directed

at him. "Congratulations," he said. He was not overly

54
impressed with a man who volunteered to hit the unemployment
line when twenty percent of the state was already out of work.
He kept eating, and the man didn't say anything more for a
little while.

When Jodi came back into the room the stranger watched
her wait at the end of the bar for two more Millers and a Tom
Collins. "She don't look too bad," he said, thrusting an
elbow into Leonard's side as she passed again to the back
room. Leonard didn't reply, though he had finished eating.

"You ever go out to Indian Lake in the summer?" asked the
stranger.

"Not since I was a kid," said Leonard, wondering what in
hell brought that up in the middle of February.

"Boy, you oughta," said the other. "I worked on a
dredging crew out there for a couple of years, and I've been
spending afternoons out there ever since. You wouldn't
believe all the tuna that packs into that beach every day."

Leonard tried not to smile. "I work afternoons."

"What time?"

"Three-thirty," said Leonard.

"Hell," said the stranger, "that's perfect. Get out
there around noon. A lot of them are married anyway. You
know, just looking for a little afternoon action. They have
to be home before hubby gets out of work... I tell ya, since
my wife, my ex-wife, that is," he smiled, "left me I've been
noticing that there's a lot of snapper around this town just

itching for a little strange."

55

"Well," said Leonard, "I guess it's the least we could
do."

"That's right," laughed his new friend, pounding a fist
on the bar. "Hey, you're just about dry there. Let me get
you one."

Leonard checked the clock and reluctantly agreed. He,
of course, now wanted something more than a hunk of tuna,
something that wanted more than a little strange, something
that offered more than an illicit afternoon orgasm. Yet there
was something reassuring in the thought of a beach covered
with pungent, starving bikinis, although it was not an easy
vision to conjure in the middle of a Michigan winter. There
was also something a bit disconcerting in the thought that a
large number of those bikinis were being carried to the beach
by'a boredom with young marriages, by the hunger for something
different, something more exciting than a husband.

He finished the second beer quickly, and began to rise.
"I have to catch a bus," he said.

"Where you going?" asked his companion.

"Downtown," said Leonard. "Larch Street."

"Well hell," said the stranger, "I've got to go that way.
Have one more with me and I'll give you a lift." When Leonard
hesitated, he added, "Beats the hell out of waiting for a
bus."

Leonard didn't like to have more than two beers before
work. His job at the warehouse was fairly mindless, and

didn't require much attention, but he knew that three beers

56
was enough to make him tired before the end of his shift. The
buses, however, were terribly inconsistent, and 'when he
thought about the weather outside the offer began to sound
better.

"What the hell," he said.

The stranger ordered two more drinks, and then excused
himself to go downstairs to the john.

Seeing him gone when she came back into the room, Jodi
walked around the bar and sat down at the stool next to
Leonard.

"Do you know that guy?" she asked.

"No," said Leonard. "Why, do you?"

"No," she said. "I think he's weird."

Leonard laughed. "Weird?"

"Creepy," said Jodi. "I didn't like the way he was
looking at me."

Leonard mused. The man was probably a drunk, and
certainly a bit strange, but he hadn't thought of him as weird
or creepy. "I hope he isn't too weird," he said, "because
he's giving me a ride into town." She gave him a disapproving
look. "Hey," he said, "it's cold out. I have to get to
work."

She made no further comment on the subject, but didn't
get up either. "My name's Jodi," she said after a moment.

"I know," said Leonard. "I heard Alberta say it the
other day."

"And yours is Leonard." Smiling, in answer to the

57
question on his face, she added, "I asked Alberta."

She held out her hand and Leonard took it, shook it, and
held it for a second. "Pleased ta meetcha," he said.

Jodi smiled. "How far into Ulysses are you?"

"About.halfway," said Leonard. lkzseems like it's taking
forever."

"It's worth it," said Jodi. "Joyce once said that
reading that book was a lifetime's work."

Leonard had been surprised. at. her interest in his
reading, but he was nearly shocked by her familiarity with
Joyce. "That sounds borderline egomaniacal. He was only
thirty-two when it was copyrighted. It took.him longer to get
it published than it did to write it, and the rest of us are
supposed to spend our entire lives reading it?"

"It sounds like that," said Jodi. "But I don't think he
was separating himself from the rest of us. He saw a
synthesis in the book.that he didn't put there, that he didn't
even fully understand. Ulysses is different from his earlier
stuff. He was beginning to think of himself as a gifted
observer and recorder of life, rather than as an interpreter.
I think he was right. It is a life's work--probably more."

Smiling, astounded, Leonard stared at her.

"I'm working on a Masters degree in English literature,"
said Jodi, in answer to his unasked question. "Oop, there's
my cue."

Leonard saw the stranger coming around the corner from

the stairway. Jodi laid a hand on his shoulder to push

58
herself up from the stool.

"See ya later."

"You got a little something goin' there?" asked the
stranger, pulling up to the bar.

"Just talking," said Leonard.

"Uh huh," said the other, grinning.

At the other end of the bar Alberta, setting her spoon
back into the hidden chili bowl, fell into a violent coughing
fit. The cough was harsh, and sounded painful and forced.
It went on for ten or fifteen seconds, and Leonard started to
fear that she was choking. He was about to get up, wondering
whether her old ribs were too brittle to survive a Heimlich,
when the spell began to subside. Between two loud final
coughs she emitted a rattling fart, and the stranger laughed
aloud. Leonard wasn't sure whether the whole coughing fit was
faked to cover the fart, or the fart was a case of equal and
opposite reaction, but either way he felt sorry for the old
woman, and irritated at the man next to him for heightening
her embarrassment.

He finished his beer in a silence that even the stranger
did not interrupt, paid his tab, and laid a dollar on the bar
for her. The stranger downed the remainder of his drink and
rose.

"See:ya next time, Alberta," said Leonard, pulling on his
coat.

"Okay, hun," said the old woman, meekly smiling. "you

take care."

59

"You betcha." He waited for the other man to start for
the door, and then set another dollar on the bar without
looking back at Alberta.

At fifteen minutes to three Ulysses, the envelopes still
nestled in its pages, settled on the dash of a 1977 Chevy van.
The front bumper of the van was missing, as was about half of
the grill, and the right headlight was held on by two strands
of wire and what appeared to be a shoelace. The driver, as
he explained to Leonard, had a D.U.I.L. ticket to clear up.

"Do you drink whiskey?" he asked.

"Occasionally," said Leonard. He was beginning to wish
he had caught the bus when he had the chance, but it was too
late. The next one would get him to work at least twenty
minutes late.

The stranger, whose name Leonard still didn't know,
crawled into the back of the van, where he had a small stove
and refrigerator, a narrow bed, and one hell of a mess on the
floor.

"I really have to get to work," said Leonard.

"Plenty of time," said the stranger. "This will just
take a minute." He shuffled around in the rubble, swearing,
for a couple of minutes, and then re-emerged in the driving
compartment with a half empty pint bottle of whiskey, two
styrofoam cups, and a half-liter of Seven-Up. I always rinse
out my coffee cups," he said, "just in case I have company.
Not that you're the kind of company I have in mind, if you

know what I mean." He measured the whiskey carefully into the

60
cups and handed one to Leonard.

Leonard poured a few ounces of bubbleless Seven-Up into
his drink, noticing that the man hadn't rinsed the cups
particularly well. A few ashes and a small hair swam in the
swirling liquid, probably the least toxic of the mixture's
contents, he mused, though the hair bothered him a little.

As he drove, the stranger told Leonard the story of the
accident and the ticket. Another car had pulled in front of
him on an icy highway, and he hadn't been able to get around
it. It wasn't his fault. But while they waited for the cops,
who took almost an hour to get there, he was sitting in the
back of the van drinking whiskey and Seven-Up and getting
sloshed. The other driver got ticketed for an unsafe lane
change, and he was cited for driving under the influence of
liquor. He intended to fight it, though, on the grounds that
he hadn't been drinking before the accident. It was legal to
drink in the back of a van in Michigan, he explained, as long
as it was registered as a motor home. He didn't say how he
had planned to get the van off the side of the highway.

Leonard sipped slowly and carefully at the drink as they
travelled, keeping a close eye on the hair. When they came
to a stop sign and the driver was watching the traffic, he
stuffed a finger in and pulled it up the side of the cup.

"As soon as I get that taken care of," said the other,
"I want to go down to Texas."

"Yeah?" said Leonard, wiping his finger on the side of

his jeans.

61

"Yeah," said the stranger. "I'veigot friends in Houston,
but I don't think I could stay there. There's too much work,
and I'd end up losing my unemployment."

Leonard laughed.

"Really," said the other. "But I think I've got it
worked out. I'll rent a little shack down in Corpus, or maybe
just a room, and have 'em send my checks there. Then I can
just drive down from Houston twice a month to pick 'em up."

"Sounds like a lot of work to stay unemployed," said
Leonard.

The stranger laughed. "It'll be worth it."

At the corner of Michigan and Larch the tires scraped
against the curb as the van came to a stop.

"Sure you don't want me to take you all the way up?"

"This is fine," said Leonard, anxious to escape. "I have
a few minutes to kill, anyway." He swilled what he could of
the drink, and dumped a half inch of the liquid and most of
the ashes out the door. Thanking the driver, he jumped to the

sidewalk.

