by James Tate
“And what about Mimi’s mother, you don’t think she’ll tell all three-hundred women at her club? You’re pretty naive for a son of mine. Really, Thomas. I don’t know where you’ve been these past eighteen years, you don’t seem to have learned anything. Whether you like it or not, the whole world is watching your every step.”
“I’m sure you exaggerate, father. It’s true that you are an important man with grave responsibilities, but I on the other hand am merely an average eighteen year old trying to lead a normal life with my girlfriend and a few other friends. I seriously doubt if there is a terrorist in the world who knows my name.”
Mr. Crushank’s mind was elsewhere by now, and he was busy surveying the contents of his briefcase.
“You tell your mother exactly where you will be at every moment, do you understand? I want it written down, room number, telephone, what name you are registered under. Do you understand? I want to be able to reach you at all times. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“All right, I’m late. Is the driver here? And don’t speak loosely with strangers. Do you understand me?”
“I understand. Good luck with the Prime Minister. I hope that goes well.”
Mr. Crushank took one last look around the room as though some essential evidence might have escaped his concentration, and then, to his son’s relief, he was gone.
It was never a good time to talk with his father about his own ideas or problems. Everything that was his own withered in the shade of his father’s world-scale responsibilities. And Thomas knew that his father’s pre-occupation with his job was necessary. The world might very well fall apart were it not for a few thousand men like his father, tinkering with codes and messages eighteen hours a day, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. But then, why do these men have wives and children. Shouldn’t they be eunuchs and live in sterilized cells? Why this pretense of pomp and correctness and dinner parties and private schools for children they barely know? When Thomas revealed to his father that he had begun to write poetry, all his father had to say was, “What could you possibly have to say?” And then he paused and thought about it for a moment and added, “When I retire I will write a book. That will be something, I tell you.” Thomas was hurt by his father’s failure to take him seriously or to allow him one thing that was his own. And Mr. Crushank never thought about it again.
And that was the very first evening that Thomas conceived the idea of running away, of disappearing. He loved his mother, but she was hopelessly tied to this life. She was the perfect mechanical hostess and, increasingly, as the years wore on, she was becoming mechanical in her dealings with her own son. When he was a child she could still let go and roll around with him in the courtyard and call him silly pet names. Now she mostly just repeated her husband’s orders and treated Thomas as if he were a negative force on his father’s career, a liability on his advancement for which Mr. Crushank had worked with a singlemindedness for more than twenty years.
But just as Thomas was about to accept the indictment of his father and mother, he met Mimi. She could touch that part in him that had never been touched since childhood. She was fresh and alive and he wanted to spend every hour of every day with her. But of course his father disapproved because her father was a lowly speechwriter, and she knew little of the protocol that went with position. His mother did come to his aid, if a bit meekly. “She seems like a very nice girl,” was all she had to offer. She did tell a few white lies to cover for Thomas when he was with Mimi.
Thomas dreamed of sneaking back into the States with Mimi and living a quiet life of poverty, a simple life in some state like Vermont, though he barely knew what life was like in the States. He had read Walden in school, and this appealed to him, with one major difference: he would share it, everything, with Mimi. “Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts,” Thoreau had counseled. But what would his father do, how would his actions be interpreted by the C.I.A., the F.B.I., or, for that matter, the President of the United States himself? He felt twisted and hung on a rack. What would be the advantageous moment to inform his father that he wanted none of it, that he could not go on being a model son, that he was not even vaguely interested in going to college, much less Princeton. Mimi. He wanted Mimi. He wanted to carry water to a chicken, to watch the sun come up. He wanted to work with animals and to eventually have lots of children with Mimi, not just one or two, but five or ten.
As he sat there in his father’s study entertaining these delicious thoughts, saying the words Vermont and Mimi to himself in alternate fashion, his mother was searching for him from room to room in the huge house. When she found him, she was breathless and shaking. “Oh, Thomas, come quick! Your father’s been shot. He’s at the hospital now. They’re operating.”
MANSON
One of the children had suggested that the new dog be named Manson. On the first day home from the pound, where they had rescued it from death row, the dog’s inclination toward random violence was displayed sufficiently for the name to stick. After dinner Mr. Nelson excused himself and went upstairs with the intention of visiting the lavatory. A terrible ruckus ensued, angry growling followed by cringing cries for help. The children and Mrs. Nelson were laughing so hard at the white terror in his face when he finally made it down the stairs that they neglected to notice that Mr. Nelson’s shoes were badly spotted with blood and that his suit trousers were in shreds around his ankles.
“Will one of you kids please go up there and get that dog away from the bathroom door?”
“Daddy,” Cindy said, “he won’t hurt you. He’s just getting used to his new home.”
“Look at my cuffs, look at what he did to my trousers. What do you mean he won’t bite me? He already has!”
“Oh my,” said Mrs. Nelson, “And he broke your skin. I hope he doesn’t have rabies.” At this the children tittered. A cocker spaniel with such teeth.
“I think I should call the pound and find out if he has had recent rabies shots.”
“I just want to go to the lavatory. Will somebody please get that dog away from the door?”
