Take a later ferry. Call him where he’s staying and make him come.
Not with all the people who are still here, she said.
I said if he’s going to be associated with the family he should meet the family.
She said she was not ready for that yet, and then added in a secret way, It’s a delicacy about William.
Oh.
I guess that means William doesn’t know about Pete Arena. But it’s hard not to suspect Patty’s concealing something from me. If you have any theories let me know. You must know everything by now.
PATRICIA KEY: To Pete Arena
This little plane with the propeller roar, I’m watching a loose screw jiggling in the engine cowling, so get me out of here. Sitting in single file behind Melanie with Henry across the aisle, Lucy Realm and David somewhere behind, dreaming of a letter to you, though with such a view of the islands I’m supposed to be more interested in the scenery or my imminent death.
Funeral’s over, burial, last family dinner, pack your stuff. This morning goodbye goodbye. Goodbye Mother through the porthole probably crying while she waves. Here we go to Boston and our connecting flights. Where are you at this moment? If you’ve left already or are lingering still. Thank you for how you stayed out of the way. In spite of which there was a leak. Mother heard and wanted me to invite you over. I’m not ready if you don’t mind. I need to prepare her first, and I put her off.
I saw you at the funeral, looking us over. I apologize for the lack of ritual and the simplicity of our Reverend Mr. Dawson who makes the noblest ideas ridiculous. And William. I saw you staring at him, trying to figure him out. Don’t let him scare you, my friend, he’s no smarter than the rest of us.
My crazy brother Henry sits by the window staring at the sea, the slow islands, the coming land. Trembling, looks like giggling, is it giggling? His wife across the aisle fidgets, embarrassed. As always. To be embarrassed by Henry, it’s Melanie’s distinctive feature.
Once Henry and I were close in a treacherous way. I was the third child, he the fourth. I gave him incantations. Together we tortured the baby George, while Philip and Ann stayed aloof. Henry was fat, which is either important or it’s not. He was fat, which embarrassed him so he tried to turn fat into muscle. Athlete. Henry the athlete, defying the world. Defying us, all these snobby children with our arty pretensions—Philip’s writing, Ann’s dancing, I and my cello, even George, who was going to be a movie star. The athlete would play football, basketball, baseball, all the high and visible sports. Went out for the high school teams. Exercising, stretching, grunting and gasping, around the block, sweaty and running like he would cry, damn he was determined. Nothing’s impossible if you try hard enough. Yeah. Climb every dream impossible mountain sort of crap. He just wasn’t very good. They made him manager of the football team, who carries the water bucket. Dropped from some squad, I forget, and what a time we had in the family then. We consoled him by telling him it wasn’t important, which was the worst dumb thing we could say, proving exactly what he wanted proved, how little we knew. Worried about his loneliness, Mother would invite his teammates to the house, ice cream, dinner, the ones you like best, whom you consider your friends. She would ask him and he’d name the stars, who thought we were a bunch of groupies (including Henry) as they swept like horses through the kitchen.
He dropped sports with a crash, cut cold like an addict, with more scornful anti-athleticism than any of us, and dropped himself at the same time with an equal crash. Looked for the most self-ignoring alternative he could find and ended up a social worker in permanent depression. The crater left where his Henryness had been.
He persuaded Melanie Cairo to take on the tender job of caring for his depression. Don’t let her tell you she didn’t know what she was getting in for. Her hope and his hopelessness lived off each other, each requiring the other. He’s been fighting hope all his life. His career in sports was a demonstration against hope, since he knew it was hopeless from the start and needed only to prove it so he could be depressed and hopeless and fat and taken care of by Melanie forever.
For ten years he’s lived in a smelly apartment in Stony Hill. That’s a seedy old section of River City, a changing neighborhood full of transients and drugs, where he stays without noticing the changes. Twenty minutes from my parents’ house at the University, except that they left in 1988. He and Melanie remained. No one knows what kind of social worker he was, for he never said. I suspect his unselfishness was too selfish for him to be any good. I used to wonder before I gave up the practice of wonder, if he was afraid of his work. It’s impossible to imagine him giving advice to anyone.