At three-fifteen, Ulysses, still snuggling the two
envelopes, pulled away from the corner of Larch and Michigan
on the dashboard of the 1977 Chevy motor home. Leonard stood
at the corner for a few seconds, made a strange, sour face,
shaking off a gastronomical tremor ignited by that last drink
of the whiskey, and then walked half a block up Larch Street

before realizing he was missing something.

62

"Fuck!" he shouted. "Shit!" He jumped in the air in
order to be able to stomp both feet at the same time. When
he got back to the corner he saw the van, two blocks down
Michigan Avenue, stopped in the left turn lane at a red light.
He started running, and after a half block began waving his
arms, trying to whistle, and yelling, "hey!" He ran past the
adult bookstores, which advertised "Peep Shows" for fifty
cents, past the Velvet Fingers Massage Parlor and Escort
Service, past the downtown Rescue Mission, which advertised
Christ, who died for our sins, past the Pussycat Theater, past
three gay bars, one Mexican restaurant, and two high school
girls who had certainly picked a questionable part of town in
which to spend the afternoon, one of whom pointed, and both
of whom laughed as he ran by. He had almost reached the van,
despite nearly being run over on Cedar Street, when the light
changed and it pulled around the corner. He chased it south
for two blocks more, falling farther and farther behind, until
he saw it swerve onto the entrance of the highway.

"Shit!" he shouted, flipping his middle finger up at the
back of the van as it faded out of sight. "Fuck!"

The whiskey and the running had not treated him well.
He was not in very good physical shape, and found himself
terribly out of breath and a little dizzy. Still worse, he
was furious with.himself for being so stupid. He should never
have gotten into the van. At a corner drug store he stopped
and used the phone to call in sick to work, though he was

already getting his wind back and feeling a little better.

63
His boss was surprised, but not unfriendly. Leonard had not
missed a day in the two years he had worked at the warehouse.
There are firsts for everything, he thought as he hung up the
phone.

The walk home was not bad, although.it was several miles.
He pulled his hood on, and without anything to carry now, was
able to keep both hands in his pockets. As his breath and
heartbeat returned to their normal walking rhythm he hit his
stride and actually began to enjoy the walk, and the thought
of not having to go to work. He became also a bit less severe
with himself, and began to wonder why he had become so
panicked and enraged. The selenium report was, of course, one
of several copies, and he still had the original at home.
Ulysses was a sad loss, to be sure, but it was the paperback
edition, and the financial beating was therefore not too
severe. And the letter...

Yes, the letter. He realized suddenly that the letter
was the only thing that couldn't be replaced. Even now he
could remember only small parts of it. "It was my pride," he
had written, "that didn't want you back." And he had gone on
to diminish pride and to rant poetically in the name of love.
But now, walking through the February grey, with his hood
pulled up so that he could see only forward, like a horse in
blinders, he found that his pride was back again, and that it
wasn't willing in the middle of the day to be so easily
diminished.

"Goddamnit!" he shouted. to himself, not angry, but

64
relieved, suddenly relieved and slightly amused. "God fucking
damn it!" He had won a reprieve. Losing the letter might
have been the best thing that could have happened to him
today. It gave him a chance to rethink his position. He had
not even thought about Kathy since... since he had talked to
Jodi at the Mariner.

For the rest of the walk Leonard reconstructed the
previous night's dream in his mind.

"Does this mean...?" he began to ask.

"It means nothing," said the man in the dream. And this
time Leonard agreed. Yes, she had awakened him from a deadly
sleep, but it was a sleep that she had put him into in the
first place, and it suddenly seemed to him that the re-
awakening was all her return had to offer him. He did not
need her back. He laughed aloud at this realization, so loud,
in fact, that he startled himself. Then he laughed again at
being startled.

When he finally arrived home his legs were tired, but he
felt good, better than he had felt in a long time. He went
into the second bedroom, the one he used as a study, and
removed the original of "The Effects of Selenium on
Methylmercury Neurotoxicity in Laboratory Rats" from the
center drawer of his desk. The desk was a huge maple affair
that he had purchased at a rummage sale just after his wife
left him. It had been painted yellow when he found it, and
he had stripped it, replaced a broken leg, and refinished it

in linseed oil and wax. He was very proud of having found and

65
resurrected such a beautiful piece.

He laid the report on the kitchen table, so that he
wouldn't forget to have another copy made in the morning.
Looking at it lying there he felt the absence of Ulysses. He
would buy another copy tomorrow. Or perhaps he could borrow
one from Jodi.

Finding himself loosened up a bit by the food, the
drinking and the exercise, he went into the bathroom and
assumed a familiar pose atop his faithful American Standard.
He was now much less indisposed than earlier in the day. In
fact, he orchestrated a movement of virtuoso perfection, not
missing a note, and was so pleased he could.have given himself
a standing ovation. His newfound regularity was not one
sided, either; he found his mind freed from its previous
confusion and returning to its old and ordinary shitcan
occupations. He read about palmitic acid, triethanolamine,
pentane and sorbitol on the back of his shaving cream can;
about SD Alcohol 40, propylene glycol, menthol, benzoic acid,
and FD&C Yellow#5 and Blue #1 on his after shave; about TEA
Lauryl Sulfate, Lauramide DEA, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose,
and possible traces of Linoleamide DEA and sodium dihydroxy-

ethylglycinate on his bottle of organic shampoo.

PAWN TO QUEEN FOUR

The only light on in the front part of the Wells house
was the one in the first bedroom, Craig's room. I jumped onto
the porch, careful not to step on the lawn, and knocked
lightly on the window of that room. Craig's old man would be
sitting in the living room, listening to a ball game or the
jazz station on the radio, staring out of the dark at the
street and the lawn on which he spent so much of his time.
I didn't need to see him to know he was there. He was always
there, and is probably there now. But if I had rung the bell
and listened to the long series of chimes he would only have
been irritated, and would not have budged from the couch to
let me in. Stepping on the lawn would have brought him to the
door.

A minute or so after I knocked at the window I heard
Craig's chair slide away from the desk. Although I knew he
stayed very busy I always suspected that he kept me waiting
on the porch intentionally, to make me feel unimportant, or

at least uncomfortable, and to gain a psychological advantage

66

67

in the chess games. When he finally got around to letting me
in I heard two voices: first that of Craig's sister,
apparently engaged in an argument with their mother in the
kitchen: then that of Dave Bing, one of the radio commentators
for the Pistons' games. The radio was not loud enough to
drown out the discussion taking place in the kitchen, but Mr.
Wells, a still dark shadow on the couch, did not appear to
hear anything but the sounds of the game.

"What's the score?" I asked, a little surprised at the
volume of my voice in the hallway.

The old man snorted in the darkness without moving. "A
million to one," he grumbled after a moment.

Craig clicked his tongue off the roof of his mouth the
way he often did to indicate his disgust or impatience. "You
want to play chess or talk about basketball?" It always
seemed to bother him when I stopped to talk to his father,
maybe just because it kept him waiting and destroyed the
superior position.he'd established.by leaving me on the porch.
I'm sure I never thought of that at the time. I just enjoyed
talking to Mr. Wells, despite all his efforts to make himself
unlikable, and perhaps partly because of them.

There was a story that had floated around the
neighborhood about the old man being drafted by the Brooklyn
Dodgers as a pitcher. He played, according to the story, a
year of double-A, and supposedly would have gone up to the
majors if he hadn't been drafted into the army for World War

II. By the time he got out there was a new crop of strong

68
young arms, and no place for him to play. It was the kind of
story I could believe, and it seemed to explain, at least to
some extent, the old man's ill-temper.

As we walked into the room and Craig pushed the door
closed, I noticed the aroma of the pot, and the half burned
joint in the ashtray next to the chessboard. Smoking pot was
a regular part of our evening chess games. It was usually
Craig's pot, and I remember him accusing me once of putting
up with the games in order to get high, an accusation that was
probably not entirely unfounded. The trouncing I took in most
of the matches was far from enjoyable, but Craig's pot was
always good.

He was three years older than I, a freshmen in college
at the time, while I was a high school sophomore. We had
gotten to know each other a couple of years earlier, during
our simultaneous and equally unsuccessful attempts at hanging
around with my older brother and a group of his friends.
Craig never fit in because his interest in school kept him too
busy to learn anything about being cool, about the art of
hanging around. I was too young, and too willing to open my
mouth and express my immaturity, to gain the respect of the
older guys. In our own ways, Craig and I were both dinks, and
we both slipped quickly and uncomfortably out of the gang.

I managed to salvage one redeeming accomplishment in the
failure: I proved myself the best competition in the
neighborhood for Craig's chess skills. 'This was not any great

clairu My brother and most of his friends had each played him

69
at least once, but none of them knew much more than how the
pieces moved. I wasn't a lot of competition--I was lucky to
win one of ten--but I understood enough about strategy to at
least make him work to beat me. Our rivalry was fierce, but
for the most part friendly. Craig made the most of his
superiority. He was a poor winner and an even poorer loser.
He gloated mercilessly at every victory, and pouted and
complained so at each rare defeat that I was always
disappointed to feel as much sympathy as satisfaction when I
won. He had convinced me that something had to be terribly
out of order for me to beat him.

