All Tomorrow's Parties

by Rob Spillman

  “What are you thinking?” Elissa asked.

  I was thinking that it had taken me seventeen years to get back home. But instead of feeling a rush of relief, I felt the panicky sensations of no relief from myself. I was both the skittish eight-year-old and the restless twenty-five-year-old.

  “You okay?” Elissa asked.

  “Hard rolls with butter for breakfast. Soldiers marching in the street in front of our apartment. That’s what I’m thinking,” I said, wanting to feel more. I wanted to feel embraced, to be welcomed as the prodigal son. Instead I felt like an American tourist.

  “Do you remember any of this?” Elissa asked, waving at the broad avenue in front of us.

  “Sort of. But everything is cleaner than I remember. Every­one looks cleaner and neater.”

  “It’s okay to feel weird. Do you want to pull over?”

  “No. Thanks. I’m good,” I said, desperately craving a beer, but keeping the car moving. I drove up and down the Kurfürstendamm, willing some kind of emotion from the familiar sight of the Sunday afternoon window-shoppers; but it didn’t elicit strong feelings. I avoided the Wall—not yet ready. Elissa, I could tell, was giving me space, not saying anything, nodding as I occasionally pointed out a landmark.

  After we had cruised around for an hour, maybe two, streetlights popped to life, and Elissa asked, “Think Hank made it?”

  “No way,” I said.

  “We should check,” Elissa said. “Where’s the church?”

  “We’ve driven by it already a couple of times. The half-bombed-out church with all the people in front. Supposed to be a living reminder of the horrors of the war, the civilian toll. They call it ‘the Remembrance Church—the Gedächtniskirche.”

  “Gesundheit.”

  “You’re funny,” I said, and swung back onto the Kurfürstendamm. In front of the church, before I had completely stopped, I spotted Hank jogging down the stairs past a swarm of tourists.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said.

  “No way,” Elissa said, her expression at once puzzled, angry, and excited at the same time, mirroring what I was feeling and thinking, which was that I was happy our friend had rallied, but that I was still pissed at him and that we once again were going to have to navigate as a trio.

  Hank was ashen and wide-eyed, his jeans and black T-shirt streaked with dirt. “You look like shit,” I said when he reached the car. “What happened?”

  “I got here yesterday morning,” Hank said. “I spent the night in the bushes over there, curled up with my bowie knife.”

  “Stupid, but serious adventure points,” I said, impressed by the needless Rambo act.

  “Why didn’t you stay in a hostel?” Elissa asked.

  “Too many junkie kids,” Hank said, his eyes darting around to the innocuous-looking punk teens clustered on the steps.

  “I’m glad you made it,” Elissa said, giving him a hug. “Let’s find a place to crash and get you cleaned up.”

  “Yeah, that would be great,” Hank said.

  “Hell no,” I said, and they both turned to me, surprised by my vehemence. “I haven’t waited all these years and driven all this way to go find a shower. Get in. Let’s go to the Wall.”

  “But Hank—”

  “It’s okay,” Hank interrupted. “Your rodeo, partner.”

  Yes it is, I thought, and you’re not holding me back.

  At the sign for Checkpoint Charlie, my stomach tightened as it had when I was a child. But terror slipped to confusion—it seemed that everything had shrunk. The giant guardhouse on the Western side now looked like a British phone booth; the quarter-mile-long metal bridge to the East was just a hundred feet long. I looked around for the looming guard towers, which I remembered as being a hundred feet tall, then spotted one of them, only twenty feet high, but now toppled, its windows, through which soldiers had fired on anyone approaching from the East, smashed.

  And what of the Wall itself, that massive, impassable monolith? It was still imposing and awe-inspiring. The twelve-foot-tall ribbon of concrete stretched to the horizon left and right. The only difference was that now both the eastern and western Walls were missing four-foot sections. The Wall now looked like an old prizefighter’s smile.

  So this is the monster in my closet? I couldn’t believe I was driving right through it. “I’m going under the Wall,” I sang out, my T-shirt sticking to the seat as I leaned forward.

