Why We Came to the City

by Kristopher Jansma

  And there she was. Smiling like a girl in a toothpaste commercial, in a blue high school graduation gown. Eating tacos in a college cafeteria with a couple other girls. Unwrapping a present in front of a fake Christmas tree. Eating mozzarella sticks in Washington Square Park with a girlfriend, wearing churchgoing hats at a Salvation Army. He realized what a difference just a few years made. Facebook, the Internet, all this had been a part of her youth, while for him, now, it hardly existed. He paused on a picture of her wearing a cranberry prom dress and pinning a corsage onto the tuxedo lapel of an earnest-looking young man—when he hovered the pointer over the boy’s face, his name popped up, unrequested. Francis U. Williams. Francis and Ella. Then Jacob signed off, almost immediately. It had been only a tiny, accidental lapse in professionalism.

  This was how Jacob planned on explaining it all to Oliver, as he walked quickly through the halls of Anchorage House to Oliver’s office, where he had been abruptly summoned over the PA system, midway through his shift in Dr. Feingold’s group. He knew he was in deep shit even before he saw that the door to Oliver’s office was, unusually, closed.

  “Dr. Boujedra?” he said, knocking quickly on his way in. “You wanted me to come—”

  Inside the office, Jacob saw Oliver’s elbows on his desk, his hands gripping the sides of his balding head. A police officer stood a few feet behind the door, fiddling with the dispatch radio on his belt. Jacob froze. Surely not because of him?

  “Thanks for coming in. Unfortunately, my father just had a stroke behind the wheel of a car. He’s been killed. This officer needs me to go and identify his body.”

  Jacob didn’t understand. “What? All the way to India?”

  The police officer looked confused.

  “Jake—you know—” Oliver paused to collect himself. “My father has been in a senior citizens’ community in Mount Kisco for a few months. Before that he lived in New Jersey.”

  Jacob had known this. It was just the way Oliver spoke about his father—always reminiscing, always in the past tense, made it seem like Dr. Boujedra, Sr., still lived far away. But yes, now that he thought about it, he remembered that the man had been widowed six years ago and had then retired to the United States.

  He began remembering snippets of conversations with Oliver—anecdotes of how Dr. B. Sr. had been behaving erratically. The diagnosis was Alzheimer’s, and Oliver had gone down to Jersey to bring him up to the Glendale Retirement Center.

  Jacob thought of something. “Where’d he get a car?”

  Oliver looked embarrassed.

  The officer spoke up. “He pocketed a set of keys belonging to the assistant director of the facility. Nice little blue Porsche. Cayenne model?”

  “Yes,” Oliver said bitterly. “Which he totaled. Drove it into a water hazard at the Sunningdale Country Club.”

  Jacob tried to cover his snort of amusement with a fake sneeze.

  Oliver didn’t seem overly convinced. He sighed. “I suppose I should be happy he didn’t kill anybody. Anybody else.”

  All Jacob wanted to do was throw his arms around Oliver, but he kept pretending that he was just a dutiful employee. “How can I help?”

  Dr. Boujedra cleared his throat. “Officer Himmel is giving me a ride to the morgue. I was hoping you could drop my truck off by my flat later this evening on your way home from work. If it isn’t too far out of your way. I don’t think I’m in any condition to drive, and I’d—I’d leave it here but the Glendale people have asked me to come by in the morning to pick up his things.”

  Jacob could barely hear himself saying, “Sure, sure. Of course.”

  Oliver was standing, arms folded against himself, his face turned away. Coldly, he sorted papers into his bag to take home. Then he handed Jacob the keys to the truck and walked off with Officer Himmel.

  Jacob went into the bathroom to stick his face under the tap, slurping coppery water until his mouth was numb and his stomach was full and sick. He fumbled his way into the stall. It was like being hung over—or still drunk from a week ago. Fuzzy sheet over his eyes, cotton in his mouth and ears. He’d never had a panic attack before. He’d always figured it would be like being out of breath, but he was breathing fine, even though his nostrils stung as if he’d been huffing Sriracha. He ground the heels of his palms against his eyeballs, which felt as if they’d been turned to marbles inside their sockets. When he felt like he could walk again, he went straight to Oliver’s parking spot and jumped into the truck.