The board was set up for play, the only thing in the room
that reflected any sense of organization. .Around the carpeted
floor and across the bed were scattered a number of thick
textbooks, mostly math and statistics.

"Must be hell to get a vacuum through here," I said,
moving to my side of the desk.

"Very funny," said Craig. "I haven't had time to play
housekeeper this week."

As I sat down I gave the globe at the end of the desk a
spin, and then stopped it, closing my eyes, with a finger.

"Madagascar," I announced, without opening my eyes,
feeling the relief with my hand.

"Good," said Craig. "Just like your chess game. Make
a blind move and then try to guess where it got you." He sat
down and lifted a pawn from each side of the board, shook them

between his hands, and held out two closed fists. I pointed

70
to the one on the right. Craig opened his hand to display a
black pawn.

"Maybe you should try closing your eyes," he said. "You
want white? It hate to start you off with even more of a
disadvantage."

He always made this offer when I drew black, probably
just for the sake of being insulting. "I'll play black," I
said. "That's what I wanted to pick."

After replacing the pawns he took the joint from the
ashtray and handed it to me. We each went through five moves
without hesitation as we smoked. Craig almost always opened
the same way, pawn to queen four, the unconventional favorite
of Bobby Fischer. I had tried a few different gambits against
the opening, but didn't understand them well enough to avoid
disaster, so I had settled into mimicking his first few moves,
developing some power, and countering the quick attack on the
center of the board. The knights came out, the queen's bishop
came out, and pawn to king three opened a lane for the king's
bishop.

At that point the pat moves were all used up, and we both
began taking more time, trying to visualize an attack, to find
the right spot for a trap or an all out offensive. Craig was
an expert at setting middle-game traps, and although I rarely
fell for the same one twice, I always felt outclassed in this
part of the game, even when I seemed to be holding my own.
Craig's plans included five or six moves at a time, and what

looked to me like a simple trade often turned out to be an

71
elaborate scheme to win a major piece or gain control of a
side of the board. That was all it took for him to win a
game. When the board thinned out, Craig's superiority made
even a slight advantage almost invincible.

When it became apparent that the real battle was about
to begin I thought and looked for long periods of time between
moves. I could hear the sounds of the basketball game, and
the argument in the kitchen rising intermittently above it.
Craig's sister seemed to be a real problem for their mother.
At fourteen she was like an untrainable pet. A big girl,
almost Amazonian in appearance, she towered over the others
in her class, and probably had even more trouble fitting in
than her brother did. But she didn't have Craig's academic
advantage to compensate for her social problems. Instead of
burying herself in books she roared like a lioness, and fought
verbally and physically with anyone who opposed her, outside
of and within her family. In the kitchen her arguments rose
at points to a hateful, shrieking tone that I couldn't
remember ever being angry enough to reach, and fell at other
points to a pleading whimper that seemed beyond any
desperation I'd ever felt.

I wondered if Craig's failure to become an accepted part
of my brother's group was not due more to the strangeness of
his family than to any undesirable trait in Craig himself.
We all had strange families. The neighborhood was an urban
stew of religious neurotics, alcoholic fathers, mothers with

prescription drug addictions, sisters who were becoming dope—

72

whores. But there was something different about the Wells
family. Maybe it was just that none of us ever felt that we
really knew them. It was okay when somebody found your dad's
whiskey stashed in the garage, as long as you laughed along
with them. It was even all right to get pissed off, the way
I did when one of the guys told me that the reason my mother
couldn't seem to keep her car on the road was that she was
always on downers, because everybody understood. But when you
just dummied up the way Craig did when somebody made a joke
about his father murdering someone for walking on his lawn,
nobody could understand. He never gave us any indication of
what his family was like for him, which made it hard to
sympathize with him, or to joke with him about them.

I heard Craig clicking his tongue against the roof'of his
mouth, and realized suddenly that I had been staring at the
board for a long time without even thinking about my next
move. I tried to ignore his impatience and focus my
attention, but my imagination wasn't working. I couldn't see
the changes that were likely to occur in the next stage of the
game. The noise from the kitchen rose and fell in expanding
waves. I was in trouble. Falling into guessing my way from
move to move always resulted in swift disaster. I stalled for
a few more minutes, ignoring the drumming of Craig's fingers
on the desk, and finally, more out of aggravation than
calculation, moved pawn to queen's bishop four. It opened a
lane for my queen, and added a new complication to the center

of the board. If nothing else, it would at least force him

73
into a new variation of whatever scheme he was working on.
"That's it?" said Craig, throwing his hands up in
disbelief. "All that time, and that's what you came up with?"

"I thought.it would look good there," I replied, a little

irritated.
"Well," said Craig, "I guess it could have some
interesting ramifications. " The way he studied the board made

me think I may have made a pretty good move. I reviewed the
last few moves and the positions of all the pieces, and
finally found it. My pawn move was going to force a conflict
at the center of the board, and I appeared to be at an
advantage if I could make it happen quickly. I could win a
knight or a bishop, or at the worst a pawn and control of the
center. I had stumbled into a powerful position. I glanced
up at Craig to see that he had been watching me.

"So, you finally see it."

I smiled. "Pretty brilliant, huh?"

"Yeah," said Craig. "You're a blithering genius.
Sometimes I almost forget you don't know what the hell you're
doing."

"Thank you."

He continued to stare at the board for a long time,
calculating, I was sure, all the possible combinations of
moves the coming conflict would initiate. I tried for a few
minutes to do the same, but my attention wandered. I drummed
my fingers, cleared my throat, and even clicked my tongue

against the roof of my mouth, but Craig didn't seem to notice.

74

He didn't seem to be distracted by the noise outside the room,
either. His sister's shouting was beginning to rise to a new
shrill level, as if building to an explosion. His mother's
voice was lower, but firm and sharp. She spoke in short
sentences, and although I couldn't make out her words, they
sounded threatening. An occasional radio comment from Dave
Bing still sneaked in from time to time. It had to be nearing
the end of the basketball game; he sounded depressed and
exasperated.

When Craig finally made his move he took power away from
the center of the board, weakening rather than strengthening
his defense of the contested square. This, I assumed, was
intended to cut his losses and prepare for a counter-attack.
He was giving me the battle, and I knew him well enough to
know that meant he had something else going. Surveying the
board, I noticed a rumbling of white power on the king side,
but nothing that seemed like an immediate threat.

I initiated. my' attack, and. he ‘made the obligatory
counter-moves, slowly and deliberately, though I knew he had
already played them out in his mind. I could not believe he
hadn't seen the conclusion I thought inevitable in the
combination. I would finish my exchange with my knight,
leaving myself in position to leapfrog right down his throat,
forking his king and his queen's rook. It was a simple but
classic example of the deceptive strength of the knight.
Craig had destroyed me with it a number of times before, and

it seemed impossible that he didn't see it coming.

75

I took one last glance at the board. The shouting in the
kitchen was beginning to sound almost maniacal. I made the
last move of my combination, setting my knight up in the
center, convinced I was about to take control of the game.

"It's not fucking fair!" screamed. the girl in the
kitchen.

The scream was followed by a slap, and then a rumbling
of movement, falling and scrambling, that stopped with a
sudden thump in the hallway. A door opened and closed.
Craig's sister began to scream again, but a loud crack sent
her voice trailing off into a whimper.

"Get up!" shrieked the mother.

Without looking up from the board, Craig moved a knight
in on my king side, taking a pawn, and forking my queen and
rook.

In the hallway, it sounded as if the girl had just gotten
to her feet when another crack dropped her back, crying, to
the floor. I stared down at the chessboard, trying not to
think about what was going on.' I had not seen Craig's attack
coming, and only now realized that he had beaten me to the
punch, and that I was going to lose again. The cracking sound
began to come at regular, pulsing intervals outside the room.
With each blow the mother shouted a single, unintelligible
syllable. It sounded like some kind of insane chant.

"Sometimes," said Craig, finally looking up at me across
the board, "I don't think she handles things just right."

I looked down at the board.

76

"Thought you had me, didn't you?"

His sister had gotten to her feet again, and taken a
couple of steps down the hall. There was another crack just
outside Craig's room, and the door suddenly burst open. She
came tumbling in, slamming into the desk and sending chess
pieces flying across the room.

"Jesus Christ!" yelled Craig, jumping from his chair.

"Get up and get out here!" shouted their mother.

"Is this really necessary?" said Craig. "I do have
company here right now."

"You stay out of this." His mother glared at him, and
then.at me for an instant, her eyes hateful, the belt dangling
from a trembling hand. "I ought to use this on you, too," she
said, turning back to Craig, "for smoking that damn shit in
here every night."

The sister glanced at me as she pulled herself up from
the floor. There was a red welt across one side of her face.
She, too, seemed.to hate me for being there. Slightly hunched
over, hands shielding her head, she moved quickly past her
mother at the doorway and hurried down the hall to her room.
The mother stood there for a moment, staring after her down
the hall, as if trying to decide whether to follow, and with
one final accusatory glance at me, turned the other way and
returned to the kitchen. Craig pushed the door closed and we
began silently gathering up the pieces on the floor.

When we had them all assembled on the desk I began

setting up my side of the board for the next time we played.