  “Woo-hoo,” Elissa cheered, and Hank leaned out the window like a dog wanting to get its first breath of ex-Communist air. Over my shoulder, I was surprised to see the pristine eastern side of the Wall, still graffiti-free. I was thirsty and hot, but I also had goose bumps, just like when I was with my father. A few blocks in, there were no Westerners, but plenty of Easterners, peering curiously into our car.

  “Jesus, their clothes are grim,” Elissa said.

  “Exactly like I remember,” I said. “Except for that,” I added, driving around yet another pile of cobblestones that had been ripped from the streets.

  “Why the roadblocks?” Hank asked.

  “Beats me,” I said.

  “Isn’t the West now helping out the East?” Elissa asked.

  “Not until reunification in October,” I said, “and until then we’re in legal limbo.”

  “At the church, I heard that Westerners are getting rolled in the East,” Hank said, “and that Western cars are being stolen by a Russian mafia ring and then caravanned to Moscow. And skinheads have been coming in from the north to attack Westerners and the anarchist squatters.”

  Drama queen, I thought, but said, “I haven’t seen any Westerners.”

  I vaguely remembered my father’s walking route and drove into Prenzlauer Berg. I couldn’t understand why, but with each block that I was farther away from West Berlin I felt happier. “I can’t believe this. This is so damn cool.”

  “Easy, Chief, eyes on the road,” Hank said.

  “My father and I walked through here,” I said, pointing to a little park.

  “I’m so happy to finally see this,” Elissa said.

  “Let’s walk around a little,” I said, and pulled over. “I want to see if I can find the old music shop we used to go to.”

  “Think it’s safe?” Hank asked, his hand on the car door.

  “Absolutely,” I said, giddy. I tapped my chest, feeling for my money belt and my passport, with its “Get out of jail free” stamp—a German place of birth.

  “If it doesn’t look safe, we’ll turn back.” As soon as I said this, I realized I was lying.

  Hank got out, grim but determined, and cuffed his jeans up slightly higher so that he would have quicker access to his knife. I guided Elissa down the block, now noticing that most of the streetlights had been smashed out. There were no people visible and the street was strewn with glass, much more glass than could have come from the lights. I hurried us along to the next block, which was better lit, but which was also spookily unpopulated.

  “You know where you’re going?” Elissa asked with mustered optimism.

  “I think so,” I said, though by now all of the streets looked the same, including the one we were on, which dipped downhill and dead-ended in a small green park. Dark, thick with trees, the park was dotted with islands of heroic statues of old warriors, and in the center a Teutonic figure on horseback leaning down to run his sword through a Hun.

  And there were cops. Or soldiers. How could I not have seen them? Next to the pith-helmeted Hun, a handful of men in modern military gear. Now that we were closer, I saw sixty, eighty, perhaps a hundred helmeted soldiers casually leaning on their clear plastic shields, black batons at their sides. Four German shepherds sat at attention in front of an armored personnel carrier, its bed filled with coils of barbed wire, the top of the cab fixed with a water cannon. Many of the men were smoking, no one in a hurry to
do anything.

  “What the . . .” Hank said, several steps behind me.

  “Soldiers,” I said, stating the obvious. “C’mon, guys.” I kept walking.

  “What do you mean, ‘c’mon’?” Hank asked. I turned and he looked at me as if I were deranged.

  “We’re not doing anything wrong,” I said. “And we’re not skinheads or anarchists. We might as well stay in Kansas if we’re not going to see what’s really going on.”

  Would Joseph Conrad, George Orwell, Jack Kerouac, or Ken Kesey turn back? I don’t think so. Would Johnny Cash or John Lydon flinch? No chance. Would Hunter S. Thompson not walk right into the fucking breach? Hell yes.

  “But, Rob, man, this is . . .” I didn’t hear the rest, because I was already marching down the hill, Elissa at my side. I nodded to her and she nodded back. I could see that she was exhilarated but also frightened. And trusting. I would like to say that I was thinking about her, about her safety. I wasn’t. I was thinking about me. I hadn’t felt this alive in years, not since I was in a spinning car waiting for the extreme sensation that the ­onrushing brick wall would deliver me.

