by Jonathan Dee
She went back to her polishing. My hunger was getting the better of me, even at the same time as I was growing a little afraid of her. All of a sudden it occurred to me to wonder if your father had died. Silently I begged you to get back home from wherever you were. Would you mind, I said, if I helped myself to something? I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve come all the way from California today. You know how that airplane food is.
Help yourself, Kay said cheerfully. I think Molly did some shopping.
I got myself two turkey sandwiches and a can of Sprite and sat at the little table in the kitchen. It was dark outside. I thought what an odd thing it was, to find myself in the space of a day transported into your childhood kitchen, and how that oddness would dissipate at once if you would just show up.
Kay was standing in the kitchen doorway. She now wore a nightgown.
Who did you say you were again? she said.
Hurriedly, I swallowed, and wiped my mouth. John Wheelwright, I said. I could have gone on, but I didn’t; surely the name must have meant something to her.
You’re the boy that’s been calling all the time, she said finally, with a terrifying kind of neutrality. From Berkeley.
Yes, that’s right.
She nodded. Well, good night, she said. And before I could resign myself to sleeping in my car, she added: If you like you can sleep in Richard’s room. I just put fresh sheets on the bed yesterday.
Mrs Howe. Do you know where Molly’s gone?
She shrugged. Molly comes and goes, she said. She’s always been a very independent girl. Very mature for her age.
Yes, but, I mean, do you … Should we be worried?
Her eyebrows shot up, and stayed there, and for a few moments I regretted having tried to puncture her equanimity after all: she looked as if she might be right on the edge of some kind of hysterics. But then her face resolved itself again into that same eerie calm. Nonsense, she said. Molly can take care of herself. We all can take care of ourselves, can’t we? Now, you get some rest. If she’s not back in the morning, there’s something I need your help with.
She disappeared. I washed my dishes and sat in the living room in one of two huge recliners there; determined to stay up all night if necessary, thinking now that you must have been out somewhere with some old high school friends, even an old boyfriend maybe. I lasted only a short while before the stress and the cross-country travel finally overwhelmed me into sleep, right there in the chair.
When I woke, the sun was up, it was Monday, and you were still nowhere in sight.
* * *
LATELY MAL SEEMS to have lost his taste, in the interstices of our discussions about work, for trying to get me to talk about Molly with him, to share our admiration, to help him put into words what he feels but can’t always articulate. Too bad; because as time goes by I find I’m getting better at understanding it myself.
I know that Molly loved me. Even then, though, it was her remoteness, her unreachability, that transparent partition between herself and the outside world that like it or not you were part of, even at the moments of greatest intimacy, that made her so alluring, so thoroughly involving. You could reach her, you felt, you could get to her, if only you could figure out how. It wasn’t a matter of simply putting in the effort but of finding the key, making the imaginative leap. Impersonating her, in a manner of speaking, as a way of intuiting what she needed. In some ways, it was like falling in love with someone who couldn’t speak a word of English.
Her hair is brittle, even I can see that, because she doesn’t take care of it, or even pay attention. Her lips are full, but also dry, chapped, uncared-for. My point is that beauty is greatest when it shows through in spite of itself. The more beauty is enhanced, the more it converges toward an ideal, an arbitrary, bland ideal; while every inch of Molly, every aspect of her, is unique, unrepeatable. Her two front teeth are just slightly, disproportionately large, so that they are sometimes visible between her lips when she’s listening to you. There is a blue vein that runs more or less straight down the center of her right breast. She bites her nails. These are not flaws. They are the opposite of flaws.
Some feelings acquire a burnish from time, some feelings are swallowed up by time, leached from memory. She was my one great love, that’s obvious, but I’m not just saying that, believing that, because that love failed. I’m not being sentimental; I’m not deceiving myself.
Of course it’s possible that that’s the very definition of greatness in love. A love so great that you fail it, you find your own resources are unequal to it. The problem of how to do it justice, in a sustained way, turns out to be beyond your capacities to solve.
* * *
MAL WAS PACING around my office today when I came back from lunch.
Elaine has quit? he said loudly. I turned around and shut the door.
Is that so? I said. I didn’t know.
Didn’t know? Come on, you think everyone around here doesn’t know you’re sleeping together?
I don’t know what everybody around here knows.
She’s gone already. She left me a note, because she said she couldn’t face me, and now she’s gone, back to New York.
I had an idea something like that might be happening, I said. She moved all her stuff out of our bedroom.
When did this happen?
A few days ago. But I was—
A few days!
But I was hoping she had just moved in somewhere else in the house.
Hoping! Mal said venomously. You couldn’t be bothered to check it out? She was one of our original hires here. She did a lot of fantastic work, and she’ll do more, only now it will be for somebody else. On top of which, I don’t particularly want it getting around that people are leaving the place, just when we’re hitting our stride. That’s a very damaging rumor to be floating around.
