Wake Up, Sir!

by Jonathan Ames

  (6) 1984 plaid green-and-blue summer coat, from Harry Ballard of Princeton. Needs frequent dry cleaning, seems to hold on to perspiration in a rather unforgiving way, but can be very charming. I have a love-hate relationship with this coat.

  (7) 1986 blue linen summer coat, from Hazlett's of Princeton. Very handsome, a summer blazer essentially, and wrinkles in an attractive way that makes me feel like a character in a Chekhov play. Interesting that my sport coats provoke thoughts of Russian literature. Had never made the connection before this moment.

  (8) 1990 spring-and-summer-weight check, from Harry Ballard. I often rely on this coat too much and don't appreciate it. It's so solid I take it for granted. Will try to work on that. It's my Harris Tweed for the warm seasons.

  As you can see there's a preponderance from the Princeton region of sport coats, which is a very rich region for jackets, rivaling if not surpassing Cambridge and New Haven. It is where I first began amassing my collection, and that's because I was stationed there for a number of years, first as an undergraduate and then as a regular citizen. After graduation in 1986, I stayed on in the town of Princeton for another six years, during which time I wrote and published my first novel; fell in love and stayed in love, until I had my heart crushed; tried writing a second novel, but couldn't; and between the writing problems and the loss of the girl began to slowly lose my mind.

  Then I moved to New York, to jump-start the writing process and forget the girl, and for two years, 1992-94, I lived with Charles and made progress on both fronts, writing and forgetting. But I have to admit I was hitting the bottle too hard, which eventually caused Charles to kick me out and me to end up in rehab, where I completely lost my mind, which is what I do, I've noticed, and that is to treat my mind like a set of house keys: lose it and then happily find it, only to lose it again. And one shouldn't treat one's mind this way, but these things happen. Anyway, this all explains why my sport coats are either from Princeton or New York—where you live is where you acquire your sport coats.

  Well, after loading the automobile with my garment bag and my suitcases, Jeeves came back in and reported that he was going to give the Caprice a thorough inspection—oil, water, and tire pressure. “Very good, Jeeves,” I said, and he siphoned himself back outside, and I cleaned up my breakfast dishes.

  In the refrigerator, while putting away the milk, I noticed that my aunt had put together a bag lunch for me—my half-eaten sandwich from the Kosher Nosh, a pickle in foil, and an apple. She had attached a note, which gave my heart pause:

  Dear Alan,

  I love you and Irwin loves you. Call if you need us.

  You're very dear to me. Please watch your drinking. But if you do want to stop drinking and go to meetings or to rehab, you can always come back to us.

  Love,

  Aunt Florence

  I girded myself so as not to be weepy. It's always unnerving when people are loving. The slightest act of kindness—taking the time to put a lunch together, write a note!—directed at my person and I fall apart. Goes against one's core beliefs about one's self. Sets off a skirmish on the inside. I'll be the first to admit it: my whole unconscious—well, I'm somewhat conscious of it—outlook on life is built on the premise that I can't stand myself and should be shot. So if people love you, it makes it difficult to go about your business of being blissfully self-destructive and impulsive.

  But I pulled myself together—didn't let my aunt's note unravel my plans for quitting Montclair—and made a final check of the bedroom, where I gathered my last and most essential belonging, my writing instrument—my laptop computer. As I left my room, my uncle's door opened wide and he emerged at the end of the short hall. Sunbeams, coming through a window in his room, bathed him in a radioactive orange light. He stepped toward me like a solar fireball. He was in flaming bathrobe and ignited Pio beard.

  “Good morning, Uncle Irwin,” I whispered before I was burnt alive: I was Icarus and he was the sun. I was trying to fly away in my wing tips.

  “Are you growing a mustache?” he demanded, and he was right on top of me. The fire around him receded, though the hall behind him was still ablaze. I wasn't used to having such an acute, sober sense of sight in the morning. Thank God, I had been drinking all those months in New Jersey. I didn't know that this little hallway was so perfectly aligned with the sun, like Stonehenge, but in Montclair.