His wife’s an elementary school teacher. No children. Ten years and still no children. It’s quite noticeable. Without actually mentioning it, they keep the awareness alive. When you listen to Henry and Melanie, you’ll find yourself soon noticing that they never mention their lack of children and you’ll wonder how you happened to notice it.
The doctors and hospitals and Melanie all call Henry’s depression an illness, but I wonder because I can’t imagine a Henry not depressed. What will be left if they get rid of it? They talk of the progress of his disease, but how do they know it’s not the natural growth of who he is? A year ago he quit going to work. Now he sits around. Melanie speaks of recovery: When he goes back to work, she says. She also talks of his forthcoming suicide like a scheduled event. And she interprets: unfortunately he was not good enough at what he really wanted to do, she says, but he’s too smart to become a bully or deceive himself about the modest available alternatives to glory. A bully? Instead he chose to become dull, abandoning the marks of identity one by one, as if identities were skins that itch and sting and press upon the heart, too painful to wear. So he cast them off and now there are none.
Nobody in the family noticed. Except Melanie, who lives on it. For the rest, Henry is Henry, which is exactly how I feel. It should be terrible. We should all be full of woe and charity, what to do about this poor brother who’s slipping away? Nobody wants to be bothered. Which is how I feel too. I don’t care what happens to Henry. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s his own fault. Since I’m not a mean or nasty person, it can only be that. Something he does, like the smell emitted by a skunk, which keeps the people who would help if they could from approaching.
Now the giggles. Henry, Melanie whispers across the aisle so we can all be sure to hear. People are looking at you.
In the ferry down below, far behind, is William with what used to be our car. He’s taking the kids to the mountains. If you’re on the same boat stay away from them. William and I had an argument about eternal life, and I’m surprised he thought he could beat me. What you say is impossible to refute, he said. He seemed to think that rendered it invalid, which is dumb since its irrefutability was exactly my point.
Philip with his families is also on that boat. He told me he stole some of my father’s papers which he thinks would ruin Father’s reputation. I doubt it. Father’s dead, so who’s to care outside the family? I told him to go ahead, burn and forget them, but he won’t. Not without writing an opera about it.
Left behind is my poor mother, last seen as a figurine in blue by the airport fence shrinking into a speck while the land dropped into a detailed model of itself.
MELANIE CAIRO: What to tell Dr. Parch
He didn’t want to leave the Island. Wild enthusiasm as I packed him up, a complete change of mood. Now I know everything, he said. You go home, I’ll stay behind. Fearing suicide, I said, Henry what are you talking about? and he made up a reason, Mother needs me. I wondered what help her depressed son could give, but he said he wasn’t depressed anymore.
He went out and came back and said, I just told Mother about Pete Arena, but I didn’t tell her who he is.
This is an allusion to my sister-in-law’s new fiancé, who happens to be African-American. We only found out about him on the last day of our stay. By not telling who he is, Henry meant he did not tell her he w
as African-American.
I said, Why did you tell her?
Because she ought to know.
I thought it was up to Patricia to decide what and when Mother ought to know.
Well I left it to Patricia to tell the rest.
His giggling made me suspicious. What is it you find funny? Mother. I can’t wait to see her face when she finds out. Finds out what?
Who he really is.
I told him he was a bigot.
What do you think, Dr. Parch? Is it bigotry or is it Henry? If it isn’t bigotry, how do you distinguish? I admit I was a little shocked when I first heard about Mr. Arena. It made me wonder why Patricia was not drawn to someone of her own kind. To me it’s too big a difference to throw my life into. But evidently not for Patricia, and if that’s what she wants, more power to her. I think it’s a courageous social gesture, except that for Patty it’s not a gesture, it’s how she wants to live. I admire that, don’t you? But Dr. Parch, I guess you being what you are you don’t either judge or admire anybody.
I’m not a bigot, Henry said. I’m a writer who sees clearly what other people don’t.
A writer, ho? The distinction between writing and bigotry, that’s another one I wonder what you think about.
