Nate said, Here?
George said, What?
This good?
Yeah. They were doing Up on Cripple Creek.
I had this idea, George said, hard to believe—in the fall of ’76 I was going to hitch to San Francisco to see this concert. Leave school a week early for the Thanksgiving break.
Thanksgiving? Nate said. Didn’t you have to go to some dinner somewhere?
I had no relations, George said. Now I have you and your mother, so you shouldn’t be surprised. I always regretted I didn’t do it. I didn’t have the nerve. It was cold, you know.
Now there’s one thing in the whole wide world I sure do love to see… Levon Helm was singing.
They are really tight, Nate said. He was watching the screen with care. From Nate this was a high compliment.
Being tight was what they did.
There’s like twenty instruments going on here, Nate said. The keyboards are amazing.
Richard Manuel. He’d soon be dead.
The mandolin.
Danko. He’d die soon enough too.
Out of nine lives, I’ve spent seven—how in the world—do you get to heaven?
George had seen the film too, with another girl, Ninah, pronounced Nigh-nah—a tall blond girl with long hair. Ninah also from Canada; a friend of the first Canadian girl. Who was conveniently back in Toronto at that point.
The thrill of the girls. Even more thrilling—this was the sad part of life, wasn’t it—in memory than they had been in the anxieties of the moment. The Toronto girl kissing him. Gorgeous full lips. Ninah’s long legs out of her jeans, her panties down them, he pulled them across her feet, she opened like a gate allowing him in. He felt he should, almost could, remember the taste of these women. Ninah had a large clitoris that responded to his tongue without the usual mysteries or doubts. The pale brown and rust of her pubic hair. One could remember some of them—or was the memory just making it up as you went along, asking for certain information and the memory providing the full picture, falsely, like an Italian when you inquired for directions. Yet so vivid. When the Toronto girl came, he was behind her and had his hand on her stomach and he felt a wall of muscles rippling. She was a singer, a serious one, a classical singer. All those muscles were the work of her singing. His left hand on her breast and his right hand on her belly, pulling her against him: he could remember this, now, watching Mac Rebennack—Dr. John. Such a night.
And then so many years later, Nate gave him the DVD for Christmas.
And he watched it, and tears began running down his face, and tears kept coming.
Oh my god, are you crying? said Nate. Again?
What again? George said. I’m sorry. Or, no, not really. I’m not sorry. But excuse me anyway.
The tears took their time, gathered, and rolled out of his eyes, one, then another; not sobbing: just tears, like drops from the eaves as the ice melts on the first warm day, drip drip drip. Sniffle.
Why, Nate says. What could possibly make you cry about this?
Well, part of why, you already know.
Okay, said Nate. Sorry.
But no, George said. Look at their faces. Look.
Nate looked. What? he said.
Look how free they are, George said. They don’t even know how free they are. It keeps occurring to me that no one, possibly—
He cut the sentence off.
What? said Nate. No one possibly what?
George waited a moment. I wonder if these people had any clue what they were watching the end of. It’s possible no one in my lifetime will ever be that free again.
Buzzkill, Dad.
It’s not the legacy I expected to pass on, George said. A distant memory of freedom.
You know you’re kind of full of shit, right? Nate said.
Only kind of?
Only kind of. I mean, I can see what you’re saying, I think. They’re not doing any of that posing everyone does now, you know, performing or whatever.
Except Neil Diamond, George said.
Who?
He hasn’t come on yet. You’ll see.
But you’re full of shit because they’re white and privileged. Nineteen seventy-six in San Francisco, great, but if you were a black man in Oakland you wouldn’t be so free. Weren’t they still exterminating the Black Panthers at that point?
I think they were finished exterminating the Black Panthers by then, George said. But I’m impressed you even know about this.
American history? Nate said. Hello? Documentary films on the Internet?
Like you went looking for info on the Black Panthers? George said.
Yeah, I did. I got interested.
