School was a joke, at least socially. Michael treated it is a joke, a bad, lousy, unfunny joke, and he kept to himself. He even brought out the Norton & Sons wardrobe on occasion, half to please his mother and half to rankle a couple of snickering guys and their attendant girlfriends. Wearing his shirt with a ruffle and narrow-legged pants with the stripe, he got the usual inarticulate comments. “Sit on this and rotate,” he said to Dickie Trudeau, responding in kind and flipping him the bird. Dickie just looked at him like he’d seen something for the first time. He was amused.
Michael’s father was just confused. Michael no longer listened to ball games with him on the radio in the kitchen. The World Series came and went in four dull games in early fall, after which Michael decided, by Thanksgiving or so, that organized football was a travesty. Michael still enjoyed throwing the football around with Phillip, teaching him to throw a spiral. But otherwise, he read his assignments, by himself in his room, and then, often, with Tommy in his room, and found that schoolwork was getting both easier and more interesting.
The Newmans treated Michael as more special than even the Dashnaws had. Mr. Newman showed Michael his collection of books: dozens of red leather volumes of Dickens, a whole shelf of green leather-bound Sigmund Freud. In the living room, he read Life magazine and The New Yorker, which had funny, confounding cartoons.
Although Michael’s mother took note—and approved—of Michael’s increased studiousness, his father took note—and no doubt disapproved—of his withdrawal from the great outdoors and the world of sport.
The only thing Michael did not withdraw from, with respect to his father, were their trips to feed the cows. He enjoyed rattling around in the smelly truck; he found his father increasingly amusing—or ridiculous—and treasured the chance to polish his disdain.
“Football’s stupid, Dad. No individuals, just armies.”
“An army won the war, wise guy.”
“Baseball’s boring. Nine guys standing around in a lot.”
“Willie Mays doesn’t just stand around in a lot.”
Maybe this is what men do, Michael thought, toss strong opinions back and forth like a medicine ball.
“I don’t trust shrinks,” his father said.
I’m not surprised, said Michael to himself, sensing a power in silence.
Michael liked the barn’s dark interior and the ripe smell of damp oats and manure and the comforting sounds of the cows mooing and clanging around, and even his father’s animal sounds, the heps and whoas mixed with almost tender ministrations to his “girls.” The girls were dumb and innocent and didn’t really want or need much. And yet the little one, the mooley, distressed Michael. Each time his father had to wrestle the other cows, getting bigger and heavier now by the week, away from the salt lick or away from the slop barrel, Michael felt a wave of sympathy for the poor mooley.
“Why don’t you get rid of her? Or give her back to someone.”
“Not possible, amigo,” said his father, who had started to roll out certain terms of masculine fellowship, like “pardner” and “boss,” whenever they were at the barn. “You want her?”
Michael didn’t answer, and there was nothing to say.
Since he’d turned inward (which is how he saw it, the image of a lighthouse beam reversed), Michael had more to think about these days. There was more light. He and Tommy talked about taxonomies and evolution. They finished Ethan Frome and then 1984. Thanks to this, Michael felt he had a quieter and enlarged space, with more things to look at. He felt, somehow, furnished, lit within. All this owed something to the conversations with Mr. Newman, who welcomed the young boy’s questions, particularly about math problems and the reach of the universe, and he answered them patiently. “You can’t add anything to infinity, Michael, and you can’t subtract anything from it. It has no quantity. It is nothing,” said Mr. Newman, grinning. But it seems like everything, Michael thought.
II
IT WAS THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING and my father said there was something special going on at the barn and that I needed to come: He needed a hand. He said he might need two or three hands for this, and that he’d talked to Mrs. Newman about bringing Tommy along. Tommy had been feeling better since he’d gotten back from Burlington, where they’d drained some of the spinal fluid out of his skull. I remember thinking his head looked a little smaller and not as yellow. But he wasn’t expecting to resume attending school.
I couldn’t figure out what was ahead at the barn—maybe this was to be the day that the cows got sold. Maybe some dairy farmer would be there—or several farmers—and my father would have his big payday. I could see him wanting to share this kind of thing, with me and even Tommy. Show us the ways of the world. Farming, commerce, what men do.