77

"What are you doing?" asked Craig. "The game wasn't
over."

"I think it is now."

"I can reconstruct it," he said.

"That's all right," I said. "I know you were going to
win."

"But you don't know how. That knight fork was just the
beginning. You were going to lose your queen in two more
moves."

It seemed as if the beating I had just witnessed had not
mattered to him, as if it was just an interruption of the
logic and predictability of the game. Outside the room the
house was now still except for the music of the jazz station
on the radio. The basketball game was also over. I took a
cigarette from my jacket pocket. I only smoked a couple a
day, and sometimes none at all, but I liked to have a pack
with me.

"You want to go for a walk?" asked Craig after a minute.
"Smoke another joint before you go home?" This had become a
kind of post-game tradition, but I didn't feel much like it
this time.

"Sure," I said. "I guess so." I lit the cigarette and
began smoking it while he rolled a joint. When he finished
we both watched the board for a minute.

"That was a good game," said Craig. "You had me scared
for a little while there." I put the cigarette out and we got

up together to leave the house. The old man was still on the

78
couch in the dark living room, motionless, staring out into
the‘night.

The autumn night outside was chilly, but not
uncomfortable. The sky was clear, but the lights of the
subdivision made the stars seem dim. We walked to the park
at the end of the block and sat down to smoke the joint. For
a while we didn't talk. The scene that had taken place during
the game had left me without much to say. I had been spanked
pretty good from time to time as a child, but never violently,
never like that. The beating I had just witnessed was beyond
my comprehension.

"That's a hell of an opening," said Craig.

"What?"

"Pawn to queen four. It changes the whole complexion of
the game."

I walked with him back to his house. Stopping on the
sidewalk in front, I glanced at the living room window,
knowing the silent shadow of the old man would still be
staring out, waiting to chase a neighbor with a dog away from

the lawn.

TREES AND CHILDREN

"Hey!" yelled Arthur Jennings, looking out the kitchen
window at the boys climbing in his cherry trees. He scrambled
past his startled wife and out the side door. "Get the hell
out of there!"

The boys jumped down, and one of them ran out the alley
and disappeared behind the garage. The other came straight
at him, smiling contemptuously, veering away as he passed him
to head out the drive. Arthur took one stride and landed a
foot in the back of the boy's pants, lifting him into the air.

"Grin at that, you little son of a bitch!"

"Arthur!" shouted his wife, looking out the door.

The boy, barely breaking stride, landed on the driveway
and continued running, putting a hand over the seat of his
pants as he turned out of sight. Arthur stared after him for
a moment, and then turned toward the house.

"You didn't have to be so rough," said Aileen. "You
might have hurt him."

"I hope I did." She didn't understand. For the past

three years, since their family had moved in down the street,

79

80

he had been trying to fight off the attacks of the Trevor boys
on his prized trees. He spent so much time keeping them
perfectly pruned, and they climbed in them, breaking off twigs
and even small branches. They had carved their initials in
one of the trunks, along with a few Obscenities. One summer,
just as the cherries were ripening, they had stripped them
both bare, scattering the fruit all over the yard. It
infuriated him that booting one of them in the ass was the
only retaliation he had been able to manage.

"They're just kids," said Aileen.

"That's the same thing Ed Zimmer keeps telling me," said
Arthur. Ed Zimmer was their next door neighbor. "'Kids do
that kind of thing,‘ he says. If I had any of my own I'd
understand."

Aileen turned away from him and walked out of the
kitchen. A year before they were married she had had an
abortion. They had both agreed that it seemed to be the only
thing to do at the time. They were not ready to be parents.
But a complication in the surgery had made it impossible for
her to bear another child.

Arthur returned to the kitchen table, where he had left
his Friday evening paper and a cup of coffee. He didn't mean
to hurt Aileen, but he was tired of being reminded that he
didn't have any children. When he married her he said, and
believed, that.it didn't matter, and.he still wasn't sure that
raising children was an experience he was sorry to be missing.

But there was something about being responsible for their

81
inability to have them if they wanted to that did matter to
him. In agreeing to the abortion he felt that he had somehow'
committed a terrible crime against Aileen, and he thought now
that he had married her as much because of that inability as
despite it. If there had been a crime, he realized, they had
committed it together, and living alone with her in this
community in which every household but theirs seemed to be
producing children reminded him every day of their complicity.

They had moved into the lake community six years ago,
during the second year of their marriage. It was supposed to
be a refuge from the working day that never seemed to end when
they lived in the city, but the city and their jobs, he had
come to believe, were not the only things from which they, or
at least he, wanted to escape.

A year after they moved into the house, without Aileen's
approval, and to her dismay, he had.paid three hundred dollars
to have the pair of trees, already pretty well developed,
transplanted into the back yard. He spent hours with them
every week, almost every night for the first summer, pruning,
fertilizing, experimenting with organic methods of disease and
insect control. The trees became his refuge, not only from
the city and the working day, but from the rest of the
neighborhood, and even from Aileen. In his relationship with
those trees he had accomplished an understanding, an awareness
of terms and conditions that he had never been able to achieve
in a relationship with another person. He had them planted

there, he nurtured them, he scrambled through journals and

82

manuals to diagnose their afflictions, but he quickly came to
realize that all his work, though it kept them tidier and
somewhat healthier than they would.have been without it didn't
matter to the trees. They had a plan of their own, and all
he could really do was watch it develop and try to help them
succeed. He couldn't browbeat them. He couldn't kick them
in the ass and make them see things his way. But that was all
right; he had come to understand that about trees, and to
enjoy just watching their progress, helping them along, and
trying to guess at what directions they might take.

Aileen had once accused him of buying them just so that
he would have another excuse to spend time away from her, and
he knew, in a sense, that she was right. He hadn't bought
them for that purpose, but he did probably spend more time
working with them than he did talking to her, and he often
felt less alone observing the serene strength of the trees
than he did in the house with his wife. It was not, he
thought, that they had drifted apart through the years, but
that he, and probably she, too, had come to recognize the
differences that had existed between them all along. Their
joint responsibility for the accidental result of the abortion
was the bond that.had carried.them into the marriage, and that
experience had.been so strange and confusing that they had not
been able to look beyond it to see that there was little else

holding them together.

Saturday morning, glancing again out the kitchen window

 

83
as he poured his morning coffee, Arthur saw first.a glimmering
of red light in the trees. .As his eyes adjusted to the bright
morning light his jaw dropped in shock, and his cup tumbled
into the sink.

"Jesus Christ!" he shouted, scrambling toward the door
in much the same manner he had the previous evening.

They had painted them red. The trunks, the limbs, the
leaves and twigs, and even the buds, which would have begun
to open in the next couple of days, had all been painted a
glowing, fiery red. They had done a thorough job. Only the
highest areas had escaped the spray.

"Oil base," called Ed Zimmer, walking over to the fence
that separated their yards. "I took a look at them earlier.
I was going to come get you, but I figured you'd see them soon
enough. Don't know how in hell you're going to get it off."

Arthur felt sick to his stomach. The paint was so thick
in places that the weight made small branches droop. The buds
were sealed tight, and would surely never open.

"They're going to pay for this," he said quietly.

"You know who did it?"

"We both know who did it."

"You both suspect," said Aileen, coming around the side
of the house.

"You know as well as I do," said Arthur.

"We didn't see them do it," said his wife.

Arthur turned away from her and stared off over the tops

of the trees into the high clouds of the morning sky. "They

 

84
are going to pay."

Ed Zimmer began to talk about the difficulty of removing
the paint without doing further damage to the trees. He
suggested a couple of possibilities, but Arthur wasn't
listening. There had to be a way to get them. They had gone
too far this time.

"I think you should just forget about those kids," said
Aileen. "If you leave them alone this will probably be the
end of it."

Arthur continued to stare, pretending not to hear her,
until an idea suddenly came to him. "I guess you're right,"

he said, after a moment. "I should try to forget about it."

He didn't try to forget, but through the afternoon and
evening, his plan already formulated, he managed to put it in
the back of his mind, and to convince her that the trees,
growing ever redder in his imagination, were not bothering him
any more. ‘When she had fallen asleep, shortly after midnight,
he slipped quietly out of bed and dressed. The night was
unusually warm for April, but the moon and stars were veiled
by a layer of high clouds, leaving only the pale yellow glow
of the streetlights and. a few’ scattered. windows in ‘the
neighborhood to intrude on his darkness. He inhaled the
fertile smell of the damp soil and budding plants as he pushed
the screen door quietly closed behind him.

At the garage he stopped to get an old hand drill from

his tool chest. He selected a three quarter inch bit,

 

85

tightened it into the chuck, and crept out the back door and
into the alley. The crunching of the gravel beneath his feet
as he moved slowly through the alley sounded like bones
cracking in the otherwise silent night air. The flat bottom
of the boat was leaning horizontally against the back of the
Trevors' garage, hidden from sight of the house. The
dilapidated old Chevy with which Allen Trevor, the boys'
father seemed to tinker incessantly while he was drinking his
afternoon beer sat lifeless on flat tires next to the garage,
its headlights staring blankly at him, the toothless smile of
its grill seeming to know what he was up to.

