She turned.
“Route 66, Averill Park Road, just east of Albany.” I looked up.
A smile. “What’s playing?”
I shrugged. “Who cares?”
Dinner: at the concession stand, pizza was seven dollars. With pepperoni, it was eight. We ordered it with. After all, I was a guy who had an upgraded room at the Econo Lodge.
We parked in a rear corner, ate in the car, trying not to get tomato sauce all over ourselves in the dark. Drive-in movies tend not to be first run. The first feature was Rain Man. It had already won the Academy Award, back in March. Great movie. Men after my own heart, going to Vegas, winning just enough to solve a problem, no more. My dream.
Jeanne came back from the washroom at intermission. “You have to see that one to believe it. I had to line up outside there were so many of us. One woman actually butted in. I let her. I tried to imagine having to go to the bathroom that bad.”
“I understand. I saw the men’s.”
Second feature was Funny Farm with Chevy Chase. It was a good one to miss. As well as she could with the stick shift between us, Jeanne nestled in my arm. “You ever make out at the drive-in?”
“Is that a question you’d like me to ask you?”
She moved slightly. Closer. “I guess not.”
I answered anyway. “A bit. More ambition than success. Callow youth.”
She kissed my neck. “How ’bout now?”
There were only about a hundred cars in a lot that could hold three hundred. There was nobody near us. The window was rolled down halfway. Crickets, the stars, the smell of a summer night in the country.
“It’s a good time,” she said.
For a minute, I didn’t follow.
“Middle of the month.”
A slow dawning.
“And lots of girls get pregnant in the backseat of an automobile.”
Suddenly I wasn’t forty-five years old. I was eighteen. We locked the doors, got into the backseat of the Honda, pushed the front seats as far ahead as they’d go.
“You gotta admit,” she said, “it’s a perfect spot.”
“It’s a perfect idea.”
And we made love. I won’t tell you how we did it. I’ll let you imagine. But we did it. It was a tribute to our ingenuity. And it was great. In fact, it was incredible.
Next morning, I had coffee, juice, and the Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s. Jeanne had the Ham ’N’ Chedda Omelet.
Talk about celebrating.
III
The Finger Lakes—Seneca, Cayuga, Owasco, and others—are southeast of Rochester, southwest of Syracuse, maybe two hundred miles farther on from our upgraded Econo Lodge quarters. They were only a small detour on the way home, and worth seeing. This time we cranked it up a notch again—to the Holiday Inn in Auburn. $89. We were still celebrating.
In McMurphy’s Pub, downstairs, we sat at the bar and ordered the clam chowder and pints of Guinness for dinner. After eating chili dogs, fries, yogurt smoothies, and Mrs. Field’s cookies at rest stops all the way along I-90, it was all we wanted. Besides, we were too impatient. We were on a mission.
The Finger Lakes Drive-in was on Route 20, just west of Auburn. We’d spotted it late in the afternoon, touring around.
Bull Durham was a wonderful movie: sexy, smart, funny. We’d seen it last winter, but it was even better now.
“What do you think of Susan Sarandon?” asked Jeanne.
“Can’t hold a candle to you. You’d have to give her lessons.”
“Good answer.”
“Getting better, aren’t I?”
“There’s hope.”
Picture a wooden box office, wooden concession booth, that giant screen, a sloping field of soft grass, a handful of scattered automobiles, that summer smell. It was a clear, dark evening. Stars like diamonds, enough to make you ache.
We rolled up the windows against mosquitoes, locked the doors, climbed into the backseat, and gave “Crocodile” Dundee II a miss.
A movie with a Roman numeral in its title, about an Australian who hunted crocodiles. How could we relate?
Next morning, at the Auburn Family Restaurant, I had eggs, bacon, home fries, toast, juice, and coffee. Jeanne had the same, but substituted sausages for the bacon.
What can I say? Celebration after celebration. When you’re happy, you’re happy.
In Toronto, we went back to work, back to routines with Adam. Jeanne’s cycle came and went. I think that was when I started to have some of my night sweats, started to wonder, before I started putting any of the pieces together.
