Walter Falls

by Gillis, Steven;

  I had no more argument left, was not even sure how Tod managed to turn my statement around as easily as he did, and flummoxed, I could only lift my whiskey and swirl around the remains of my near empty glass.

  We finished our meal and began clearing away the plates. I watched Tod move about our kitchen in tandem with Gee, setting his own dishes in the sink, retrieving the electric coffee grinder at her request and then the bag of coffee beans from the fridge. The fluidness of their cooperation—following on the heels of their united front at dinner—unsettled me that much more. Such shared domesticity seemed part of a greater conspiracy I’d no idea how to thwart. Together they carried the coffee and cake, the tray of dessert dishes, saucers and spoons and forks out to the back porch, while I pulled the small glass table around and set the two green patio chairs side by side. The night had turned dark, the threat of rain mixed with a sort of measured stillness that warned of distant storms.

  I flipped on the floodlight that shined out from below the awning into the yard. The buzz of insects and the song of evening birds filtered in from just beyond the screen, while shadows fell across the porch and slid serpentine between the chairs. Tod sat next to Gee, in the seat I planned to take for myself. I stared at my wife, and disappointed, refilled my glass with whiskey before dropping onto the end of the grey and blue chaise lounge.

  Rea was upstairs with Sheri, changing for bed, and soon came down to say goodnight. I embraced my daughter in front of our guest. (Earlier, Tod mentioned how much of me he saw in Rea and I replied, “She is my girl”) Gee went upstairs with Rea and when she came back I signalled for her to join me on the chaise lounge. She ignored my invitation however and settled back beside Tod. (Shoulder to shoulder, their shadows overlapped.) We spent the next half hour talking in turn about the weather, the Renton Monarchs, and the latest book by Richard Feynman. We ventured briefly onto politics and twice Gee reached and set her hand on Tod’s arm to emphasize a particular view. All my comments, in turn, were taken to task. (I’d only to say, “Umm,” for my wife and Tod to cry, “Baaah!”) At one point, halfway drunk and fully convinced that all measures of restraint had failed, I threw up my hands and spoke of love.

  “Has Gee ever told you how we met?” I put the question to Tod, surprising Gee, upsetting the momentum they’d acquired during the course of the evening, their interaction transcending mere flirtation while conveying a sense of comfort and synchronicity I found all but obscene. I wanted to discuss my marriage for no other reason than to draw attention to its existence, to reestablish my place in the immediacy of Gee’s life; wherever that might be, “It’s quite a remarkable story,” I went on.

  “Really, Walter,” Gee set her coffee on the glass table. “I don’t think Tod wants to hear.”

  “No? Do you want to hear, Tod? But of course he does. Everyone wants to hear a good love story,” I moved to the edge of the chaise lounge and set my glass between my feet. I looked again at Gee and, suddenly nostalgic, remembered a time early in our marriage when we spent a weekend at the Day Clove Inn, watching old Bogart movies on a black-and-white TV, ordering burgers and wine from the restaurant downstairs without ever once leaving the room. (How magnificently inglorious our sex was then, how many dents and stains we put on that old bed.) I recalled the birth of our daughter, and the summers we used to walk along the narrow path at Welbrooke Park, holding hands on our way to and from the lake. I thought of the winter a storm blew a branch through our front window and we covered the damage with cardboard taped over the open hole, lighting the fireplace and kneeling with Rea between us as we tended the flames. Here was what possessed the core of my love, the essence of memory that could not be swept away.

  I recounted for Tod the story of the museum and if not for the ticket I received from a client, Gee and I would never have met. “Looking back, who can deny we were destined?” I stretched out my legs in the direction of my wife, and in the process nearly toppled my drink.