You know, she was really angry at you about the Kerouac thing. Did her letter say anything about—
How could you let things get out of hand like that? You have a romantic dispute, you settle it. There are more important things at stake around here. If you’re having some kind of problem with her, I expect you to manage it better. This is a very serious fuckup in my book, letting someone like her get out the door just because you can’t treat her properly.
Mal, I said, that’s a very personal thing. You get to a point where you have to ask yourself how committed you are.
I expect you to manage it better! he said, and slammed the door behind him.
* * *
I DROVE YOUR father home from the hospital. Your mother sat beside me, giving directions, not unpleasantly. All she had said by way of explanation was that she didn’t enjoy driving anymore. None of us had any idea where you were, at that point; but since Kay didn’t seem troubled by your disappearance, I figured I shouldn’t be, either. I guess that was it. I was younger then, and they were grownups, and it’s astonishing how the confidence another person displays in his or her madness can just draft you along, for a while anyway. Plus, they were your parents, and I wanted to make a good impression on them at any cost, because my plan at that point was that once I got my degree and a job I would ask you to marry me. That’s how I was thinking then.
Kay wanted to wait in the car, but in a moment of lucidity brought on by panic I pointed out that surely they would only discharge her husband to the care of a family member. We walked across the parking lot, myself a step behind her, and into the hushed reception area; she stopped a passing nurse and asked her which way to the mental ward. Just like that. I had only a few silent seconds, in the elevator, to savor that feeling – half fearful, half comic – that goes through you at such a time, the feeling of how on earth could I possibly have arrived at this moment? How could the leading edge of my life now consist of such an errand: in a town I’d never seen, a total stranger to everyone, chauffeuring a middle-aged man I’d never met back to his home after a stay behind the steel doors of a psychotic ward?
All for you, I had time to
remind myself as the doors buzzed open. That was the justification for all the strangeness. All in the cause of you.
Maybe you’d disappeared for a day or two just because this particular errand was one you’d find too upsetting. I could certainly see that, now that I was there myself. Maybe you’d be home when we all returned. Or call, at least, to apologize for your absence, and to see that everything had gone as planned. Then you’d learn that I was there.
The look on your father’s face was something else I won’t forget. Yet for all the horror that registered in his face on seeing me – I was a complete cipher, a bafflement, an insult – I felt an instant bond with him, because, like me, the one and only thing he really wanted at that moment was to see your face. And you weren’t there. He stood holding a suitcase, dressed in a casual-preppy style (chinos, deck shoes, a V-neck sweater with some sort of country-club insignia on it) that couldn’t have been more inappropriate to that place. Which I suppose was why he had put it on.
Where’s Molly? he said. Who are you was the companion question that passed over his face; but I was obviously with Kay, and he was too well-bred to ask.
Molly’s not here, said Kay. She looked at me expectantly, until I jumped across the gap between us and took Roger’s bag. Not without some difficulty: he didn’t want to give it to me.
Where is she? Did she have to go back to school?
No, Kay said, nothing like that. (She had already taken two steps back toward the steel door of the ward.) Molly wasn’t around this morning, so … This is John, a friend of hers from California. He came to visit.
John Wheelwright, I said. Pleased to meet you, sir. Roger shook my hand, with astonishing feebleness.
His mouth fell open, as he struggled with this turn of events, with his wife’s apparent refusal to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging the strangeness of it. But what was he going to do: turn around and go back to his bed in the psych ward until everything outside reconfigured itself into the shape he had expected?
Well, he said finally. All right then.
I drove back; like everything else about these few days, the route was already engraved in my memory. Roger sat in the back seat. I’d feel better if I could tell you that not a word was exchanged, that at least there was that sort of tacit recognition of the absurdity and gravity of the whole situation. But in fact I was the only silent one. Your father looked out the window and spoke admiringly about the fecundity of spring, the beauty of the farms, the wisdom of those who laid out our nation’s highway system. Your mother spoke in a manner that seemed more concrete but was equally crazy, ticking off mundane household details as if her husband were returning from some sort of business trip. They spoke alternately, but nothing ever had any connection to what had just been said.
My father grew up on a farm, Roger said. Wheat. Wheat and rye. He used to go out, this was as a boy of nine or ten, and scythe before school. Can you imagine it? This would have been … well, he was too young for World War I, but his brother, I remember …
The porch light is out, Kay said, staring through the windshield. It’s not the bulb. I didn’t call Norman because I thought maybe it’s something simple. But if it’s the wiring, we’ll have to call him.
Dogwoods! Roger said. He rolled down his window.
We pulled up to the house; I hopped out and took his bag. He smiled at me, purely instinctively, as I imagine he would have smiled at any proper show of politeness; then he continued to stare at me as his smile gradually fell. I think he was trying to figure out if I was something he was now going to have to get used to. I walked a few steps ahead of him into his home; Kay was already inside, turning on the lights.
Is Molly back yet? Roger said.