We’ll have to look up the dates. Wait. You hear that voice? The backup? That’s Joni Mitchell. Look, there she is. Neil Young’s from Canada and she’s from Canada and it’s a song about Canada. The film, while she was offstage singing backup to Young, showed her silhouette behind the musicians where the audience presumably couldn’t see her. Then she came onstage and did a beautiful version of Coyote.
Anyway, I think they were finished exterminating the Panthers by then, he said, while Neil Young was still singing.
Well, even more so, Nate said. I mean there’s a kind of freedom in fighting to be free, and even that was already over by then.
He was watching the screen. Muddy Waters looked kind of free, he said. I’ll admit that.
Oh, I don’t know, George said. Some people perform it. But all their faces. You simply cannot see that look on the faces of American humans today. White, yellow, pink, brown. Nowhere that I’ve been anyway. Not onstage or in the street or in the bedroom. It’s over. And until seeing this I hadn’t understood it was gone or how gone it was. We killed it. And what you’re saying about Oakland, I’m not sure it was any favor to the people who were less than free to destroy the freedom of the people who momentarily were. It’s not a they-lose-I-win kind of proposition. It’s an everybody-loses proposition.
Merry Christmas, man, Nate said. He clapped George on the shoulder, stood and went to the kitchen. He came back with a yogurt. There’s never anything to eat, he said.
That’s not true, George called back. Lourdes packs the fridge full of stuff to eat.
That’s like meals, Nate said. There’s never anything to just eat.
We’re going to have a like-meal. Just not for a little while. What is there.
Some kind of peppers with meat inside.
Is it five yet? The new evening guy should be here. What’s his name.
Andy. His name is Andy.
In a casserole dish? George said.
Yeah. There also appears to be a chicken. I think it’s a chicken. It’s small.
Just talk to Lourdes, George said. Tell her what you want to have. She’ll get it.
You’re dreaming, Nate said. You think I haven’t talked to her? She’s all like—he does the Spanish without trying to imitate the voice—okay mi amor, oh yes mijo, sure, and then she goes to Citarella and buys like swordfish steaks at forty dollars a pound. I’m like, how about a bag of chips.
Watch the movie, George said. Look. It’s Joni Mitchell. Singing about Sam Shepard. You’ll be brushing out a brood mare’s tail while the sun is ascending, boy. C’mon. Sit down.
* * *
AFTER GEORGE STARTED seeing Clarissa, Marina, who’d taken him to lunch, said from behind her menu, How did you let this happen? Burke’s daughter? I mean I understand you’re in grief and all, but still. That’s insane.
I don’t know. What can I say. The day I saw her again after lo, these many years, who knows how the stars were aligned. It sparked.
Fuck the stars, Marina said. Fuck the spark. We’re talking about you.
Well, she was a bit late and when she got there she just glanced at the menu and ordered, no fuss, George said. And she wore a lovely frock. I succumbed.
She’s twenty-eight, Marina said.
Thirty-two, George said. She’s thirty-two.
Thirty, Jesus Ch
rist. Remember thirty? I don’t.
Thirty-two, George said.
Marina lowered her menu, which she’d been studying and not merely glancing at, and gave him her full evil eye. Malocchio.
Yeah, she said. Keep insisting on that two years like it makes all the difference. You’re fifty-two. Twenty years older. Does she know Dylan? Has she read Heart of Darkness? Ever heard of Hazel Motes? Travis Bickle? Can she end the sentence Forget it, Jake? Does she know whence comes, historically, the phrase Peace with honor? Does she know where on the planet Malcom X was shot? Does she know what day World War Two began in Europe? Can she name at least five of the dozen or so democratically elected regimes we’ve taken it upon ourselves to topple since the end of that war? There were three in 1964–65 alone, maybe she could get one. Can she state in one brief sentence why we were attacked on 9/11? By a bunch of Saudis, no less? And they hate our freedom doesn’t count. Frocks, schmocks, you can’t trust the young.
George said, She is lovely and she is kind and we like each other a good deal.
Notice you don’t say love, Marina said. Okay, people who can order that way at a restaurant—and granted, it is socially graceful to the max—don’t actually care about food. Which is good, but alien.
