They looked at each other. George considered death, as he understood it. As he understood it, now, it meant to be pulverized under a flaming heap of rubble, or to die as his mother had, round-eyed in fear and mute with tubes.
The old man patted George’s hand.
Well, son, carry on, in the meantime. That’s another quote. What Vladimir says to Estragon, right? You remember?
George had to think. Vladimir, Estragon.
Beckett? he said.
Yes, Goldstein said. Waiting for Godot. I saw it when it opened with Bert Lahr. I was young. Nineteen fifty-six? I can’t remember. Then years later when it was revived at the Vivian Beaumont and some other time, too, awful, with Madonna and Robin Williams. She at least was humble. He was out of control.
What did Vladimir say to Estragon? George said.
Oh, near the end, just a few lines before, Estragon says, I can’t go on, and Vladimir says, That’s what you think.
Ah, George said.
That was my guidepost, that line of that play. I used to say it to my wife.
Oh great, George said. She must have loved that.
The poor woman, no wonder she hated me, he said. Then he laughed and showed his long mottled old-man teeth. His cackling laugh again made George laugh.
That’s right, you laugh, Julia said. You two just laugh. You don’t know what women know. Men are like mules. You need the mule, yes, for the work, for the field, but when that mule’s not doing what you need him for, then all he does is eat and kick and go to the bathroom all over the barn. He’s stupid too.
She said this with both irony and conviction and a proper dash of rancor.
I love her, Goldstein said. I’m Lear and you know who she is.
George rose from the table.
Julia, said George, offering her his hand, which she took. You are wise. Please, take good care—of him and you.
He turned to the old man and bowed. It’s good to see you. More than good.
It was good to see you too, Goldstein said. I have to go home now and handle the memories.
Ah, said George. I’m sorry.
No, Goldstein said. It’s what I do. You’ll see. Getting old is all about remembering.
You forget everything I tell you, Julia said.
He looked at Julia, pointed at the plate. I think I will have a bite of that cake.
Hallelujah, Julia said. It’s a miracle.
* * *
EARLY IN 2016, an ad started appearing on the subway and various bus stops, heavily concentrated in north Brooklyn and eastward out to Bushwick and Ridgewood, the young people zones: it was around only briefly before the MTA corrected its mistake and rooted it out. The Authority took them all down but not before the thing had gone viral, pictures on 300,000 mobile phones, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. Thirteen million likes. Futura type, in all caps:
ADVICE TO THE YOUNG:
EARN ENOUGH MONEY…
TO BUY A LITTLE PROPERTY…
FAR OFF THE USUAL GRID…
WITH A SOLAR GENERATOR…
GOOD WATER FROM THE NORTH…
HAVE A FEW CHICKENS…
GROW SOME GREENS…
POTATOES AND BEANS…
BRING A FRIEND (IF YOU CAN)…
BECAUSE THINGS ARE NOT ON THE MEND.
—RVD
This was the first of what became an unpredictable sequence of publicly placed, non-NPR-friendly admonitions of this kind. No one knew who RVD was. Or what. It was as if Banksy had gone on an apocalyptic life-advice-printing binge. This first message looked perfectly reasonable to George. The only thing he puzzled over was the placement of ellipses at the end of every line. Gave it a haiku flavor—Frog jumps… eternity! kind of thing. Perfectly good message though. For the young. For him, too late. Here’s what it meant to be closing in on sixty: he just wished them all good luck.
* * *
AND THAT WAS it. Good luck. George tried to take pleasure in his life. He at least took amusement—people could never stop being how they were. God had a sense of humor, this one thing was certain, if there was a God. In George’s life, if not in his house any longer, there were people whom he loved and who loved him: he had Nate, who would be married soon, to a smart and, most important, kind young woman; he had Marina, in Washington, sending exasperated texts and more philosophical emails, loyal and still loving most of the time and sharply entertaining always; he had Clarissa and her boy, Andrew, whom he took places and did things with like a grandfather, which people often mistook him for; he had Burke, and Burke was Burke; he occasionally had Louis, like once or twice a year but enough, and occasionally, too, Arthur and a few other old friends. He believed there would be another woman in his life, so one should be keeping one’s head above water. That hope and the demands of sailing kept him going to the gym. He had books and films and travel—he had Mexico, which he had come to love—and he had memories. He found himself, like the old man Goldstein, talking to Anna in his head, and sometimes he detected an answer.
He did not know how it would all turn out, all of it; or when the turn, all the turns leading to the final turn, would happen. Here it was, this might have been life’s secret, left in plain sight—the crux of every story and every dream, summed up in a common, impenetrable phrase: no one ever knew how things would turn out. Except to say there would always be sorrow, like stones in a sack; and there would always be loss, from the birth of self-consciousness forward, a constant set of cuts and burns and dissipations. Sometimes the loss was slow and invisible like time itself, until you looked and there was no more water in the jar; at other times the loss came shocking and large and loud, and left broken glass, ragged holes, smoldering steel, blood and bodies in the rubble… All this destruction not merely from the working of bullets and bombs but from the larger powers of time and human will. He felt now as if he spent a portion of each day in the recognition of dying. Not in a bad way, just in a knowing way; this is what life’s later phases contained, this solid knowledge. Despite his fears and weaknesses, he knew he endured it; just endured it, gave it minimum space to move, as everyone endured it, most human beings, almost all—endured it and distracted from it, with love and desire and hope. To die, whether by one’s own hand or fate’s, was to relinquish those things. And so we continue to endure it, all of it, all the suffering and loss and the passages of despair, the dying itself—endure it and endure it and endure it—until that moment of severing mercy, when all the enduring is done.
Acknowledgments
My deep thanks to Patricia Towers and Vanessa Haughton, two superb editors who gave me careful readings of earlier drafts of this novel and invaluable advice, as well as to my beautiful friend Joshua Furst for his smart reading, encouragement and moral support. N read it twice, which shows she must be fond of me. Yvette Grant at Simon & Schuster was a life saver and a spirit saver (as well as a true literature professional). Finally, grateful acknowledgment must be made here to Agni, where part of this novel in different form first appeared, and to Jennifer Alise Drew of that journal, whose sensitive, intelligent, rigorous editorial assistance has many times, over many years, added to the possible beauty of my work and whose friendship has added to the certain beauty of my life.
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About the Author
© RUTHERFORD TOWNES
VINCE PASSARO is the author of the novel Violence, Nudity, Adult Content. His criticism and essays have appeared in many prominent publications, including Harper’s Magazine, the Nation, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, Elle, and Salon. His short fiction has appeared in such magazines and literary journals as Esquire, GQ, Harper’s Magazine, Open City, Agni, and others. He lives in an old Huguenot town a few miles north of New York City.
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Violence, Nudity, Adult Content: A Novel
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Disclaimer: It is an incurable habit of the imagination to sculpt the past, or an incurable habit of mine, anyway. The novel that follows is set in a small collection of known places and known periods of time, populated by known personalities. Yet it remains a work of imagination and no factual reality should be imputed to whatever actual persons, places, organizations, or events appear here; they should be understood as part of an entirely fictional narrative, created for artistic purposes. History can be an energizing element in literature, as can alien creatures from other worlds, should one choose to include them. Of the two, aliens might be the more comprehensible.
Copyright © 2021 by Vince Passaro
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition September 2021
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Interior design by Lexy Alemao
Jacket design by Rodrigo Corral
Jacket photograph by Allan Tannenbaum/Getty Images
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021943099
ISBN 978-0-7432-4510-4
ISBN 978-1-5011-3488-3 (ebook)
Crazy Sorrow Page 38