The wooden hull of the boat had dried out badly from lack
of attention, and the drill cut through it easily. He made
the first hole under the seat at the center, at what he
thought would be the least conspicuous spot, and then moved
to the stern. Laying on his side in the grass to reach under
the rear seat he cut a second hole, listening happily to the
splintering of the brittle wood over the hum of crickets and
treefrogs. When he felt the bit break through the bottom of
the hull he slipped it out and crept back to the alley,
smiling at the effortlessness with which he had accomplished
his mission.

As he approached his yard he stopped before the black
silhouette of the cherry trees. They looked the way they had
looked two nights earlier, the destruction for which he had
just taken his revenge invisible in the darkness, but the

leaves, encrusted and hardened by the paint, rattled in the

86
breeze as if it were autumn. It was not enough, he thought.
The boat was something, but it was not enough for what they

had done.

In the morning, however, he again felt quite pleased
about his revenge. He smiled through breakfast, pretending
to be reading the Sunday paper while his wife eyed him
suspiciously across the table. She had probably heard him
come back to bed, but he couldn't tell her where he had been.
She wouldn't understand, and she wouldn't approve. When they
had finished eating he returned to the bedroom to dress.

"Are you going to church with me?" asked Aileen.

"I'm going fishing." He had not gone to church with her
in a long time.

"It wouldn't hurt you."

"It won't hurt me to go fishing. Maybe I'll catch the
evening mass."

He didn't really feel any more like fishing than he did
going to church, but he was sure the Trevors would be taking
their boat out this morning, and thought watching the
culmination of his scheme might make him feel even better.

Carrying his rod and tackle box, he walked the block and
a half to the lake. There were a few boats out, all on the
other side of the lake. Several men were fishing off the
public dock, and a few children were casting lines off the
shore near the swimming beach. Arthur walked out to the end

of the dock, sat down, dangling his legs over the side, and

87
cast a weighted rubber night crawler into the water. He
continued casting it out and reeling it slowly back in for
about half an hour before the Trevors' car pulled up at the
boat launch, the little fishing boat tied to the roof.

Allen Trevor got out of the car to help the boys untie
it and lift it off, and then jumped back in and drove away,
leaving them to drag it through the grass and sand to the
lake. Arthur was a little disappointed. He had hoped to see
him in the boat with them when they discovered the leaks.
After all, his own shiftlessness was probabLy the primary
cause of his kids' delinquency.

The boys rowed the boat, one on each oar, much faster
than he would have guessed they could, and he was surprised
at how far they were getting without noticing the holes. He
had thought the leaks would be big enough that they would see
the water coming in right off shore, but they had crossed the
dark line above the<drop off before they stopped. The younger
boy moved to the bow and began letting the anchor down. The
older one, moving sternward, suddenly began to shout.

"Jesus! Pull that up!"

"What?" said his brother, still letting the anchor out.

"Water! There's a bunch of water back here."

"Bail it out," said the younger one.

"It's coming in fast. Just pull up the goddamned
anchor!"

"How could it be coming in that fast?"

The older boy jumped up furiously, setting the boat

88
rocking, and scrambled toward the bow. "It just is, goddamn
it!" he screamed, grabbing at the rope. "Gimme that!"

Arthur smiled on the dock, sure that they still had
plenty of time to get back to shore, or at least into shallow
water. He was thoroughly enjoying the panic. But suddenly
the delight with which he had been watching turned to horror.
As they wrestled for the rope the boat tipped, stood up
vertically on its port side for a long instant, the boys
suspended above the water, still hanging onto the taut anchor
line, and then capsized with a belly smacker thump. One of
them went down very fast, as if still clinging to the anchor.
Arthur and the others on the dock and shore watched, none more
stunned than him. .After a moment the younger one came up next
to the boat.

"Help!" he shouted. "He's gonna drown!"

Arthur pulled off his shoes and dove in. The boat was
not too far out from the end of the dock, and he reached it,
swimming underwater, surfacing just twice for air. He pushed
the smaller boy over to the side of the overturned boat and
told him to hang on, trying to ignore his wailing.

The anchor line was still taut, the top snagged on an
oarlock. He followed it down about fifteen feet and found.the
other boy, hanging in the water, one arm looped in the rope,
the other flailing wildly at it. Arthur pulled up the anchor
below him for slack and pulled the arm free. The boy
continued to swing frantically, catching him once across the

bridge of the nose before he could grab him. IHe had been down

89
there a long time, and Arthur could feel the kid gulping in
water as he took him up..

When they reached the surface the smaller boy was still
clinging to the boat, still sobbing.

"Is he dead?"

"Can you swim?" shouted Arthur.

"Some," whimpered the boy.

"Where the hell is your vest?"

The boy did not answer. Arthur pushed his brother up
against the boat. His skin was a frightening grey-green, his
lips purple, and he did not appear to be breathing. Holding
him against the boat with one arm he slammed his other forearm
against his chest. He struck him a second time and was
showered by the spew of vomit and lake water.

"I have to get him in," he said to the other. "You stay
here. Do you understand? Don't try to move. Just stay here
and hold on."

The boy nodded. Arthur pulled the older one up against
his shoulder and.hegan sidestroking toward the shore. 'The kid
felt heavier now, and it seemed to take forever to get him in
to where he could stand up and carry him. A small crowd was
gathering at the shore. At the boat launch an elderly couple
had just slid their speedboat into the water.

"Are you all right?" called the woman.

"There's another one out there," said Arthur, motioning
with his head.

The man waved and started his motor. "I've got him," he

9O
shouted over the roar.

Arthur dropped the boy to the sand and stared at him in
shock. He was unconscious, and still didn't appear to be
breathing. For the first time it occurred to Arthur that if
the child died he would be a murderer. He fell to his knees
in the sand and pumped hard on the boy's chest with the heels
of his hands, initiating another spray of green water. He
continued pumping until the water stopped coming, but the boy
was still not breathing. He lowered his head, taking a
breath, sealed his mouth against the cold purple lips, and
blew. When he was sure he must have inflated the lungs he
began to pump again on the boy's chest.

"Breath, damn it!" he shouted.

He returned to the mouth to mouth, and when the boy
suddenly vomited again he was unable to escape the eruption.
Spitting out water and bile, Arthur turned him over and
slapped his back to clear his lungs. The boy began to cough
and the crowd of spectators, which had grown considerably,
sighed, and then broke into a cheer. The boy gasped for air.
Arthur turned him over again, laid him on his back, and
collapsed into the sand beside him, thanking God that he had
come back.

The ambulance arrived as the couple with the younger one
pulled up to the shore, and took them both away, the big one
on a gurney, the little one, who appeared to be all right,
sitting next to him in the back. Arthur rested for a few

minutes on the beach, trying to ignore the congratulations of

91
the people still milling around him, and then rose and walked
slowly home. He was halfway there before he realized that he
had left his fishing gear and his shoes on the dock. He

didn't bother to go back for them.

Aileen was still at church. After a hot shower he
brushed his teeth twice and gargled with mouthwash, but
couldn't completely erase the taste of the boy's vomit any
more than he could forget the grey-green skin of his face or
the firm rubbery feel of his purple lips--like two fat rubber
night crawlers that had just been pulled out of the cold
water. But the taste was not terribly unpleasant once it had
been subdued a bit. It reminded him, in fact, of something
he had tasted before, though he wasn't sure what it was. And
the vision of the deathly face no longer terrified him the way
it had when he looked at it on the beach. He had saved him.
He had actually killed him, but he had brought him back. He
was still shaken by the horror, but he was beginning to feel
an exhilaration and a strange sense of satisfaction with the
outcome.

"Well, here's the local hero," said Ed Zimmer, coming
through the front door with Aileen as Arthur came down the
stairs.

"Are you all right?" asked Aileen.

"I'm fine," said Arthur.

"They said you saved that boy's life, that they thought

he was already dead when you brought him up."

 

 

92

"I guess he might have been, technically. He's okay?"

"He's going to be," said Ed Zimmer.

"Allen Trevor stopped as we were coming out of church,"
said Aileen. "He was on his way back from the hospital. He
was in tears, Arthur. He's coming over later to thank you."
She embraced him as he reached the bottom of the stairs. "Are
you sure you're all right?"

"I told you," he said, wrapping his arms around her
shoulders. "I'm fine." He wished he could tell her the whole
story. He wished he could explain just how fine he felt and
make her feel that way, too.

"Hey," said Ed Zimmer. "I talked to my friend at the
paint store yesterday afternoon. He has a stripper he says
is safe, completely'biodegradable. Says it should.work on the
trees."

"What's that?" said Arthur. "Oh." He had forgotten
about the trees.

Ed, still in the doorway, looked at him for a moment, and
Arthur knew they had retrieved the boat and discovered the
holes, but it didn't matter. No one else would know, and even

if they did it still wouldn't matter. This had been enough.

THE TROLL

Jenny Rae had just drifted into that first stage of
sleep, the stage in which her last waking thoughts slipped
into a subconscious dressing room and emerged as a procession
of images, when the shouting began. Laying still in her bed,
her eyes now open again, she watched the spectors of her
imagination evaporate back into ideas and emotions. Colors
became words and shapes became dimensions before the shouting
rose again. A vision of her _ex-husband, silent and
expressionless, became an.empty memory of the failure of their
marriage, and the face of her daughter, her mouth poised in
its interminable "Why, Mommy?" was transformed into a
conscious fear that she would never have the answers a child's
questions deserve.

