by Martin Riker
It seems they had been expecting me for months—Emily explained, much later, that this was what Abram had told her—and had been often disappointed that I continually failed to arrive. Now I was there, however, and the next stage of my life began.
Tuesday was Uncle Miltie with Martha Raye; Thursday The Lone Ranger; Friday Rin Tin Tin. Lawrence Welk, whom I never cottoned to, was Saturday at nine, while Lucy, whom everyone loved and whom I loved more than I loved any actual person, was nine on Monday, later moving to Wednesday at seven thirty. By that time there was Wagon Train and Father Knows Best. There was Perry Mason, Dick and the Duchess, and Gunsmoke. Next there was the Beaver—how I loved the Beaver! There was Zorro and Pat Boone. When I think about them chronologically, one thing I’ve noticed about those early years of my television viewing is that the programs seemed to mature in subject matter at more or less the same time I did, from childish pie-in-the-face variety programs to the antics of bowl-cut young men to the adolescent romance of Western adventures. The culmination of this trajectory was a season sometime in the late fifties that saw an unbelievable concentration of Bonanza, The Rebel, The Lawman, The Alaskans, Maverick, and Wyatt Earp, with the Beaver—whose brother, Wally, was so close to my age that I was able to imagine him aging right alongside me—having moved by then to eight thirty Saturday from his previous Thursday spot. One tends to think of watching television as a solitary activity, if not downright isolating, the opposite of wholesome social interaction. In its heyday, though, television was often the very site of such interaction, connecting direly inhibited individuals across impossible social voids. And when you consider the sort of person I was, or rather the nonperson I just barely personified, you can see why my residence on Abram’s sofa represented a great upward turn in my development as a social being.
It was not that Abram and Emily and I discussed what we watched or held other conversations of any length or depth. In fact, if either Emily or I presumed to talk during a program, Abram quickly shushed it away. No, what we shared was a time and a place and participation in an unsanctioned activity. Passive activity, it’s true, but we shared it. And not for a night or a week or a month or even a year, but for the several years that we met this way, on our regularly scheduled evenings. And this was how I came to have what might properly be called a life. A life with people and a life with television. A life with people and television.
This brings us up to 1960. It was the year CBS’s Sunday lineup ran Lassie, Dennis the Menace, Ed Sullivan, GE Theater, Jack Benny, Candid Camera, and What’s My Line?, and the year my fate took its next definitive turn.
I was eighteen, was now well into my life with television, and had little sense of, much less ambition for, a life beyond—when one night Emily and I arrived to find Abram gone. It was a vibrant, fresh-scented evening, the sort that fortifies the blood in the exhilaration of springtime thaw. I’d met Emily along the path to the “haus,” and we’d been talking a bit about the programs for that evening—in fact, we’d been speaking more and more lately, not just about television but other topics as well, and not just along the nighttime path but on chance meetings throughout the day, or when Emily, not at all by chance, would stop by my workplace to chat, until Abram would grumblingly remind us of the work that needed to be done. But there was a pleasantness there, is all I mean to say, and it was a lovely spirited evening, and so we were quite unprepared, emotionally, to arrive and find Abram gone. Of course each of us had been sick or otherwise absent on countless occasions over the years, but this was something else. He was gone. The television was on, as was usual when we arrived, yet set atop the console were several pieces of yellowish paper that turned out to be a rather long note.
I apologize in advance for its wordiness, but as it has always been an important document for me, one I’ve given a great deal of thought to over the years, I include the entirety of this letter below.
Yungins,
Many a nite-an-day haf I pourt myself a hedful of thinkings bout this telefussin, and vhy gut Christian mums and dads get acheybelly and knickertwist ofer a thing so entrataining and gut-joyable and plessur-making and fine. I doubtnot you have vundered such yourselfs. Tis true that vatching you much telefussin can bit-tarnish normalife and make normadays appear saemwhat dullish—I disputeth no part nor paece of this claim. Yet to unterstant in full telefussin’s awe-filt Got-like power to sow into souls many insatsfaxons, we need us first consiter how a mudern peeples mostdays are liffed. And this is vhy I haf prepared me this note of my own thinkings for your considering.