  A few of the soldiers looked our way, but none of them moved. I headed for the path leading to the side of the armored personnel carrier. As we neared, more and more heads tracked our progress. Their green uniforms were crisp. Elissa squeezed my hand tighter. A hundred eyes watched us from under their upturned visors. Elissa’s pulse raced ahead of mine. Then they were right in front of us, shields down, batons dangling.

  “Abend,” I said, hoping to sound casual, but not too casual.

  “Abend,” several voices called back.

  I kept walking. Elissa relaxed her grip, then squeezed twice. That signal—to me it meant that yes, we had walked through the fire. Together. This was the moment I had been living for.

  But I had to go on.

  At the edge of the park I turned around, and Hank was still at the top of the hill, by the corner, a good hundred meters away. Shoulders hunched, he was trying to shrink, to disappear on himself like a black hole. I waved to him, aware that the soldiers were watching our pantomime. I knew I was publically humiliating and emasculating Hank, and I didn’t care. If he wanted to be part of the show, he had to come along. After a few seconds, Hank rocked off his heels, then hesitantly shuffled forward, eyes down.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” I urged, impatient, punishing, but also not wanting the soldiers to have any excuse to detain us. Nothing to look at here. Just us chickens, on a harmless stroll. When he finally caught up, I led us away from the soldiers and out of the park. This is my fucking city.

  “What was that?” Hank hissed.

  “Nothing. Just soldiers.” Glass crunched under my high-tops. I could’ve taken them off and sprinted over the shards without getting a scratch.

  21

  “You can’t copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.”

  —Billie Holiday

  Soundtrack: Billie Holiday, “Don’t Explain,” 1944

  WHEN THE CHAUTAUQUA FESTIVAL ENDED, my father and I didn’t go home to Rochester, but instead drove our trusty old Hornet south, to my new home without him. After two days of driving we passed the Georgia-Florida border, the humid, late-August air thick with bugs. I put a plastic bag over my hand and stuck it out the window to see how many I could catch. The bugs—some big and black, others smaller, yellow, black, and red, a few bottle-green—stung my hand as their bodies smashed into my plastic-covered palm. My father flicked on the windshield wipers to smear away the dead insects, not wanting to miss the turnoff for Disney World. This detour was his way of ­distracting me into forgetting what was coming, or maybe to make up for the upcoming drive back north to my mother’s house in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she’d moved to teach after getting her master’s degree. I kept thinking, First my mother leaves, now my father’s leaving. I don’t even know my mother. I hadn’t seen her since Easter. At least in New Orleans I would have had my cousins. In Lynchburg I would know no one except my mother, who didn’t know anyone there either.

  My father tried to be cheery, in his manner, playing our usual word games, pulling over for strange foods, signaling funny signs and strange town names—Jane Lew, Mink Shoals, Hurricane. It could have been like any of our other drives, except that Linus and Lucy kept yowling at the heat and uncertainty, panting in their carrier. I tried to smile through the misery, never thinking about how excruciating the experience must be for him.

  At Disney World, we parked in a massive parking lot. I wondered how we’d ever find the car again, and hoped that, at the end of our day of fun, we wouldn’t. We tromped around the squeaky-clean grounds till we reached the line for Space Mountain, surrounded by fat Americans in bright colors. I had plenty of time to study the warning sign: “IF YOU HAVE A HEART CONDITION, DO NOT RIDE SPACE MOUNTAIN. PUT YOUR GLASSES IN YOUR SOCK. ENJOY THE RIDE.”

  When my father stopped in front of my mother’s nondescript brick apartment complex, I think he said, “Love you, kiddo.” I don’t remember my father and mother talking, though they must have. He must have handed her my suitcase, my cat carrier; he didn’t just dump me and my possessions on the curb. I do remember him getting back into his green Hornet. His. It used to be ours. Now there I was, in my new home, with my mother. With a reassuring smile, she showed me around an apartment that was twice as big as my father’s, and ten times more orderly and clean, though a hundred times more bland. While the cats hid under the big, clean white sofa in the living room, I went to my new room and sobbed. I cried and cried and cried, all the while trying not to. Even though I didn’t really know my mother, I didn’t want her to think I hated her. After collecting myself, I went to the bathroom and doused my face with a cold washcloth.