Bob Alman, the next door neighbor, had come home drunk
again. She knew this without listening closely to the words.
It had happened a number of times before, and she also knew
that the argument would not end quickly. She pulled back the
blanket and took her robe from the post of the headboard.

Looking out the bedroom window she could see shadows

93

 

94

moving in the house next door, but couldn't tell what was
going on. She peaked into her daughter's bedroom before
descending the stairs, saw that she was sleeping soundly, and
wondered what kind of apparitions wandered through her dreams.
Two steps above the landing at the bottom of the stairs she
stopped.to peer through the window that faced across the front
drive. The sides of the houses were like mirror images of one
another, and she could see over the bannister of the Alman's
stairway into their living room. Bob Alman was standing in
the middle of the room. He was still yelling, but the little
window had been painted shut years ago, and she couldn't make
out what he was saying through the glass.

He was a short man, but very big in the shoulders, the
hair on.his head and face thick and.wild, almost never combed.
Melissa, her daughter, had begun to refer to him as the Troll.
Jenny laughed at the nickname, and told her not to be afraid
of him, but agreed that the man's stature and appearance
created a figure more likely to be found under a bridge in a
children's story than in the house next door. She could see
from the redness in.his cheeks that he was indeed drunk. They
could have been red from anger, but when she had seen him
drunk before, angry or not, they were always glowing so red
she half expected his beard to burst into flame.

She finished descending the stairs and hurried to open
the dining room window. Though she couldn't see the Troll
from there, she could see his wife, a little Mexican woman,

standing in the archway between their living room and dining

 

95
room, her back facing the window.

"I don't.want you going to your god damned mother's house
every day," shouted the Troll.

His wife made a reply that Jenny couldn't make out, even
though she was much closer to the window than he was. She
tended to speak in a hiss when he began to yell, aggressive
and accusatory without being loud.

"Where I am don't make a goddamned bit of difference,"
said Bob Alman. "You don't have to be going over there every
damn day."

Jenny returned to the living room and turned a lamp on
next to the couch. What a stupid thing, she thought, to be
arguing about in the middle of the night. She and Frank, her
ex-husband, had hardly ever argued. Their differences had
never seemed important enough.to be worth fighting about. She
wondered now if they shouldn't have fought more. .Over their
last couple of years together Frank had grown gradually
quieter with.her, until they rarely talked.much about anything
at all, and then one day he had just come home from work and
announced that he was leaving. That was eleven months ago.

She returned to the living room and turned.the television
on, setting the volume low enough that she could still hear
most of what was going on across the driveway, thinking it
best that she pay some attention. She didn't really fear for
the safety of the woman. As many times as she had listened
to these arguments she had never heard any indications of real

violence. He would throw things, and occassionally break

.iv'n-‘I I .

96

something, and sometimes his wife would join in, hurling and
smashing a few items herself, but she didn't know of anyone
ever actually being hurt. She wondered, in fact, if they
didn't both somehow enjoy the bouts--little sessions of home
therapy, or at least a break-up of their day to day monotony.
They always seemed.to subside just.before they reached.a truly
dangerous level. He would storm out of the house, or she
would stomp off to bed, and things would be forgotten, or at
least ignored, until the next session.

Still, she didn't think it merely nosey to listen. The
arguments did get loud, and often viscious, and there was
always the chance that one day they wouldn't knock off at
quitting time. When he was drunk the Troll's explosiveness
seemed much more predictable than his judgment.

After a few minutes the argument subsided for a while,
and Jenny tried to sink into a late movie, but it was an old
film, featuring nobody she recognized, and didn't help to
alleviate the tension she always felt during the neighbor's
fights, or the loneliness that dominated the house when she
was awake late at night. Most of the time she didn't miss
Frank any more, but at night she did. She hated being awake
and alone at this time. For the first few months after he
left she'd had afternoon cocktails once a week with a couple
of girlfriends, but she had stopped because even though she
never had more than two drinks it made her tired in the
evening, and she always fell asleep too early and found

herself awake and alone at two or three in the morning, her

 

97
imagination still spinning, as if it had refused to be pulled
completely from its dreams. It was the one time of day that
she had never found a cure for. Even Frank's silent presence
would have offered some comfort.

Though she continued to stare at the television she
listened more to the dialogue coming through the window from
next door than to that of the movie. For a moment she
wondered if she didn't enjoy the catharsis of the fights as
much as the neighbors. She did not enjoy being awakened, but
once she was up it was easier to listen to their arguments
than to concentrate on reading or even watching television.
Her imagination, too active to allow her conscious mind to
focus within fixed.parameters, could.play with the sounds that
floated across the drive, reconstructing, adding and
subtracting, until it tired itself out.

She wondered what it would have been like to have a
serious fight with Frank. Maybe there were things that could
have been worked out. Maybe they just needed to fight once
in a while. She tried to imagine him in the kind of fit the
Troll was in right now, but it was a hard image to conjure.
Frank's face, contagiously stoical, she had seen reddened by
embarrassment, but never by anger.

When the argument next door began to grow louder again
she turned down the television to listen. It was Mrs. Alman's
voice, louder than she ever remembered hearing it, but still
sounding more like a venomous hiss than a shout. Unable to

understand what she was saying, Jenny got up and moved again

98

to the dining room window. The Troll and his wife were in
their dining room, directly across from her, glaring at each
other across a rectangular table with a red checked cloth.
Jenny slipped back to the corner of the window to avoid being
spotted.

"I'll go anywhere with anybody I want," shouted the
Troll.

"Yeah," hissed his wife. "You sure in hell will."

"Anyfuckingbody!" screamed the Troll.

"God," said his wife, "you make me..."

"Anymotherfuckingbody I god damned please!"

"You make my skin crawl."

"You got that? .Anybody I want, any fucking time I want!"

Jenny caught herself leaning across the window and sank
back again behind the curtain. She wondered if they were
talking about a mistress, and what kind of woman could be a
mistress for the Troll. Frank, unless he had been extremely
discreet, had never had an affair while they were married.
At times she almost wished.he had, thinking it would.be better
if he had left because he found someone who made him happier,
rather than because she made him unhappy.

"Yeah," said Mrs. Alman, "I got it, and you ain't the
only one."

The Troll walked around the table, kicking a chair out
of the way, and grabbed her by the front of her blouse. "What
the fuck do you mean by that?" He was still yelling, though

he held her just inches from his face.

99

The woman's voice became barely audible. "Nothing," she
said, trying to squirm away.

Jenny was suddenly overwhelmed by a panic. She had never
witnessed this kind.of physical contact.in their disputes, and
it felt as if Bob Alman, in pulling his wife closer to him,
had pulled her also closer to the conflict.

"What the hell do you mean nothing?" he shouted,
tightening his grip. "What did you mean by that?" He pulled
her still closer, until their noses almost touched, and then
pushed her backwards into the table. The table slid a couple
of feet and a chair toppled over, but the woman caught her
balance and didn't go to the floor. Jenny stumbled backing
away from the window, and then ducked out of sight when the
Troll looked in her direction. She was as terrified as if she
were the one standing over there, trembling against the wall,
instead of his wife.

The Troll stepped toward.her, and reached out to grab her
as she began to move away, but she managed to slip out of his
grasp and scramble past him into the kitchen. Jenny managed
to reach the phone, shaking, somehow strangely surprised that
the thick little hand of Bob Alman had not pulled her away.
He stalked into the kitchen.and.the shouting continued, though
it was now muffled beyond intelligibility, as she dialed 911
and the switchboard operator connected her quickly with a
police sergeant.

"And what is your address?" he asked when she had

explained the situation.

 

 

 

100

She gave him the address of the house next door. "Please
hurry," she added, hoping she hadn't already waited too long.-
She hung up before he could ask again for any information
about her.

When she returned to the window she could hear them
yelling at each other in the kitchen, but the voices,
distorted by the distance and the dining room wall, were in-
comprehensible even from there. The kitchen had no wall on
the driveway side of the house, the only room on the first
floor in which she couldn't see them. She went into the
living room and sat down across from the television without
looking at the movie, nervous, and still as frightened as if
she were the one in danger. If it had been her, she would
have been running to the kitchen for a knife, and she wondered
if that was what Mrs. Alman had done, if she was just holding
him off right now. After a moment, too anxious to sit still,
she went back upstairs to check on her daughter again.
Melissa still appeared to be sleeping. From her room Jenny
noticed that she couldn't hear anything from next door.

She stopped halfway down the stairs, suddenly realizing
that the fight had stopped. The house next door was silent.
She peered through the little window in the stairwell and saw
Bob Alman sitting in a chair in the living room, his fiery
cheeks buried in his hands. His wife stood across the room,
staring at him, tears running over her own reddened cheeks.

It was over. They had taken it right to the limit this

time, but they had stopped, and no one seemed to be hurt. For

 

 

101
a moment she felt a dizzying relief that drained her the way
she imagined it drained the couple next door. She wished she
had seen and heard what happened in the kitchen. Then she
remembered that she had called the police. It would be all
right. They’ would come and see that it was over and
everything would be all right.

