by Ward, Robert
“So what does this mean, Mom?” I asked. “You and Joe moving back to Baltimore?”
“I think so, hon,” she said. “When I left here, I thought I was done with the place, but you never really are finished wif Balmere. When you come right down to it, I think that’s the main problem with all those people in Florida.”
“What’s that, Mom?” I asked, holding her sweet old hand.
“They aren’t living where they grew up,” she said. “I found out a person needs to be where he grew up, or else he don’t have any touchstones.”
I smiled at her and thought about what a rage such sentiments might have inspired in me years ago. When I finally did leave Baltimore, I was dead certain that I was through with the place forever. I wasn’t going to be trapped like Dad. I wasn’t going to get pushed into some trivial little life on the row house block. And I had made it, made it in the big town. But I would never get the place out of my mind. The difference was that now I no longer wanted to forget. Quite the opposite: Since I had finally let my memory run riot, I found myself hoarding every little detail, for they all seemed precious and dear.
I was talking with Billy when Dr. Spaulding took my arm. He did it so casually that it shocked me. He had certainly never done anything like it before. The only time we had ever touched at all was to give one another stiff handshakes. Yet, here he was leading me away from Billy, toward an isolated corner of the room.
Finally, we were out of earshot, standing by a trash can filled with the remains of old crabs.
“Congratulations, Thomas,” Dr. Spaulding said.
“Thanks,” I said.
I wanted to go on. I fully intended to finally say what I hadn’t said all those years ago, that I had been young and, well, a jerk, but before I could speak, Dr. Spaulding smiled at me warmly: “I enjoyed your speech, Thomas.”
“You don’t have to be polite,” I said. “I know it was a bunch of disjunctive babbling, sentimental garbage.”
“Well, I see one thing hasn’t changed,” he said in a suddenly stern tone.
“What? What’s that?”
“You’re still ridiculously hard on yourself.”
“Not hard enough,” I said. “I still haven’t reached my true potential, you know.”
Though I meant it, I tried to say it with an ironic twist, and he laughed and took off his glasses and tapped them on his palm. Seeing the old gesture made me feel such a tenderness for him that tears nearly came to my eyes.
“You sound like the characters in James’s story The Real Thing, you remember that one, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I remember it. The story about the man who looks and looks for his real, true destiny, then finds when it’s too late that it’s love, and it’s been right under his nose all along.”
“Well, it’s a good deal more complicated than that,” he said, “but essentially, yes, that’s it. The story is about a mind that is confused by ideas, by ‘ideas about excellence,’ and ‘destiny.’ You have a marvelous gift, Thomas. Why don’t you relax and enjoy it?”
“You read my books?”
“Of course, all of them.”
“That’s nice to know,” I said. Then I cleared my throat.
“Professor,” I said, stumbling and feeling suddenly like a schoolboy again. “Remember … years ago … the last time we quarreled. I said a lot of things that day, stupid things, unforgivable things, and I’m sorry. You were the best teacher I ever had. It’s that simple.”
I felt choked up then, it was that kind of day, so I sipped my bourbon and faked a little cough.
“Well, I was quite furious with you at the time,” he said. “I thought about running you out of school. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so mad at a student before.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you had,” I said. “I was dead wrong.”
He sighed and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “You were dead right. What you said was tactless and thoughtless and filled with the self-righteous anger of youth, to be sure, but there was no denying it, you were right. I was not the man I wanted to be, and to be honest, I had met Jeremy Raines the year before and had lunch with him down at that place.”
To say that I was astonished to hear this would be a gross understatement.
“You?” I said in a voice so low that it came out a mere whisper. “You were down the old Chateau Avenue place?”
“Yes, I was,” Dr. Spaulding said. “He invited me to come by for lunch, so I did, and, well, at first it was all very pleasant. He and the girl you went with, Val Jackson, made me lunch, fried crab cakes and stewed tomatoes, and we sipped white wine.”
A cloud passed over Dr. Spaulding’s face.
“What happened?” I said.
“We got into an argument, something about art versus life, and I’m afraid I took the old classicist’s view that there was nothing new under the sun, that the artist’s job was to pass on what was of value of the old culture to the younger generation. Of course Raines took the same tact you did, only, and I hope you won’t be offended or insulted, he did it with a great deal more subtlety. He said that there were new things, new ways of being, that the world was so filled with change—new technology, new invention—that the entire idea of identity itself would change in a very few years. Of course, I turned up my nose at such thoughts. I reminded him that he wasn’t the only Utopian ever born. I suggested that he was uneducated, even in the Utopian ideas from his own tradition, that he should do some reading before he passed off such stuff as original.”
“You did?” I said, and my voice sounded very much like that of a fifteen-year-old. Still, the very thought of the two of them in such a discussion amazed me. God, what I would have given to have been there.
“What did he say to all that?” I asked.
“Well, it was strange,” Dr. Spaulding said. “He smiled at me and agreed with everything I was saying. He admitted that his education was spotty and that this was a great failing and he hoped that I would help him get acquainted with Utopian writings. He said that he wanted us to become great friends.”
