by Curtis White
“There is no home,” he confessed. “I burned it to the ground.”
35.
“My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor’s edge.
This screwball might kill his wife, then take the pledge.”
—ROBERT LOWELL,
“TO SPEAK OF WOE THAT IS IN MARRIAGE”
“What? You burned your own house down? I don’t know who has been counseling you on this point, but that is not the way to a woman’s heart.”
That seemed like sound advice to me, but he looked ready to burst out either angrily or in tears or in angry tears.
He settled for saying, “It was beyond my control.”
“If you could restrain yourself from beating women, why couldn’t you restrain yourself from committing arson on your own home? Belongings too? I suppose the computer went up.”
“Yes, the computer’s destruction is the only part I don’t entirely regret. But I was not thinking of it at all when I poured on the accelerant and lit the match.”
Looking out the window of our strange conveyance, I saw a sign indicating that the airport was only a few kilometers away.
“Well, I suppose there was a reason whether good or bad, but I’m afraid I won’t have time to hear it. I’ll be getting off at the airport. Then Glasgow and the sweet United States.”
“Ah! The United States! Surely women never do these filthy things there.”
“Never.”
“How good! But still, you must listen!”
What I hadn’t anticipated was my companion throwing himself to his knees before me, clasping his hands, and looking up imploringly.
“What I’ve told you is just prologue. I need to tell the whole story, but if you won’t listen I’m afraid I’ll never have the courage to start again!”
“Get on with it then, man!”
I guess I was a little petulant. I hadn’t eaten breakfast or had my morning coffee. I was perhaps a little hypoglycemic. I saw that my clothes were torn and grass-stained. Looking at my dim reflection in the window, I saw that clumps of straw were sticking out of my hair. I couldn’t go to the airport like this! And what about my luggage? I felt for my wallet. Thank God it was there or I think I’d have torn the coach door from its hinges and leaped out, screaming, onto the highway.
“Come on, man!” I yelled, “I don’t have all day!”
Pity I didn’t have a scimitar.
“Okay, okay! Let’s see. As you suggested, when my wife told me that she would return and was even eager to see me, I was very happy. Our separation had been the single greatest crisis of my life. After a lifetime of disappointments, to fail now, in this humiliating way, was more than I could bear. I was so calm, so determined, so patient, so stoic, and, in spite of it all, quietly confident that I could get her back. My friends and colleagues were amazed at how focused I was. And don’t think my wife wasn’t impressed. She was. Once, after one of our last Skype negotiations, she looked deeply into her computer monitor and said, ‘You have changed. You really have changed.’”
I don’t know what gave her that impression!
“So I did in fact begin to prepare a celebratory meal for us. It was short notice, and I felt a little hurried, but I thought I could throw something nice together if I didn’t get too complicated. I knew I had a bag of mushrooms harvested from a nearby forest, chicken, cream, pasta, and a bottle of the local rosé. I could do it.
“So I went quickly to the kitchen and looked for the mushrooms. Unfortunately, they’d been in the cooler a little longer than I remembered. They were all a suspect shade of black and a very inky fluid filled the bottom of the bag. I opened the pouch and smelled. Off, definitely off, but not completely rotten.
“So, okay, they’d be fine in a sauce. That’s what sauces are for. But when I reached for the butter there was only a note from my neighbor acknowledging that he’d borrowed the butter—two weeks before! All right, I’d cook the mushrooms in oil. I then reached for the little pitcher of cream. Empty. I had put the cream back in the icebox empty. I remember my wife’s complaints about my habit of putting empty containers back into the icebox so that reaching for anything was like playing a very low-stakes version of Russian roulette. ‘So,’ I thought, ‘maybe I can substitute yoghurt.’ It was fat-free, and flavored with vanilla, but better than nothing. Tragically, except for some drooly whey at the bottom, the yoghurt too was empty. No wonder she got so angry. ‘Well,’ I thought, ‘I’ll just use this powdered buttermilk. Maybe that will work.’
“By this time, my frustration and irritation were starting to build. So, I thought that a small glass of the wine was in order. Sit down, have a drink, then return to dinner preparation. But that was not to be. I went to pull the cork, and it slipped out with a sickening squishy plop.
“Well, now I was upset. In the course of the next half-hour, I drank the bottle of bad rosé. Then I drank a quart of beer that I had stoppered the week before. When I finished, I of course was not seeing much of anything correctly. The living room was fuzzy. But like a little window of clarity cut into the center of the fuzz I could see in perfect detail my wife’s lovely face sinking in disappointment, looking at this meal, looking at her drunk husband, wondering if coming home had really been such a good idea.
“But I hadn’t given up. Properly herbed, the meal could still be a winner. ‘Tarragon,’ I thought. ‘Tarragon will pull this all together.’ I went to the sliding herb drawer and pulled. The drawer moved out by one-eighth of an inch and stopped. Something, a bottle of turmeric, had fallen sideways and was blocking it. Worse, it seemed to be well back where not even the blade of a knife could reach it.