“I’ll get him,” Timmy volunteered.
“Be careful, Timmy,” his mother cautioned.
The Nelsons kept Manson, and grew to love him, although he never really changed. Mrs. Nelson walked him each evening, or rather she lurched and stumbled behind him, herself on a leash, and Manson with the strength of an elephant pulled her through the back streets of the suburban village snarling and growling at any living thing. Neighbors and passers-by soon learned to cross the street at least a half-a-block before passing this loathsome, hateful dog. Mrs. Nelson rarely had the opportunity to explain or apologize as it took all of her energy and concentration to simply avoid being smashed into a tree or a parked car. And yet, she loved him, incorrigible beast that he was.
In the house Manson’s territorial imperatives were respected whenever possible. If he was napping on one end of the couch, the entire couch was off-limits to the whole family. If he sprawled in front of the bathroom door the men in the family would relieve themselves in the backyard—a practice that humiliated Mr. Nelson. The women would try to sweet-talk Manson away from the door with promises of his favorite biscuits.
By the end of his first year with the Nelson family, however, all four family members had been sewn up at the hospital, thanks to Manson. One simply never knew when the surprise attack might occur. One night Cindy came home late from a date and tripped over him in the dark. Manson tore at her upper arm savagely and would not let go. The whole family awoke and turned on lights and swatted at the animal with brooms and other long-stemmed instruments until he turned on each of them, releasing Cindy only at the thought of more fresh meat. He quite literally terrorized the entire Nelson family, and yet they loved him. They laughed themselves silly after each incident.
Of course they were no longer able to have house guests or dinner guests or visitors of any kind for fear of injury and lawsuits. Mr. Nel
son was adamant about this. He wasn’t going to have his modest lifesavings pulled out from under him by some senseless canine felonious attack. Why, even the roof over their heads would be taken away from them should a non-family member suffer the kinds of injuries each of them had experienced. At times they all thought they were insane. They were the fourth family to have rescued Manson from death row. The others had taken him back after a day or two. The Nelsons took some pride in their tolerance and durability, the fact that none of them had actually died in Manson’s jaws.
Before he had come into their lives there was some question as to who ruled the Nelson household, Mrs. Nelson being a very strong lady herself, and Mr. Nelson known, at least to his children, as an intractable, if respectable old coot. Now there was no question as to who ruled. Manson had established that within minutes, and held without sway the crown and scepter for a full decade, a dramatic and dangerous reign of unpredictable violence that earned him the love and respect of his lowly slaves and peons, collectively known as the Nelson family. It made no sense to anyone who knew of the situation. Friends were lost. Packages were undelivered. The milkman quickly scratched them off his list of customers.
And the more isolated they became, the happier they seemed to be. Tim and Cindy stopped fighting and teasing one another and formed a kind of Manson fan club, they brought him presents and took pictures of him which they had framed and hung on their bedroom walls. Mr. Nelson had never really been comfortable with Mrs. Nelson’s dinner parties and was relieved when they stopped of necessity. And Mrs. Nelson got to play Florence Nightingale all the time now, a role she enjoyed, cleaning wounds, applying disinfectants, bandaging. She especially cherished bandaging. They were brought closer together by this cantankerous spaniel with jaws of steel.
One day during Cindy’s senior year in high school neither Mr. Nelson nor Mrs. Nelson were feeling well and they asked Cindy if she would mind taking Manson for his walk. Always before they had thought that only themselves were sufficiently responsible and strong to make certain no catastrophe befell their household as a result of these daily outings with Manson. But Cindy convinced her parents that, at eleven years old, Manson no longer had the wherewithal to break her grip on the choke chain and that she was shrewd enough herself to avoid situations that would ignite the devil in old Manson.
But of course she was still only a teenager. The first block went well enough. Twice she had had to distract Manson from his temptation to lunch on smaller dogs running loose in the neighborhood. And once she hid him behind a parked car so that he would not be incited by the sight of the mailman.
Manson dragged her from tree to tree, where he insisted on leaving his mark on each and every one. He even attacked several oaks and actually bit the bark off of them in great anger at something only he could detect, such as the possible existence of other dogs in the universe, a thought which clearly enraged him.
Cindy was panting for her breath when a police car pulled up beside her. The young officer inside reached over and unrolled his window. “Excuse me, young lady,” he said, “Could you tell me where . . .” Manson crouched and, with horrendous force, snapped the leash and hurled himself through the air and into the police car window. Cindy lay face down on the sidewalk and heard what sounded like a tremendous explosion. Her knees and elbows were burning with cuts, but she did manage to stand and brush herself off, still dazed. The officer was clutching his face and mumbling to himself over and over and over, “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.”
“What happened? Are you all right?” Cindy ran over to his window and the officer slowly lowered his hands to reveal a bloody map of Manson’s dental charts.
“Oh my God, Oh my God,” she couldn’t find the words.