  “Yes. I am growing a mustache,” I said, not liking the tone of his question.

  “I don't think it's working. It looks like you've been drinking orange juice.”

  He was referring to the reddish-orangish nature of my facial hair, and I didn't appreciate his remark. First Jeeves, and now Uncle Irwin. This fledgling mustache was under attack from all directions, but this only stiffened my resolve.

  “I am trying to single-handedly bring back the Douglas Fairbanks Jr.-Errol Flynn-Clark Gable look,” I said coolly. I didn't intend to mention, naturally, the blemish motivation, or the fact that actors aren't gentlemen. “When people see me at gas pumps on the state highways during my journey and in roadside restaurants, a ripple effect will occur. A grassroots movement. You may find yourself, in a few weeks' time, bowing to the pressure and thinning out your own considerable mustache.”

  “Listen,” he said, “if you get pulled over by a state trooper, don't say anything. Just give them your license. It will upset your aunt if we have to come get you again out of some rehab or psychiatric hospital.”

  Usually, I don't register insults or sarcastic remarks directed at my person. I lack some type of translation device or hostility radar. I absorb the comments as if they are perfectly polite statements. And it's only later, well after the fact, that it dawns on me that I've been treated rudely, which is not unlike my delayed response to danger and horror.

  Anyway, that morning I was in unusual form; perhaps it was sobriety—I had been quick to defend my lip hair against the orange-juice comment, and when my uncle followed that up with this psychiatric-hospital barb, I knew that another affront had been made. I then gave it back to the uncle as good as he had given it to me. We were at the very spot of the previous day's congress and I made reference to this.

  “If I had a cup of coffee, I would be sorely tempted to douse you, Uncle,” I said, brandishing my laptop as if it were a coffee mug. Some type of oedipal fury, repressed for months, was being unleashed between us. Though since he was my uncle, I guess it was more of a Hamlet fury.

  “You did that on purpose yesterday, didn't you?” he growled. “I've always said that you're as nutty as a fruitcake.”

  “I'm not the one who thinks he's Padre Pio and has more guns than Al Capone! And I should think that the proper remark was ‘as fruity as a fruitcake.’”

  His eyes widened. Verbally, I had struck quite a blow. I turned my back to him and went down the three steps to the kitchen, Poconos-bound in a hurry. There was a good chance the back of my neck was in the sights of a .38.

  “Wait a second,” he said, following me into the kitchen and moving with considerable speed. “Slow down … I'm sorry! … I don't want you to leave on a bad note … I apologize! I'm upset, because your aunt is upset. We're both worried about you.”

  I turned and faced him. His mood-mustache looked warm and his apology was generous. I endeavored to soothe him.

  “You and Aunt Florence shouldn't worry about me,” I said. “I'm stronger than the two of you think. I promise you, I'm going to be all right. I swear.”

  “Well, where in the Poconos are you heading?” he asked.

  “I'm just striking out into the whole territory. I'm relying on kismet. I want to find a cabin and get some writing done. My idea is to locate a summer Hasidic community.”

  I felt my uncle straining to give me one of his oysterish eye beams, but he held it in check. Also, he couldn't argue with my desire to be near fellow Jews, though it wasn't so much their Jewishness that I wanted proximity to, but, rather, their timelessness—fashion-wise the women are trapped in the 1940s
and the men are in the nineteenth century, and both these time periods appeal to me. It's nice if you can combine regular traveling—like going to the Poconos—with time travel.

  “You won't find Hasidim in the Poconos,” said my uncle. “They're in the Catskills.”

  This was devastating intelligence to receive, right on the verge of takeoff. “Are you sure the Jews haven't branched out to the Poconos?” I asked the uncle, thinking that perhaps the Diaspora had spread to more than one mountain range.