In truth, the vorld we lif in is mostpart filler, like a Viener schnitzel, scrappl, or uttervise low-graed vurst. This VURST VORLD is made most of scraps and feddyparts, with oft whole years past tween meat-filt goings-on. Nay, yout not belief yourselfs to see it, but even hi-adventuring peeples out in this mudern vorld knoweth only the teenymost chunk of tru lifeiness, hopped in there amongst the scrappl fat of the everydays. The mudern vorld is just this and thers no uttervise posbil.
Now, if telefussin shown not but the fanciest mudern lifes but shown the full bits of them, there then twould be naet for Christian mums and dads to spaek boo over. Yet the awe-filt Got-like power of telefussin lieth not in the parts it showeth, but ruther in the parts it leaveth out.
Spaken plaen, telefussin takes away lifes dullish parts, the scraps and feddyparts, and makes any life atall seem intrusting. Yay, vere it posbil to liff a telefussin life, you could be any soul atall and twould not matter, insomuchas how intrusting yout be. Vere it posbil to liff a telefussin life, all your moments twould be momentious, all your thinking twould be profownd, all your choosing twould be of grossie and everlasting import. Nay, put none can liff a telefussin life, and the raeson is a thing I stall myself from telling. Long haf I stallt from discusing vith you this matter, but now I do feel in my hart and hed that you haf grown old nuff vhere you is better off hearing than not hearing it.
Tis Got. Yay, I spake it plaen. For Got wrote the Book of Life, and He writeth it still, and He doth not removeth from out His Vorks noneparts vhatsoever, not the feddy nor the meat-filt parts naether, nay, nor doth He stand for othersome to removeth such parts, as do question the purfection of His Vorks. Yet the programs you vatch on the telefussin, by not showing the full bits, do not gift full Grandur to His Vorks, His VURST VORLD in all its allness, but rather moldeth and shapeth mostdays life to fit peeple’s self-magining. It createth from true life meer idols of self-delisation. It melteth down the mettle of Got’s VURST VORLD and make instet a goltin calf to vurship! Vhich is HERESY, plaen and simpl. Nor doth it matter if the telefussin program be true or falsht. It matters only that we selecteth from His Vorks. We stareth in the mouth Got’s Gift-Hass. Beggars tho we be, we Choos!
Such is the sin for vich we are punisht vith perpetul insatsfaxons. Yet as to the faerness of it, I do atimes vunder. If Got Himself did removeth from out His Vorks some bits of the feddy, mudern life vould be a faer bit more entrataining, not to say gut-joyable and plessur-making and fine.
Yungins, the raeson I haf writ me this note of my own thinkings for your considering is that you are now grown and changt much, and our cowch has alast becum overcrowtert. It is time I adventur into this VURST VORLD, the vorld beyond the telefussin, to discover vhat destiny holds in stor. Much as any mudern man, I feel insatsfaxons of all sorts, yet I knoweth too a truth: that there is not so much choosing in this vorld as He vould haf you belief. Therefor, if you can liff in Gots VURST VORLD and be gut-happy here, vhy, you most surely should. They call that “grace,” and peeple can only haf it long as they know not vhat it is. Once you know, then try as you vould, normaday life forevermoreafter dissatsfies, and you forevermoreafter prefer you the telefussin sort. May be I just ruint it for you by telling.
Gut luck!
Abram
In the coming years I would reread this letter many times, on many a self-questioning evening. On this particular evening, however, in the understandable intensity of having a great surpr
ise suddenly thrust upon me, I failed to take in much of Abram’s letter at all. I was preoccupied instead with the sheer fact of it, the shock of the sudden absence that had occasioned it, and also with something else, quite unrelated—an even more pressing development, which I’ll now do my best to explain.