The neighborhood was heavily patrolled, and the police
car arrived within a few minutes. She watched as the two
officers climbed out, slipping their nightsticks into their
belts, and approached the front door. Bob Alman jumped from
the chair when they knocked, and her panic returned when she
saw the rage that had subsided a few moments earlier flaring
to a new peak. He threw open the door, screaming
incoherently, and an altercation began immediately between him
and the two policemen. Jenny stared, horrified, as they
dragged him, still yelling, from the house. They had to
wrestle him together to the front lawn before they could get
his hands cuffed behind his back. Mrs. Alman stood at the
center of the living room, watching through the open door.
She looked more frightened than she had even at the height of
the argument.

The Troll allowed himself to be led to the back door of
the squad car, but then stopped and refused to get in. The
younger of the two policemen put his hands on Bob Alman's
shoulders and tried to force him down into the car, but the
Troll's bulk and strength were more than he could move. He

drew his nightstick and swung it hard into his prisoner's

 

 

102

thigh, bringing a scream from the woman in the house. The
Troll roared over his shoulder, but still didn't budge. The
officer struck him again in the thigh, harder, and then began
working his way up, swing by swing, each.blow bringing another
shriek from Mrs. Alman, until he had struck him several times.
in the side. Jenny felt sick. The beating had succeeded only
in further enraging Bob Alman. He didn't move until the older
officer drew his stick and jabbed him once in the stomach.
This blow doubled him over, and together they shoved him down
through the door, banging his head against the roof of the
car, before he could straighten up.

The older officer returned to the house to speak with
Mrs. Alman after they had closed the door on her husband. She
hissed at him for a moment, and then burst into tears. The
man put a hand on her shoulder and began to say something, but
she pulled away from him. He stood there for another moment,
just looking at her, and then turned, pulling the door closed
behind him, and returned to the car.

The sudden quiet in the neighborhood after they had
driven away was eerie. Across the driveway Mrs. Alman sank,
sobbing, into the chair her husband had been in before. .Jenny
continued to stare out the window at the street for a few
minutes after they were gone, and then moved back to her
living room, turned off the television and dropped into the
couch.

It was her fault. She had no business listening or

watching, no business butting in. The danger had seemed so

 

 

103
real to her. She was sure he was going to hurt her, maybe
kill her, if she didn't do something. But they had stopped,
and they would have been okay if she hadn't called the police.
It was their fight, and they knew when to stop it. She, who
was not a part of it, had taken it too far because she didn't
know the limit.

She heard a squeak on the stairs and looked up to see her
daughter, dragging a blanket.with one hand, and rubbing an eye
with the other.

"Melissa," she said, trying to hide the fear that seemed
to have increased rather than diminished since the incident
had ended. "What are you doing up?"

"I juswokeupisall," said the sleepy child.

"Well, come on," said Jenny, picking her up. "You can
sit up with me until you just fall back to sleepisall."

"Mommy," said the girl, "is Daddy all right?"

Jenny held her up to look at her face. "Why do you ask
that?"

"I thought I heard Daddy. Did somebody hurt him?"

"No, honey," she said, pulling her against her shoulder

so that she wouldn't see her crying. "it wasn't Daddy."

 

 

GREAT BUILDINGS AND HIGH PLACES

In the dank restroom of an Amoco station at the junction
of Interstate 96 and Michigan Highway 40, fifty miles from
Lansing, Jerry Butler changed from lightweight jeans and a T-
shirt into his funeral suit, a dark grey wool blend. He had
worn it also for more cheerful events, as it was the only suit
he owned, but thought of it as his funeral suit because that
was the purpose for which he had purchased it some six years
ago. When he had completed the change he stepped up to the
urinal. He had not had a drink in three days, since hearing
the news of his fathers death, and wondered.why now, just over
an hour before the funeral, he was suddenly conscious of his
sobriety, imagining the poisons being purged from his body as
his urine streamed out over the lower lip of the porcelain
mouth.

Tinkertoys, he remembered, checking himself in the
mirror. He had awakened in his car at a rest stop two hours
earlier, several hours later than he had intended. Just
before he awoke he was in the midst of a strange dream that

had deserted him in the sudden intrusion of the morning light.

104

 

 

105

Now he remembered. He was in a huge corridor, walking through
a vast Tinkertoy structure. The little colored rods and
unpainted wooden hubs connected to form a catacomb of archways
and domed rooms. ‘When he neared the end he saw his father for
an instant, smiling, but not at him. The only trace of the
dream that had remained with him when he opened his eyes was
a strange feeling of confusion, a feeling that did not abate
even now that he recalled the images that had stirred it.

Squinting, shading his eyes against the sun, he stepped
out the door and into the parking lot. .A semi-tractor pulling
two trailers of new cars rumbled over a bad seam in the
interstate overpass, creating a swell in the pulsing hum of
the other traffic. Though it wasn't even eleven o'clock, it
was already almost ninety degrees, and he could see the heat
radiating from the passing cars. A horn honked in the gas
station lot, and a blonde haired woman in a dilapidated red
van glared at him through her open window. He had left his
car blocking the gas pumps.

"Sorry," he called, waving over his shoulder as he
climbed into the car. Although he still had plenty of time
to get to the chapel at the funeral home for the service,
oversleeping at the rest stop had set him far enough behind
schedule that he would have to cancel a stop at his mother's
house on the way, a development that didn't greatly disappoint
him. She had a way of using somber occasions, however
irrelevant, as evidence of the instability of his life. He

knew that in her mind his father's death would be an omen, a

106
sign that he had better get his life in order. Meeting her
in a crowd at the funeral home would be easier.

He had not yet mourned the loss of his father, had not
thought much of it at all. As he drew closer to Lansing the
death began to seem more real, though his first feeling was
not of the loss of a loved one, but of a missed opportunity.
He didn't remember his father ever being proud of him, at
least not since he was a very small child, and had always been
sure that one day he would do something to really impress the
old man, to make him want to stand up and shout, "Hey, that's
my boy!" It had never happened. His father had died without
ever coming to understand or respect him. He died knowing a
son that he didn't like.

Already uncomfortable in the suit, Jerry stripped the
jacket off, steering the car down the interstate with his
knees. He remembered.the driving lessons with his father when
he was a teenager. "Both hands on the wheel-~two o:clock and
ten o:clock." If he came to a complete stop his father would
shout, "The sign says stop, not park." But anything less and
he would scream, "You in California boy? In Michigan that's
not even good enough for a yield sign." Though he had no
trouble passing the tests and getting his license, he had
never found that perfect median that would win his father's
approval, and had never been comfortable driving with him.

About twenty miles outside of Lansing, cursing aloud to
himself, he wobbled the car to the side of the highway on a

flat tire. Fifteen minutes later, sweating like a wrestler,

 

107
hands and shirt filthy, he lowered the weight of the car onto
the spare and listened.to the air whistling out of the cracked
valve stem as it flattened slowly to the ground.

"Damn it !" he shouted. "It had to fucking happen!" He
hurled the lug wrench to the ground and stomped his foot in
frustration as it bounced up to take a ding out of the fender
of the car. The jack and the first tire still laying on the
grass embankment, he slammed.the trunk closed, took.his jacket
from the car, stepped up to the road and held out his thumb.

"Monday morning traffic was not.heavy, but.he counted.two
dozen cars passing him before he saw the red van. As she
swerved in he jumped off the shoulder of the road, not sure
if she was trying to pick him up or hit him.

"Well, are you going to get in?" she called through the
window.

The door groaned like a walrus as he pulled it open.

"Gotta lift and pull to get it closed," she said as he
climbed in.

"Are you going into Lansing?"

"Yeah, but there's a gas station closer than that."

"I don't have time right now. I just need a ride into
town."

"You're Jerry Butler, aren't you?" She swung the van
back out onto the highway, letting him search his memory for
a moment. "You went to school with my older brother, Wes
McDonald. I'm Tina."

He remembered a skinny girl who vaguely resembled this

108
woman, who had watched him beat up her brother once when they
were in junior high school. He wondered if she remembered
that, and if he should tell her that his father had beaten him
just as badly when he got home.

"So, where do you need to go?"

He gave her the name of the funeral home, and offered to
pay for gas if she would drop him off. An afterthought, he
apologized for his inconsiderate parking at the gas station.
She agreed to drop him off, ignoring the apology.

"Family?"

"My father."

"I'm sorry." She focused her attention on the road, and
graciously maintained the distance of a respectful stranger.

He was still sweating. Sitting above the engine of the
old.van.was not helping to cool him off. He knew they weren't
going to make it on time. One of his uncles would stand in
for him as pall bearer. The family would whisper. His mother
would claim to be heartbroken by his lack of respect, and in
her memory the death of her husband would forever be
associated with the irresponsibility of her son.

A few white clouds floated across the otherwise blue
summer sky. The van rattled like an old washing machine down
the highway at almost eighty miles per hour. Jerry Butler
stared out the window at the black pumps over a small field
of oil wells, and found himself thinking again of Tinkertoys.
He remembered a time when he was very small, not yet in

school. He had spent the better part of an afternoon building

 

109
a Tinkertoy castle to present to his father, the architect,
when he got home from work. But when he was finished, and
there was not a rod or hub left in the can, he decided it was
not good enough. He disassembled the whole thing, but had
barely begun rebuilding it when his father walked in.

