by John Haskell
I say pulled because, although I’m holding my little camera, I couldn’t really have said I had any reason to be following her. We’re standing on the site of the future mini-mall, and nothing is said about the odd coincidence of our seeing each other twice in the same day.
“Are you taking pictures?” she says.
“Yes,” I say, and lift the camera to prove it.
“Of?”
“Landscapes,” I say. “Buildings mainly. And people, if they’re around.”
“Doesn’t look very populated now,” she says, indicating the pallets of cinder block.
“No,” I say, and although I’m looking at her, I’m also seeing everything around her, the light and the air and the leveled dirt.
“Don’t let me stop you,” she says.
“As a matter of fact,” I say, and I ask her if she’d be willing to stand in a picture. “To give scale,” I say. And when she stands and strikes an appropriate pose, I adjust the composition. I ask her not to smile. She doesn’t smile. “That’s perfect,” I say, and then I snap the picture.
“Take another,” she says. “Sometimes the first one … In case I smiled.”
“Okay,” I say, and I take another.
“What about this?” she says, and she puts her foot on a stack of two-by-fours. I take the photo and when we stand together, afterward, she asks me why no smiling.
“So as not to distract from the landscape,” I say.
“How would a smile distract from that?”
“You’re right,” I say. “It wouldn’t.”
And that’s about all we say. We walk together to the motel, just walking along, the wind cool, the sun warm, just walking together until we get to the motel stairway, where we stop. I would like to keep walking, to continue on our common trajectory, and although she seems to enjoy being looked at, and I would like to keep looking, my room is in a different direction. So we start to float apart, like two ice floes slowly flowing in different directions. I want to pull them (the ice floes) together so I say one more thing to her. I tell her she looks like Joni Mitchell.
“Maybe it’s the beret,” she says.
I shrug, and when she turns to go I say, “Who did you say you knew around here?”
“I didn’t say,” she says. “I’m with my friends.”
And then she walks up to her room. And I imagine that happiness probably exists up there in that room, waiting. Not for me, but for her. “Good luck,” I say, half aloud, either to her or the stairway she just walked up, and although I’m saying “Good luck” to her, I’m wishing that some of that luck was mine.
I can tell I need to sleep. I’m experiencing sleep deprivation, which is causing me to stand there long after she’s walked away, not moving, staring at the concrete staircase. Later, in my own room, in my bed by the window, I think about her. I would like to go to sleep but I keep having these thoughts, and although they’re my thoughts, they have a mind of their own.
3.
In Melville’s Billy Budd, the eponymous young sailor is called—in an expression from another time—a natural man. He’s a man with grace and generosity of spirit. And Claggart, his nemesis in the story, can’t stand the natural attraction people feel for Billy, including his own attraction. Holding on to the dwindling lie of his own superiority, he torments Billy and plots against him, and all because of his inability to live without some barrier between him and what he sees as a threat to what he believes he is. We don’t know the whole history of Claggart so we don’t know if maybe his obsession with destroying Billy Budd is a way to avoid looking at some lack of something in himself. But there he is.
And there I am, walking out my door to the motel parking lot, which is empty except for the dark Mercedes, nose to nose with the maroon station wagon. I walk across the parking lot, like walking across a frozen lake, walking to what may or may not be my old car, and when I get to the car, Linda is sitting behind the steering wheel rolling down the window.
“I see you’re still fascinated by the car,” she says.
“I didn’t see you here,” I say.
“No?” she says.
“No,” I say. “Not really.” Looking down from the scarf on her head to the handle of her door, I notice some pieces of broken glass beneath the left front tire of her car. I don’t tell her about the glass, but because I want to think of myself as a good person, I offer her a ride in my car. “Do you need a ride?” I say.
“I’m fine,” she says. And she notices that I’m looking at her door handle, not her, and she says, “Do you need a ride somewhere?”
“I have a car,” I say, pointing to the Pulsar, which is parked by the empty swimming pool.
So she starts the car, and it sounds like the old maroon Tracer. I can see that when she drives away she’ll drive over the glass, and you might think: How can I do that? How can I let her drive off with the glass beneath her tire?
How I do that is called interpretation. I’m trying, in my mind, to interpret my actions as the actions of a good person. But it’s not that easy because, although I intend to tell her, and in fact am thinking of a graceful way to do it, at some level I want to deny her the happiness that ought to be mine, or had been mine, the happiness that I thought I wanted. As if, in the universe, there’s only a limited amount of happiness and it’s either hers or mine.
So when she puts the car into gear I’m waiting, still intending to say something about the glass on the ground, still intending to be good, but before I get an opportunity, she shifts the car back into park. She turns off the engine. “You know,” she says, “I think I will take you up on your offer.”
She gets out. And I’m a little nervous now, walking to my car, opening my passenger door, and excusing my mess. She settles into the plastic seat and I get in behind the wheel and then I start the car.
“Thank you,” she says. “It’s pretty far away.”