When, said George, did you turn into a man? You know, psycho-politically.
Oh, honey, I never wasn’t. You just took all these years to notice.
All those magnificent blow jobs blinded me, George said.
I should hope so, Marina said. Although many men are good at those too, one hears.
George said nothing to this.
When George had first arranged to have dinner with Clarissa, the first evening, Burke had known he was going out with someone, though not with whom.
Make sure it’s not a dismal woman, Burke said. So you can enjoy the meal.
I don’t date dismal women.
We all date dismal women. Sometimes we need dismal women. Just not now, for you. Not for dinner.
They wanted each other. They wanted each other’s company. How peculiar and how he, who was having very few physical feelings these days and no romantic ones whatsoever, would not have predicted it, not even slightly. She wanted to heal him. Very kind of her. It took him weeks to be able to perform with her sexually. He assumed this would be true for him with anyone new. He’d been shattered and he had not since he was in his twenties felt so endangered by intimacy.
They talked much of her father. That was part of why she was there but George would never say such a thing to her. Let her figure it out for herself.
I am so not above taking his money, Clarissa said. Money is not moral. It doesn’t bring with it any moral value. There is no morality in earning it and there is no morality in inheriting it and there is in many cases very little morality in stealing it. It’s like saying to me, this air you’re breathing, did you pay for this air or are you just freeloading on the earth’s atmosphere?
It didn’t take long to be found out.
Are you fucking my daughter? Burke said.
The language made George physically rear and wince. No, he lied. We’re friends. She’s a lovely young woman.
They—George and Clarissa—returned over and over to the question: Why did they both love the man? His narcissism. His beauty. His seemingly infinite energies, which became a kind of gravitational pull, him being a planet one revolved around, from which one took all measures of light and time.
Clarissa said, you know how the most beautiful visions of Earth are images taken from the moon? Like that. This large, gorgeous, inexplicable thing. All the Earth’s horror and pain are completely absent in these images. That’s how it is when I’m looking at him: not dealing with him, mind you, not remembering my history with him, not experiencing my emotions toward him. Just looking at him, taking him in, watching him be him. He’s like the dumb Earth.
He shouldn’t be allowed to be that big, George said.
Oh yeah? Clarissa said. He’s not that big to you?
No way, George said. No way.
Right, Clarissa said. Say it twice, maybe that will convince me.
When she was a kid and Burke was broke and fucked up on one thing or another, he had hit her. Two or three or four times, she said. And paused.
Maybe more, but I only remember a few times. With those enormous hands of his, she said. I am haunted by those hands.
At the sight of the large, two-ringed hand: she would cry—a child, she had only been a little child, George couldn’t stand to think of it—of course she’d cried—her mother who said nothing to the violence of the father, who did nothing to keep the—but why talk about it anymore.
You can’t let this get inside your relationship with him, Clarissa said. Don’t judge him. He needed to change and he did change and he loves me now like crazy and he affirms me and supports me in whatever I want to do. I respect him and I love him. So don’t let this cloud your thinking.
I won’t, George said. He was lethally young. And to be a parent is to fail every day in some way or another. You look all right to me.
Overall, she said.
She did, though, have a bit of a thing for hands. She held George’s hand against her when he was using it, a standby when he was working out his other problems. The way she touched the hand was like some kind of extra level of communication. And women’s hands she loved too. For all the trouble women encountered with the male gaze, with men objectifying them, the true connoisseurs of female beauty were women themselves. It was they who most ardently appreciated physical beauty—not the enticement and rapture of flesh that men saw and dreamed of, but actual beauty of bone and shape and posture and gesture. They saw in it a moral achievement, even a touch of the divine.
Clarissa said, I go mad sometimes, seeing a woman’s hands, beautiful hands. A woman who moves gracefully, dresses well, I want to be her. It’s an erotic feeling but it’s also beyond erotic, or at least it’s not satisfied in the erotic. Certain gestures. I die.