It was a warm and sunny day for November. I remember I was wearing the sunglasses my mother’d gotten me for my birthday—aviators, for skiing, she’d said, though we were skiers only in her mind. When my father and I got to the truck, Ted Farrell was already sitting in the passenger seat. “Ted’s gonna help us,” said my father. He told me to hop in the back. Ted’s collie Queenie was already there.
We headed up the hill and pulled into the Newmans’. I thought I’d have to go in and invite Tommy—ask him if he wanted to do this—but he was already on the porch with his mother, who was wearing her apron. He had a red hunting jacket on and the shades he had to wear lately to keep out the bright light. Ted got out of the cab and got in the back, insisting, as did my father, who more or less ordered it, that Tommy sit up front, which he did.
Ted said nothing to me as we headed up the hill to the barns. The wind was whipping his hair and ruffling Queenie’s fur. You couldn’t hear anything back there. They both had their snouts in the wind. I hunched in the lee behind the cab, trying to listen to what my father might be saying to Tommy, but I couldn’t. When we arrived, my father went in the barn, emerged with a couple of items in his hands, and made a little speech, and Tommy and I stood together listening.
“It’s the mooley’s lucky day,” he said. “Finally. As Mickey can tell you.” My father looked at Tommy now, who glanced sideways at me, like, Why is your father talking to me?
“The little one in there we call ‘the mooley’ she’s been getting pushed around for six, eight months. You know why? Because she has no horns. Born hornless. That’s what a mooley is. A freak. One of God’s mistakes. For a cow, hornless means defenseless. Same for any ruminant. But today, boys and girls, the mooley gets even. The mooley has her day.”
He held up, in one red, filthy hand, a large pair of rusty clippers, and in the other what looked like a steam iron with a long cord that dangled like a live snake. He handed that to Ted Farrell. Then he waved us into the barn. It was dark as a dungeon. I remember Tommy and I both dropped our sunglasses on the floor and had to feel around with our toes to find them. And it was hard for Tommy to do such a thing—bend way down. I gave him his.
The mooley was released from her stanchion, and this is where Tommy and I came in: We were to watch her in the corner and hold her by a rope collar. Then Ted Farrell got on a barrel and with a long extension cord plugged his ironlike tool—it had a handle and a flat square surface of steel—into a socket. My father went around the front of the stanchions and, one by one, clipped the horns of a dozen cattle with a shocking crack, like musketry going off. Each cow nearly buckled with the pain and then set off to bucking. Blood that looked purple in that light gouted from the stumps and spread across their white-and-black faces. Ted Farrell followed, putting one arm around each cow’s neck to steady her and apply the hissing iron to each stump of horn. “Cauterizing!” shouted my father at us over the din, by way of instruction. “Stops the bleeding!” More angry squealing. “Stops infections!” The mooley was jumpy in our grasp and confused and she looked at everything but what was right in front of her. She looked at me and at Tommy as if to say, Who’s next?
“That’s all there is to see,” announced my father, though Ted’s iron was
still sizzling. He told us to take the mooley out, along with Queenie, and walk her around the pen.
The whole thing took all of two minutes.
When we got out into the barnyard, the day looked drained, like it, too, had been bled. I felt cold. I guess I was the one who was drained. But Tommy didn’t look any better. His head was alarmingly white. It almost made me faint to look at it. At him. The low sunlight took some adjusting to after the dark interior of the barn. Queenie circled us as we stumbled some holding the mooley, who stepped carefully and kept shaking her head—quick little shakes. When I looked at Tommy, he had his eyebrows raised, which meant he was thinking, and was about to speak.
And I so wanted him to speak, because I was speechless. He rubbed his face hard and kept rubbing his face hard with one hand and he just never said anything.
We let the mooley pull us, guide us. We held on. It was a slow, sad parade, a staggering band with a cow and a dog. We sloshed through mud and cow shit till the mooley got to a destination—one of the salt licks. Her pink tongue stippled with black dots worked along the length of the white block, and it sounded like sandpaper. Then she seemed to sigh.
