“Peachy.”
The hold music is “Band on the Run,” and Paul McCartney's voice comes pouring through my speakerphone with surprising clarity, clashing with the Springsteen on my stereo. I turn off the Springsteen at the same instant that Owen's scratchy voice replaces McCartney's, and thus we avoid a historical duet. “Hey, Joe.” He sounds hoarse and groggy, which is at least partially my fault, since I kept him on the phone until close to five this morning.
“Sorry about last night. I hope I wasn't interrupting anything,” I say, although with Owen you're almost always interrupting something. The man keeps his social life hopping with a frenetic, almost desperate intensity. It's as if he's worried that if he took one night off, the wild circus of his life would pull up stakes and leave town without him.
“I'd pretty much gotten my money's worth from Sasha by then,” he says with a low snicker.
“Sasha?”
“A Romanian nurse, if I understood her credentials properly.”
“I see.”
Owen's brazen patronage of high-end call girls is legendary in the publishing industry. He is currently working his way through the “sensual role play” ads in the back of New York magazine, gleefully reporting to me after every encounter.
“You heading up to the Falls now?” he asks. “The Falls” is a term used only by the locals, and it's just like Owen to insinuate himself like that.
“As we speak.”
“Well, I hope your dad's doing better.”
“Thanks,” I say, feeling suddenly guilty, as if I might be perpetrating a fraud of some kind by accepting sympathetic wishes on behalf of my father. “Did you get the pages?”
“They were waiting for me this morning,” he says after the slightest pause. Owen is not a man typically given to pauses.
“Have you read them?”
“Some.”
Given the success we enjoyed with Bush Falls, Owen has been eagerly awaiting my new manuscript, which I've been promising him for the last year. I actually finished it about six months ago but have withheld that information, since I'm not particularly thrilled with the finished product. The conventional wisdom about fiction, according to Owen, is that first novels are generally highly autobiographical works, and mine certainly does nothing to contradict that notion. It's the sophomore effort that confirms a writer's ability and relevance in the literary marketplace, because that's theoretically the work wherein he must truly harness his imagination and voice to create something from nothing. The publishing world is awash in blood from the slit wrists of all the one-trick ponies.
“You hate it,” I say.
“No.” I hear the unmistakable grind and click of his cigarette lighter. “There are actually some wonderful sections.”
“There's a big ‘but' hanging over that sentence.”
Owen sighs. “I never had you pegged as a magical realist.”
“I do it pretty sparingly,” I object. “It's an atmospheric conceit.”
“It's a pretentious distraction,” Owen says dismissively. “Look at me, pushing the literary envelope! It doesn't work. Magical realism is not a movement or a technique. It's a novelty act, and the novelty's long gone. Readers will tolerate it from Marquez and Calvino because the New York Times tells them to. You're a Jew from Manhattan and no one's going to cut you that slack. It's bullshit.”
“Why don't you tell me what you really think?”
“I think you're too good a writer to waste your time with experimental postmodernism.”
I test the waters of his remark for patronizing levels and decide that he's being sincere. “Well, other than that, how are you finding the narrative?” Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the show?
“Honestly, Joe, I think the subject matter is beneath you.”
It's shocking, really, how with one sentence he is able put into words what I've spent six months trying to pin down to no avail. The novel—working title: It Starts Here—is about a kid who drops out of college to follow a Grateful Dead–like band around the country for a few months with a woman he's only just met. He's running away from his privileged upbringing, and she's fleeing an abusive husband and the law. Romance and chaos ensue amid the tie-dyed backdrop of the rock-and-roll bedouin culture. Not the most original premise in the world, but I really did start the novel with the best of literary intentions, meaning to tell a contemporary love story while examining the way in which people struggle against America's invisible class system. The spare combination of two main characters and their unique spin on a universal theme should have kept me focused on the story without being overly ambitious. But they made the movie of Bush Falls while I was writing It Starts Here, and there is no denying that the film perverted my writing. I was blocking shots instead of describing scenes, an entirely transparent and unacceptable practice when writing outside the milieu of courtrooms and serial killers.
“Listen,” Owen says. “I'm barely into it, so this conversation is premature. Talk to me after the weekend.”
“But we've ruled out loving it.”
“Does it get better?”
“I'm not sure.”
“Ah.”
“Don't ‘ah' me.”
“Hmm,” Owen says.
“So,” I say after a bit. “What now?”
He coughs lightly. “Listen, Joe, you're a good writer. Blah, blah, blah. You don't have to prove anything to me. But I really don't want to talk about this until I've read it all. Then we can sit down and decide what it needs.”
What it needs, I suspect, is to be taken out back and given the Old Yeller treatment. “And if it needs to be scrapped?”
“Then we'll scrap it,” he says easily. “And you'll write me something else. Happens all the time.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It's not my job to jerk you off. You want to feel better, go back to therapy. My job is to make you write better, and it's been my considerable experience that the worse you feel, the better you write.”
“Wonderful,” I say dejectedly. I don't bother to point out that I've been fairly miserable for the last six months and haven't managed to write a single sentence worth shit and that it positively terrifies me to think that I might be one of those poor slobs who have only one book in them.