“I don’t mind,” I say. And as we drive off I can tell that she’s looking at me, and that by looking at me she’s giving me a signal to reciprocate.
But I don’t.
She offers to pay me, but I say, “You just tell me where to go.”
We drive along, past stoplights, moving with the flow of traffic until the town is behind us. The road begins to wind up into low hills. She’s still looking at me, and I’m staring straight ahead, past the dashboard to the terrain outside.
“Have you ever gone off the road?” she says.
“You mean in an off-road vehicle or do you mean like…?”
“What’s your name?”
“Out of control?”
“What do people call you?” she says.
“Friends, you mean?”
“You must have a name.”
“Several names. That different people call me.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to tell me your name?”
“What’s your name?” I say.
“I already told you. I hate my name.”
“Jack,” I tell her.
“Like Kerouac.”
“Linda,” I say.
“Right. And your name is Jack.”
I can feel her looking at the side of my face.
Although I’m not aware of any barrier or wall between us, there is something. And what it is, in a sense, is Anne, or my belief in Anne and my life with Anne, and because the person next to me is not Anne, I’m creating or constructing this particular wall or barrier or screen.
“Are you married, Jack?” she says.
“You mean because I don’t wear a ring?” I say, lifting my left hand.
“I’ve never been married either. Officially,” she says.
I look straight ahead and see the arc of the wiper traced on the window, and the window itself. “Are the people you’re with … I’ve noticed you’re traveling with some people.”
“You really like looking at the road,” she says.
“I’m driving.”
“But we’re also talking.”
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“True,” I say.
And she points to where I need to turn. “We’re getting close,” she says.
“What would I look at?” I say. “I mean I’ve noticed your friends, the people you’re with…”
“Look at me, for instance.”
And looking straight ahead I tell her, “I’m concentrating on the road.”
“That’s all right,” she says. “Except maybe you’ve concentrated enough. It’s not really all that complicated, is it?”
And I can feel a million things going on in my mind, and to avoid the confusion of all of them happening at once, I turn and look at her face.
“There,” she says, pointing to a barn up ahead, off to the side. “You see that barn thing? That’s the barn.”
I slow down, turn right, and drive up a gravel driveway. I park on some level ground near a propane tank. I kill the engine. “We made it,” I say.
She unties her scarf and shakes out her hair.
And it might not be clear from our words alone, but what was just happening was that I wasn’t doing what she wanted me to do. I wasn’t looking at her. I was seeming to be doing it, or seeming to be trying to do it, but I wasn’t.
She wants a little attention and there’s nothing wrong with that. She wants to break through the barrier between us, thinking that breaking through will make her happy. And maybe it would. But my happiness is different. My happiness—I wouldn’t even use the word “happiness,” my form of satisfaction—comes from keeping her from what she wants. She seems to have enough happiness as it is, and because I don’t have enough or don’t feel I have enough, I want to keep it from her. If I can’t have it, no one will.
4.
There’s a red house nestled in the hill, and across the road there’s a tumbledown chicken coop. An older man appears at the door of the house with a bright red stocking cap on his head, smiling and waving. He walks to her side of the car, and immediately they embrace. I watch the hug until, after a while, she introduces me, referring to me as a friend, and the old man walks over to me, looks into my eyes, takes my hand, and embraces me.
Together we walk to the house, the man leading the way. He and Linda are talking about work and people, and there’s something strange, or at least I’m sensing something strange, and it isn’t clear what it is until the man looks up, turns to me, and asks me who I am.
“I’m Linda’s friend,” I say.
“Linda?” he says. Then holding up his open palms he says, “Welcome.”
His smile seems full of equanimity and acceptance, although it’s possible it only seems that way. It’s possible that only certain things, certain events or facts or people, get through the filter of his attention. Linda mentioned to me that her friend was losing touch, by which she meant he was losing his memory, and although he seems clear-headed, as we walk to the house I’m looking at the old guy, trying to discern any evidence of dementia or incoherence.
In the house there’s a large, unlit fireplace, neat and orderly, and there’s a desk by the window, neat and orderly and unused. The whole house is that way. The rugs are clean. At first we’re all standing around, Linda and the old man exchanging different kinds of information, and at a slight pause Linda turns to me and says, “Would you like something?”
“You mean to drink?” I say.
“There’s tea,” the old man says.
“I could use a little liquid,” I say, and it turns out the man has made some sun tea by leaving a glass jar of water and a tea bag sitting out on the back steps. “We have some in the refrigerator,” he says, walking through an archway dividing the front part of the house from the kitchen, negotiating his way around the various pieces of furniture.
I join Linda on the large sofa, crossing my legs. She adjusts the material of her pants. I’m sitting on a crack between two cushions and she’s sitting on a third cushion, and both the padding and the springs of the sofa are getting older, and the whole thing is not absolutely firm and so the sagging of the sofa draws the two of us closer.