  “Don't be ridiculous. Pennsylvania and the Poconos are for the Irish and the Germans. The Jews are in New York State. You should go to Sharon Springs. That's in New York. You want Hasids, Sharon Springs is loaded with them.”

  “Really?” I was intrigued.

  “You can take mineral baths there; that's why they like it—for the shvitz baths. I used to pass through Sharon Springs for business. There's a nice hotel there, the Adler. It has a kosher dining room. That's where you should stay.”

  This Sharon Springs and the Adler seemed perfect. Mineral baths—a cure—would give the adventure a sanitarium ring to it. Ever since I read The Magic Mountain, sanitariums (not rehabs!) have had a romantic draw for me, and, too, it was appealing, after all, to have a firm destination, to not rely entirely on kismet, which isn't always so reliable, this being one of the drawbacks of kismet. So I told my uncle that I would follow his advice and go where he suggested. “I can work on my novel and take a cure at the same time,” I added. “Soaking in baths is very healthful.”

  To aid my withdrawal to Sharon Springs, he went to his office in the basement—a bunkerlike space alongside the boiler, which always struck me as dangerous, since it was in his office that he stored his considerable munitions—to procure me a map. We then studied the map together on the kitchen table, and huddling so close to his person, the secondhand fumes from his baby powder were overwhelming, but I survived, like a commando, by breathing through my mouth. He traced a route for me and estimated that I could be in Sharon Springs in four hours, if I didn't violate the speed limit. He was very keen on my keeping a distance between myself and the constabulary, but I didn't take offense. All had been forgiven.

  “Thank you so much, Uncle Irwin. Sharon Springs sounds ideal!” I said, and with that we shook hands good-bye. “And thank you for everything you've done for me, for taking me in all these months, you've been very generous.”

  We then unclasped hands, the uncle actually smiled at me, and I gathered together my things, including the map, which was a gift from him.

  He walked me to the door. He said, “I'll miss you until I see you again.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  There was a twinkle in my uncle's eye and it occurred to me that something wasn't quite right in his parting comment, but I decided not to meditate on it. So I walked across the patio where I had done my sun salutations in the mornings and suddenly I felt a bit weak in the legs and my forehead went cold. I was scared. Scared to leave. But, thinking that my uncle might still be in the doorway watching me, I couldn't let myself fall apart. I soldiered forth to the driveway, and when I saw Jeeves sitting in the front seat of the Caprice, my fears left me entirely. It was hard to stay frightened when I remembered I wasn't alone.

  CHAPTER 5

  Motoring along and pulling freeA dangerous contract with my fellow citizensA discussion of deathA discussion of the “other half”

  We biffed along silently, both of us rather quiet and solemn at the start of our journey. But don't think we were morose, just contemplative and preserving our strength after the effort expended in breaking free of Montclair.

  My Caprice was a spacious cruiser, well insulated from the world—one motored along the highways as if sitting in a middle-class living room equipped with an engine and tires.

  It happened to be a perfect day for driving a living room. There was a terrific clarity to the July midsummer light—no atmospheric muddle, no moisture. The palette of the day was simple, primary: the sun was white, the sky was blue, and the road, freshly paved, was black. Trees alongside the highway, despite being perfumed with car exhaust, were green and flourishing, showing off their chlorophyll with pride.

  We were on Route 287, heading north for the New York State Thruway. Traffic was fairly thick and I tried to catch glimpses of my peers as they zipped past me. Who were these citizens? Where were they off to in such a hurry? Where was I off to? They all looked tragically self-absorbed and self-important; they had stricken, tormented faces. But then I remembered that's how everyone looks. That's how I look.