  At first he intended to just head back to Oliver’s early—maybe lie down for a while and flip through one of the pretentious little green leather-bound Poetry Classics volumes that he kept way up on the top shelf in his study, so no one could see they’d come through some Time-Life subscription service back in the 1980s. But as Jacob went out the back way and got onto the Hutchinson River Parkway, he began to dread the idea of lying there alone in the flat. Waiting for the sound of keys in the door and knowing it would be Oliver, all sad and depressed, or maybe still aloof and despondent as he’d been in the office.

  Steadily, Jacob accelerated. The trees along the parkway were brilliant green and moving lightly in the breeze. He rolled the window down a little and set the radio dial to seek. He’d never even met the elder Dr. B. Probably Oliver had known this was coming. He was probably more annoyed about having to pay for the Porsche.

  Jacob wondered what he’d do if his own father died. Probably drink heavily. Certainly be extra rude to people like Oliver. And he didn’t even like his father—Oliver and his dad had been quite close. Well, no, not that close. The real problem was that Jacob was dating a man in his late fifties who was still basically in the closet. The old man had gone to his grave believing that his son was straight. Still asking when he and his ex-wife would finally get back together. Now Jacob wondered if, somewhere deep down, Oliver wasn’t relieved: both his parents had died without knowing their son slept with men.

  Jacob remembered coming out to his own parents at age fifteen to Royal Shakespeare Company–level hysterics. His father had sworn solemn oaths, and his mother had literally beat her breast. Oliver had never lived through such a scene. True, post-fallout had been better—he got a rare apology from his father and had gotten to watch him reading, in extreme discomfort, self-help books with titles like Love Is All: Accepting Your Gay Son. That had been pretty priceless; there had been illustrations. Plus, he’d got to check out men at the mall with his mother after school.

  Jacob hardly called his parents now and only visited on his birthday. He wondered how it would feel to be an orphan.

  The radio came onto a classic rock station, and Jacob punched the button to hold it there on the tail end of “Paradise City.” He cranked it as high as it would go, rolling both the windows down so that the wind roared back and forth across the bench seat. “‘Oh won’t you please oh take me hooooooome . . .’” He recalled nights in dark Ithaca basements, lost in the strobing of jury-rigged lights, voices all around him shouting this anthem from before their time.

  Jacob sped up, sailing around each bend, tacking between lanes around sad little Hondas and Kias and Scions. His heart thundered, and cool air pummeled his face with tiny fists. The music crescendoed and crashed into silence, and Jacob felt as if his whole body might burst. Just then a little prerecorded promo came on: Two for. Two for. Two for Tuesday. Jacob remembered loving this as a kid, when they’d play a second song by the same artist, right after the first. And softly, the rising return of Axl’s moan, knock knock knocking on heaven’s door and Jacob pounded his fists against the steering wheel, lost in a joy greater than he’d felt in over a year, ecstatic—filled up like this by not just one song but a second, just when it ought to be over.

  Like a multiple orgasm—a subject of intense debate once between himself and George—whether guys could ever have one. Sting claimed it was possible. Back at school Jacob had wanted to sign up for a cours
e in “orgasmic mastery” taught by a Dr. Koolhaus downtown. Sara had said it was God’s way of making it up to women for childbirth. Then Irene told stories about nights she’d spent with a woman in Detroit who could wrap her tongue around a Coke can. He could remember how George squirmed, trying not to lose his mind thinking about that—hopeless. Even Jacob had taken a cold shower.

  He noticed that he’d gone past the exit that cut over to Stamford. Way past it. He was seeing signs for Meriden, still heading north toward Hartford.

  From there, he vaguely knew, he must be able to take something else east toward Boston.

  It all seemed so simple, he didn’t know why he hadn’t seriously considered it before. He’d crash on the couch at George’s for a week or two. It would be good to see them again. It had been petty of him, not uncharacteristically so, but now it had gone on long enough. Of course George should go to Boston and work at fucking Harvard if he got the chance—and just because he looked happy in Facebook photos didn’t mean he actually was. George was just unflappable—that was what everyone liked so much about him.