The family mourned Manson’s death for weeks, for months, really. He was given something of a state funeral in their backyard, one befitting a great dictator. Each of them tossed a red rose into the earth before shoveling the dirt over old Manson’s remains. And each had a few words to say about the beast, and all of them, even Mr. Nelson, shed a few tears. An era had passed and, while no one spoke the thought, they knew nothing stood between them and the world now. Their one excuse had been removed, a bullet through his heart. They had their scars and little else to defend themselves against the multifariousness of the world.
MUSH
It was an incredible fight that went on for three days. Frank had thrown all of Stephanie’s clothes onto the front lawn. She responded by breaking his favorite pieces of Mayan statuary. He countered by hurling chairs and tables and bookcases through the front door. She bit his ear with all her might, nearly severing part of it. Then she hit him on the head with a tricycle and they made love.
They made love for three days. They did things to one another they had never tried before. He smeared her vagina with his favorite apricot jam. She made a chocolate cast of his penis. It was amazing, worlds opened up to them. Just as he thought he could not possibly achieve another erection, Stephanie had another idea. Frank thought he just might die. Both of their genitals were finally too raw for further use. That’s when she suggested that they have another baby. Frank looked forlornly at his withered member and said, “How?”
And that’s when Stephanie informed him that she hadn’t been using anything during the whole three day orgy. She laughed and laughed at how she had tricked him again. That’s how the other three were conceived, after big fights. Because Frank didn’t really like children. But then again, neither did Stephanie.
On his way to work the next morning Frank fell asleep at the wheel and narrowly missed a head-on collision with a logging truck. When the driver’s horn woke him, not a moment too soon, he almost wished it had been allowed to happen. Each time he had been on the verge of leaving Stephanie she tricked him into staying with another pregnancy. There was never a right moment, she saw to that with her sexual bait. His career as a politician—a city councilman on the rise—no longer mattered to him as it once had before he met Stephanie. He had once said he would be a United States Senator before the age of fifty. That was before he discovered “the mush”—his words—at his core. Stephanie knew about it, and that’s what she worked on, Frank’s mush.
She liked being married to a city councilman, and she still dreamed, indeed she believed the dream, that he would someday rise above local politics and into national prominence, and she would be there by his side with her brood of little ones. It wasn’t the money and all the special perks she wanted but an affirmation that she and Frank were special. Meanwhile it took all the wile and guile she could muster to keep Frank from disappearing into Mexico and losing all trace of him forever, and she knew—though she did not like to acknowledge it in any way—that that was his obsession now. So she was going to make him another baby now. One month later the tests made it official, and Frank was congratulated by everyone in the office. Jokes were made: “Looks good, Senator, father of four, family values. There’s no stopping you now.” His head was full of obscene panic; he assumed everyone could see the awful mess in there. He even thought of throwing a few of the gawkier ones out of the window or setting fire to his secretary’s hair. She knew everything, he was more and more certain. Perhaps she was even to blame, as it was she, Iris, who had introduced him to Stephanie five years back. Yes, Frank was seriously thinking of immolating Iris.
Frank treasured the long drives to and from work, forty minutes each way. At the beginning of each drive he had a choice to make: to examine the mush, to rake it over again and again for some clue, some tiny opening out, or to not examine the mush, a much more pleasant choice. If he chose not to examine, he could wake up an old man in Chiapas or Tehuantepec and smell the morning coffee brewing and hear the canaries singing. But then he would be that much further away from actually escaping from Stephanie and the ceaseless caterwauling of the children.
Stephanie greeted him each day with a list of chores it was necessary for him to perform that evening if their common ship was to stay upright and not
drift off course. And then she recited all the problems with which she had to contend all day: the babysitter was sick, the washing machine ate three diapers, the plumber had not even bothered to return her calls, her mother had called and was threatening to visit, until Frank thought he was going to explode. He detested domestic trivia, especially Stephanie’s, and it was Stephanie’s as far as he was concerned, and not his own. He had not asked for any of this. The woman would not be satisfied until she had melted chocolate into his brain and devoured it. How had all this got started? he had asked himself ten thousand times. He could tell the story a thousand ways to himself, but they were all lies. The truth can sometimes be so small and embarrassing, he thought to himself, that it is often not worth mentioning. In this particular case it was tits. He had wanted to suckle from them from the first night she had shown them to him. He had wanted to give up everything and just suckle.
As the birth of the fourth child approached Frank was beginning to make mistakes. Iris was keeping a close eye on him, she was actually keeping a daily diary on his behavior. She justified this by telling herself that she was “covering for him,” that is, she was noting mistakes Frank had made, phone calls not returned, conversations that Frank had with various committee members that would have to be smoothed over by her, or by Frank himself if he was still capable. Iris’ brother had committed suicide several years back and she knew some of the signs to look for. “Frank is a walking time-bomb” is how she put it to her best friend. “And does his wife, Stephanie, know?” her friend replied. “Stephanie? Are you kidding. Stephanie just wants to be Mrs. Senator. She can’t see beyond her big tits.” Iris did not usually use that word, but she knew how Stephanie corralled Frank, and she had the burden of her own guilt for introducing Frank to Stephanie. She wished she had made a move on him herself, things would have worked out much better.