Tommy and I stood there, on opposite sides of the mooley, looking at each other. I don’t think that we ever had another word. We drove back in the truck in silence, dropped Tommy off, and went home. The Newman family left Oreville in a matter of weeks.
III
“WHAT’S THIS? IS THIS IT?” It was Everett coming in from the stoop with the Times and the mail.
“Have you canceled the Times delivery for the month?” asked Michael.
“Have you talked to Ruben about picking up our mail?” parried Everett, handing Michael a small package that appeared to be a reused Jiffy bag, though it was carefully wrapped and Scotch-taped.
“This must be the Ellington CDs,” said Michael.
Everett and Michael were having a Duke Ellington period—and they were about to take a road trip. The Public Theater was closed for renovation, freeing Everett, and Michael had finished his paper for the Math Society—it was now out for peer review. It was July 1 and they were quite ready to get out of New York.
Everett still played a little piano. He’d just read Lush Life and was obsessed with Billy Strayhorn. Michael thought a good selection of the Ellington band was in order—that lovely sonorous orchestral coloring, and the drive—to keep them driving all the way to Maine. And here it was—3 CDs, the Blanton-Webster years.
Michael noticed that the return address on the paper packaging—this was a used CD boxed set, ordered through Amazon but fulfilled by some private citizen selling his collection—was “P. Newman, 17 Harrison St., New Haven.” And inside, taped on the edge of the jewel case, a tag read “From the library of Gerald F. Newman.” Minutes later, Everett found Michael at the kitchen table, the CDs half-unpacked in front of him, the thumb and fourth finger of his left hand to his temples, staring at the opposite wall.
MICHAEL AND EVERETT DROVE UP 95 and listened to Ellington on the way. Michael was happy to have the new music—it relieved the need to talk. They found Harrison Street easily—they knew New Haven very well, having met at Yale in the late seventies when they were both in grad school. The big pale yellow house, three stories, however, they didn’t know by sight—it was off Whalley Avenue, huddled in the shadow of West Rock. “A classic Queen Anne,” said Everett as they got out of the car.
Phillip was getting a little portly and his hair was thinning, but Michael noted the same spunky grin that Phillip had when he was a kid, as if he was visibly savoring something he didn’t need to share, but would, if you insisted. Michael had liked that in him. Michael, now sixty-five, figured Phillip to be about sixty-two. Phillip delivered a genuine hello and the men shook hands, all three around.
Phillip wore a pale yellow linen shirt with the sleeves rolled and twill trousers, while Michael and Everett, perhaps now a little embarrassed, were in sandals and cargo shorts. A woman stood on the porch, tall and trim in a floral skirt and white-collared blouse, looking, thought Michael, a lot like Mrs. Newman had looked on the porch of the house in Oreville when she watched them playing in the yard eons ago. This woman was Phillip’s wife, and he introduced her as Janet. Bright blue eyes, a close-cropped head of silver hair. They invited their visitors in, and they sat around a large oak table in a room decorated with Palladio prints. There were fresh-cut flowers on a mantel; rugs; ivory-colored fabric lamp shades, like the old days.
“Original trim,” whispered Everett as they sat down, “and wainscoting.” This irked Michael at first, but perhaps it was polite to look around. “I think I recognize that piano,” Michael said. A black upright sat in the corner. “Do you play?”
“That’s a classic Story & Clark,” said Everett.
“Janet does,” said Phillip. “And yes, that piano’s been in the family for years. We moved it to Oreville. And out of Oreville.”
“Used to play,” said Janet, correcting her husband. She’d left momentarily and was now returning with a plate of cookies.
“Molasses,” said Phillip. Janet laughed self-consciously. Michael and Everett hadn’t eaten since an early breakfast in the Village. There was already a silver coffeepot in the middle of the table, along with cups and saucers.
“Phillip told me that his mother always gave you molasses cookies when you used to visit their house.”
“That’s so true,” said Michael, looking at Phillip, touched to have been remembered in that way—as a boy eating cookies.
“Mom also talked about it years later,” said Phillip. “She remembered those times, short as they were, in your town. She also said that Tom was happiest then. You were his friend, Michael. She used to say you were his last friend.”