There we are, sitting on the lumpy sofa, listening to the clinking of glass in the next room, and even for me, involved as I am with the past, the present moment is taking my attention. The old man calls out, “I’m putting in a little bit of sugar,” and he returns with two glasses of tea with ice cubes. He’s standing there, looking at the two of us, holding the tray, looking and standing, and she says to him, “Where would you like to sit?”
“I’m going to find your bathroom,” I say, standing up as he sits down.
Mr. V.—that’s what she’s calling the man—explains the way but I assure him I can find it. And I do.
I’m in the bathroom and Linda is in the fireplace room, and although we are separated by several walls, I imagine we’re thinking about the same thing: each other. I’m wondering who she is, and if somehow she’s responsible for the kidnapping of Anne, or the disappearance of Anne. And what about her friends? And bringing me up to this house in the forest? And this old man? What’s that about? And I’m sure she’s wondering who I am, this person who seems to be following her. And is he following her, or is she bringing him along? And if she’s bringing him along, why? He seems like an honest person, the way he stands with his weight on one leg, his arm bent, but it doesn’t mean he actually is.
When I come out of the bathroom, having been in a little world of my own thoughts, I’m aware that those thoughts have disconnected me from the world I’m standing in now. Like flies around my head, they’re distracting me. There’s always some thought, I think, and I try to push through the thoughts and come into the world. Which I do, briefly, looking at Linda, who’s surrounded by pillows, sitting on the bedspread-covered sofa. I don’t feel like sitting quite yet so I stand, with my weight on one leg, leaning against the fireplace.
The old man, Mr. V., is sitting in his comfortable chair, but he’s sitting like a young man, legs spread, hands on thighs, looking intently and openly into Linda. I say “into” her because it’s not just into her eyes. He’s leaning toward her and you can feel the attention he’s sending to her or washing over her. He’s probably in his sixties or seventies or even his eighties and yet it’s difficult to judge. He’s thin, but his cheeks have the ruddiness of someone who’s lived his life outside.
There’s a bond between this man and Linda, and I don’t know what kind of bond, but it’s a bond. Linda occasionally turns to me, smiles, then turns back to the old man. I drink my tea. I’m still a married man, and I know I’m a married man, and I’ve made no overtures toward this Linda person, this person who means nothing to me, and may in fact be the villain in the story I’m right in the middle of.
I have, not only the memory of Anne, but the possibility of a future life with her. I believe in that future, and because Linda isn’t Anne, I’m not really that interested in her. But because the man is interested in her, and she’s obviously interested in the man, I’m starting to see the ease and fellowship happening in front of my face as a threat.
I try to say a few words or ask a few questions but I can’t break the not-quite-palpable beam of emotional fellowship passing between them. It’s not my emotional fellowship, and although I would want to be part of it, it seems to me a fellowship completely unattainable, or at least unenterable, and I feel now a definite wall separating me from what I want.
And maybe Linda can see this, because she stands and suddenly announces that she’s giving me a tour. We walk outside and she begins showing me things, trees and mushrooms, and we walk to the old barn up the hill, a big insulated barn. The small door is unlocked and inside she shows me the cameras that were used when the man was actively photographing bats. The bats are all gone now and the barn and the studio are in disrepair. There are cages and lights and tripods and she explains how the bats would fly down, grab whatever food was offered, and the moment the food was snatched a trigger set off a strobe that flashed light and a photograph was taken.
She takes me into an office part o
f the barn and shows me photographs of bats, swooping down at millisecond intervals, their claws or talons reaching for morsels of food. Also on the wall, on a different part of the wall, are pictures of people, mainly women, including women in states of partial undress.
There’s one particular photograph of a young woman and her apparently nude body. It’s very artistic. A close-up. She seems to be standing on a beach, but its focus is the woman’s back, with part of her arm and part of her breast and the ripples of her stomach as she bends toward the sand. I can see in the tilt of her neck something about her personality revealed.
At first I don’t say anything, just walk along the wall, photo after photo, black-and-white, and then, when I get to the end, I say, “These are very beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“Is that you in some of them?”
“Some of them.”
“That one?” I say, referring to the photo of the person bending.
“There’s no beach around here,” she says.
“It looks like you,” I say. Then I realize I have no idea, or only a vague idea, what she looks like, like that. “It could be a sand dune,” I suggest.
“Thank you, but I look nothing like that.” She ushers me away from the photos and out of the room. “There’s an album of photographs,” she says, “back at the house.”
“Who took them?”
“Mr. V.”
“He likes you quite a lot,” I say.
“I love him,” she says. And then she adds, “How can you not?”
5.
At a certain point the man suggests that he and I take a tour of the barn, and although I’ve already seen the barn, I agree. We put on our coats, go outside, and it isn’t raining, but the earth is damp, and the trees that have fallen over are soft and moist and rotting. The trail we follow leads up a hill, past rock outcroppings, and eventually to a barn—a different barn than the other barn—and I help the man slide the large wooden door across the entrance to this barn, and we let ourselves in.