  But I wondered if I should trust my fellow self-centered New Jerseyans. Driving together at speeds in excess of sixty miles per hour perhaps is a dangerous social contract. I did feel well armored in my Caprice, but the fragility of my life even within such a sturdy vehicle was readily apparent, though why I cared about my life is something of a conundrum. Supposedly, according to my core beliefs, I should be shot—I know this because I'm always saying to myself, as a sort of mantra, “I should be shot”—but I also, if I look at the facts, have a strong instinct for self-preservation, because I really don't want to die, at least not in a painful car accident. Like most people, I'm a curious mixture of opposing forces: I think I should be punished—shot—but I loathe pain; I think often of suicide but have a fear of death. Well, if nothing else, all these opposing forces give me a certain balance.

  Befitting my middle-of-the-road outlook on life, Jeeves and I were in the center lane, surrounded by antagonists. I had a speeding truck of prehistoric dimensions careening on my left, a slow-moving, narcoleptic senior citizen on my right, and in the rear there was a tailgating sociopath, who was evidently homicidal as well as impatient.

  I said to Jeeves, “Do you ever think of dying?”

  “Only when I'm in a car, sir, with someone I don't know, don't know their driving, that is.”

  “But you trust my driving, don't you, Jeeves?”

  “You're a very good driver, sir.”

  “But with other people, as they careen along, you think, ‘This could be it’?”

  “Yes, sir, I've often thought this.”

  “Then you resign yourself?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That's just what I do, Jeeves. But we're too polite, you and I. So many times in New York City, I didn't have the courage—and I was paying for the service!—to ask a cabdriver to slow down. But then I would rationalize my cowardly behavior by thinking that if he slows down, then I'll be altering our destiny and maybe some accident which we would have avoided will occur. Follow my thinking, Jeeves?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But I do think we're well protected in this Caprice, Jeeves,” I said, putting up a bold front. “Other than the trucks, I think we'd crush all the other cars, and also a lot of cars tend to flip over when things get rough, so I really do think we'll be all right.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “But driving is tiring, so let's plan to take a coffee break in an hour or two and mix with the locals and see how the other half lives.”

  “Yes, sir. A coffee break, in an hour's time or more, will certainly be welcome.”

  “But about this other half, Jeeves,” I said, contemplating my previous statement, “what half do you think we are?”

  “I imagine, sir, that all halfs are simply the other half.”

  I let what Jeeves said swirl around in the Blair brain. It seemed like very good stuff. “You may have said something profound, Jeeves. Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  But then the Blair brain kept working, which it often does, and I found I wasn't yet ready to mail in Jeeves's aphorism to the patent office. I was going to have to knock the fellow down a peg. “Though, I do wonder,” I said, “owing to our small numbers, if we qualify as a whole half. You see what I mean, Jeeves?”

  “A point to consider, sir.”

  So we both considered this and our heady discourse was a pleasant distraction for me, especial
ly while every other available nerve of mine was engaged in the serious business of negotiating the road and keeping us alive. Even if I sometimes purported to having mixed feelings about my own life, I certainly didn't want to hurt Jeeves.

  PART II

  Sharon Springs, New York

  PART II

  Sharon Springs, New York

  CHAPTER 6

  Arrival in Sharon SpringsHas something catastrophic occurred?An allusion to Stephen King, the American DickensDifficulty purchasing a phone cardYou have to let people kill themselvesUnexpected newsSolicitations of a sexual natureAnother change of plans

  It took us seven hours—instead of the estimated four—to reach Sharon Springs. You see, after our first coffee break, I made the executive decision that we should pursue a route of scenic back roads. This had the advantage of an aesthetic upgrade, as well as featuring less peril in the form of other drivers.

  We stopped at several country restaurants for coffees to go, but we didn't do much anthropological mingling, as I had wistfully intended, with the “other half.” Once we got going, a sort of road focus took over, and we were intent on achieving our destination, even if we were now taking a more circuitous route.

  When we made stops, we just ordered our coffees and made use—as a direct corollary to the absorption of these coffees—of a number of diverse WCs, which would seem to be an innocent and necessary office of the body, but it turned out that my numerous visitations to these washrooms contributed to an unfortunate disaster, the details of which I will convey later.