There was a silence. Everett poured coffee for all. With some difficulty, Janet removed the plastic wrap from over the cookies. She seemed to have a bit of arthritis in her thumb. A smell of nutmeg and ginger wafted forth warmly when she succeeded.
“Well, how have you been, Phillip? You go first,” said Michael.
Sleek blades of light came through the tall windows, the color of jade. The burl on the oak table swirled like nebulae. Michael felt a kind of radiant warmth from it all, suddenly very comfortable at this table in New Haven on a summer afternoon. He even put sugar in his coffee.
But Phillip remained silent, as if he didn’t think it was his turn to speak, even though invited.
“So where did you move to?” Michael asked after a time, prompting.
Phillip then explained that the family had moved to Providence, for the children’s hospital there—Rhode Island Children’s. Tom—he was now Tom in memory, it seemed—had deteriorated rapidly. “The hydrocephaly stopped his brain from developing. It was like a slow flood. He gradually lost his senses. Sight, smell, et cetera. He was just shy of sixteen. The last months were rough. For everyone.”
The reality of it hit Michael, even though his father had assured him that Tommy Newman “would never see eighteen,” and his mother had agreed.
“We never heard from you,” Michael said. Everett shot him a glance, but Michael shot it back in their secret semaphore, meaning, “That was no reproach.”
And it wasn’t taken as one. “My mother was devastated,” said Phillip, looking down at the table.
“And how are they? How is she ... Hilda? And your father ... Gerald.” Everett and Michael had already surmised that Gerald—“From the library of”—was deceased, though they could find no obituary online.
“Mom lost a battle with stomach cancer,” said Phillip, straightening up.
“No!” Michael said, as if in protest. Everett shifted a little, knowing that Michael’s mother had suffered the same fate.
“When?” Everett asked. “His mother died of that two years ago.”
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Michael. Mom died ten years ago last month. A blessing.”
“Our mothers might have been good friends, you know, had we stayed,” Phillip contin
ued. Michael was instantly ashamed that it was Phillip saying this, and not he. “It’s too bad,” Phillip went on. “But we had to . . .” He hesitated, as if reconsidering, then plowed on. “To help Tom. Dad really thought it was best.”
“Now you look good,” Phillip said to Michael, lightening the mood. “Hair!”
Michael rapped his knuckles on the tabletop, looked at Everett, and said, “We’ve been lucky. Our health is good.”
“I miss the paisley shirts,” said Phillip with a straight face that meant the opposite. A tease. Everett and Janet exchanged exaggerated looks.
“And how’s your father. How’s Mr. Touhey?”
“He’s no longer with us,” said Michael. Everett managed to suppress some derision.
Michael went on. “Dad ended up at Sloan-Kettering. Bladder cancer. Just before Mom.”
A dog barked then, somewhere in the house.
“I’m sorry, Michael,” said Phillip. “Speaking of fathers, Dad’s upstairs. That’s his mighty mastiff barking now, Barley.”
“Can I see him?” Michael blurted out. He might have regretted it . . .
Phillip assured him that he could. “Once the nurse comes down. Barley’s barking at her; she’s new.” The faces of both Phillip and his wife were awash with affection, for exactly what, Michael couldn’t tell, but what did it matter? Affection for the new nurse, the old man, the dog, each other. No, it didn’t matter. There was plenty to go round.
“But catch us up,” said Janet, now seeming nervous. “Oh, and let me say—we have no kids. Perhaps that’s clear. I studied abroad and worked abroad, all over the continent, for twenty years.”
“Neither do we,” said Everett with a kind of theatrical fatigue, as if life were tough enough. And then he laughed. Janet smiled, but thinly.
“Janet was a portfolio manager with Deutsche Bank and then Credit Suisse,” interjected Phillip, taking over, as Janet seemed to lose power. “We settled in New Haven when I became part of the faculty. I still lecture one term a year. And I have a little practice, restoring some of the old New England housing stock—like this place. I have a small staff—two partners—up in Hamden.”
The Business of Naming Things Page 10