  Twice Gee tried to stop me, and twice more I went on. I was boastful and gushing in detailing the triumphs and commitment of our relationship and, hoping to remind my wife of all we had, I made every effort to contrast my life with Tod’s. “Have you ever been married?” I put the question to him, and when he answered, “No, I haven’t,” I gave a telling nod, and said, “No, of course not. And why should you? What a wild time you must have with all the liberal young ladies who volunteer at your review, the writers and coeds. All free spirits. What fun it must be. The lifestyle appeals to you, I’m sure.”

  Tod sipped at his coffee. He did not glance over at Gee. I felt certain I’d embarrassed him—at last—and when he said, “You’ve a colorful idea of my life, I’m afraid, Walter,” I laughed as if he was attempting a bit of modesty, and answered with another half-drunk, “Do I?”

  “My attitude toward women is not as opportunistic as you might think.”

  “And still, you make time for the ladies, I’m sure? As a liberal man with modern ideals.”

  “Being liberal does not mean I conduct my personal affairs like a dog in heat.”

  “Yes, yes. But you do get around?”

  Again, Tod said, “It isn’t as you imagine. The assumption people are always so quick to make about anyone possessing the least liberal leanings in their political views also being nonconforming in their personal life is a bit of a stretch.”

  “And yet, perhaps people believe as much because it’s true,” I continued to press the issue, feeling my advantage and refusing to let the matter drop.

  “From a purely logical perspective,” Tod responded, “there’s simply no relationship between left-wing ideologies and libertine attitudes. The notion that anyone who challenges the powers that be must accept universally all iconoclastic conduct is a misconception left over from the ’60s when the modern triumvirate of free sex, drugs, and rock and roll became synonymous with the progressive movements first introduced on college campuses. It’s the sort of nonsense right-wing fundamentalists advance in their criticism of liberalism, but the hypocrisy among conservatives is severe. Hoover was a homosexual after all, Eisenhower slept around on Mamie, Whitaker Chambers was a pathological liar, McCarthy a suicidal alcoholic. Even today, Jesse Helms is a corrupt egoist, John Ashcroft a racist, George W. Bush a drunkard, and Chief Justice Rehnquist addicted to drugs. If the outward perception of these individuals can differ dramatically from their private lives, why shouldn’t liberals be afforded the same luxury?”

  I felt myself once again losing ground, and in an effort to hold on to whatever leverage I had, I quickly asserted, “But what of those liberals who espouse free love as part of their political views? What of the left-wingers who champion the impermanence of relationships and refer to monogamy as counterintuitive, insisting single-minded affairs inhibit the organic course of intimacy by ignoring the natural flow of human desire and affection?”

  “Is that what you think, Walter?”

  “Me? No. Of course not.”

  “Because you make a good argument.” At this Tod looked toward my wife. “My problem is not one of sexual freedom,” he said then. “I support unconditionally the right of all adults to behave as they choose in private. The necessity to force the issue however, to be liberal as you say in everything we do, seems to me a bit contrived. From my perspective, freedom is itself a discipline and truth is rarely found in the extremes. Consequence is the more revealing force. The result of what we do. Commitment presents the real truth of who we are, don’t you think?” Tod finished and looked again at Gee who smiled while I bristled under the weight of a position I could not possibly support. How did I constantly wind up so manipulated, I wondered? Not ten minutes earlier I championed the heart and soul of my marriage, spoke passionately about monogamy and love, only to have Gee ignore me as if I was babbling in tongues, and here Tod spewed a bit of abstruse nonsense and my wife’s ready to—what?—canonize his sanctimonious ass!

  I slid forward on my seat in order to pour an additional shot of whis
key into my glass, and straining still to win Gee’s favor said, “Your attitude mirrors my own then, Tod. We both value a good romance.”

  “It would seem so, Walter, yes,” he smiled and turned further toward my wife. Gee poured him a fresh cup of coffee and cut him a second piece of dessert. (No such offering was made to me, and hurt, I sipped off the top third of my drink.) A cat cried in the neighbor’s yard, startling me. (The sound was fierce and filled with fear.) I set my whiskey back down on the floor and, sullen, shifted to the far end of my seat.