  Jacob wondered how he would get Oliver his truck back. Probably stealing it wasn’t the nicest thing to do to someone who’d just lost his father. Now the classic rock station had on some Joni Mitchell bullshit. He wanted something angry. Less Bob Dylan, more Dylan Thomas. To Dr. Sr.!—Jacob raised an imaginary glass to the windshield. Driving around a Westchester Country Club golf course in a stolen Porsche. He had to hand it to Dr. B.—at least he’d gone out on his own terms. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Maybe that was why it had been so brutal, at the end, to see Irene lying there in the bed all morphined and breathing on a machine and, well, going gentle. If old age ought to burn and rave, then youth ought to be downright atomic. There shouldn’t have been anything spared for miles after Irene went out. She should have decimated the entire city, with no one left standing.

  Soon Jacob grew tired of driving, tired of the trees, and tired of the second Joni Mitchell song on the radio. “Two for Tuesday” could cut both ways. He was tired of never knowing how he’d be feeling next: panicked, annoyed, orgasmic, weepy, worn out. Traffic had slowed to a crawl in the right lane and was barely faster in the left. He inched along, following a red snake of brakelights around the winding curves, until at last he saw the cause of the holdup. About ten cars with their flashers on, moving slowly as one through the right lane, and the left clogged with people trying to get around. One by one Jacob passed the cars in the right lane line until at last he pulled up ahead of the chain, to the black hearse with purple zinnias ornamenting the hood. PAULSON & PETERSON FUNERAL HOMES was written discreetly along the side. Just as he was about to pass it, the traffic ahead of them slowed down, then stopped.

  Jacob tried not to look over at the hearse through the passenger-side window. He pictured Oliver down in some hospital basement, like where they must have kept Irene, afterward. Some creep balding doctor opening a metal drawer in a refrigerated wall. Inside, at first, just a pile of white sheets, as if someone had forgotten to make the bed. Just have a look, and we’ll be all done here. Underneath, a life-size-doll version of the man who raised him. Made of something cold and white that isn’t skin. How hard it would be to believe it—to say, Yes, this is my father—when you didn’t see it happen.

  Jacob took the first exit and looped around on an overpass, getting back on the parkway heading south again, the way he’d come. He turned the radio off and rolled up the windows. Again, he blew right by Stamford. By the time he got back to Anchorage House and parked in the director’s spot, he’d been gone just over one hour, and there were only two left in his shift. Dr. Givens and Dr. Berg were down by the little trash-filled pond, smoking cigarettes. They definitely noticed Jacob climbing out of Oliver’s truck, but he was finished caring. Life was too fucking short. He wasn’t going to give two fucks about what everyone else thought.

  Inside, he walked back into the bathroom stall and sat down on the closed toilet seat. He lifted the truck keys to the cold metal wall and scratched lightly, a little surprised how easy it was to leave a mark. Back in high school he’d done it all the time, leaving cryptic poetry, but he didn’t quite feel up to that yet. He would go to Boston in a few weeks, once Oliver was feeling better. His feet were steady on the tiled ground. His legs didn’t shake on the edge of the seat. His hand scraped at the paint. A little less-than sign and the number three beside it: <3. It made a little heart, just like the ones people had written on Irene’s Facebook wall.

  Then he got up and went straight to his assignment in the common area. The patients were playing board games and doing puzzles and watching Judge Judy on the TV.

  Paul patted his palm against the wall, as if to coolly invite him over. “Hey la, hey la, your girlfriend’s back. I just saw Jorge from Ward One sneaking a cigarette in the back stairway. Said they readmitted Ella Yorke this morning.”

  Jacob wanted to just throttle him. “Fuck. Is she all right?”

  “Said she looked kind of sunburned.”

  “No, I mean what the hell happened?”

  “Guess you’ll have to ask her. Even money she’ll be up here again in thirty days.”

  “Shit.”

  “Well, you know what they say,” Paul grinned. “Fourth time’s the charm.”