Now Dr. Spaulding stopped and shook his head.
“It was very strange. As you are no doubt aware, I have always consciously kept a certain formality, a certain distance between my students and myself. For many reasons, first and foremost being that I believed, still believe, for the most part, that neither student or teacher is well served with excessive chumminess. The teacher’s job is to bring his brain and sensibility to class and to use whatever talents he has to elucidate works of art. He is not a therapist or, really, even a friend, and so ordinarily I would have been offended by such a rude offer, especially by a student who knew the rules and seemed to be deliberately overstepping the implied agreement.”
“But you weren’t,” I said suddenly. “Instead you felt that you might actually like to know him better. In fact, I bet you felt that if you didn’t become Jeremy’s friend, you would be passing up something magical, something that might send your life careening off into some wild new direction.”
He looked at me and laughed, and I felt shy again, shy and embarrassed for putting my words into his mouth. But he wasn’t offended by it in the least.
“That’s right,” he said. “I sensed it at once. I know this sounds absurd but I remembered reading about Paul Verlaine meeting Arthur Rimbaud and feeling this kinship, this astounding capacity for friendship, and for something else, too, for a kind of vision that really is beyond words. But Raines seemed to have something, seemed to know something, something I couldn’t know and was too afraid to find out. It was made all the more palpable by the fact that he never disagreed with me at all. No, he simply smiled at me, and then he said the most curious thing. He said, “Professor, I wish your back would stop hurting. Why don’t you let me hypnotize you? Then you could sleep at night.”
I could say nothing to this. I was dumbstruck.
“He was right,” Dr. Spaulding said in a whisper. “I
had a bad back, but I had never said anything about it to anyone. Perhaps he could tell from some way I was leaning. Perhaps I had unconsciously rubbed my back with my hand. I don’t know, but he was also right about my not sleeping as well.”
“Did you let him hypnotize you?” I said.
“No,” he said. “No, I did not. I told him that my bad back was from lifting furniture around my house when I was moving into my apartment, but he knew this wasn’t true.”
“You lied to him?” I said. “But why?”
“Because he scared me, Thomas. Though I have never told anyone about this for fear of looking foolish, I will tell you that your friend Raines knew that my back was sore from nerves. He also knew I was lying; I left soon after that, and I was never so glad to get away from any place in my life and yet … yet, when I thought back on it, nothing had happened. Nothing and everything.”
“And your back,” I said, breathless.
“Oh, it still hurt for months. I’m not suggesting he had those kind of powers, and yet, I’ve had dreams of him. All these years, Thomas, and I still dream of his eyes, his voice. Anyway, he frightened me. He seemed to live beyond the rational. And when I heard you were living there with him, that you had taken him up on the invitation I had refused, I felt such a mixture of things, fear for you, real fear, for what if Raines used whatever charismatic powers he had for evil ends? I liked you, Thomas, and I knew how young and, well, needy you were, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to you. But I also felt jealous, jealous that you would have the courage to go where I feared to tread.”
I smiled and put my hand on his arm.
“It wasn’t courage, Doctor,” I said. “It was pure naïveté, believe me. I had no idea what I was getting into when I moved into Raines’s house.”
He shook his head violently and held my forearm.
“No,” he said, “it’s time you understood something about yourself. You were brave then, and you are brave now—braver than me—and I deeply cherish the fact that you were one of my students. I only wish there were more like you and Jeremy. The last couple of generations that have come through old Calvert have one goal in mind, to become good little members of the middle class.”
“So I understand,” I said.
“Anyway, Tom, I am proud of you and I think what you said about your generation is true. You weren’t afraid of the irrational like I was, though we had our reasons. Not to make excuses, Tom, but my generation had just seen some serious irrationality with Hitler and it had frightened us off the whole concept, but in my old age I know there is something else, inside, some place where the poems come from, some place where Freud and Joyce came from, some place that can use the unconscious to heal and create. I think your friend knew that. And what is even rarer, I think he understood how to harness it.”
“Yes,” I said, and now tears did come to my eyes.
“You still miss him, don’t you, Tom?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s funny, but as I get older, I miss him more.”
He nodded and squeezed my wrist slightly. “And what of the girl?” he said. “Do you ever see her?”
I smiled then.
“Val? No, but I’ve heard tales. When she left Baltimore, she moved to the Haight, then she ended up in Vegas dealing Keno, and for a short time, she went with a gangster.”
“My Lord,” Professor Spaulding said, but he looked interested.
“The guy used her for a punching bag though,” I said, falling into my noir voice, “so she left and ended up in Paris, where she married a deputy mayor. Now, I hear she has a terrific apartment near the Champs-Elysées and two children. I understand she’s quite content. I almost called her last Christmas when I was promoting my last book for my European publisher. But at the last minute, I chickened out.”
Dr. Spaulding nodded and sipped his drink.
“If you wouldn’t mind a little advice,” he said, “call her. Don’t let your old friendships die. Is there a girl in your life?”
“There have been girls,” I said, “but no marriages. Maybe now, though, I’m ready. Maybe it’s time.”