  Gee then spoke of love.

  Crossing her legs so that her right foot, now bare, came conspicuously close to resting against Tod’s thigh, she repeated what I said at dinner, giving me an odd look as she remarked, “It’s like spinning plates on broomsticks, isn’t it? Seeing what stays up and what crashes down.” I resisted making any comment of my own, and concentrated instead on willing my wife to abandon her seat beside Tod and come join me, to slide between my legs, muss my hair with both her hands, and kiss me with reassurance. I needed this more than ever and hoped she might yet take up for me and say something favorable about a love which had learned to adapt and endure despite all obstacles and deterrents these last ten years. Instead, she stared into the yard where the light from just below the awning fell and cut a pale path through the dark. “I’m going to have a cigarette,” she said then and getting up, she disappeared around to the front of the house, ignoring my appeal for her to stay.

  Left alone with Tod, I made up my mind to address once and for all his conduct toward my wife. (“Now see here,” I thought to tell him.) Although confrontation was something I evaded whenever possible, arguments, and altercations better left to men like Ed Porter and Jack Gorne who drew energy from the fight, I was determined to rise to the occasion, only before I could speak, Tod moved his chair closer to me and said, “I was hoping I might ask a favor.”

  Surprised, I could only stare back.

  “A bit of business,” he explained. “I was thinking about our conversation at the Dunlaps a few weeks ago, and your offer to help me if I ever seriously considered making an investment. If we could arrange a time for me to come by your office, there’s a deal I’d like to get your opinion on.”

  “An investment, Tod?” the irony was too much, and insisting my office hours were booked for weeks, suggested he “Go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Tod sat with his legs crossed and ran his right hand back through his hair. “All differences aside, your knowledge on such matters far exceeds mine. I’ve examined my financial situation and have to admit I’ve fallen into a rather risky habit of funnelling all my available resources into current projects. Money comes and money goes, and after putting out nearly one hundred issues of the Review, I still have to worry about financing each edition. I’ve no investments to fall back on, nothing but the equity in my house and the Appetency Café.” Along with the property Tod inherited from his late uncle—a three-bedroom brick colonial built in the 1920s that earned him a few extra dollars as he rented out one of the bedrooms to undergrad and graduate students who came and went in their turn—he also inherited Eddie’s Bar and Grill, which he converted, with the help of two friends, into the Appetency Café. Large cushioned chairs, lowboys, and steamer trunks were brought in to replace the linoleum tables, the walls lined with shelves and books, the menu offering espresso, organic chicken sandwiches, tofu and bagels, pasta and green sprout salads appealed to his select clientele of local artists and writers, students and professors and the like, all readers and supporters of the Review whose patronage helped give the café a reputation as a New Age bohemian mecca, though very little in the way of a profit was ever earned.

  “Despite what you may think,” Tod went on, “I don’t consider free enterprise a dirty business. It was free enterprise, after all, which allowed me to start the Kerrytown Review. My objection has always been in the way an open market economy gives people the idea they can empower themselves through acquisitiveness, how corporations without the slightest hint of social conscience can alter our entire landscape.” He came forward in his seat and looked straight at me. “That said,” he smiled, “I’m convinced if I truly want to establish a successful power base for the good of the community, I need to put my capital to better use. I thought if I ran my idea past you, Walter, and you liked it,” he let his voice trail off, allowing me the chance to respond. I brought my hands up to my chin, touched my lower lip with two fingers and gazed across the porch. “Go on then, Tod.”

  He spent the next several minutes describing in great detail the investment he envisioned. He identified a large plot of land on the far south end of Renton and said his idea was to build affordable housing for working-class families. “The land’s available and priced to sell.” He spoke eagerly of how the construction market was ready to boom and Renton was aching to grow, and, “I’ve heard from someone I know, a writer friend of mine doing a piece on an otherwise unrelated topic, that the city council’s prepared to move on a proposal to expand the metro rail south. If that’s the case, the value for all the land we’re talking about, and the houses we’d build, would triple overnight. We can help young families get started while assuring ourselves of a sound profit.”