“Furious, I pulled again. Then harder. Harder yet! It was at that point that a fuse in my head went off, and my mind with it. I put my foot against the counter and threw the full force of my body into it. The herb drawer and a side of the cabinet frame exploded outward. Tins of mustard, dill seed, curry, oregano went crashing in every direction. I looked at my hand. It still held the drawer knob.
“‘So,’ I said to myself, ‘you’ve broken the drawer. Well, if you’ve broken one drawer, you might as well break them all!’ Believe it or not, in that moment that felt like a sunny idea. So I did. I destroyed every drawer, destroyed every cabinet and countertop. I pushed the fridge over and even used a chunk of maple butcher block to devastate the sink and its plumbing. The kitchen started to fill with water.”
“I know exactly how you felt.”
“It gets a little crazy now. I thought, ‘You can’t have her find this mess. She’ll turn tail and go back to her handyman.’”
“So you burned the whole house down.”
“I did.”
“That was a triumph.”
“I won’t lie to you, it felt really good.”
“But then…”
“Right. But then, standing on the front lawn, looking at the flames shooting up through the roof, sirens nearing, I realized what I’d done. And I realized that I couldn’t be there when she arrived. I just couldn’t. I couldn’t face it.”
“So you ran away and here, by God, you are.”
“Yes.”
“And that was all yesterday evening?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Nice job!”
A little low moaning.
“I don’t know if it has occurred to you, but when your wife comes back and finds the house burned to the ground, fire trucks milling around, a crowd of strangers laughing and drinking beer, and, the worst, no you…she’s going to think it’s all a message to her. Passive aggression on steroids. She’s going to think you did it on purpose.”
The idea stunned him.
“But it was…How could…Oh my God, what have I done?”
“Well, this is where I get off. Nice to meet you. Hope things work out for you and your wife.”
36.
“Ohimé!�
�
—ORPHEUS, IN MONTEVERDI’S ORFEO
Once in the terminal, I went to a restroom before going to the counter. I brushed my clothes, washed my face and hands, and dampened my hair to get a comb through it. Even so, the mirror was unkind. I thought I looked like a woodsy mammal that had caught fire and then been stomped out. But that was going to have to do.
I went up to the counter of the regional airline and presented a credit card. The young woman behind the counter was smiling and professional. She was even professional about the way I smelled, bless her. But then, peering into the monitor, she frowned and said, “You are in our system, but the flight you were to take was ten days ago.”
“Ten days ago?!”
“Yes.” She laughed. “You missed your flight.”
I freaked. I had important responsibilities back home. Jake, the Marquis of N—’s grandson, was on the road with that scapegrace Rory. In ten days Rory could have bollixed the trip in any number of regrettable ways. I had to be there. The Marquis would surely hold me responsible.
“Well, you still have a credit with us and we can book you from Glasgow back to the U.S. There will be a change fee of one hundred dollars, but your credit card is in good order. Shall I put the fee there?”
“Yes, please, but hurry!”
She became just a little terse. “How fast I go has no bearing on when your plane leaves. Your plane leaves when your plane leaves whether I hurry or not, and that’s not for several more hours.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m just upset.” I felt a little like taking the bus, or whatever that thing was, back to the Queen’s and curling up on the lawn. Perhaps that was the life for me.
She started looking at me with suspicion. Here I was ten days late for a flight, I had no luggage, and no idea what day it was, my clothes were dirty and torn and tiny pieces of leaf were still stuck in my hair, and now I was behaving suspiciously.
She handed me a ticket and said, “Have a nice flight,” but before I could turn around I felt a tap on my shoulder. A man in a dark suit stood there with two armed security men behind him.
“Sir? Come this way with us, please.”
How easy it is to become a “person of interest” these days. But then I’d always wanted to be interesting.
37.
“Only the artist is capable of redeeming society…but that order is so wrong that the very effort of the artist recoils upon itself and destroys him.”
—MORSE PECKHAM
By the time I got back to the Midwest, Jake and Rory were in the lake country of northern Minnesota. I had never intended that they go so far north. On old bicycles no less. I have no idea what happened to the horses I gave them. I guess the willing suspension of disbelief was willingly suspended on the road somewhere between N— and Madison. Maybe I’d been gone so long they just forgot the horses. They woke up one day and, in that demoralizing derangement we call morning, got on bikes instead of trusty steeds and never noticed afterward. That disappoints me just a little. I thought they were better than that.
And of course the plot that I had so carefully crafted was impossible now. Those wonderful narrative devices Rory had brought along? Well, you can forget them. They lost their fragment of the map. The letter had fallen into a puddle during a rainstorm, the lottery ticket with it. Even the gun was gone. They sold it, under duress, to a gang of dogs not far north of N—. The dogs claimed they needed it to get even with a “certain Alpha.” Worse yet, our boys had to accept dog money for it, delivered in an enormous bale, like something to feed cattle with in the winter.
Jake said, “Maybe we should have hung on to the gun until they showed us real money.”
Rory said, “Doesn’t matter. Those bullets I gave them are not investment grade. They are junk-bond bullets. Just pray we’re not around when the dogs find out.”
Jake shrugged. What did he know about junk bonds?