Like Las Vegas, the Poconos, like Niagara Falls before that, nothing happened.
IV
Outside the Belmont Auto Theater near Dayton, in the bright sunshine, I got back into my car.
TWELVE
I
From 675, I drove east out of Dayton along the Yellow Springs Road. A mile farther, near Byron, there were cattle. Suddenly I was in the country. Just as suddenly: a pretty road, lovely homes, horses. Landscaping, three-car garages. Farms.
Within minutes, Yellow Springs, population 4,600. The main street was artsy, attractive. Ye Olde Trail Tavern Restaurant. Dino’s Cappuccinos. Ohio Silver Company. I drove past the Little Art Theater too quickly to notice what was playing.
Then Antioch College. I got out my pocket guide, looked through it: 325,000 volumes in the Olive Kettering Library; student newspaper: Antioch Record. A small college. Expensive.
Adam couldn’t afford it. I couldn’t afford to send him. From what I had seen, neither could his father.
I got out of the car, stood on the lawn beside the college sign, stared at the oaks, the maples, the building beyond them with its six spires.
In the house on Maxwell Avenue, we had a small liquor cabinet in the dining room when I was growing up. It was about two feet square, with hinged doors that swung from its middle, and a drawer at the bottom. Inside, in one half were shelves, filled with an assortment of different-sized tumblers for various concoctions; the other half was a space for standing bottles. There were never any bottles. Nobody in my family was a wine drinker. And none of them could handle hard liquor, so there was seldom any in the house. Beer was often plentiful—especially on weekends—but was kept in the fridge or in the cool darkness beneath the stairs in the back kitchen, en route to the basement.
Hard liquor was drunk in bars and cocktail lounges, outside the home, on rare occasions. A souvenir of such momentous episodes was the plastic swizzle stick accompanying the drink. The drawer at the bottom of the liquor cabinet contained dozens. As kids, we could play for hours in that drawer, building with them (more interesting than Lego), lining them up, trading them, organizing by colors, shapes. There were arrows, feathers, sabers, spears, flags. No one minded us on the floor with them; we were quiet.
When I was between the ages of ten and twelve Nanny took me with her on her annual week’s summer vacation to Buffalo. Previously, she’d always gone by herself. The first year we took the bus, the next the train, and finally we flew. Nanny had never been on an airplane, and wanted to try it. It was my first flight too. We couldn’t have been in the air more than twenty minutes. It was ninety miles by road, sixty by air across Lake Ontario. On the last trip, she was seventy years old.
We stayed in downtown hotels with elevators. I bought comic books at outdoor kiosks; we went to movies and ate in restaurants.
In the evenings, Nanny would take me into a bar or cocktail lounge, buy me a chocolate milk, get herself a Tom Collins, and we’d sit and watch television. Every now and then, a program would be in color, which was astonishing. She told me not to tell anyone that we went into bars on our holidays. I knew that if I kept quiet, I’d get more chocolate milk, the cherry from her Tom Collins, might see more TV programs in color, and pocket handfuls of those plastic swizzle sticks. It was a great deal.
Like my brother Ron, with Da, at the bootlegger on Sunday afternoons, I was a willing conspirator. And like her father
, Nanny wanted only to get away for a brief time, away from it all. Like him, she needed that drink.
I’ve lost track of what happened to the liquor cabinet over the years. Someone in the family must have it. The swizzle sticks in the bottom drawer disappeared long before it did. For some reason, though, I feel badly that I don’t know where they are. I miss them more than the cabinet.
From Yellow Springs, I drove down 68 to Xenia, then west along 35 into Dayton. It was two-thirty in the afternoon when I got back into the city. I exited onto Patterson south, trundled along the Great Miami River, saw the University of Dayton Arena on the opposite side. Staying with the river, I segued onto Carillon Boulevard, and within seconds was inside Carillon Historical Park.