  I waited until Tod finished before rejecting his plan in total. “In the first place, there’s nothing more speculative than the deal you just described. Until it’s certain the metro rail’s going up, you’d be sitting on worthless plots. In the interim, you’d have property taxes, insurance, and escalating building costs. You want a steady return on your investment in order to help support your review, and yet what you’re talking about would suck up all your resources in two months. Even if things went perfectly, you’re looking at six years before you made a dime on your original investment. Building the underground metro itself will take three years. Add to this the fact that, if as you say, the city’s already decided to run a new metro rail south, there must be a dozen other developers already in the process of putting together such a deal.

  “Furthermore,” I could have stopped at any time, but enjoyed pressing the point, “have you any idea the sort of money required to put this kind of deal together? You want to buy land and build a subdivision for the working class, and yet what is it you have to invest? A few thousand dollars? If I was to get involved in what you’ve just described, I’d only be speaking to people who had a million dollars minimum they could afford to tie up. With no connections or money of your own, I don’t see what your role in this project would be. It would cost Porter and Evans somewhere between thirty and forty thousand dollars of our own capital just to conduct the requisite research and put together the proper report before we could even go to would-be clients. Unless you’re looking to hire us on and cover our costs, there’s nothing I can do for you. I’m sorry.”

  Tod listened closely, disappointed by what I had to say. “I suppose I was hoping you might pull some people together for me.”

  “And if I did, where would you fit it?”

  “As it’s my idea, I’d receive a minority share.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, Tod. In the first place, ideas are a dime a dozen. Why should you get anything when, at best, what you have to offer is information already in the public domain? Ed Porter would have my ass if I offered you as much as a finder’s fee. Secondly, and as I’ve told you, even if it is your idea, no one investing a million dollars is going to let you in when all you’re risking is pocket change. To make a go in business, you need to have the resources to pull the trigger. I suggest you focus on something smaller. Something that fits your immediate cash flow,” I said as much in earnest, feeling quite generous in that moment and magnanimous enough to extend this bit of free advice. “If you’d like,” I added, thinking nothing of it at the time, gloating still at my ability to make Tod grovel before I dismissed him absolutely, “if you want a safe return on the few thousand dollars you have to invest, I’m sure I can do that for you.”

 
Tod came all the way forward in his chair and touched my shoulder. His disappointment was less severe and he seemed to understand and appreciate my advice. I could tell he was genuinely pleased by my new offer, his voice warm as he replied, “That would be excellent, Walter. It would be a start. I guess I am a bit out of my league on this one.”

  “Stick with what you can afford,” I repeated. “I’m sure we can come up with something that will earn you a few dollars.”

  “I’ll leave it to you then.”

  “That’s a good idea, yes.”

  An hour later Tod left for the night and I immediately told Gee what he asked of me while she was out having a smoke. I recounted the way he begged for my assistance, how he pleaded with me and conceded his need for my expertise. “What do you think of that?” I pitched my voice and laughed on the way upstairs. “All his liberal mumbo jumbo and who needs who now?” I wanted her to admit the irony and see what a fraud he was, that people like Tod Marcum were no better than children set loose in the woods, incapable of surviving without the aid of more sophisticated and worldly men like me! I grinned with self-assumption, anticipating Gee’s concession, anxious for her to acknowledge the superiority of my station, but all she said was, “I know,” and shushed me in the bedroom, whispering, “Rea’s asleep.”

  Gee refused to engage me further on the subject, expressing instead her annoyance at how I behaved that evening, accusing me of being a poor host, of drawing Tod into needless debate and confronting him every time he tried to talk. Her charge was sudden and startling, the suggestion that I had done anything wrong so preposterous that I could only stammer, “You have to be kidding. And what do you mean you know?”