“If you’re ready,” Dr. Spaulding said, “you mustn’t let the past drag you down, though I understand your obsession with it. There is nothing ever quite like one’s first dear friends. Keep in touch, Tom, okay?” He squeezed my arm lightly, then smiled and turned away.
When it was over, Billy drove me to the airport. He was excited over the award and kept laughing and calling me Dr. Fallon, which was charming of him. But then I found most things he did charming. He had, after all, become my son, as surely as I had become Dr. Spaulding’s, and I was happy he was here and happier still that he could drive the car, for I was no longer sure I could navigate the streets. So much had come rolling back to me that it was hard for me to see the great oak trees flashing by on Charles Street, hard to see the mansions in Roland Park, hard to see Johns Hopkins University as we sped toward downtown.
And as we drove down funky, strip-joint Baltimore Street, I thought I saw Jeremy standing with a group of winos in front of the old Two O’Clock Club.
Oh, yes, I was gone, gone once again into the past, and I thought of the old 1940s movie flashbacks, which showed the past through a haze, and I thought the Hollywood boys had it exactly backward. The past is always lit under a nova of white light, it’s the present that’s a whirling cloud of mist, it’s the present where one stumbles one yard at a time, barely able to see daylight, trying to avoid the flying bodies.
I thought of Dr. Spaulding and Jeremy at their lunch. That was too wild. My two spiritual fathers, those who had taken me through ice and fire, had finally met one day, and though they were not destined to be friends, it was as though they had recognized something in each other. What was it? Something they both needed yet lacked?
In Raines, an architectural intellect, the crucial ability to make a plan and see it through?
In Dr. S., magic, pure spirit, a spirit he had lost somewhere in the darkness of the war?
Oh, that was pure schematic bullshit, writerly jive and yet, it was hard to resist, for wasn’t I their symbolic child?
Yes, I knew that somehow I had carried on as well as I had these past twenty years because of them and, to some degree, for them.
For them and for dear, selfish Dad and for my mother, and more so for my memories of Val and Eddie and Babe, too, whom I never saw again the day that they left me in front of the house on Chateau.
Billy drove us on, out past the gleaming rebuilt city, a place that now advertised itself as Charm City, and maybe it was true, but for me, all the real charm was in the past and unlike my mother, I knew I would have to live with my new jerry-built signposts in other towns, in my adopted world in New York. For I couldn’t come back home, not with all these smiling, yacking ghosts walking around.
As we headed into the airport parking lot, I shut my eyes and I remembered that last night long ago. No, I hadn’t told the professor or anyone else about that. That was my own little sweet, sad secret. Now, as the big planes floated over my head, I recalled myself standing there as Babe and Eddie and lovely, sad Val drove away, leaving me alone, feeling like some abandoned lover on the long blues highway.
But also knowing that there was no time for sadness, no time at all, for the second they were out of sight I knew what I had to do. It was as though Raines himself were alive and guiding me and as I got into my father’s car, I heard myself talking to him.
“Is this what you want?” I said. “Tell me straight. That’s all I ask. Tell me straight, okay?”
And as I drove aimlessly out the York Road, over the old dead trolley tracks, I heard him clearly.
“You know the game plan, my boy. You know very well.”
Of course, I was more than a little mad, though at the time it didn’t seem like madness. No, it really was as though we were doing this together, Raines and I, and I got the kerosene and the rags and I laughed and said to him: “If you had lived, you lunatic, if
you had lived, what would you have done? Tell me, what would you have fucking done? Would you have become a gangster or a governor, a doctor, a dictator, a thief, some crooked saint guru who breaks old women’s hearts down on tony Charles Street? What would you have done, dead boy, dear, crushed friend?”
It was impossible to say of course, just a mad little game I played in my grief and pain and loss and also, I guess, to keep me from being afraid when I walked down into the basement where the wild King of Cards and I had first met, that crazy blue morning when the old house shook from the iron ore machine.
It was just about midnight when I got back to our old home and walked down into the Hole. I sat there for a long time in the half light of the old overhead bulb looking at the embosser, the crazy, murderous laminator, the great streams of plastic, the piles of Daliesque cards with one ear, one nostril, an unblinking eye.
And I thought, yes, it was true, this had been my own home, my best friend’s home, and whether I saw any of them ever again or not, it was a sacred place, and it must never, ever fall into the hands of Rudy Antonelli.
So I threw the first little Molotov cocktail right into the middle of the cellar. It ignited almost at once on some old yellowed Evening Suns and then on the curling plastic strips; the flames shot out and crackled and gave off the rotten odor of burning chemicals.
I took my time, watching everything like a camera, impartially, with no feelings at all. I just wanted to record it all, keep it inside me, so I would never forget any of it.
Solemnly, I dowsed the steps behind me as I went upstairs. Then I dropped a match on the landing and watched the entire stairway ignite below me and I felt both fearful and mightily glad all at the same time.
As I backed out of the house, I thought about throwing one more bottle in the living room but I was afraid the curtains would catch and that the fire trucks would get here in time to save the place.
I sure as hell didn’t want that. All the salvation had already taken place; this little church had done its job and now it would close its doors to saints and sinners alike.