You were not. It felt like an entire day had passed, but it was still only about ten-thirty in the morning. Roger said he thought he’d take a nap before lunch. I was sure his own bed would feel good to him, but such sympathetic sentiments were impossible to express, particularly when the two of them, husband and wife, seemed locked in an intuitive agreement that nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all. Even my own bizarre presence there didn’t cause a ripple in the placid surface of their madness. Kay sat down to watch a talk show on TV. I went out and sat on the porch, in an Adirondack chair facing the open end of the valley.
I had to believe you’d come back. I couldn’t figure out where you might be hiding, or why you’d slip out just at the moment when your father was scheduled for his release; you must have known about that. Maybe there was much more, in a sinister way, to your relationship with him than you’d ever told me. Or (I admitted it was possible) you were hiding out of embarrassment over my seeing what your home was really like. Well, if so, I regretted having put you on the spot like that, but really it was your own doing, refusing to answer my calls like that. You had to know I’d come looking for you. I was so stupid with love.
Down at the end of the driveway, just beyond the gate in the low wooden fence, a mail truck drifted to a stop; an arm reached out, opened the box, shoved in a pile of paper, shut it, and flipped the flag up all in one motion worn by boredom into a gesture of unbroken gracefulness. A few seconds later, when the truck was out of sight, the front door opened behind me, and Kay walked out to collect the mail. She flipped through it as she passed me again, without a smile or a glance in my direction. In spite of everything else going on, I felt a little offended that she should treat so casually a guest in her home. My own upbringing showing itself, I guess.
Ten minutes later, when I went back inside to offer to make your parents some lunch, I almost ran Kay down: she was still standing about two steps inside the front door, holding a postcard up in front of her face.
It was from you. All it said was that the Honda was in the long-term parking lot at the Albany airport. I read it a few times over Kay’s shoulder, both of us struggling to make sense of it. Then my heart leaped, and I began thinking immediately about how to make my own escape from that place, where in the house your parents might keep a phone book, where I could find a phone out of their earshot in order to call the airport myself.
Because it could only mean one thing. You had flown home to me, to California, and now I wasn’t there.
* * *
MAL SUMMONS ME to his office.
I had a call from Rachel Comstock, he says. You know who Rachel Comstock is?
He looks angry.
No, I say.
Neither did I. She’s a producer at 60 Minutes. She apologized for bothering me but she said she had called your office three times and never had her call returned.
The air was heavy with some kind of recrimination. He was sitting behind his desk; the windows were open, and a stack of papers riffled underneath a paperweight. I was damned if I was going to let this turn into a conversation about my job performance. I was damned if I was going to say I was sorry about anything.
What did she want? I said.
His nostrils flared. See, the point is that I’m supposed to be finding that stuff out from you, and not the other way around. But since you’re interested enough to ask, 60 fucking Minutes is now doing a story on these Culture Trust guys out in Spokane. The trial’s turning into some kind of circus. These two guys apparently think they’ve inherited the radical-clown mantle from Abbie Hoffman, at least that’s what this Comstock woman tells me. You know how embarrassing it is to have to learn this stuff from a total stranger, from a journalist no less? I thought you were on top of this!
I am on top of it. It’s a criminal trial. It’s the gallery pressing charges, not us. What do you want me to do?
What do I want you to do? I want you to go back out there and take care of it.
What do you mean, go back out there?
Fly back out there, he said, in a somewhat challenging manner, I thought.
When?
When? Right now would be good. What do you mean when? This is a public relations disaster—
There’s no point in my going out there. I
f the 60 Minutes people see me there all of a sudden, that’ll just make it seem like a bigger deal, like we’re genuinely worried about these –
I’m sorry? he said. Was there something unclear about what I told you to do?
Mal’s nostrils were flared, and his mouth was set so tightly it was quivering. It wasn’t like him to get this mad about something work-related. This can’t be about a couple of self-important middle-aged vandals three thousand miles away, I told myself. This has to be about something else. I folded my arms; the possibility existed that I might actually start crying, and the swell of that feeling in me really made me furious.
Is that what you want? I said. To get rid of me?
What the hell are you talking about?
I stood there staring down at him – he was still in his chair – and I thought, I don’t really know what to hope for anymore.
What’s happened to you, John? he said. You’ve really changed. Your behavior has been erratic these last few weeks; I’m not the only one who’s noticed it. What’s the matter?
What’s the matter? I said.
Because if this is about Molly then all I can tell you is you’re acting like a petulant idiot. Get over it. I realize this is a strange situation for you, it’s a strange situation for all of us, but it’s just what’s happened. I mean you might as well tell me now: do you still have feelings for her?
No, I said. I don’t.
Then what’s the problem?
We have a history.
Yes? Mal said. And?
And when he said that, somehow all the air just went out of me. Maybe he’s right, I thought: what difference does it make? Why should I think that what matters to me would matter to anyone else?
Okay, I said. Fine. I’ll fly out to Spokane tomorrow.
Mal relaxed. Well, you don’t have to look so glum, he said. It’s three days at the most. You have to be back Thursday for Jean-Claude’s thing.
Though in fact I wanted to be back for the debut of Milo’s Palladio piece, there was something about the way Mal said I had to that caught my attention.