Fool (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries)

by Frederick Dillen

  “Marian,” she said.

  It was a name like a chord from all the beautiful musics he had never bothered to learn. It sang inside the station wagon, while out in the gray parking lot people went under Doug’s day lit neon palm tree to brunch.

  “Marian,” he said. Today she smelled like fresh soap and water.

  “No,” she said. “You’re supposed to say, Barnaby Griswold.”

  He said, “Barnaby Griswold,” in his regular voice, and she looked at him as if he might be from outer space after all. He still had not yet smiled himself. He did that. “How do you do.”

  And she laughed. He saw her teeth. Was she terrified?

  She said, “How do you do,” in a deep and teasing voice and held out her hand for him to shake. She wasn’t terrified. And if she wasn’t terrified, then maybe he wasn’t.

  He shook her hand. He held her hand while she shook his. She shook firmly and straightforwardly, and Barnaby pretended to shake back and felt everything he could feel of her hand, the strength of her grip, the runs of tendon and bone down the back of it, the warming cold of her palm and her fingers, the edges of her nails, the delicacy of it all despite the strength, the smoothness of her skin.

  He let go.

  He was afraid somebody outside would see what he was doing.

  He turned and started the car and gripped the wheel.

  Christ Almighty.

  He drove off.

  Should he have offered her the chance to get out? Too late. Was she appalled?

  “Garlic,” she said.

  Garlic. Jesus. She didn’t sound appalled, but she didn’t sound like it was the happiest day of her life either.

  It was Barnaby who was appalled. Scared to death of a pretty girl. Well, at least sit up straight. Look where you’re going.

  “The garlic is from Happiness,” he said.

  She laughed again. Had she laughed before? Barnaby stared ahead out the windshield and over the carrier deck of the station wagon’s hood. He said to himself, Thank you, Jesus, for making it Sunday, because driving in traffic would have been too difficult. Thank you, Jesus? Was Happiness worming into his syntax now that he’d thrown over a pilgrim’s honest religion?

  “I’ve never been that happy,” Marian said. “Does the garlic just, you know, come out your nose when you feel terrific?”

  Was it possible that Barnaby Griswold could not find a retort for that?

  He could not even look at her.

  He said, “Happiness is a person,” and his delivery made the incarnation sound like the end of all humor.

  “Oh,” Marian said.

  And they didn’t speak again.

  Barnaby drove.

  He got there. He’d studied the map.

  Not another word.

  Twenty minutes. Half an hour.

  Not one.

  He’d never been to the zoo, but it was not difficult to get close to the gate because everyone else had stayed home. It was open. Zoos were open on Sunday regardless of winter and the weather.

  He stopped and put the shift into park and, still sitting behind the wheel, turned to her to find out if she wanted to go home. That was all she’d have to say. He wouldn’t speak himself.

  She had the two bulbs of garlic, and she held one toward him.

  “I think we’d better take these,” she said.

  She wasn’t smiling, but she said it like the commander of a spaceship in gravest danger, which could very well have been funny.

  He opened his own hand and let her drop the one garlic into his palm. He said, like the co-captain acknowledging every ounce of the danger, “Yes.”

  They got out of the station wagon, and Barnaby put his garlic in a side pocket of his sport coat. Marian put hers in the breast pocket of her flannel shirt, and inside the pocket’s heavy material the bulb made the appearance of one breast because her real breasts were so slight they didn’t show. Barnaby saw and, more than he could say, loved that her breasts were small. If there had not been the momentum of all the silence from the drive, he might have said so.

  Instead, they got their tickets and a map without a word, and now it was as if silence were the plan. It was a nervous plan, but Barnaby tried to be calm with it. He was not used to silence. He was not used to plans. He opened the map and she stood next to him and together, side by side, they studied it. They could hear the seals barking, and she pointed on the map at the seals, and he nodded, and they went that way and looked at the seals. They didn’t look at each other. Barnaby didn’t look at her. Barnaby was glad to see the seals, and he thought blindly that she seemed to be glad.

  From the seals they went on and toward the hippos. Was it the hippos? When they came to a choice of paths, Barnaby opened the map again, and they stood together again, side by side, her arm against his. But she didn’t choose. She waited for him to choose this time, and so he did. He chose, there, toward the birds and the monkeys, and they stood apart and walked on.

  It was a handsome zoo. Simple and open, large and planted and clean. It was the best of Oklahoma he had seen, even on so drearily deserted an afternoon.

  She chose inside to the snakes, but Barnaby didn’t think she liked them.

  He chose to the ostriches and the giraffes and the African buffaloes.

  At the ostriches, a ranger coming out of the pasture with an egg said, “Would you like to hold it? It’s still warm.”

  And they did, and it was, and nothing more was said. They handed it carefully back, as if it had been a marvel. Which it had, like a weight of God. Marian thought so too; Barnaby glanced at her and could guess that much because she was something from God herself. The colors of flesh in her face, and her eyebrows and eyelashes too, were all pale and at the same time in rosy bloom. She was luminous with life next to the gray expanse of grasses in the ostrich pasture. If Barnaby could have held her face in his hands the way he’d held the egg, her face would have been warm as well. And if she hadn’t wanted to be held, her eyebrows would have become instantly fierce like more of a mother than any of the ostriches who were talking nearby about something mundanely other than babies. Barnaby took a moment to sympathize with the ostrich mothers because he himself had always before preferred to talk about anything but children.