Owen changes the subject. “So, you're going back to the Falls. Let me once again say wow. This could be interesting.”
“I'm just hoping for quick.”
“Well, keep me posted. I want to hear every last detail.”
“Owen,” I say. “Sometime in the future, you really should consider getting a life of your own.”
He chuckles. “I had one once and discovered that they're overrated. Besides, I don't need one anymore. I have yours.”
“'Bye.”
I hit the END button, turn the stereo back on, and step a little harder on the accelerator. The engine responds instantly with a deep, low growl. Within minutes I'm on the Merritt Parkway, luxuriating in the way the Mercedes chews up the dipping curves of the two-lane blacktop. I'm still in the formative stages of a love-hate relationship with the car. There's no denying that it handles like a dream, practically anticipating my every move. But on the other hand, everyone who can afford a Mercedes doesn't necessarily belong in one, and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that I fit into that category. The car embarrasses me, and I sometimes find myself grinning apologetically at passing motorists in Fords and Toyotas, as if those perfect strangers know I'm really one of them, out doing some unseemly social climbing. The sleek German design was never intended to house my petty insecurity.
The Parkway winds its way through the green Connecticut foliage, the outer edges of the leaves just beginning to glow red, signifying the approaching autumn. I sing along loudly to “Thunder Road” in an attempt to distract myself from the anxiety rising in me with each passing mile, but it's no use. I'm assaulted by a steady barrage of scenes from my past that flash by too quickly for proper identi
fication but nonetheless leave me feeling vaguely disturbed. And then, as I'm passing Norwalk, Bruce begins singing “Backstreets” and, as if on cue, Sammy Haber emerges without warning from the back of my mind, striding purposefully across the stage of my brain in his checkered pants and that ridiculous pompadour. The image is so complete, so overwhelmingly perfect, that I feel my throat constrict and tears well up unbidden in my eyes. I take a deep breath, but the tears continue to come, blurring my vision, and I have to quickly pull over onto the anorexic shoulder of the highway, choking back an astonished sob as I throw the car into park.
Sammy. It takes just that one image of him for me to realize that I've been cheating my memory up until now, relating to him strictly within the confines of a literary character, unwilling to connect with him on a personal level. I thought I'd exorcised my demons by writing the book, but I now see that I've merely appeased them temporarily. And now I'm heading back to the Falls, where his ghost and others await me, and I'll have to deal with him and everything that had happened all over again, this time without the structured buffer of my pages and chapters to hold them in check. I shudder, wiping away the warm dampness on my cheeks as I wrestle my breathing back under control. Cars hurtle past me on the Merritt like missiles, their force gently buffeting my car as it idles on the shoulder.
There was a time when I wasn't like this, when I had friends and I cared. Sammy, Wayne, and me, three misfits who somehow managed to fit. And then things got all fucked up and we didn't anymore, but for a while there we had something. And beyond that, even, I had Carly.
Time doesn't heal as much as it buries things in the undergrowth of your brain, where they lie in wait to ambush you when you least expect it. And so, as the years passed, Sammy became little more than an exhibit in the museum of my memory, and Wayne was reduced to an enigmatic hologram fading in and out of perception. Only Carly persevered as a living fixture in my consciousness, stubbornly eluding any and all efforts to retire her behind the glass wall of memory, maybe because I had loved her as an adult or maybe because that was just Carly, whose sheer force of personality would never allow such diminishment. Whatever the reason, my every feeling and experience is still colored by a dim awareness of her, and wherever I go, she floats, ever present, in the background. She's still such a part of my life, the pain is still so fresh, that it's unbelievable to me that we haven't spoken in close to ten years. Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.
The tears threaten to return, so I willfully banish all thoughts from my head and take a few more deep breaths. I'm suddenly dizzy from the panic attack I've just suffered, and I close my eyes, resting my head against the warm leather of my steering wheel. Loneliness doesn't exist on any single plane of consciousness. It's generally a low throb, barely audible, like the hum of a Mercedes engine in park, but every so often the demands of the highway call for a burst of acceleration, and the hum becomes a thunderous, elemental roar, and once again you're reminded of what this baby's carrying under the hood.
five
1986
Sammy Haber moved into Bush Falls the summer before our senior year, a baby-faced skinny kid, with sandy blond hair gelled to an audacious height, tortoiseshell glasses, and an unfortunate affinity for pleated slacks and penny loafers. He and his mother had moved up from Manhattan, where, it was whispered, they'd been forced to leave in the wake of some kind of scandal. The lack of concrete details didn't hinder the powerful gossip engine of the Falls, was actually preferable, since it left the field wide open for sordid speculation.