He said, I’m going to write a book about Sam Truro. This made me realize he had been thinking about Sam Truro the whole time and Pete Arena was merely overflow.
I pass it on for you to consider. A book, after a while he was calling it a novel. I said what do you know about writing books? I argued how every ignoramus thinks he’s an author, but he didn’t hear me. Just babbled on, a book, Sam Truro, a book about Sam Truro, babble babble. Why Truro? I asked. Why Truro and not your brother Philip? Or your dead father? Or your sister dropping William for the black mechanic? What’s Truro got that makes you so wonderful? He goggled his eyes at me. Ha, he said. Little do you know. Little do you know what really happened between my father and Truro.
So he explained or should I say “explained” in quotes, and let me pass the explanation on to you and let you judge how crazy or uncrazy this man of mine really is. Why Truro? Henry said. Because the real killer of his father was Truro. Not as in the discredited newspaper rumor by the reporter who said Thomas had been literally shot but killed by some symbolic Truro and all he represents. Moving us into the realm of fantastic interpretation. A long explanation of what Henry called everything. The Story of Life. Guilt, he said. In Henry’s view it started long ago when Thomas kicked Truro out of the University and thought nothing of it. Just part of the academic carnage which he was well used to until something in old age sensitized him to the blood and gore of all human venture. And made him take the blame. Now why would he do that? Henry asked rhetorically, as if his father were the unreasonable one. The trouble began when Thomas discovered why Truro had followed him to this island. The man whom he had kicked out of the University. According to Henry, Thomas took that as a sign, like nemesis, you know, life’s conscience catching up to you. So says Henry. I don’t dispute when he’s in moods like this, he’s always so fixedly right.
For a long time, Henry says, Thomas didn’t remember Truro, with Truro working peaceably in the bank. Even after he realized who Truro was he didn’t notice the irony in Truro’s admiration until the very last moment. That is, he thought Truro really did admire him. Until the moment when Truro broke. Broke, turned the gun on his wife and child to make an example of himself. Which suddenly, according to Henry, made Thomas see his mistake, what he should have seen from the beginning, the nemesis and all, the shock of which—well. Please follow this if you can, Dr. Parch, Henry’s interpretation of Thomas’s interpretation of Truro’s psychotic break. Truro’s break, which could only be interpreted as a twisted ironic gesture of some sort, the self-appointed symbolic victim, a gesture which Thomas in his guilt, the accumulated guilt of his whole professional career, instantly assumed was directed at him. President of the University who had fired him. Demonstrative revenge through a Significant Gesture.
You have here three madmen making interpretations, or at least it’s three if you believe Henry. In any case, when Thomas first learned that Truro had hostaged his wife and children, says Henry, he instantly interpreted what Truro meant, which he also assumed Truro himself didn’t know. Therefore, having faith in his ability to speak, the rhetoric upon which his career had been based, those powers of persuasion by which he had once (to some extent) induced rich men to give their wealth to educating the young, Thomas made it his duty to talk Truro into a state of reason. Supposing he was the only one who could do this because only he knew what was wrong with Truro, only he understood the irony as well as the real cause of Truro’s distress. He went over to Truro’s barricaded house, past the cops and up the walk fully intending to explain Truro to himself and thereby restore civilization. Are you with me still?
The trouble was, according to Henry, Truro was not interested in disguised meanings. If he had seen his disguised meaning he wouldn’t have bothered to disguise it. All he could do was shoot and his bullets could only miss since if they hit there would be no point in taking hostages, who were only tokens anyway. But says Henry the missing bullets were as good as a hit for the senior citizen on the walk because of the shock of revelation they produced. This man is shooting at me, Thomas thought though in fact this man was not shooting at him. The shock would be final confirmation of his career-guilt, enough to precipitate bang the stroke which had been building up in his brain vessels for days or weeks looking for an excuse to finish off the dirty work in his gut for the last half year.