Just before they reached Lansing, Tina McDonald sent him
to the back of the van to wash his hands with a dirty towel
and water from a plastic milk jug. He scrubbed a little at
the sleeves of his shirt, succeeding only in making them look
dirty and wet. When he returned to the front he pulled his
jacket on. No one would see the shirt, anyway.

The city looked different than when he had last seen it.
At the center it was still much the same, but the strip malls
and office buildings that radiated out along the main roads,
many of which his father's firm had designed, now reached and
engulfed the little outlying towns.

When they reached the funeral home the parking lot was
empty. A clock on the front of the building said ten minutes
to one. Jerry sank back in the seat and shook his head. He
knew he was going to be late, but didn't think he would miss
the whole service.

"What cemetery?" asked Tina.

"What?"

"What cemetery? ‘You can try to catch the service there."

"Meadowlawn," said Jerry. "I guess it's worth a try."

She swung the van back.out of the drive and began winding

through the maze of one way streets in the downtown area. He

 

110
had given up hope, but her willingness to try encouraged him
a little, and after a few blocks he began exhorting her to
hurry. She coasted through stop signs and ignored speed
limits. As they approached the cemetery gates he saw the
police car behind them, lights flashing.

"Don't pull in." It was too late. Tina was already
turning the van into the driveway. "Jesus," he said. "This
is all I need. What the hell did you pull in here for?"

"This is where you wanted to go."

"It isn't where I wanted to get pulled over by a cop."

"Shit," said Tina, checking the rearview mirror. "Well,
you were the one who wanted to hurry."

The crowd was just beginning to disperse at the grave
site. The door of the van groaned as he opened it to jump
out. His father couldn't have directed more attention to him
if he had sat up in the casket, pointed to him, and shouted,
"Hey, that's my boy!"

The cop stopped.him next to the van, and he presented his
driver's license, explaining quickly that the woman had picked
him up after he had car trouble, that she was simply dropping
him off at his father's funeral, for which he was late, and
that they did not know each other.

Most of the people were already in cars when he caught
his mother and sister approaching the limousine.

"Mom."

"What in the hell is the matter with you?" She spoke in

a harsh, hissing whisper.

 

111

"I'm sorry I'm late. I..."

"Late? You weren't here. It's over."

"I'm sorry. I had some trouble."

"And you have the nerve to show up now in that piece of
junk, with whoever that is, and the police chasing you."

"He wasn't chasing us, and it was the only ride I could
get. It wasn't my fault."

"Of course not." She burst into tears. "It never is."
Clutching her rosary to her chest she ducked into the back of
the limousine.

Jerry looked a this sister. She stared back at him for
a moment, more worried than angry.

"Alice, there was nothing I could do. I had two flat
tires."

She sighed, and then smiled and stepped closer to hug
him. "Seven hundred miles, and you didn't check your tires
before you left."

"They looked all right."

"Well," said Alice, "I'm glad you're here. Give her some
time to calm down, and then come over and talk to her. And
don't tell her it wasn't your fault. I'll be staying with her
for a couple of weeks."

He walked slowly toward his father's grave to get away
from the line of cars beginning to crawl through the gate.
His mother would never forgive him, but she would calm down,
and things would be the same as they always had.

A few minutes after the last of the cars in the

h‘

 

112

procession had left he heard the van start up and pull through
the gate. Staring at the casket at the bottom of the hole he
tried to remember what his father had looked like the last
time he had seen him, but could only summon a general image
of him, stern, strong willed, his heavy eyebrows habitually
lowered in disapproval. He was sorry he had missed the
service, not because the service was important to him, but
because he didn't want people to think he didn't care. He
didn't want his final actions in the history of his father to
be seen as gestures of disrespect. If he hadn't respected him
it wouldn't have bothered him so much that he was never able
to please him.

When he turned away from the grave the police car was
still in the drive. He walked past it and out the gate,
pretending not to notice the man watching him through the
windshield. For the next two hours he walked alone through
the city. He smiled self-consciously to himself as he set
out. This, he supposed, was the walk during which he was
supposed.to work.things out, but.he couldn't think.of anything
to work out. He didn't feel much like thinking at all, and
had decided to walk only because he didn't know what else to
do.

He stopped on a sidewalk downtown, in front of a building
his father had designed years ago. A forty-two story business
center, it was not a skyscraper by big city standards, but it
was an impressive building nonetheless, and.the only high rise

his father had ever done. iHe remembered going to the top with

 

 

113
him in a construction elevator before it was finished. He had
been very young at the time, and standing up there looking
over the city had made him feel very small. His father had
accused him of being afraid of heights when he asked to go
back down, but it wasn't the height that scared him: it was
the terrible sense of unimportance he had felt looking down
from it. "Acrophobia," his father had laughed. He wondered
now if there was a word for the fear of insignificance, or if
all the other phobias--fear of heights, crowds, open spaces,
closed spaces, darkness, flying, bodies of water--were
actually just symptoms of the fear of insignificance. He
wondered.if great buildings and high.places made everyone feel
as unimportant as they did him.

He thought again of the Tinkertoys in the dream, and
remembered the smile on his father's face. Was he smiling at
some other child, the child who had built the structure,
hidden somewhere in the darkness beyond the corridor? Or had
he built it himself. Perhaps he was smiling because he knew
it was better to design great buildings than to stand in awe
beneath them, because he knew high places could be made the
slaves of geometry. Perhaps they had never made him feel
small.

When he tired of walking he checked into a new motel on
the east side. It wasn't until the clerk asked for his
license plate number that he remembered he'd left his car on
the highway. From his room he called his insurance company,

and arranged to have it towed to a service station he could

 

114
see from the window. His feet and legs tired from the walk,
he laid down on the bed and soon fell asleep.

At eight-thirty, just as the sun was beginning to set,
he awoke in the same confused state in which he always awoke
from afternoon naps, trying to make sense of time and place
and the sleepy feeling of morning. When he had recovered his
memory of the day he looked out the window and saw his car in
the parking lot of the gas station. He saw also the battered
red van in the motel lot.

After retrieving his car and belongings he showered and
shaved and went down to the restaurant for dinner. Before he
had finished eating Tina McDonald walked in, pretending not
to notice him, and took a seat at the bar. He finished his
meal, paid the check, and joined her, apologizing as he sat
down for deserting her when they were pulled over.

"I got a thirty dollar speeding ticket," she said. "Are
you sorry enough to pay it?"

He took forty dollars from his wallet and laid it on the
bar in front of her. "I am sorry. It was nice of you to try
to help me."

She slid a ten dollar bill back to him. "You don't have
to buy me off. Just pay the ticket."

"And buy you a drink?"

"Fair enough. I guess our entrance didn't go over too
big, huh?"

"Not too big at all," said Jerry. "It'll blow over."

He ordered.two»drinks and stayed.with.her, talking through the

 

115
evening. During their second round.he:mentioned the childhood
fight with her brother, and told her how bad he had always
felt about it.

Tina laughed. "My brother was an asshole."

Jerry smiled. "I guess I probably was, too."

"Oh, you were," she said. "Wes still is. He spends half
his life screwing people over, and wastes the other half
apologizing. How about you."

Jerry thought for a moment. "Yeah, I guess I still am,
too."

"Hey," said Tina. "I was just kidding. Don't get all
serious about it."

Jerry felt suddenly very alone. Tina McDonald had no
idea what it was like to be Jerry Butler. No one had any idea
how he felt when he stood at the foot of a great building.
The catacomb of Tinkertoys existed only for him, and only he
understood what had to be understood to expect anything of
Jerry Butler. These were not thoughts that depressed.him, but
observations that intrigued him, and brought him a strange
pleasure.

When she turned on the barstool her knees brushed against
his. He hadn't noticed that she had finished her drink.

"That's about enough for me," she said. "You sticking
around?"

He watched her expression change as he thought, knowing
he had already missed the opening. "For a few minutes."

"You all right?"

116

"I'm fine."

After she left he finished his drink and returned to his
room. It was ten-thirty. Outside the window the lights of
the streets and buildings created a yellow glow in the still
night air. He stretched out on the bed without undressing,
though he wasn't ready to sleep. After a few minutes he sat
up to the phone and dialed his mother's number.

"Alice? I'm glad you answered. Is Mom still up?"

"She went to bed an hour ago. She's still pretty
steamed, but she's getting better. You'd better come over
tomorrow."

"I will."

"Are you okay?"

He told her the whole story of the day, including the
Tinkertoy dream and the visit to their father's tower.

Alice laughed. "Jerry, you are so weird. Only you could
have a day like that."

"I know."

"You know Dad always loved you?"

"I suppose so."

"I love you, too."

"I know, Alice. Thanks."

He hung up the phone and dropped back into the bed. As
he closed his eyes the Tinkertoy structure of the dream
appeared again before him, but this time his father was not
there, and he stood alone at the end of the corridor. In the

absence of his father the network of rods and hubs no longer

117
seemed important, a cobweb without a spider. He would miss
him the way a mountain climber would miss a great peak if it
suddenly crumbled before he had gathered the nerve to attempt
it. He felt cheated, but he felt also a strange sense of
relief, a relief he didn't yet understand, and wasn't sure he

was comfortable with.