  JUNE

  The Ward III library was set into an old linen closet off the common area, which had been fitted with shelves and the sort of partly shredded paperbacks found on the racks outside bookshops for a dollar, or for free in a laundry room. A collection of castaways, curated only to the extent that anything vaguely interesting had been chucked. There were a handful of feminine empowerment books for teens and a few pop-psychology favorites: The Road Less Traveled and In Search of Self. The sprawling oeuvre of Dr. Phil. Jacob had noticed that Ella, during her previous stay, had been working through the odd classics, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen, but the library mainly carried the B-side stuff. Pickwick Papers. Northanger Abbey. She had plowed through these in the span of a few days. It had taken Jacob a year in college to trudge through Middlemarch, but Ella had it back on the shelf in under a week. There was really nothing much written after 1890, and when he asked Oliver why they’d omitted anything written after Freud bought his first couch, Oliver had answered that the selection hadn’t been updated since before his arrival, ten years earlier, but that he had once spoken to Dr. Dorothy about it. She was on the committee that oversaw purchasing of books, games, DVDs, etc. Basically everything had to be assuredly harmless. Nothing too scary or too bleak. This explained a lot. After the Industrial Age things got a bit dicey, didn’t they? But most kids wouldn’t slit their wrists after reading Mansfield Park. Jacob argued they might, when faced with the prospect of reading it over and over again all summer.

  There was no poetry of any era, which Jacob took as a compliment. Nonstandard line breaks were mighty suspicious. Enjambment, slant rhyme, lack of punctuation? They could easily send anyone over the edge. Keats died young, Shelley drowned. Sylvia Plath, obviously, was strictly verboten. How many girls came in there saying The Bell Jar (practically a suicide manual!) was their favorite book? Jacob had always wanted to give them a copy of “The Colossus” and say “there, there.” And good old Frost had never killed anyone, had he? Why not at least give them the sort of stuff that made the days worth passing? Finally he volunteered his services to Oliver, saying he’d be happy to sift through the anthologies for life-affirming poetry, but he got the answer he’d expected. Safer not to. Anchorage House couldn’t afford to be sued just because some patient had a bad reaction to Les Fleurs du mal.

  Oliver seemed to be doing okay. Distracted more than anything else. Jumpy sometimes. What was more bothersome was how eager he was to use his newfound grief to reach into Jacob’s. “Now that my father’s gone,” he’d said once, as they showered together one Sunday, “I feel like I have the chance to really sum up what we meant to each oth
er. You must know what I’m talking about.” Or the night after, going through the magazines for recycling, Oliver had fondled a bit of the rough twine and said, “The funniest things remind me of him. What is it for you?”

  Jacob supposed he could have answered truthfully: girls in red coats, Spanish-language television, hot tubs, almond croissants, that stupid Plain White T’s song, the entire Metropolitan Museum of Art (which he hadn’t been back to). Jacob resented the implication that these things were equivalent to Oliver’s twine. Fine if he legitimately missed his father, but it wasn’t the same. Like when Oliver recalled little racist things his dad had said when he was a boy. “Well, he wasn’t perfect! Makes it worse, in a way, remembering all his flaws. You know what I mean.”

  Jacob thought of Irene’s compulsion for girls who treated her like shit. How she’d loved getting wasted on champagne and spending Midas amounts of money on vintage clothes and how she’d been notoriously bad about paying people back what they’d loaned her. She’d been fierce about her secrets, as if believing that without them they’d have long ago gotten bored with her. None of them even knew where she’d come from or how she’d ended up in Ithaca. It felt like a lack of faith in them, when you came right down to it. But everyone had dumb flaws when they were twenty-six years old. Oliver’s father had had fifty years to climb beyond those early shortcomings. He’d had decades to regret his bad choices and outgrow his habits.

  And what would Jacob regret if his bus were to sail over a guardrail the next day? He didn’t think more time watching Oliver “processing” would be on the list. No, what he’d regret was not being there when Ella’s thirty days were up. Oliver he couldn’t help, but Ella—well, he had begun to formulate a plan. If she couldn’t get to her summer session, then he could bring it to her. After work he holed himself up in Oliver’s study, ostensibly working on some new poems but actually quietly climbing up and down the swanky bookshelf ladder, digging through his green Time-Life poetry volumes. Working carefully, using a ruler and half a scissor, he sliced out one poem after another.