  Whatever was he thinking?

  He looked away when Marian’s eyes met his own.

  She chose the tigers.

  There.

  The path went right at the tigers’ place, and it was a fine tiger world from a distance.

  It was fine up close, even in the darker gray of now late afternoon. There were stone cliffs and running water, and there were distances of meadow and tree available behind. It was a much better place for them to live than Barnaby remembered from Boston when he was a boy. It was, in its way, better than the wallpaper of La Cote.

  Only there were no tigers. The tigers were not out. The tigers were somewhere inside their fine, cliff-seeming house because it was a lousy day. Barnaby didn’t blame them. Still, he stood at the rail hoping.

  After a few minutes, Marian turned to go, but Barnaby waited, not hoping so much after another few minutes as just waiting.

  He waited a little longer.

  And a little longer still. It occurred to him to mention to no one in particular that he had whipped Peterpotter, but he didn’t.

  “No tigers today,” Marian said. It was the first thing she’d said, the only thing, and she said it gaily. She couldn’t know.

  But Barnaby sank down to his knees.

  He didn’t look up at her. He couldn’t possibly. He looked under the rail and through the fence into the tigers’ fine world. What would become of him now? The walk was damp, and his knees were already wet. He was kneeling down, God help him, Barnaby Griswold, for no reason at all. He was not sad. Maybe he was happy. Done with tigers? He knew Marian looked at him, but he looked only into the tigers’ world.

  As much without exasperation as he could manage, with as much authority as he thought respectful
, he said, “Oh, come on out.”

  And a tiger came out.

  Honest to Christ.

  And another came out right behind.

  Strolling, both of them.

  And a little bit stalking, or prowling. Then stretching. Slow, less than interested, but moving with long, loose, threatful muscles like only tigers could move, like Barnaby had always known tigers would move.

  Orange and yellow with white underneath, and with black lightening on top as if somebody’d flipped the lights for Christ sake.

  And one of them, the biggest, a massive tiger, had whiskers. Jowls. Fur like Edwardian sideburns. Barnaby had never known of those, but he should have known. Christ, what a tiger.

  And that monster of a tiger with sideburns like the headmaster of the world came right at Barnaby. He stared from his elegant, Frank Lloyd Wright porch across the moat at Barnaby. He made a sound, a gurgling in his throat, like a belch after eating a village. He made it at Barnaby.

  He knew Barnaby.

  He belched in the casual, agreeable acknowledgment that the important sometimes give, and turned away, and Barnaby could either have cried like a baby or sprung up in his own roar of triumph.

  He started to spring, and he hit his head on the rail and didn’t care. He sprang again and made it up, and he didn’t roar, but he turned to his most beautiful waitress on earth, and he looked her in the eye, and he smiled. Her eyes were green and brown and watching and difficult. Her chin was up and her back was straight, and even so she might not have known how regal her cheekbones were.

  She said, “Are you okay?”

  And he didn’t care if she was worried about him hitting his head on the railing or about him kneeling there like a lunatic.

  She said, “That tiger knew you.”

  Exactly.

  “If my face were not black and blue,” he said, “would you kiss me?”

  And she did.

  She was not far away, a step, but she took that step to him, and she was almost as tall as he was, and she kissed him as lightly, as gently, as completely on his lips as her fingers had touched him last night in the bar and in his dreams.

  She did not close her eyes. She looked at him as she kissed him, and he was too shy to look back. He closed his eyes and felt only in all of the universe her thin, tender lips touching his own lips no matter what.

  She stopped and said, “You closed your eyes. You’re a romantic.”

  Then they walked without speaking back to the gate as the afternoon gathered to dusk. Barnaby had to go with his fists in his pockets to keep from reaching out to hold her hand, and there were trees and there were the sounds of creatures. There were other people but not many. There were no cars, no houses really, but there were structures and hills and cages that were inhabited. There were cared-for paths and tidy bridges. It was all a blanket of life. It was almost Central Park.

  They got the concession stand’s last hot dogs on the way out and ate them on the drive back to Doug’s.

  The speechlessness in the car now was a preserving bubble of the afternoon. The station wagon, with its large effortful engine and its spent shocks, with the smell of hot dogs and the sound of bites and paper, was an ark of memory for the zoo’s reverberating cries of dinner time.

  When they were stopped once more in Doug’s parking lot, Marian said, “Thank you,” and when Barnaby started to get out, she said, “Don’t get out. I mean, you can get out if you want, but I’m all right. I had a good time. I’m glad we went to the zoo.”

  So Barnaby didn’t get out. He said, “I had a good time too.”

  She grinned and said, “Listen, somebody should call you Tiger instead of Barnaby.”

  Barnaby had forgotten about sitting up straight, but he sat up straighter at the thought of a name like Tiger.

  Before he could bring himself to ask her if she meant it, she said, “What did that big tiger tell you?”