You already are one of those women, George said.
Oh no, Clarissa said. I’m not. I’m an imitation. It’s just that men are easy to fool.
* * *
EVENTUALLY SHE LEFT him to go to Italy. In part she wanted to get away from her father and his influence but soon the world would not be large enough for that—there were more than twenty Brown & Co. outlets in Italy. None in Malaysia yet, George told her. But he was at peace with it; he was grateful to her in fact. She was generous and kind and that worked on him on both the spiritual and physical levels. He commenced actual long-term healing with her. But she was, as the clock ticked, a person who wanted to raise children, have a nice home, and be liked. There was something almost comforting for him in accepting the normative bourgeois flavor of this realization; here was a person who wanted a pleasant life. People her age, he was coming to believe, took comfort living inside the boundaries. Took comfort thinking there were still boundaries one could live inside.
29
They were near a decade through the twenty-first century. Nate finished college in 2009 (he’d taken a year off). On that occasion, after George gave him his gift (a turntable and receiver and twenty requisite vinyl albums not already in Anna’s collection, searched out in trips to Kim’s and Colony and a couple of small used record shops downtown), Nate presented George with a letter he had written, a special life-moments note, with actual pen and paper: perhaps the last ink-and-paper letter he would ever produce. George read it in front of him. In it he said he loved George, was grateful to George, but his generation was despicable, and the one after no better. He wrote that the financial system had collapsed the way the habitat was going to collapse—because you fucking Boomers and Gen Xers just drained it all dry. It was all pure greed as far as he could see. He went on: You people are showing no signs of being committed to changing anything at all, nothing whatsoever. His generation, he said, was totally fucked.
George finished the note, looked up. This is very well written, he sa
id.
That’s not the point, Nate said.
Well, George said. Yes. It’s bad. And apparently all you kids are gonna live at home until you’re thirty-nine, like old-school Irishmen. Then you marry the spinster schoolteacher. She doubles as the village’s only postal clerk. A sad wee girl.
Oh fuck you, Nate said.
You’re coming into the world now, soon it’s yours, George said. Make it yours, take it, and change it. You’re going to have to break down the power structures governing things, and that’s formidable. You’d better start now. You got everyone born since 1980 and you got the kids coming up behind you. Figure it out. You’re right: I failed. I looked at it all when Reagan was president and I said, I don’t have a chance. Politically speaking, in the face of industrial-strength narrative production, individual agency and desire don’t have a chance. There was no longer any way to be heard. That was a mistake of course. But I basically gave up. So did everyone else. We went for the money.
* * *
AND ON. OBAMA was making beautiful speeches. They really were terrific. As he neared reelection in 2012, you knew that the more gorgeous the speech, the less likely there would be a policy to support it. George was past fifty-five now, heading downhill toward sixty. He knew what it was to be a henchman. The associate guy. The Nick Carraway, there to see and report, never to drive. Ed Norton, Barney Fife, Barney Rubble. Uncle Charlie, Mr. Fucking French. An essentially comic role in which the assistant’s unlikely personality is forced to fit in—garrulously at times, okay—with the schemes of the main character. Such was his relationship with Burke, after all these years. Always had been. What was he there for? From the beginning it had been the money but it had been a certain kind of money, money made from thinking shit up.
And now here he was at his desk in a rare enough visit to the office: and the little circle on his laptop in a smog-sky screen just twirled around and around and around with everything he tried to do, he couldn’t shut it off, he couldn’t reboot it. His rage built over a couple of minutes—not long, perhaps even one minute only—and then came surging up in him like vomit, total red rage, and he stood and picked up the laptop and smashed it and smashed it and smashed it until the screen portion he was holding was severed from the body, which bounced away, and then he commenced trying to break the screen in half with a terrible cracking of bones until, unable to snap it in two, he threw it across the room where it hit the bookshelf and knocked down some goddamned tchotchke that broke on the floor. He wanted to smash some more shit but Katrine dashed in and was looking at him. So he straightened himself, looked at her. The alarm on her face.
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