In the park, I saw Dayton history: the Newcom Tavern, a two-story log house with a stone fireplace, preserved from 1796. I stood in front of a 1924 Sun Oil gas station. I scrutinized the 1905 Wright Flyer III airplane, the camera that recorded the milestone initial flight, a drawing table and sewing machine owned by the Wrights. Antique automobiles, a working 1930s print shop, vintage bicycles.
Sitting on a bench, I spread my arms along its wooden back, stared at trees, river, the carillon—the 150-foot granite, steel, and limestone bell tower that stood against the blue Ohio sky—looked around me, realized how pretty it all was.
My father was not a handsome man. In fact, in many ways he was rather homely. He was about five-seven, thin, balding, wore glasses, and unless he had been drinking, always seemed rather undemonstrative to us. As a kid, watching my mother iron clothes in the kitchen, I once asked her why she had married him. She stopped, looked up, smiled to herself, and said, “Because I love him.”
This was a complete revelation to me. Love was what I’d seen on TV and in the movies: beautiful people, romance, kissing, hugging. I saw no connection between daily events in my home and what I’d seen going on between Gregory Peck and Ann Blyth in The World in His Arms, which we’d all gone to see at the Capitol Theater on Yonge Street.
Mom had no diamonds, never got a rose. Her wedding ring was a plain silver band that had to be cut off her finger when her hands swelled with arthritis later in her life. Yet it was Dad who pushed for the fiftieth anniversary renewal of vows in 1979 at St. Monica’s Church. We stood behind them—Anne, Ron, Judy, Dennis, and myself. Mom’s arthritis had her in a wheelchair by then. She seemed to accept it all. But it was Dad, I noticed, who cried. And watching him cry made me cry too.
When she died, less than five years later, in 1984, he was lost.
That was the year I went to Ashland. That was the year I met Jeanne and Adam, the year I started my own family, without knowing it.
I left Carillon Park, sat in a donut shop on Far Hills Avenue, waited for the Delco shift to end. It was four o’clock. One more hour.
II
At five o’clock I was parked at the bottom of the entrance driveway where I’d watched his car disappear that morning. I waited about twenty minutes until the JESUSROX Olds drove by me, turned south on Woodman. He was inside it, alone.
I followed.
I’ve thought back on this a lot. Jeanne was right. It was crazy. Maybe I was crazy.
But I thought maybe my father could help me. Maybe that’s why he’d come with me. Why my whole family was with me, inside me.
At the corner of Woodman and Dorothy, instead of turning left, heading home, he continued a block farther and drove into Woodlane Plaza. Pulling in behind him, I stayed back, watched as he parked, got out. I watched him go into the Legacy Lounge.
I angled the Honda between two white lines, got out, looked around. The sun was still hot. I shielded my eyes. Woodman Lanes Bowling, Goodyear Certified Auto Service. Sew-Biz: Bernini Sewing Machines, The Transmission Shop, Carousel Beauty Colleges. Superpetz, the Pet Food Superstore, was the big item in the plaza.
I couldn’t see inside. It had a wooden front—vertical planks, painted a turquoise blue, including the door. “Top 40 of the ’70s, ’80s & ’90s,” a painting of a guitar. “Proper Attire Required.” “You Must Be 21.” “No Motorcycle Parking on Sidewalk.” “Hours: 7 a.m.-2:30 a.m. Sat/Sun: 12 noon-2:30 a.m.” Above the door, one of the legs on the N in “Lounge” was broken off.
I stood out front. Inside was Bobby Swiss.
Through the door, a small alcove, a pay phone, more signs: “Motorcycle Attire Allowed.” “Legacy Lounge Reserves the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone!”
I went in. Into the Legacy Lounge.
It was narrow, dimly lit, smoky blue. There was a jukebox in the corner, two billiards tables, three green-shaded, low-hanging lights over each.
A long, rectangular island bar ahead of me, wine-colored stools with backs on them. Red and white plastic pennants strung across the ceiling: “Bud Racing,” and “Bud Driven to Win.” In recesses at the back, I saw a dartboard and tables. The clock on the wall had a Budweiser face.
I counted seven men at the bar, two waitresses behind it. Nobody paid any attention to me.