Into the hospital goes the stricken Thomas (as Henry sees it), his hypothesis confirmed by the bullet that came so close, his personal dedicated bullet, the bullet meant for him. As he lay in the hospital evidently Thomas decided that civilization still depended on him, that his responsibility as a leader in the world (university president) required him to make one more approach to the man with the grievance and make the amends that needed to be made. It was Thomas’s disease and Thomas’s mind working hand in hand, each with its goal (both goals the same in the end, if you ask me) and each learning how to assist the other to make Thomas when the time came get up, elude the nurses and security and make one more approach to Truro. Now get this Dr. Parch and add it to your Henry bank. What Thomas planned to say to Truro would not be another futile attempt to persuade him to give up. No, Henry said, Thomas was too imaginative for that, so he must have had a more radical idea (only a more radical one could have dragged him out of his stroke bed in the middle of the night). What he intended, says Henry, was to offer himself as hostage. To join the little group under the sleepless carbine. Or better still if Truro would allow it (Henry’s eyes agleam with romance) to replace the other hostages, take over the hostage role. Which Truro ought to welcome since not only would it liberate the wife and child from their bondage as symbols but it would identify for him and put into his hands the true object of his revenge. I think it’s ridiculous myself.
However, it’s true that Thomas did get out of bed and escaped from the hospital and went to Truro’s house before the stroke cooperated with the police to stop him. I say there’s no way to know what he intended, but Henry’s sure it was to make the sacrifice Truro needed to bring him out of his siege. A great heroic final act. I think it says more about Henry than Thomas or Truro, but don’t let me influence you, I’m sure your interpretation is different from mine.
Whenever I raised a reasonable doubt, Henry would say how little you know, how do you know so little, and I ask, does Henry know his way out of clichés? What makes him think he’s a better writer than anyone else? Meanwhile I packed him his things. No resistance, just babble. I led him to the car, to the airport, said him his goodbye to his mother, took him aboard the plane. Shivering. Hee hee. Some joke. Misunderstood genius. I tried to hush him, but he said, Don’t you like me better? At least I’m not depressed. Dr. Parch, am I really supposed to like him better?
Like Henry James, h
e said. Henry James Westerly. Good name for a writer. Let me calm down a bit and you’ll see.
It’s like he’s denying all I’ve done for him over the years and my whole life is thrown away.
DAVID WESTERLY: To Charlie
On the night bus. Good seeing you again and I enjoyed tenting with you in spite of my complaints. My objection to Lucy Realm is her negative attitude. I sat next to her at the funeral and she whispered all through. She complained about everybody’s long faces. I say people have a right to long faces at a funeral, and I didn’t see all that many anyway. Most people looked pretty happy to me. She complained about people tiptoeing but everybody I saw had their heels on the ground.
It made me mad for her to be so sure of everything. When she dies, Lucy said, she wants someone to take her back into the fields (what fields? Do you know any fields in Greenwich Village?) and burn her. Bonfire. No ceremony, just a few words, her poet friends could write a poem and her artist friends could toss some of their more valuable paintings on the fire with her corpse as a symbol of loss. (I don’t suppose it would do to sacrifice their poorer paintings, right?)
On the plane we argued about the funeral speeches. She said Dawson’s was an insult to the intelligence and William’s didn’t have anything to do with Grandfather. I said it didn’t matter what anybody said. Dawson was there. Think of him and you’ll automatically remember Grandfather, which is the purpose of a funeral. It could all be gibberish or the owl and the pussycat, and it would serve the purpose. By the time I thought of this it was too late because the plane had landed.
So she went off thinking she had won. I wish I had made my point. But even if I made it she would think she’d won because she wouldn’t agree. Making my point won’t make her agree if she doesn’t agree. Actually I won the argument because her points didn’t take into consideration my perception of their limitations, only unfortunately she’ll never see that and will just continue thinking she won. Not only that, she probably thinks I think I won, which she takes as a sign of my stupidity because she’s so convinced her arguments are right and mine are obtuse. What she doesn’t see is how obtuse it is of her to think that. So really there’s no way to make her see that she lost, and even if she knows I think so, she’ll go on thinking she won because she thinks it’s only my stupidity refusing to admit. If you follow me.
Telling Time Page 23