We were sitting on the sofa, holding the letter, sitting in our normal spots but without Abram’s body between us. Emily had turned off the television, our attentions more occupied, for once, with the reality at hand. Yet as the smoke of the situation began to clear, and as we ourselves settled, she now got up and switched the set back on. I did not make much of this gesture, assuming she meant simply not to miss any more of our program, or at most to divert us from the various worries we’d been discussing. Only later did I realize there was more to the gesture; a diversion, yes, but not from worries. Rather, it was her effort at dissipating the uncomfortable emotional situation that was already developing in the room. A shift in the air, in the social dynamic. For it was not simply Abram’s absence that hung heavily in the air that day; it was also the newfound presence of our aloneness together, a before-then-unheeded tension between Emily and myself, which I tried to attribute, as we settled into the program, to Abram’s absence, the shock of it. Impossible to discuss or outwardly acknowledge—yet this tension continued to grow stronger, even as the television’s characters paraded past. It swelled in the space where Abram would have been sitting and was soon so oppressive that I began to feel nauseated by it, as if by the onset of a sudden, inexplicable illness. No longer able to follow the program, utterly oblivious to the television’s images and sounds even as my brain passively received them, I watched my body shiver as if cold, felt my pulse elevate; I sensed the onset of a vomit deep down and would have hastily excused myself to the woods had Emily’s body not appeared to me, in that moment, to be suffering the same condition. Eyes met, and rather than vomit we gave ourselves over to a wave of passion that carried us far out to sea, to a place we had never gone, had barely imagined, and from which there was—one instantly knows—no returning. It was a churning, disorienting wave that twisted our bodies into brilliant reckless contortions, a calamitous journey outside of time and bereft of perspective, and when at last it subsided, I felt as if ages had passed. We found ourselves floating, still clinging to one another, surrounded in all directions by a new placidity, a transcendental calm, with a great dark emptiness beneath us, a thrilling and terrifying depth, and with the muffled voices of our favorite television characters just barely reaching out to us from some distant, long-forgotten shore. It was my first experience of being inside of life, of attending life’s essential performance not as spectator but as fully engaged participant. I knew then that my childhood was over, though I hadn’t the slightest idea what came next.
Nine months later, when Samuel Jr. was born, and when my dear Emily died giving birth to him, I experienced again this extraordinary feeling, not a “bad” or “good” feeling but a powerful participatory one. After that, I felt it quite regularly in the daily up-and down-surges of life with my son, until the day came when I lost it forever, which we are getting to soon enough.
It will seem all too befitting Unityville’s Edenic pretensions that the first major event of my adulthood was banishment. In fact, it was a rather mild banishment, as banishments go. Nor was it Emily’s pregnancy that earned us this sentence—that was reconciled with a quick wedding that we both agreed to happily enough. But it was the inevitable revelation of our longtime clandestine affair with the television that led several in the town to suggest that Unityville might not be the ideal location to start our new life together. There is a generous interpretation to this suggestion and a less generous one, but I will not bother with either, since other circumstances made the question largely moot. There was a child on the way, after all, a child who was heartily welcomed by Emily’s parents, perhaps slightly less by my own, a tiny human still innocent of the world and deserving every sort of stability and care. And so, to balance these various considerations, it was decided that Emily and I would move together into the now abandoned “haus,” whose location would once more prove providential, being near enough for grandparents but far enough for lives of our own.
Thus began the most pleasant, carefree months of my life, spending mornings and evenings with Emily and during the day providing semiskilled handiwork for the town, where Abram’s sudden departure had left more than enough opportunities for his “apprentice” to regain the approval of the citizenry. And outside of town, Emily and I were left to grow our relationship in whatever manner made sense to us, whether that meant watching television or discussing television or, as was increasingly the case, spending hardly any time at all with television, and instead taking walks, and making love, and holding long conversations about our future, the seemingly wide-open possibilities of our new life together. The world I had once imagined, a world “out there” on the far side of television, was now of little interest to me, unless it was to travel there with Emily, for “with Emily” was the only place I wished to be.