Rory cursed, threw the bale of dog dollars into the campfire, and went to Jake’s tent. He was done explaining things to Jake for that day.
The bale just smoldered.
Completely lacking in guidance, they kept pedaling north looking for a job, whatever that could mean by this point. Let’s face it, all that was left to them was entropy; they’d spent energy, lots, and done a job of work, but with horrible inefficiency, and now all that remained was a kind of pollution, the smoggy miasma that followed their many failures.
But now that, at last, we can rejoin our friends, I have to say that they are in a wondrous place in spite of it all.
Just look!
38.
“Fuck me, I’m falling apart.”
—SUFJAN STEVENS
Jake and Rory were walking their bicycles, still heading north. They were sad, I suppose, but it was not an unpleasant sadness. I think they’d grown used to the daily routines of their trek, even the suffering. There was something both simplifying and satisfying about it all. The trip had become a kind of pilgrimage, even if it was a pilgrimage without a destination or even a purpose. They had long ago forgotten about the job search.
But, ah!, Minnesota! The road moved between high peaks, stark and treeless, carved by gale force winds. Peat bogs in deep tarns marked the upland fallows. Streams moseyed across rumpled moraines. Ice Age fish endured at the bottom of the cold lakes. Footpaths followed the ancient Roman trade and military routes. They walked along narrow lanes, and close by thickly lichened walls tufted with wallflowers and encrusted by hedges. All was black and sullen, and yet alive with an inaudible motion, as if the scene were one living thing, a spirit.
From a rocky crest they looked northeast into a valley where a vast reservoir shimmered. The rocky path was treacherous and slick from centuries of human travel, the steep sloping ground was soaked from last night’s rain, but at last they arrived at a lake (Lake Mandubracius, in case you know it) where a stand of ancient oaks and enormous boulders (they kept the state from floating away) created a sort of living space, a theater, a place for human gestures.
There before them was an artist, a painter, with his easel, looking out toward the copse and, spreading to the horizon, the lake. He had his back to them and was concentrating on his work. A hat of fine woven fibers, linen and hemp, bobbed as he looked from trees to lake and back to his canvas. Jake and Rory approached him with deep respect, just as they had done so many times before, in so many places, all of which must here remain blank pages. Finally, they were standing right behind him, quietly, shy about disturbing him, knowing how important his work was to the maintenance of Things.
But you know Rory by now. The parakeet in him could stand the silence only so long.
“Hi, there,” he said, too loudly and too close.
The artist was startled and turned quickly.
“Oh, you scared me,” he said, laughing.
“Sorry!” said Rory.
Like a child who is disappointed that a toad sits still and so pokes it with a stick, he wasn’t sorry at all.
“Really,” Jake said, “we are sorry. We don’t want to disturb you.”
“That’s all right. I’m just sitting here in friendly strife with Nature. But I understand. A painter makes everything just a little uncomfortable.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that artists make a scene like this, which only wants to be what it is, feel very self-conscious. The trees have the look of trees that know they’re being looked at, and that’s a problem for an artist. Surely you can see that the lake and the trees, the birds, even rocks and dirt are agitated. They’d like to run away and hide. Through the artist, Nature becomes bashful, as if discovered naked as Diana. The artist, for this affront, must try to move Nature’s embarrassment to the other side, to dignity and nobility, before the dogs are sicced on him. In the end Nature thanks the artist because, after the indignity of being looked at, it understands for the first time that it is beautiful.” He smiled a self-effacing smile. “Or that’s what I think.”
Rory w
as jumping up and down.
“Sir, I think we have a live one here.”
Dubious, Jake asked, “May we look at your painting?”
“Certainly. Of course it’s not done in its detail, but I have already seized what I set out to seize. I have wrested it from Nature. I don’t yet know how the scene, especially the liquid lake, feels about it. At present, I believe it is encouraged, hopeful that it can at last become the lake that it is.”
Our boys came closer as the artist scooted his little folding seat to the side. If, at that moment, you had looked from behind the painting at their faces, you would have seen them squint in incomprehension. Rory’s face stayed like that, but Jake’s face seemed to open in surprise, alarm, you might even say horror.
Rory, as usual, was the first to speak. “Your painting doesn’t look much like what you’re looking at, does it? You must be one of those modern painters.”
The artist laughed. “No, no. It is just so.”
They were quiet for a minute before Jake, looking stricken, asked, “Who is that woman?”
Rory looked again at the painting. “What woman?”
Speaking to Jake, the artist asked, “Do you mean who is my model?”
“Whatever you call her. How did she get here?”
“She’s just a local girl.”
Rory was now bouncing around from point to point, seeking an angle that would allow him to see what they were seeing.
“She is not a local girl.” Jake froze, afraid to say what was so obvious to him, afraid that he would reveal himself as mad. “Rory, can’t you see? That is Fanni. Sir, that is my ex-wife.”
Now Rory was in a frenzy. Looking up, practically between the artist’s legs, he said, “Now I see her, or something. Very like an ex-wife.”
Jake didn’t even have the self-control to tell Rory to shut up, so I’ll have to do that for him.