Lucy Haber, Sammy's mother, did nothing to dampen the gossip. She was wildly beautiful, with thick auburn hair worn long and free, wide, uncomplicated eyes, and stark white skin that offered a perfect contrast to both her hair and her impossibly full lips, which came together in a thoughtless pout. In her platform sandals, long, flowing skirts, and clinging tops with plunging necklines, she exuded a casual, bohemian sexuality as she ambled distractedly past the stores on Stratfield Road, humming to herself as she went. Connecticut mothers, for the most part, weren't big on cleavage when they grocery shopped. The Bush Falls aesthetic tended more toward Banana Republic blouses tucked neatly into Ann Taylor slacks. Cleavage, like the good china, was reserved for special occasions, and even then was displayed sparingly. But Lucy Haber seemed oblivious to the catty looks she received from the women she passed, or the appreciative double takes she garnered from the men. Everyone agreed that she seemed much too young to have a son Sammy's age, and it was undoubtedly her abundant sexuality that was responsible for that, as well as the mysterious troubles back in New York. There apparently was no Mr. Haber, which was, of course, perfect.
That summer, as I did every summer, I went to work in my father's display factory on the outskirts of Bush Falls. My father was one of the few men in town who were not directly employed by P.J. Porter's, the immense discount department store chain whose national corporate headquarters was based in the Falls. With over seven hundred retail outlets nationwide selling everything from apparel, cosmetics, and jewelry to furniture and major appliances, Porter's was one of the largest employers in Connecticut. Bush Falls had originally been developed as a planned community for the employees of the retail giant, whose corporate campus was situated on seventy acres just a few miles north of the town proper and housed over a thousand offices. Just about every family in Bush Falls had at least one member working for Porter's. It was well-known that Porter's preferred to hire from within the community, and they ran a highly successful summer jobs program with Bush Falls High School.
My father had originally worked at Porter's as a purchasing agent before going into business on his own, manufacturing store displays, and Porter's subsequently became his largest account, thanks to his friends there, who ordered all of their promotional displays and packaging from him. While he was no less dependent on Porter's for his livelihood than he had been when he'd worked there, he was now his own boss, a distinction of which he was immensely proud, and pleased to point out at every opportunity.
So while my classmates went to work as summer interns at Porter's, I took my place alongside the stooped Peruvian immigrants who comprised my father's labor force, operating one of the hydraulic vacuum presses. My job consisted solely of continuously loading four-foot-square styrene sheets onto the press and setting the aluminum molds beneath them before lowering the press and activating the heating bed and the hydraulic pumps that melted and sucked the styrene onto the molds. Then I would lift the press and pull off the hot styrene, now formed in the shape of the mold, cut away the excess plastic with a box cutter, and toss the raw piece into a cart, which would periodically get wheeled out onto the floor for assembly and finishing. It was sweaty, monotonous work, and I trudged tiredly home every afternoon with stiff shoulders, smelling of burnt plastic, reminding myself that at least I didn't have to wear a suit. As a point of pride, my father always paid me marginally better than Porter's paid its summer interns. “Your old man is not a spoke on someone else's corporate wheel,” he would say to me from behind the scuffed aluminum desk in his small, cluttered office in the rear of the factory. “And there's no reason for you to be one, either.”
Summers were always busy, as we desperately churned out product for the fall retail season, and that summer we were particularly inundated with orders. Because of this sudden increase in production and the pressure to meet delivery dates, my father leased a second vacuum press, which he installed directly behind the first, and asked me if any of my friends would be interested in operating it for the summer.
My best friend was Wayne Hargrove, who had proven to be such good company over the years that I was willing to overlook his regrettable status as a starting forward for the Cougars. A tall, sinewy kid with a thick mane of blond hair and a perfect swimmer's body, Wayne was one of those guys who effortlessly navigated the vast complexities of t
he high school caste system by being genuinely unconscious of its existence. He seemed to lack the innate filtration system we all had that automatically categorized geeks, dweebs, preps, stoners, jocks, goths, and the various subcategories therein. It's generally those occupying the lower positions on the food chain that are occasionally unmindful of the social boundaries, and their trespasses will usually engender swift repercussions worthy of a John Hughes film. Wayne's jock status exempted him from such concerns, and he was consequently one of the most genuinely liked people at Bush Falls High. His wit, while sharp, was never cutting or caustic, and he possessed an infectious energy that seemed to breed goodwill wherever he went. I was jealous as hell of him, but never resentful, since none of it was a conscious effort on his part.
I tried insistently to convince Wayne to forget about his internship at Porter's and come work at the factory. Linguistic and social barriers prevented me from having anything more than a nodding relationship with my coworkers, who I was always convinced were mocking the boss's son in their indecipherable native tongue. Wayne's presence would be the perfect antidote to my isolation, and a diversion from the sheer boredom of the work.
“Thanks, man,” he said as we walked home on one of the last days of the school year. “But I'm already gainfully employed.”
“We get off at three,” I pointed out.
“You wake up at the ass crack of dawn,” he countered.
“This pays more.”
He raised his eyebrows. “There are things in this world besides money.”
“Such as?”
“Air-conditioning.”
He had me there.
I came home later that evening and found my father eating a frozen dinner in the den, bitching to the professional athletes on his television. He's got nothing left. For Christ's sake, send in a goddamn closer already. What do you bother having a damn bull pen for anyway? I told my dad that Wayne wasn't interested in the job. “So ask someone else,” he said.
“There's no one else I can think of.”
The Book of Joe Page 3