He was on a stool, elbows on the mahogany counter. I watched as a match flared to life in his hand, saw the cigarette tip brighten as he sucked smoke deep into his lungs.
“You want chicken noodle soup?”
The waitress had one hand on a ladle, the other on the glass lid of the large tureen. The question caught me off guard, coming out of nowhere as it did. I leaned forward on my stool, stared at the offering. “Not right now,” I said. “Maybe later.”
“What’ll you have?”
“Just a beer. A Bud.”
A can appeared from a cooler beneath the counter. No glass. I snapped it open, sipped.
I had left one seat between Bobby Swiss and myself. We had breathing space, but I could feel him there. I could feel him. Beside me.
I looked straight ahead.
III
Tiffany shades over the bar, jugs hanging from hooks, glasses suspended upside down in sliding slots. I sat there for another twenty minutes or so, listening, watching.
Not counting the bartenders, eight of us: two groups of three, on opposite sides, at the far end of the bar. Then just us, here, a little beyond the middle.
I heard the chicken noodle soup lady say something that ended with, “... our union rep,” and the guy she was talking to high-fived her. Raucous laughter. From the other group, I caught the occasional Goddamn, or Fuck You Guys. More laughter.
The condensation trickled in weaving rivulets down the aluminum sides of my Bud, pooling on the counter. I reached over the bar, took a cardboard Samuel Adams coaster from the pile there, placed it under my beer.
I sat there, wondered if Jeanne had gone to the Trail Drive-In with him.
At low volume, the six o’clock news came on the TV high up in the corner, the lead story something to do with the Oklahoma City bombing back in the spring. A still of the gutted Federal Building, then a shot of Timothy McVeigh. I focused on the close-set, frowning eyes, the narrow, pinched mouth on the screen.
“Maniac,” said Bobby Swiss.
I turned, looked at him.
“Fuckin’ idiot.” The smoke drifted from his mouth, nostrils. “My sister was killed there.” He swiveled on his stool, spoke to me. “She worked in one of them offices. Social Security Administration. Had a good job. Wasn’t hurtin’ nobody. I’d hang the bugger myself if I could.”
He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I’d driven hundreds of miles, waited months to talk to him, planned what I’d say, how I’d introduce myself. Suddenly, it all went out the window. I’d been derailed.
“I’m sorry,” I said. And I was. For her. Not for him.
“No time for the past, though, right?”
I was quiet.
“Gotta move on.”
The past was all around me. I had no idea what he was talking about.
“One good thing came out of it, though.” He looked at me. Brown eyes, like his son. Like Adam.
I managed to speak. “What’s that?”
�
�Made me think. I filled out an organ donor card. Keep it in my wallet, right with my driver’s license.”
He had moved on. The past was over for him.
I couldn’t let it go. “Your sister have any children?”
“Two boys.”
I waited.
“But they’re teenagers.” He tipped his jug, filled his glass.
I ran a finger through the cool sweat on the side of my aluminum can.
“They ain’t kids. They’ll be fine,” he said.
I drained my beer. When the chicken soup lady looked in my direction, I held up the empty can. She brought me another.
I asked just to see what he’d say. “You from Oklahoma City?”
“Hell, no. I never even been. It was Lorraine, my sister. Married a fella from there. They divorced. She stayed, worked there, raised the boys.” He paused, then: “That fuckin’ McVeigh.”
“Where are the boys now?”
“With their father. That’s what I heard, anyway.” He looked at me. “I haven’t seen you here before, have I?”
I shook my head.
He waited.
I heard myself: “I work for a newspaper in Toronto. Canada.”
He looked interested. “What brings you to Dayton?”
I thought about what I’d told the woman on the phone from the 7-Eleven. “Workin’ on an article about the area.”
“You a writer?”
I nodded. I was beginning to amaze myself.
“Goddamn,” he said. “Here long?”
I shrugged. “Couple of days. That’s about it.”
Shadow of Ashland, A Witness to Life, and St. Patrick's Bed Page 37