And when my son was born, and was placed naked and tiny onto my trembling chest; and when, holding my son, I watched my wife watch us both, even as she herself bled out onto the table; and when I saw her face fill with horror at what I assumed was the same thought I was having, that she would die, that she would not be around for him, that she would not be around for me, that we would be abandoned and this beautiful child would be deprived of the one thing no child should ever be deprived of, his lovely mother, his mother who loved him more already in that instant than most people are loved in a lifetime; and when she spoke no words but only watched us until the pain was too great and she succumbed—in that moment I was filled with the pure light of life. I personally contained more life, in that moment, than any person should ever be asked to.
Emily, my wife, I wish we had had more time. Who knows what would have happened, the people we might have become. I wish everything had had more time. I am writing this for Samuel, our son, but also for you, of course, in a way. I mean to say that there is the bond of husband and wife, and the bond of parent and child, but there is also a bond between parents, the unspoken bond that says that everything you do for your child you also do for each other, that all the love you give to your child you also give to each other. And I think it also says that anything you would have done, any love you would have given, that, too, is for each other.
And then we were alone, my son and I. Emily was gone, had been taken from us, and I was instantly filled with the most powerful need to protect him. I whose life had never known anything like “ambition” or “direction” was suddenly more charged with purpose than I would ever have thought possible. Where before I had let whole years slip unheeded through my fingers, now I would seize the day so firmly I’d need to take care not to choke it. This was life, this child in my arms. I would never leave his side, never fail in my attention to him. For the first few days, I did not even let his grandparents near. I carried him with me at all moments, slept with him on my chest, though in truth I did not sleep for fear I might roll over and harm him. But I was determined we would live this way, two hermits in isolation even from that isolated town, my love lording over us to the end of our days.
Understand that if I take pains to emphasize the severity of my love, its unhealthy possessive nature, my purpose in doing so is not to glorify it nor to extract pity for the real duress I was clearly suffering. Rather, I underscore my emotion and conviction during this time so that you might comprehend how deeply perplexed I felt, not many days later, when anxiousness and boredom reentered me.
Of course a human being is a vessel with many compartments. Of course one’s heart never holds just a single feeling, no matter how strongly that feeling is felt. I had learned this lesson at the moment of my son’s birth and my wife’s death, yet in the days and weeks that followed, I discovered that in fact my body could maintain over very long periods the most profound contradictions, w
atching and loving this beautiful child, unable to imagine a more perfect being or a place I would rather be, and at the same time exasperated by his cries, overwhelmed by his constant care, and wondering, with increasing frequency, how I might manage to take a break from him. At such times I began bringing Samuel to his grandparents (Emily’s parents), who were extremely understanding if not outright joyful to see what they assumed was the natural fading of my (perfectly understandable, they said) irrational possessiveness and the burgeoning of a healthier, more responsible, more sharing sort of fatherly love. For my part, I allowed them to hold on to this hopeful interpretation of my mental state, though I knew it to be false. I knew that my love had not been tempered either in type or degree; it still raged in my heart with all its surety and power; simply that it contended, now, with this other force—I thought of it as fatigue rather than laziness—a force that did not lessen my love or calm my heart but simply interfered with and frustrated it. Every time I left Samuel’s side, no matter for what duration, I would swoon with guilt at the inconsistency of my actions, the inconstancy of my resolve. But while relinquishing neither my passion nor my guilt, I would explain to myself—I thought of it as being reasonable rather than making excuses—that it was a matter of exhaustion. My brain could provide only so much attention at one time, I told myself. I could sustain that level of engagement for only so long, and the speed with which I found myself going from profound immersive joy to direly needing a recess was in reality a testament to the profundity of the joy, since the more profound the joy, the faster it would consume my mental resources, as a more intense flame burns more quickly through its wick. Mine was not a peculiar combination of laziness and obsession, I told myself; rather I was too loving, my emotions too raw and burdening. And I would need to learn, for the sake of my son, to temper this affection, to parcel it out, so that I would not be so often forced to take a break from it.