  “That he’d just eaten a village.”

  She laughed, and said, “See? We can talk.” Then she opened the glove compartment like it was her own car and she knew her way around. It could have been her car; Barnaby would have given it to her in a minute. She rooted for a ballpoint pen and an old registration which she brought out to her lap. “Anyway,” she said. “This is my phone number. Though actually I’ve got a month off now. Tomorrow I’m going home and I’m not supposed to be back until the third of January.”

  “Oh no,” Barnaby said before he could stop himself.

  Because they’d just begun. They’d been to the zoo. She’d kissed him, and they’d ridden home in the station wagon.

  “Or I mean, I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean I’ll be sorry you’re away such a long time.”

  “That’s why today was the only day I could go. And actually…”

  She’d kissed him and said people should call him Tiger. A month. He had to wait a month, when he wanted them to be in love today. He told her, “I’m sorry. Forgive me if I sound too strange after just an afternoon.”

  “It was a lovely afternoon, but…”

  “A month is not so very long. I mean it’s a nice long time to be home. But it’s not so long between trips to the zoo.” If he’d dared, he could have closed his eyes and felt her lips against his own. He said, “Where will you go? I thought you might live here.” He wished he could touch the back of her hand again. He thought about reaching out to do that as she was fiddling to get the glove compartment closed again. Gad. “Gad,” he said. “I’ve just met you. You’re back on the third of January. Wonderful.”

  He suddenly remembered they were supposed to be gone by then, home by then. Barnaby’s true home. Didn’t she know? That was supposed to be the most important thing. New York.

  “Actually, the thing is, I don’t know if I’ll be back at all.” What?

  “Oh,” he said.

  Then this was it.

  This was what they told you when they didn’t want you. This was what they’d told Barnaby always. Except for Win who’d made an honest mistake.

  “At all?” he said.

  He couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Done.

  He said, “Well, that’s all right, then. You don’t have to give me a number.”

  “No. Really. Call. I think I’ll be back. I might be. This is a strange early escape for Christmas vacation from graduate school. I thought I did live here. I’m only part time as a waitress. Or I’m supposed to be only part time. I seem to be struggling as a physical therapist trainee. The medical center has a great training program, and I came all the way out here to discover maybe I’m more waitress than therapist. But anyway. The career. You’re not interested in all of that. Right? I had a good time. I would have given you my number even if I was going to be here forever. And maybe I will. Call me on the third.”

  So it wasn’t done? After all?

  Or at least she didn’t not want him. She hadn’t utterly refused him. Was that right?

  Did he believe that?

  No.

  She opened her door and got out and then leaned back inside holding her bulb of garlic.

  “Can I keep it?” she said.

  “The garlic?” he said.

  “It’s good garlic. It worked. We had a good time at the zoo,” and she laughed and closed the door.

  Barnaby rolled down his window as she strode to her Volks with her joke of garlic in one hand. When she had backed out and turned to go, he waved.

  He would never see her again.

  She put her own window down and waved back and smiled. It was a smile of thank Christ I’ve escaped.

  “Good-bye,” he called.

  “Good-bye, Tiger,” she called, and drove out into the street and off.

  Barnaby sat in his old Winott Point station wagon and let himself understand.

  Marian didn’t like him and didn’t want him.

  That was plain enough.

  But actually the thing was (which was how she’d phrased it about her not coming back: “actually, t
he thing is”), Barnaby didn’t want her.

  Not that she wasn’t sensible to turn down (kindly, for which Barnaby was grateful) someone old and whatever (he hated to say ugly now that he was so relatively fit, though even in the best of times his face had never been pretty). Not that she wasn’t sensible to say no thanks when she herself was young and beautiful. But sensible behavior had nothing to do with Barnaby. He could perfectly well imagine young and beautiful women loving him if he chose. He could imagine several at once waiting around the corner.

  Yes, of course he was a fool, and yes, obviously Marian would have been crazy to want him.

  But he was not a lover. No more a lover than a pilgrim.

  That was the point.

  Some people were many things, and God bless them.

  But Barnaby was only a fool.

  There were surgeons who were great painters and spoke five languages, and those surgeons had been peculiarly receptive to Barnaby’s snake oil in the early stages of deals when a local surgeon/ painter/linguist was a useful beacon to have on board. But, secretly, in the occasional low moments that had come even to him, Barnaby had often wished the worst for people with too much confidence in too many fields.

  “Do one thing well,” was something his father had felt he had to say regularly to Barnaby; it was something that in fact his father had told Barnaby far more regularly than “Don’t be a fluffmeister.”

  Well, in his heart, in his bones, in his purple face, even if he never fluffed again, Barnaby was a fluffmeister, and a good one; that was the professional expression of a fool.

  He was not a good lover. It was the less-than-comfortable truth that he was not a lover at all. He had never loved his daughters, for instance. He had provided for them, God knew, but, no, he’d never loved them.

  He’d never given them a thought except at official occasions, at holidays and graduations and confirmations, all of which, true to his calling, he had performed superbly. Nobody ever sang Happy Birthday with more gusto than Barnaby Griswold.