  But she could tell.

  “It’s okay to be sad,” my mother said, her hand on my back. “You’ve been with your father for years. Of course you’re going to miss him. But it’s going to be okay.”

  I nodded. Why did she want me there? Did she think of me as a feral child? A reclamation project?

  “No!” my mother suddenly yelled, and ran toward the sofa. Lucy stopped peeing and dashed past us into my room.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, the three-inch yellow circle slowly spreading. “What can we do?”

  My mother ran into the kitchen and came back with paper towels, a bottle of seltzer, baking soda. “Here, blot it as best you can,” she said, handing me the roll of paper towels. I pressed down on the warm liquid, and then my mother carefully covered the spot with baking soda and slowly poured seltzer over the fizzing, bubbling mixture. As she wiped up the mess, she said, “See. It’s going to be okay.”

  I guessed it would be, and was impressed that only an hour later the spot was gone. It wasn’t until months later that I noticed that my mother had flipped the cushion, the stain almost gone, but still noticeable if you were looking.

  Lynchburg was a different kind of green than New Orleans, more woodsy and controlled, and in the heart of the town was the school where my mom had taken a tenure-track job as an assistant professor: Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, down the road from Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. At the public school I attended, all of my classmates had lived in Lynchburg their entire lives. They were more welcoming and genuinely friendly than my Rochester classmates, but I didn’t know what to do with this collective kindness.

  However, I had to learn, and quickly. I wouldn’t be going to my mother’s job with her, as I had with my father. I was supposed to play with other kids. Marbles, Fort, Pretend—I didn’t know how to play, or how to do most anything that other eleven-year-olds seemed to do naturally. I had a bedtime. I ate regular meals. I chafed at any routine; I was bored by the regularity, the predictability of every aspect of my new life. At home, I tried not to show my unhappiness, but I can imagine what a sullen picture I mad
e, what a miserable job my mother had as a parent as she tried to integrate me back into the world of “normal” kids. She signed me up for piano lessons, which were tedious for both me and my teacher.

  I tried to be a good son, a decent citizen. At Halloween, my mother, an expert with needle and thread, fashioned a bear costume out of an old fur coat. A couple of my new friendly classmates walked with me through our development and I knocked on the door of a nice older woman I’d seen out working in her garden. The door opened, the lady’s arm in a cast, her left eye red, the area around it purple, green, and black. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I fell down the stairs a few days ago and couldn’t get candy. Here’s a quarter.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said, the tears starting. Such was my fragile state that while I craved disruption from the routine, if that disruption was sad, my normal-happy-kid façade instantly shattered. I walked past my classmates, mumbling something about needing to get another bag from home and that I’d catch up. But seeing that banged-up lady took away what little manufactured joy I had mustered for the evening. I didn’t go back out. I told my mother that yes, I had had a great time.

  I read and read and read. To escape, yes, but also to find myself. In the real world, no one was like me. But in the pages of The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and The Prince of Central Park, there I was. Or at least there was who I wanted to be. Unlikely hero Bilbo Baggins, dogged and quietly enterprising. Unflappable Susan Pevensie, with her badass bow and arrows. Or the kid who runs away to Central Park and lives in the trees and scrounges for coins in the Met fountains, invisible to the adult world.

  Outside of books, I saw the future as a predictable morass. Though my parents hadn’t said anything to me, it was apparent that I would be spending the next seven years, until I graduated high school, with my mother in Lynchburg. The overwhelming reality of my confinement gripped me in church one day as I was sitting by myself in a pew, fanning myself with the program. My mother was the principle soloist, something I thought she would be proud of, or take joy in, but she treated it like just another gig, professionally singing hymns right out of her dour Southern Illinois childhood. We had a deal—I would go to church and behave while she sang, then we got to go to Friendly’s, where I could have any kind of sundae, with four flavors, the whole works. I would have behaved even without the bribe, but I liked the bribe. As she sang, I considered watermelon, cherry, black raspberry, and chocolate—mixed together. Or maybe peppermint and lemon. Seven more years of sweating the big decisions like cherry versus peppermint. But first stand up, sing, sit down, stand up, sing, sit down.